Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 68 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
I’m here today with a little announcement. As you possibly saw in the title of this episode, I’ve called it pausing and stepping into quiet. I’m feeling a really strong urge lately to do just that, to pause things, step into the silence, spend a lot of time in quiet.
We’re coming into summertime, here on the west coast of Vancouver Island, as I record this, and the days are getting longer and sunnier. And it’s not so much that I want to spend more time in the sun because I’m not really that type of person. But I do just want to spend time in quiet right now. And slow down a little bit and listen for wisdom, really.
This episode is a little announcement letting you know that that’s what’s happening. I will keep you posted on any future directions or things that go on. Hopefully I’ll be back in a few weeks or a couple of months or whatever it is however long it lasts. I really feel drawn to just listening to wisdom, listening to my intuition, that kind of thing and following those nudges. So that’s what’s pulling me at this moment.
For the next few weeks, I hope you are doing great, doing really well taking good care of yourself.
We Don’t Need To Figure It Out with Stephanie Benedetto
Jun 13, 2024
As we discuss so often on Unbroken, there is an intelligence and wisdom that, if we allow it to, can guide our lives to interesting and fulfilling places. As with most of us, it took Stephanie Benedetto some time to really listen to this wisdom and to trust that it would support her. When she did, she unlocked a life and a business that flow with ease, even in the challenging moments.
Stephanie Benedetto is a transformational business coach, storyteller and (Un)Marketer at The Awakened Business, where she helps transformative coaches, healers and entrepreneurs unleash their heart’s message to create soulmate clients with playful (Un)Marketing — no hustle, or hype of endless social media required.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Business as a vehicle of creation
Giving ourselves permission to create the lives we want
Noticing what is alive within us that wants to guide us
Following the nudge to make a big life change
How we create our worlds based on Thought
How the pressures we feel have nothing to do with what’s going on in our lives and everything to do with what’s going on in our heads
How discomfort is created when our thoughts look real
Paying attention to what we’re listening to
How you being you is enough
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer
Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Benedetto
Alexandra: Stephanie Benedetto, welcome to Unbroken.
Stephanie: Thank you for having me, Alexandra, this is a great pleasure.
Alexandra: I’m so pleased to have you here.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Stephanie: I have been a pretty much a lifelong entrepreneur. Definitely in my adult life. But as I reflected on my childhood, I used to play games like Office and sell at Mr. Dobbs candy shop. And I used to sell cards and things. I was actually interested in entrepreneurship, even when I was quite young. So I’ve had multiple businesses.
The most notable and successful were we’re a business as a wedding DJ, with my now ex husband for 15 years. And then we transitioned into a digital marketing business, basically, internet marketing. So I used to create courses and a membership online, for other wedding professionals to teach them about business. I’ve been in love with business for a long time.
But my first love is really people. And I love business as a vehicle of creation. It’s a way that people can create the change they’d love to see in the world, they can be of service. That’s what I see business as. And so over the years, I wanted to have deeper impact with people. And that drew me more and more into coaching.
In my prior career, it looked more like consulting, marketing strategy.
And I realized that there was something missing from that, for me, that we talked about these great ideas and people that didn’t do them, because they were scared, or they felt insecure. And I saw this also in myself, because in parallel, I was on my own personal development and spiritual journey. I wanted to go deeper for me.
So I hired my first business coach. And then I wanted to do what they were doing. And it took me on this whole journey until I realized, Oh, my goodness.
The business I currently have, which is called The Awakened Business is really meant to support entrepreneurs, who want to share the truth they’ve seen, and the gifts that they have with the world.
And do it in a way that really feels good. Because there’s a lot that I was taught when I was studying internet marketing inside of business that maybe we could say is unethical or feels a little weird. And certainly people who are helpers and want to be of service often have a lot of what I could call head trash about selling and marketing. None of that has to be painful or icky, like it can actually be complete joy and totally enjoyable. And so that’s what I help people do now.
As I’ve gone deeper into my journey with the Three Principles have gone from Oh, this is a cool thing to add to all the other spiritual stuff.
This was like years ago, I saw no contradiction with neuro linguistic programming and Practical Magic and Access Consciousness and EFT and all the other things that I was doing. I was like, Oh, the Three Principles fits great into this mix. I really care about understanding those principles. I don’t care about explaining it to others. I’d say this to myself until I realized I started talking about three principles with other people.
Then I was like, I want to be a transformative coach. I’m interested in that until I find myself in Michael Neal’s super coach Academy and becoming a certified transformative coach. So I actually think there was a wisdom in it that I was trying not to take it seriously not to try to do it right. I just let the process unfold.
As time has gone on that is more and more, it’s really the foundation of everything that I do, not just in my business, not just with the clients I work with, but to help people to really enjoy their lives and whatever it is they’re creating, through the recognition of what they really are, who they really are, and, and how we work. How we create our experience. And when we’re really at our best, and that we can trust this intelligence that enlivens us. And when that happens, man, building a business is a piece of cake.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s great, good news for all the entrepreneurs out there.
How does it look different, trusting our own wisdom, trusting the intelligence that’s flowing through us versus trying to do it all ourselves.
Stephanie: Oh, my God, it is so different. I’ve been on this journey myself, for years. And of course, it’s quite natural that I also guide other people on that journey. People don’t see me this way. So often, when I say that, I used to be a total rule follower. They’re like, really? Because such a big part of my message is that you get to do it your way, you get to play the game of business the way you want to play it.
I was really devoted to doing things right. And being a good student and a good girl for much of my life.
I brought that with me into what I learned about business. And so it was doing things the way they were taught to me following the rules, and a lot of that I learned a lot from it. And some of it worked. And some of it didn’t. But at some point, the things that I was supposed to do just didn’t feel quite right. But this was, of course, mirroring what was happening inside of me.
It wasn’t until I was, I think, maybe 38 years old that I asked myself, What do I want to create in my life?
It just hadn’t really occurred to me. Asking that question sent me inward. And I began to discover, like, how do I even know what I want? That was a journey for me in itself. And then I discovered the difference between creating from my intellect, creating from the rules that somebody else gave me or the way I’ve always done it, and how limited it felt, versus those moments when I got quiet. And something would just tell me, and I would just know, to do something. So I don’t think I jumped in all at once.
I read a book called The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, I think about maybe eight or nine years ago now. With it came alive my own surrender experiment, an exploration of what does that mean to surrender? What does that mean to let life show me? What I found and how this looks so different is that I don’t need to figure it out, which is a great relief, because I don’t think I was really that good at it. I mean, I coped well, but I can’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. And I don’t know what’s going to work and what won’t.
I’m not very good at thinking about all things that need to happen. It’s overwhelming, and it’s very stressful. And I’ve realized that I don’t have to. Everyone has an area of their life where they know this, by the way, it might be the one place where they feel like, oh, I can just relax and I’m in flow. So for some people, it’s at work, for some people it’s with their kids. For some people, it’s when they’re out in nature, maybe they do a sport.
That’s available anywhere, including inside of our business.
I am still discovering this, by the way, I’m still going deeper on this, that I can go to the source of wisdom inside of me for anything and everything. And in fact, that’s what I’m looking for is what I’m really looking for is there, including the answers about how to grow my business, how to market it, how to move past things that look like they’re stopping me. And of course, the feelings, the well-being and the peace and the happiness that I’m looking for. So that’s how it looks different. I hope I have answered that question.
Alexandra: You have Thank you. I love your analogy about how it does show up for everyone in some area of their life. And sometimes we take that a little bit for granted, I think we think oh well that it’s that one specific thing that I’m good at or relaxed about. And then we don’t realize that we can feel that way, in so many other areas, if not everywhere in our lives.
Before we hit record, we were talking about our intentions for the call. And one of the things I said was that I was interested in your personal story, and you touched on it a little bit already about being a good girl. And following the rules.
On your website, there’s some detail about how you followed your wisdom out of that way of being. Can you tell us a little bit about what that looked like for you?
Stephanie: When I started asking myself, what do I want, I realized that I had been making my choices, based on a role that I thought I needed to fill, I had a lot of people pleasing behaviors going on, which made sense, because it was how I knew myself. I discovered that some of the things I was doing were part of the reason why maybe I didn’t like them after a while or became resentful or was because it really wasn’t something that I wanted. I didn’t even know I was allowed to ask that.
And as I did, as that was alive in me, I was listening. This is how I see it. Now, I don’t think I knew quite what I was doing then. But I was listening for guidance. I was always on a spiritual journey of some type. And as I got quieter in the moments when I did get quiet, which were few and far between, but I was finding them more. I was hearing things, I was getting a sense of things.
I was actually at a yoga retreat. Yoga was one of the many things that I pursued on this growth path. I had been married for I think, at that time, at least 16 years.
This knowing dropped in that it’s time for you to leave your marriage. And I was like, why?
This is not the first time I would get a message from the universe like that and be like, right, but I felt lots of things. It wasn’t just no, but see, I just knew there was a knowing in that. I took my time, which I think was also wisdom, because I loved my husband.
This is another thing was like How can I leave there’s nothing wrong here. If there was abuse, if I was unhappy, if we didn’t like each other even, that will be a good reason. But I thought I needed a reason to make a choice. I didn’t know that because I want to, it’s a good enough reason. I waited about a year of just dropping expectations and letting go of the mess that I had and working with coaches and the mess that I had in my head. I had so much thinking about it. And until finally I felt clear, I knew that I knew it wasn’t.
I said to myself, if I’m going to leave this marriage, it’s not going to be because I’m trying to escape. That’s something I tried to do before I tried to implode our marriage earlier. Or because I’m avoiding something, but I’m going to do it from a place of peace. If I’m doing it. That’s how I’m doing it. And that is how it happened. I’m still friends with my ex husband and and I think we both…we could have done better of course, looking back I see so much more now than I did then. But we did really well navigating that.
My husband and I owned a business together. We owned two houses together, we had animals that we owned together. I left all of that. I had to close it off. It wasn’t an impulsive thing. We still worked in our business for I think almost two years before we sold it together. And I started traveling and pet sitting because I love pets, I love animals. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I didn’t know where I wanted to live and I didn’t just want to do what I’d always done and stay in New York, which is where I was.
That was my real experience. Surrender is I don’t know where I’m going to end up.
And it’s continued. And it’s deepened. And it was almost two years ago that a similar big knowing dropped in where it was like, okay, I’m going to Portugal, go to Portugal. And there was a new relationship for me there. I had a very strong sense about what was going to happen. And I had to drop all my expectations about what that meant.
What I’ve come to learn about this wisdom is that it is in real time, it is for right now. And when it says go to Portugal, it means go to that direction now, like whatever that means, start the process. It doesn’t mean what I necessarily think it’s going to mean. So I had all kinds of thinking about Alexandria, again, like I was like, No, you’re doing this, I like my life. I’m happy here. But I also know to follow that, because that’s how I want to live.
There’s a delight and a depth to living from that place that I am surprised at what I find myself choosing and what comes my way. And it doesn’t lead me wrong. It doesn’t mean that everything works out the way I think it will, though. So that’s why it was like surrendering, surrendering my expectations about what this would mean. And if it would mean what I thought I just knew to follow those directions, just do that. And I did. And it actually went the way that I had sensed.
Along the way, I just showed up in the moment as best I could.
It’s opened up a whole new world for me yet again, I didn’t realize the fear that had been driving me. It helped me see that. The world is bigger and possibilities that I never thought were available for myself. I can see them now. And I couldn’t before; they were invisible to me. And it’s not because I moved to Portugal, but that was a part of the journey.
Alexandra: Wow, there’s so much in there, I got goosebumps when you talked about being at a yoga retreat and feeling that knowing that it was time to leave your marriage. That’s extraordinary. And you touched on the good girl aspect of your personality earlier.
I imagine that there was some resistance from that part of your personality when you started going in this direction more of following wisdom rather than pleasing other people.
Could you talk about that resistance a little bit?
Stephanie: What was interesting, Alexandra, was it wasn’t just a good girl living in my personality, there was also a rebel. So it was kind of like both were going on at the same time. And you can imagine that’s quite a war to have, when I don’t know that what’s really happening is conflicting thoughts. I thought that was part of me. My identity, right.
That started when I was a kid. I remember the first time I seriously rocked the boat in my family. I think I was about 15 years old. And I had my first existential crisis like, No, I am the good girl. Everybody loves me. I don’t do things that upset people and like, cause conflict and division and my family. That’s not me. Well, yeah, apparently it was. Because that too, was an experience that I have.
What I saw, and I’ve actually seen this recently, that the people pleasing behavior and the nice girl persona, the need to be that person came from this false belief I had built my world on, that for my own survival, I needed to never be a burden to anyone. And I made up what that was, right? Like, what does that even mean? Well, it’s definitely made it up. I made it up. So I could never be a burden to others, which meant I’ve really had to know what other people wanted and try to anticipate it and a whole world was created on that faulty premise that if I was a burden to others, I would be abandoned, and I would die. So that felt really scary and really important.
I built my personality on that. I built these habits and behaviors, and some of them served me at least some of the time, but many of them didn’t.
As I grew and I would see these behaviors come up, like asking people for help used to seem impossible, then it felt uncomfortable, and then I’m like, this is trivial and silly. Why am I feeling fear? I saw that it made perfect sense based on the world I was living in and seeing the world I had created out of fear.
Seeing that we create it, seeing the fact that we create a world with thought. And then we call it my beliefs and my values and my identity. And this is the way the world works, meant that I didn’t have to create it that way anymore. And so now, sure, maybe those habits of thought, those habits of behavior may come up. But I see them in a way I couldn’t see them before. They were invisible to me, they looked real before.
I don’t feel the resistance of it anymore. I don’t care, honestly, it’s like, I just went to the market today. And I feel nervous. Sometimes I freaked myself out. I’m learning Portuguese, and I don’t understand the numbers they’re saying when I’m paying for things sometimes. And so the nerves are so bad, I feel nervous. It’s really okay, I get over it really fast. And it doesn’t mean anything.
It used to look like it meant something. It used to look like it was life and death to me.
And I didn’t see that. And now it doesn’t. Now I know, it’s just another experience like any other. So it’s not that all those things disappear instantly. But they don’t have the same hold over me. And actually, a lot of them have kind of disappeared. I notice things slowly just dropping away.
Alexandra: I want to ask specifically, we touched on it a little bit, but how the messages from your life pointed you toward another way to show up. So you talked about at the yoga retreat and you just had a knowing.
Are there other ways that you experience feeling wisdom or feeling being guided?
Stephanie: Those are my first big examples of it. But now, it’s every day. Now, I see it everywhere. So for example, I wake up and I can just like kind of tune in like, what will be good for my body to eat today. I take supplements, but I don’t take them every day. I kind of just check in. Okay, not today. Just interesting. I don’t always do this, by the way. And it’s not a practice. It’s just something that started happening.
As I’ve been on my business journey, I’ll weave it into my business a little bit. So in business, I was taught a lot of different things. First, I was taught that you’re supposed to schedule all the important activities in your business to make sure that you do them. And so then I would like time block my calendar and I felt all this pressure. So I was like, I don’t want that anymore. So I stopped because somebody else told me that you should only have appointments on your calendar, and you should have space so you can see the spaciousness of your account. Neither one of those things are true, by the way. They’re just someone’s opinion.
So I did that for a while. And I realized I was kind of drifting. So I started going how do I want to experience this? Like what experiment can I do? So I started experimenting with adding some structure back in. The way I’ve kind of settled my days are often quite full.
But the pressure I feel has nothing to do with how much is on my calendar and everything to do with how much is in my head.
I know that now, I didn’t know that when I wanted my calendar spacious and free. But what I do is I do sometimes is time block activities to set aside time to work on writing this thing or editing these videos. But I give myself full permission to show up fresh with it. So that if it doesn’t feel right, or something else is occurring to me like wisdom like go now you really need a nap right now. That’s what I’ll do.
Because how could the me from a week ago know what would be perfect for me right now. So that’s kind of an example of how wisdom shows up in small ways. And even recently, I’m seeing oh wow, I can go there for everything and anything. I didn’t realize how much I was still going to my intellect, which is great. You know, it’s served me so well, if I want something really fresh, if I want to grow my business, if I want to create money, why am I going to my intellect, which is only aware of these certain ways to do it? Why am I not going to the source? And asking there what occurs to me?
This is a fresh journey for me. But there’s always something that occurs from there.
And sometimes it’s surprising. Sometimes it’s common sense. Just the fact that I can look there is amazing. Just the fact that something’s there for me. It almost doesn’t matter what it is.
Alexandra: I love that. And I love that you use the word fresh, because that’s a word that I’ve been using more and more lately. We have this wisdom that’s within us and comes to life moment to moment is so fresh, and creative. And wise, of course. But yeah, that word fresh is just so important to me these days.
You may have already addressed this in some of what you’ve said, but tell us a little bit about your ideas about that.
Let’s talk about what the awakened business looks like.
Stephanie: That’s funny, I really don’t think of it in those terms of like, there is an awakened business and one that is unawakened. I really wanted to call my business the awakened entrepreneur, honestly, but I couldn’t get the domain at the time. But what that means to me is coming fully alive, inside of your business, inside of your life, really, because they’re not separate.
Your business is a part of your life and when a person comes alive, and by that I mean begins to feel life, moving through them. Whatever way they might experience that begins to really be in their experience, give themselves permission to create what they want and enjoy. What’s happening now. Because aliveness is enjoyable.
The feeling of aliveness is, I mean, even when something crappy is happening. The aliveness that flows beneath and in all of it is amazing. And when that starts to happen, not as a state to achieve at every moment, but when it begins to happen, even in tiny moments, throughout your day, and you create a business, that way, you have a business that feels alive, you’re up to cool things. It’s easier to communicate what it is that you’re up to so that the people you’re here to help and serve understand that. You’re no longer creating it, because somebody said you should.
This way, you’re creating it, because it feels right for you.
And you get to do it wrong. I’m putting that in air quotes, I don’t think you can do it wrong.
You get to make mistakes, and change your mind and make shit up. I do that all the time. I’m constantly making things up. Things don’t work. And I know I’m okay. I know that something new will occur, that something fresh will occur. So that’s what it looks like to have a business that’s alive for me.
Alexandra: Do you find that either yourself or your clients when they’re starting to learn about doing things this way? Is there a discomfort that comes up for them?
Stephanie: Oh, yes.
Alexandra: Is it uncomfortable?
Stephanie: Yes. It often is. Because the first time like, I’m allowed to do that. Yeah, you’re making up your business. Because if you go into the typical business training world, people and I’m going to assume that most of them are well intentioned. I know they all are on some level. Ultimately, they all are. They want to help people. But what they do is they’re training people. They’re giving people their wisdom. And that’s not going to be the right fit for me or you, in parts of it might, it might inspire something for me. But that’s not the source. And it’s not going to be the perfect fit.
We’re taught that there’s a certain way to do things, you have to have a website, and on your website, you need to have this thing called the lead magnet, and you have to an email list and you need to do social media and the answer to those things. Is that true? No, no, no. And no. Or maybe yes, yes, yes. And yes. Only you would know.
It’s really weird for people at first, when I’m asking them like, well, what’s the current view? What do you know? So the people who do find me are kind of onto that, already a little bit like, they might describe it as I want to have a soul led business, or I want to follow more of my intuition or do things my way, because they’ve been around the block, and they haven’t been enjoying the way it feels.
But they still run up against that old thinking of there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way, and I better figure it out, because bad stuff’s gonna happen if I don’t. So yeah, that is uncomfortable. And I think, actually, something I’m seeing that is a bigger discomfort for people is letting go of the pressure, and the trying, and the doing and making ourselves figure it out. It’s all on me that many of us have used to drive our actions and our behavior, especially in our business, like actually going, I don’t have to figure it out. You mean I could listen to my wisdom, and that wisdom tells me seriously, that even seems like more of an uncomfortable thing for people.
Alexandra: I’m so glad you said that. Because that’s something that I struggle with as well. I go along for a while and then I noticed myself drifting off, and feeling like it’s all on me, and feeling a lot of pressure. And then I remember, and I bring myself back. But it’s a habit.
It is a little bit uncomfortable to break it, to know that there’s something else there that’s going to catch us and support us.
Stephanie: At first it’s uncomfortable, but it’s only uncomfortable because I have a thought that looks real, that says something like, If I don’t do it, nothing will happen. I have to be the one to do it. I just feel the discomfort of that thought if without that thought it’s amazing to know I don’t have to do it. It’s a miracle that I don’t have to do it. My job is simply to be me. And to do what occurs to me. That’s it. Can it be that simple? Yeah. And it’s a great relief.
Alexandra: That’s so true. The discomfort, the way that it feels is the clue.
The discomfort that we feel about taking it all on ourselves is the thing that lets us know that that thought is a lie. I love that built in feedback system.
Stephanie: It is becoming more and more black and white to me. As I am like, oh my really anytime I don’t feel good, peaceful, calm, I’m caught up in my thinking. That’s all it means. I don’t even need to know the content of that thinking. That’s what’s happening.
I know in that from that place, I am not seeing the world clearly. If I feel crappy, I am not seeing clearly, period, every time. It’s incredible to see that because it keeps pointing me back to look within. This is where I find what I’m looking for. And I start to settle down. If I’m not settled down, I know it’s just going to be a little while until it passes. It always does.
Alexandra: You mentioned that you were at the listening seminar recently. Tell us about that experience. Do you have a highlight from it?
Stephanie: There were so many little moments. It was amazing to be there. The first day we really just talked about and listened to people talking about listening. Some of my favorite mentors from inside the Three Principles, Michael Neill was there. Mavis Karn was there. I got to meet people in person who I’d never met in person before. And so we are all in a really lovely state.
This is a highlight I’ll share with you because it was unusual for me. Stephanie’s personality and my past, even though I like hugging people, I’ve always been a little weird with people in my personal space. Unless I know you, don’t come too close.
I was just in a really beautiful feeling listening to this presentation, I think it was on the first day. And I just look at this woman. And she just was so cute. She had a little bow, she had like a little flower in her hair, and this cute little dress on. And I looked at her and I see her look at me. And I’m like, it felt like we knew each other. I look away and I look back, and she’s smiling at me. And I’m smiling at her. I just went up to her and hugged her without saying a word. Without a thought. And as I hugged her, I was like, you have such a beautiful smile. And she was from the Czech Republic, I could tell by her accent as she responded.
She said, I was just thinking you’re such a beautiful woman. And that was it. We hugged, we spoke those words, we might have smiled and waved at each other at another point during that conference. But that was all. And it was such a perfect moment. I think this is what’s possible when we’re listening. When we’re just being.
Listening isn’t about hearing. It’s an openness, it’s a receptivity, it’s what happens when I’m really present.
Again, anytime I’m not feeling present, I’m not listening. And that’s what’s available, little miracles like that happen. nd I don’t even think about them, they just happen. Things move me. I don’t know why I hugged that woman. It just was the thing to do.
Alexandra: It occurs to me that when it comes to listening, it feels like it’s pointing toward the opposite of where we normally live, which is a lot of chatter in our heads about ourselves, about other people, about things that are going on, about life, about whatever. And as you said, listening is more like an openness, or receptivity.
I love that distinction. Because it’s not just about our ears.
Stephanie: My dear friend says, we’re always listening. Our listening is always perfect. What are we listening to? Most of the time, we’re listening to the chatter in our heads. And it’s not particularly productive. Sometimes it’s great fun, but other times, not so much. And we know by how it feels right.
When I’m listening within, it’s different. And things drop in, instead of me being caught up in them. It’s like they rise up or they drop in. That’s kind of a funny way to express it. But that’s how it feels. And it’s very different than when I’m listening to the contents of my intellect and my endlessly churning mind.
Alexandra: As we’re coming to the end of our time today, is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with our listeners?
Stephanie: What I’d like to share is that you being you is not only enough, it’s amazing. I didn’t know that for a very long time. And it feels so good. That’s how you know you’re being you. It feels easy. It feels effortless. And I’m most myself when I’m not thinking about myself at all. And it’s a gift. It’s a gift for us, but it’s a gift for the world. And I would love for people to know that or know it a little more deeply.
Alexandra: Nice. Oh, thank you.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Stephanie: The best place would be TheAwakenedBusiness.com. That’s my website. I’m not active on social media. I’ve been doing some YouTube and a bit of LinkedIn, but I’m allergic to the rest for right now.
I do have an email list. If people would like to follow my adventures in life and business. I share a lot of my personal experiences and experiments, they can hop on my email list and learn more.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes to your website. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. It’s been really nice to meet you.
Stephanie: You too, Alexandra. Thanks for having me.
Listening for Guiding Wisdom with Bonnie Jarvis
Jun 06, 2024
We all have a built-in GPS, a guidance system that never lies and that always has our best interests at heart. We can call that guidance whatever we want – wisdom, intuition, insight, knowing; the name isn’t as important as learning to listen to it. And, as Bonnie Jarvis points out, figuring out how your guiding wisdom speaks to you makes life so much easier.
Bonnie Jarvis has a BA in Graphic Design, MS in Computer Science, MA in Spiritual Psychology and has completed several coaching programs. Using the skills she learned over the years, she’s helped many coaches with the technical details of building successful and thriving online businesses.
For 9 years, Bonnie worked for 3PGC, a non-profit organization with a mission to share the simplicity of The Three Principles as uncovered by Sydney Banks. She developed all areas needed for their online business to thrive and significantly expand the understanding globally.
Bonnie: Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me, Alexandra, I really appreciate being here.
Alexandra: Oh, my pleasure. I’m so thrilled to talk to you one on one. We’ve been in events together. I think I was trying to recall when that was. I think it was a class with Cathy Casey. That was last year, I think. But anyway, so it’s lovely to talk to you one on one.
Bonnie: I keep seeing your name around the community. So I’m glad that we’re getting this opportunity.
Alexandra: Me too.
Tell us about your background and how you discovered the Three Principles.
Bonnie: Well, like so many people who have come across the Three Principles, I was looking around for a very long time. I know people come to this understanding, or the understanding finds them maybe as a better way of saying it, when people are looking for very different things. For me, my seeking, if you will, started when I was really young.
My dad was in a really horrendous accident when I was four. And this was 1960, giving away my age. I won’t into the details, but he was electrocuted to the point where two silver dollars melted in his pocket and then he fell three stories. And he obviously was given his last rites, no one thought he was going to survive back then. But he did.
And I don’t know, maybe when I was around six or seven, he shared his experience of what happened to him. Now we know of what people call near death experiences. But that term wasn’t even around back then. And I don’t really know what it was he said that impacted me so deeply. But I think the quality of what he was sharing just touched me so deeply, that I knew this physical reality was not all there was, but I didn’t know what else was out there.
I was really young then, I was going to Catholic school, and I learned really quickly to not talk about it in Catholic school, because it was not approved of, and it wasn’t a well known thing.
I think that experience made me a secret seeker.
I looked at so many different things, I dipped my toes into so many different things once I got out of high school, different religions. I sought out channelers, I did different self help programs that were spiritually oriented. I did a spiritual psychology master’s degree. This was over a period of like, maybe 40 ish years.
In the spiritual psychology program, the organization about 10 years after I graduated from there, they were doing a coaching program. I should say, my other parallel life was that I got a master’s degree in computer science and worked in many corporations. And definitely was a secret seeker through that because it was okay to be in a religion, but everything else was very woowoo. So I really didn’t talk about anything. But I would pop in and out of corporate America jobs at that time in the 80s and 90s. And even early 2000s, it was very easy to leave one job and find another because not a whole lot of people knew a whole lot about technology then.
In 2013, I decided that was it. I was leaving corporate America for the last time. It was not where I wanted to be. And one of my very, very close friends became the admissions director of the organization that ran the spiritual psychology program. And she called and said, Well, if you don’t have any plans, which I didn’t, I just knew I didn’t want to continue on the path that I was in Corporate America why don’t you take this coaching program? I was like, okay, I have the time, I have the money, I’ll do it.
It turned out to be the best thing ever, because one of the facilitators introduced a little video of someone talking about insight.
At the time, I had to go research everything. So again, it was 2013, there wasn’t a whole lot on the web at the time. But I did manage to track down what the Three Principles were, and it was on a Wikipedia page of all things that I was reading it and, and it just hit me. Like, oh, this is what is before all of those other things that I was looking at, all of those paths that I took, I couldn’t get to the beginning of them, because there was usually a lot of things to do.
And, and so I’d follow something for a year or two and then look for the next thing. I can’t say I understood anything that I was reading, but I just had a knowing. So would you like me to keep going?
Alexandra: Yes, please.
Bonnie: I was following breadcrumbs really. I kept looking and looking. In 2013, there were some videos, but there wasn’t a whole lot out there. I finally came across that there was a conference going on in St. Paul, Minnesota, like a month later. So I hopped on a plane, and I went to that. And then that led me to meeting the woman who would organize the 3PGC conference. And the woman that was organizing them lived near me. So we got to be friends.
Then at the conference, I believe it was there, I learned that Christine Heath, who was one of the original board members for 3PGC and still is on the board, was doing a workshop in Hawaii. And I was like, Oh, I can I can go there. I’m not working now. So I went. I think it was like September, October was the conference. And then November was this workshop. And then I learned about the Pranskys doing the first practitioner retreat in February 2014. Went to that then went to Salt Spring Island.
Then I volunteered to help with the next in person conference that 3PGC was doing and got to know Chris a little bit more.
Looking back, it was so much following that little voice that said, yeah, do this next, do this next.
But I think when it was happening, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, that’s what I was doing.
I think it was Chris that asked me, maybe this was 2015, they were trying to start a free webinar program. And it was sort of a start and stop. She asked if I’d be interested in volunteering to do that. So I did and and then it went from one a month to two a month and that program is still running. And then the the woman who originally did their newsletters and updated the first website was leaving and and that’s when I actually went to work for 3PGC very part time and learn more about the organization and then had a ton of ideas about what we could do online because that was my background
I started to talk with Chris a lot more and with the then president about what else we could do. And finally I think it was 2018 they they said yeah, go ahead and let’s build the new website. And they needed it done by the current for the in person conference in 2019. I’m kind of telling the story because looking back I feel like my finding the Three Principles and 3PGC when I did was incredible synchronicity. Because once the new website was done and we could we could create a membership site.
I think that’s when I started working for them full time for 3PGC full time and started suggesting online programs and that wasn’t really a well known thing at the time.
The board was a bit hesitant because getting the feeling in person was something they just weren’t sure of, if that could be sort of transmitted or really felt across the internet, but we finally said, Yeah, let’s do it. And we were originally shooting for a 48 hour conference, but it turned into like 54 hours of continuously running sessions, which was a lot of work to put together but it turned out to be incredible. People loved it, we had something like three or 400 people participating, people who couldn’t travel to the in person. It truly was a global event, and it was run at time periods where anybody could watch it.
And here’s the synchronicity of it. We ran it the last two days of February and the first day of March of 2020. And then the pandemic. And so we were set, we were all set up the board could see this was a great platform to do things and so we were able to build a practitioner program through and we had maybe four or five incredible programs. Not full on conferences, but programs where people could really participate in. And we were able to to really keep sharing this understanding when everybody had stay at home, basically.
So it was again, looking back, like, while I was in it, I didn’t see the beauty of following the breadcrumbs and the timing of it. But looking back, it’s like, wow, that was perfect timing for somebody like me to come in, and do it, because I just happen to have the right skills to help them out. And yeah, so that’s how I got involved with the three principles and 3PGC.
Alexandra: Wow, that’s so great. I have a few follow-up questions then.
For our listeners, 3PGC stands for Three Principles Global Community. So it’s sort of like the governing body, for lack of a better word, for the Three Principles.
You said that you felt like the principles explained what was before all the other things that you had been seeking? Could you say more about that? That intrigues me so much.
Bonnie: At the time, I didn’t know what I meant by that. I just knew this was underneath. I dippd my toes in Buddhism and Sikhism, and all sorts of all sorts of self help. And I knew there was something more to all of those things I was looking at. I just couldn’t get to it for whatever reason.
Now the words that I would put on it, and now what I understand of it is that the Three Principles truly are the formless principles that explain the human experience. So those are the words I would have put on it now. But at the time, I didn’t have those words.
Even in talking about my Dad’s experience, in looking back at that, what I think now, the quality that I felt, I think was when he talked about the light – a lot of Near Death Experiences talk about seeing the light and he was drawn to this light. And he felt that it was warm and loving and he did not want to come back. He wanted to go through. But in his words, he was told to come back. I think that feeling that he shared when he was talking about that was probably what what drew me into looking for what that was
Alexandra: Did that you said you were raised Catholic, so he was Catholic at the time this happened?
Bonnie: I was four when his accident happened. So I don’t really remember whether he was a churchgoer before then. I don’t think he ever went. I don’t remember him ever going to church after that, and possibly because of what he felt in that experience, I don’t know. I never talked to him about that.
I remember when Raymond Moody came out with his book Life After Life he coined the term near death experience. We were like, oh my god, other people have this and we talked about it. And this is the thing you didn’t make this. Because I don’t know this for sure, but I’m going to guess, that if he shared this with any doctors or nurses at the time, they probably thought, Oh, you were in a coma, and whatever.
We talked about it a lot, I would say the last six months of his life, and what it really brought for him that I got was, and he lived, this happened to him in 1960. He passed away in ‘98. So he lived a long time after that. What it really gave him was that he did not fear death. I remember talking to him and he said something like, No, I know where I’m going next. I’ve already felt that. So that was I think beautiful.
I think that’s one of the things he gave me is that I have never had a fear of dying either.
I’m not really crazy about having to go through what you might have to go through before that. There can be a lot of suffering in that, but with this understanding of the Three Principles that might even give me a different perspective of that statement. That off the tip of my tongue, but in reality, this understanding and and constantly looking and seeing things more deeply. Seeing new insights. You come back with a different perspective on the same thing.
Alexandra: Yes, absolutely. I’ve been thinking about this a little bit lately as well. I feel the same way that the idea of death doesn’t bother me at all. I’m interested in what that looks like. And the steps leading up to it, I hope they’re not too painful or terrible.
And then because our experience does come from the inside out, I realized that it is possible to experience peace, no matter what we’re going through. And yeah, so all of that is just so interesting. I could talk about that for hours for sure.
What a fascinating experience your dad went through, and just that idea that he must have thought he was alone in that for so long.
And I imagine coming from a Catholic background too he was probably very anxious about ever bringing that up with anybody. Any adults, I guess I should say? Fascinating. Really, really interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. And it makes me wonder, too, about any conflict that he felt? Betrayed. But you know about that experience? Anyway, fascinating.
Bonnie: I can look back and say, I wish I would have been in this place where I am now to ask him more questions. But I’m glad I got the opportunity to talk to him about it at the end of his life.
I also just want to say this, a near death experience is not what happened with Sydney Banks. I remember sharing this with some one of Sydney Banks’ original students, and I kind of got corrected. It’s like, this is not what happened. I was like, No, I didn’t mean to suggest that. It’s like he my dad just happened to leave his body and see that there was something else but the experience that Sydney Banks’ had was completely different and deeper and amazing.
Alexandra: That’s a great clarification. Thank you. It’s important for people to see the difference.
So you worked for the three PGC for a while. And I want to ask you two questions about that. I think you’ve already addressed the first one actually, I was going to ask you what did the job teach you and you’ve already talked about looking back and seeing the way that life was leading you in a direction.
It sounds like you didn’t fight that too much there wasn’t too much fight in you. Is that true?
Bonnie: That is true.Before listening to your wisdom, I would call it intuition. I’ve always had a strong sense of intuition. I didn’t always follow it. So following the breadcrumbs and just listening to what was coming next, which was not a huge jump for me. But there were certainly plenty of times when I could have said, I don’t want to follow these breadcrumbs anymore. But I didn’t. Something else was saying that keep following these keep doing this.
Alexandra: It led you in seems to be anyway in such a nice direction, to something that you needed.
Bonnie: I think that’s true. Whenever we really listened to our inner guidance, if there was anything that I would want to share with people, it’s that learning what that feels like or sounds like, or however you you get your guidance from wisdom or your intuition, whatever you want to call it, really get really cozy and familiar with how that feels different than what’s coming from your intellect or your personal wants and desires. Because it really does seem to me it really looks to me, like, that’s the way to go to have a happier life.
Alexandra: Speaking of which, how did you know that it was time to leave that experience?
Bonnie: That was a knowing too, I that about mid 2022, I started to get nudges. You’ve done what you’ve come here to do, and it’s time to move on. I did give notice. I think it was the beginning of December of 2022 for two months. I’m kind of a jack of all trades, master of none, when it comes to the online business. So I could do a whole wide variety of things. But in replacing me, it took a little longer because because they ended up having to bring on a number of people.
So I didn’t leave in the beginning of 2023, I waited until everything was completely set up. And then I left at the end of it, I think was September 2023. But again, that was an urge and I didn’t have anything planned next.
That’s the part that can be really scary. It’s the part of leaping into the unknown.
I guess that’s what that looked like to me. But I had done that so many times in my life, left jobs without really knowing what was going to be next and everything worked out. So I felt okay doing that.
It’s been incredible what’s unfolded since then. I was pretty busy minded when I was working for 3PGC because I was doing a broad range of things behind the scenes; I was taking care of just a lot of detailed things for the online business to keep running and it kept my mind really busy. I feel like I’ve had this massive download of understanding coming. But I was so busy with details that I didn’t really see what I was, what I was what I could see, because I had so many details on my mind all the time.
After I left, it was like this, because I really didn’t have the next thing lined up. There was this vast opening of space. And that was a wonderful opportunity also, to really I let things unfold.
One of the things I did was I met Azul Leguizamon.
She and I became friends maybe a couple years ago. I kept hearing her name, but I never met her. So I reached out to her one day, and we just really hit it off, and we started talking regularly.
She’s so wonderful. And we would share insights. What we found was, I mean, that’s one of the things we did, we talked about a lot of things. But what was so wonderful about that is that we started to notice how sharing our insight was helping, we were helping each other see more of how we were being guided. It was like hearing what we saw, what was helping the other to look more to see how we were being guided.
One of the things that came out of that, I think we started in November, we decided to offer a free webinar series where once a month we offer an open call to anybody. And we call it What Has Wisdom Shown You Lately. It’s an open discussion where everybody can share or just come and listen.
Then what grew out of that, which I honestly did not really expect at all – I guess I really thought whatever I did next was going to be a technical thing again, because that’s what my background is. But we started talking about what would we do if we did a program to teach this understanding or point people in the direction and help people to learn to share it? And help people start up a business of some kind.
I’m going to say it came through us, we ended up writing a year long program that we called The Heart of Service in like a week or two. And then we put together the webpage. And I think we only sent out three emails and we filled our program. It’s very small, we didn’t want to have a big group. And that’s been incredible. And again, following those breadcrumbs, those nudges. Right? It was just the next thing to do.
It’s been really great. We have guest speakers in it. And it’s just been a phenomenal program so far, and the participants seem to really be enjoying it as well. And we’re in the third month of a year long program.
Alexandra: I’m thinking that it really doesn’t surprise me that that’s the way things unfolded after your job with the 3PGC. Because that’s how they happened going into it.
Bonnie: When I first learned about the Three Principles I had a handful or two of practitioners as clients, and I did their online website, membership site, etc. So I really saw myself more as a background person. So I think that’s why it surprised me. Oh, I’m facilitating co facilitating with us all.
Alexandra: That makes sense. I love that.
Shifting gears slightly, one of the things that we corresponded about as we were setting up this time to talk was you said you were really interested in one of the more famous quotes from Sydney Banks.
Why don’t you share that quote with us? And then tell us what you’re seeing in it lately?
Bonnie: I’m going to read it because, okay, terrible with remembering quotes.
If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.
Alexandra: That’s right.
Bonnie: That quote has so many levels to it. You can read it at first and say, oh, yeah I can unless a gun’s being pointed to my head, I probably don’t really have to be afraid of my experience.
And then as you start to look deep, burrowed into the principles and start to understand like, alright, we really create our experience. Our experience is truly an inside out experience. And there is nothing to be afraid of. And it just goes deeper from there.
So I do that, that is one of my very favorite quotes from Syd Banks. I do have another favorite quote right now, that’s not a Sydney Banks, quote. It’s a quote by Rumi that I probably first learned about 30 years ago. It just has taken on such new meaning for me in the last six months.
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.
That’s another one with so many layers, but that has such deep meanings. Like, yes, when you really start to look down this path, when you really start to look at the three principles as truly being principles in the formless, that create everything. And that we are part of and we are people people say and I guess Syd said this as well – I think he would use the words divine mind, thought, and consciousness as opposed to personal mind, thought and consciousness, but it’s really one thing. We have the opportunity to share in that and to listen to the wisdom that comes through that. And, and so we truly are the entire ocean in a drop. That’s just so delicious.
Alexandra: There’s so much there isn’t there? And when I heard you say that quote, I felt that thing that happens when something makes the leap beyond my logical brain and it resonates within you. I love that feeling.
You mentioned the webinar series that you did with Azul and I will link to her episodes, she has been on the show. So I will link in the show notes to her episode.
Why don’t I ask you what has wisdom shown you lately?
Bonnie: That is a great question. Let’s see how to describe this. What I’ve really been seeing is that we all have so much that we can see if we listen to our inner guidance, to wisdom. We also have conditioning; beliefs that are hidden, that we don’t even realize they’re there, until a light is is shone upon them.
As my mind got really quiet all the learning that I was absorbing, but not really realizing how much I really saw brought this, I’m going to call it a bubble of additional thinking that sort of unraveled itself. Some of the things I don’t even really know what they were, but I knew I felt so much lighter.
The latest image I have of it was like if you have a ball of yarn, and you hold one end, and you just push it and it’ll just keep going until it reaches the end. It’s like that. That’s what the experience felt like. It’s like just all these beliefs that were so deeply ingrained, that I wasn’t aware of how they were sort of controlling my life, because I would make decisions.
Because I thought those were truths, not beliefs that I could see through.
So as that all came to the surface, it was years of weights lifted, and some of it, I didn’t really know what they were in particular, but I knew something was opening. And some were very painful. When I’d see them, because I could see how it drove actions or reactions in my life, that I thought, because I believed it needed a reaction. All of that opening up has been phenomenal.
Around two or three months ago, I feel it’s because I let go of this whole bundle of condition thinking that what I’ve been noticing is that the nudges that I keep getting now, it’s like when we all seem to feel our feelings in different ways. Some people have very specific things in their body, that they feel about their emotions, and I don’t really, but what I do notice is sort of a wave of energy. Like nothing really specific. But what I’ve been noticing is that I’m getting nudges more quickly. As that wave of energy comes in it’s the same nudge, very often, it’s come back to the moment, come back to the moment.
And I’ve got to tell you it’s been the most incredible experience, to keep getting reminded to come back to the moment. I get them when I’m starting to have some kind of judgment or something going on. Because in the moment, that doesn’t exist. When I first started to get this, I was calling it, it’s been pushing me into my puddle of kindness. I could feel so much kindness toward whatever I was judging, especially judgments that were coming against myself.
Since then, I’ve morphed it into this, this ocean of liquid love.
That’s what it feels like, it’s like I can nudge back into just taking a dive into it. And even if it’s just for a nano second, and then I pick up that thinking again, I come out of it with such a different perspective; the feeling changes. That’s been luxurious.
And every once in a while, I get to stay in it more than a nanosecond. People will call it being in the flow. I can be there for a little while longer before thinking takes me back into whatever I’ve decided to make up. And everybody can do that. That’s what everybody can do.
We were taught a lot that now is the only moment there is like, now is as the only thing there is, and it’s so true, it’s like because all our thinking is either thoughts from the past or thinking about the future. And so when you come into that moment, even if it’s just for a nanosecond, it’s no attachment to thoughts. And it’s so beautiful.
So I would say that, that to me, at this time the most significant thing that I would really say that wisdom has been showing me lately, to just keep coming back to the present moment.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s beautiful. And I want to pull out one thing you said a little bit earlier in that, which was, you talked about how when some of your beliefs were unravelling, that could be a little bit painful.
Could you share an example with us?
Bonnie: You know, nothing is really coming to mind now. But what I can tell you is that I’m not a big crier. But man, I would sit and sob. All the things are coming to light. I’m not even sure if I always knew what it was when I would start. But what I did know is not to try to stop it, not to do anything about it.
When people who talk about the three principles say there’s nothing you have to do, that’s where I think that applies. It’s something that was coming through me. It was coming out of me, it was energy moving through. And there was nothing that I had to do about it.
I didn’t have to look for better thoughts. I didn’t have to make myself do something else. I could just sit there with it, and wait for wisdom to tell me what to do next. So to me that’s one of the misunderstandings I think a lot of people have when they come into this understanding.
There’s nothing to do. That’s where I think that applies. It doesn’t mean you’re going to sit on the sofa for the rest of your life and do nothing. There’s nothing you have to do.
Alexandra: I loved your wool analogy, your ball of wool analogy, because it reminded me when I was a kid, my grandmother used to knit a lot, or was it crochet anyway, one or the other. She taught me that when you have a skein of wool, if you pull one, there’s two ends, right? If you pull one of them, it can kind of become a bit of a tangled mess, but if you find the other end, it just comes out effortlessly. It doesn’t get all knotted up in itself, and it almost just sort of falls apart. And it’s all very easy.
That was touching me when you spoke about that. There’s two ways to approach this.
Bonnie: I love that you just said that, because that’s so true. It’s like they’re some of the memory, the condition thinking that what’s coming up. I saw it before, but I was probably pulling the wrong end. I love that. Thank you. I was pulling the wrong end and making the ball even tighter. But yeah, so I got a hold of the right end. It all flowed out.
Alexandra: Yes.
Bonnie: That’s beautiful.
Alexandra: We created that together. That felt really good. That’s great.
As we come towards the end of our time together, I want to ask you, is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with our listeners today?
Bonnie: I think I already said this, but this would be what I would share. And that is if there’s anything that you set an intention to do, it’s to really get cozy and familiar with how you hear wisdom or see wisdom. I’m sure it comes to everybody in different ways.
Even when I think about how I connect with that, sometimes it’s just a knowing and there’s no words, I just know what to do next. But I’ve also had times where it’s yelled at me, because I wasn’t following it. So I heard words.
I’m sure it probably comes to people in feeling, too. However that is, if you can get familiar with that, with listening to that, hearing that and distinguishing it from your personal wants and desires it just helps life unfold in a magical way.
There’s no techniques and you can’t make it happen. I think you can set an intention or create an environment with being open. But as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing you can do to make that happen. Other than being open to listening to hearing it.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Bonnie: I do have a very succinct one page website. BonnieJarvis.com
I had a website years ago, but once I started working for 3PGC full time I closed it down and recently rebuilt.
I have a couple of things coming up: there’s the What Has Wisdom Shown You Lately is something that Azul and I do for free every month.
And there’s also the year long program that we call The Heart of service that we are talking about doing again, because we are just loving the program. So we set up a waitlist or a notify me list for that.
And then I’m also fortunate enough to be doing another program with Cathy Casey and Mike Heard and that is called, Stress and anxiety are just an illusion. It’s not what you think, or is it? I don’t have all the details of that. I believe we’re going to start in July and it will be for four sessions over four weeks. But more details will come out of that soon.
That’s what I do. I have been doing one on one sessions. I’ve been calling them Heart to Heart conversations. That’s all and there is a way to contact me on that website as well.
Alexandra: I will put a link in the show notes to your website and BonnieJarvis.com.
Bonnie: Thank you.
Alexandra: Thank you so much for being with me here today. Bonnie. It’s been just lovely chatting with you.
Bonnie: Thank you so much. I’ve always considered myself somebody who was more like, numbers, math and coding oriented and not very eloquent with words. So I hope I was able to share in a way that at least one person is touched by it. If just one person sees something I’d be really, really deeply grateful. So thank you so much.
Alexandra: You’re so welcome. And I would bet that way more than one person is going to be touched by what you’ve said, you did a great job.
3 Tips For Dealing With The Inner Critic
May 30, 2024
We all have one: an inner critic. That voice inside our heads that is critical of so much that we do. That voice can become debilitating, if we let it. But when we apply what we know about the Three Principles of innate health, we can teach that voice to take a back seat, where it belongs. And, on a positive note, hearing the inner critic can even become an ally in helping us to practice stepping into a better feeling.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
A neurosurgeon’s explanation for the inner critic
A reminder about the purpose an unwanted habit is serving
How the feeling that comes with the inner critic alerts us to its falsehood
On the possibility of having a different experience at any moment
The beautiful feeling that’s always available to us
How our thinking can be like the grooves in a record
Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 65 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about the inner critic or that negative voice that can dog us all the time. And this is a subject, particularly close to my heart. I feel like it’s something that I’ve wrestled with for a long time and for a long time, couldn’t see it.
Years ago, it was invisible to me, even though it was going on. And then gradually, I became more and more aware of it, but didn’t know what to do about it. And then I came into this understanding, and I put it off to the side. But it’s come up in my awareness lately. And I’ll tell you a bit more about that in just a moment.
I was reading a book recently about brain science, called I think it’s either called Mind Magic or Magic Mind by Dr. James Doty. And one of the things he mentioned in there was, how his approach to our inner critical voice or his understanding of it was really interesting. And it was about the evolutionary process that we’ve gone through, and how our brains are wired to look for danger.
Given the society that we live in now and how generally safe we are – I hope I can say that about you – that the part of our brain that’s looking out for danger, even looks out for it in our own behavior. So it’s able to be critical of us, or it believes it’s being critical of us, in order to serve a purpose in order to keep us safe.
I probably haven’t explained that, as well as he did in the book. But it got me thinking about the negative voice, the inner critic, that so many of us hear, and maybe don’t hear, that’s maybe silent. I find it at times just kind of running behind whatever else is going on, in my mind, and I’ll talk about in a minute how that doesn’t actually matter if we can’t specifically hear what it’s saying. So that’s some of the good news.
Let’s jump in and talk about this. The reason I wanted to bring it up was that, in the past, we’ve talked about how unwanted habits are working in our favor, even though it might not look like they are. They are a solution, not a problem. And one of the metaphors I use is that unwanted habits are like the valve on the top of a pressure cooker.
The habit itself lets off a bit of the pressure of what’s in the pressure cooker.
So this got me thinking about how that inner critic, that negative voice is contributing to the load of what’s in the pressure cooker, it’s contributing to all the stirred up thinking that’s in there, and not in a good way. It’s adding to the pressure that’s in the pressure cooker. And so that means that in a way I think it would help for all of us to look at that kind of negative thinking specifically, and learn how to deal with it, learn how to resolve it. And so that’s what we’re talking about.
Today, I’ve got three tips for helping you to deal with your inner critic. I’ve been experimenting with the tips I’m going to share for the last couple of weeks, and it really feels good. I’m really really enjoying it. It has opened up a space of a good feeling within me. It has taught me at a new level to not take my thinking so seriously, which I really really appreciate. And like I say I just feel this a greater sense of tenderness or compassion, kindness for myself since I’ve been practicing these things, and so of course, that feels really good. So let’s talk about the first tip that I’ve got for dealing with your inner critic.
The first one is pretty easy, and it’s something you’ve probably been looking at a little bit already. And that is to know that:
The thinking that we have going on in our minds is not the truth with a capital T.
Thought, of course is like energy, and it’s moving through us all the time. And it is not the absolute truth, even when it looks like it is. So let’s take an example of you are walking along one day and you trip and fall. And there are so many ways that you can react to that situation. In the past, one of the ways that I’ve reacted to any kind of accidental thing that I do – I drop a bottle and it breaks or I trip and fall or the other day, I bumped my hand on a kitchen cabinet knob, and it’s quite sore – my inner critic really flares up in situations like that. So it really takes a hold, and beats me up and it takes the opportunity at that time to tell me that I’m clumsy, or I should have watched more carefully what I was doing, it really does beat me up a little bit in situations like that. And that’s been a historical pattern.
What I found is that as I’ve been using these three tips that I’m going to talk about, it’s actually been fairly easy to break that habit, given what I see now and what I hope to share with you. So we trip and fall, there’s a lot of negative talk in our heads and whatever that looks like. And so the first thing we can realize is that all that thinking that’s going on, it feels so real. And it feels so true. And it’s so easy for us to live in, in the illusion that everything we think is true, and real. And it isn’t.
How our thinking reacts to a situation like that, when we’re being hard on ourselves, is probably based on historically the way we’ve treated ourselves, and probably the way that we’ve heard other people treat us or treat themselves as well, growing up. What we can recognize, and we’re going to dive into this more in a future tip is that whatever the inner critic is saying in that moment, there are so many other possibilities for what could be true.
So to stay with this example, if I tripped and fell on the inner critic told me, or was beating me up, because it was saying I should have been paying more attention. And that’s kind of the one note that it’s playing on, just by understanding that that thinking isn’t that the truth with a capital T is really helpful.
What can be more helpful to seeing that there’s all kinds of other things that might be true in that moment, as well.
Maybe there was a little uneven spot in the sidewalk and that’s why I fell. Maybe I was getting out of the way, I tried to be kind to someone and just kind of caught my foot. Maybe my shoes are too big. There’s all kinds of reasons that that particular circumstance that could have happened, which simply points out to us that whatever the noise is, the critical, negative noise that’s going on in our heads that’s not the absolute truth with a capital T.
And again, I say, Yes, it does feel like that. And yes, it’s so easy for us to be completely wedded to that thinking and to imagine that everything we think is true. But looking in this direction, about what other possibilities are available to us, is really helpful, especially in this case of dealing with our negative thinking. So that’s tip number one. Remember, you know as often as you can, that the critical noisy thinking in your head isn’t necessarily the truth with a capital T.
The second tip is that the feeling that you have, when that negative or critical thinking is going on, is telling you that it’s not the truth.
So, in other words, we don’t need to turn this into a situation where we’re monitoring our thoughts all the time, and trying to catch them all. Because that actually will take us in the wrong direction. We will add more thought, more pressure into the pressure cooker. So we can let that go. We don’t need to manage and monitor every thought that’s happening.
Our design is built so that it lets us know when our thinking is critical.
The way that we feel when that happens is the alarm bell, or the barometric reading, however you want to call it, it’s the thing that’s going to let us know. And sometimes we can skate past that, especially if we’re used to a lot of critical thinking, and used to the inner critic. And yet, what we can do, as we gradually begin to notice this happening, the feeling that we’re having, and the fact that the feeling is alerting us to the fact that we’re having some negative thinking, it becomes a habit it becomes it becomes a habit in itself.
It becomes automatic to notice what’s going on.
I’ll give you one specific example. I experience a lot of urgency when my inner critic is really flared up. I notice that urgency pretty quickly. So I feel that in my body, I feel it in my solar plexus, like there’s a tightness, there’s a clenched feeling. And then I kind of feel it in my I would say, my chest and my shoulders that I need to, yeah, there’s just this impulse inside me, it’s almost like it’s telling me to run. And what it’s telling me is to go faster, to do more.
I know that that comes from a habit that I picked up. So as soon as I feel that feeling I can be sure that I’ve got some thinking going on, that’s not serving me that the inner critic has flared up. And those feelings in my body will always tell me the truth about what’s going on in my head.
If we’re thinking it, we’re feeling it.
When that happens, I can go back to tip number one, and think to myself consciously, that there’s another experience to be had here.
I had this happen this morning, actually, when I was having a conversation with somebody. And I felt that urgent feeling, come upon me for absolutely no reason. I wasn’t in any kind of a time crunch. So I just did a little bit of silent talking to myself, and reminded myself that that feeling was letting me know that my thinking was not the truth, that I was feeling like there, I was thinking that I needed to move quickly, I needed to get out of the conversation that I was in and move on. And that wasn’t true at all.
Through that little inner process, I was able to relax into the conversation. That didn’t resolve the feelings, all of them, immediately. But I was able to step into a much more peaceful place in that moment by remembering that my body was alerting me to what was going on in my mind.
This brings us to tip number three.
Tip number three has to do with the awareness of the possibility of a different experience.
In that situation that I just mentioned about the conversation I was having, I simply became aware that there was the possibility to have another experience in this conversation with this person I was talking to. Now, we don’t need to get too attached to what that experience is going to be.
For example, let’s go back to the trip and fall example. So you trip and fall, having a lot of negative thinking about it, you notice, first of all, you remember that your thinking is not the truth with a capital T. That’s tip number one.
Then Tip number two, you, again, you’re noticing the feelings in your body, and how maybe you’re having a physical reaction to the thoughts that you’re having, or they just don’t feel good, they just make you feel kind of yucky. So that’s tip number two, you’ve noticed that the feeling the feedback that you’re getting, is that the thinking that you’re having isn’t the truth, and your body is alerting you to that or your experience is alerting you to that.
And then you remember that there could be another possibility. There’s another way to think about this tripping experience. And again, what’s important to know is, you don’t have to know what that alternative is that the universe is there with its wisdom, with its intelligence, and its creativity, its infinite infinite creativity. When we feel like we’re in the grip of a bunch of negative thinking, and this is the reason why this tip is so important, is that there’s always a possibility of another experience to be had. And when we know that it softens things and, and opens them up a little bit.
What I was picturing when I was preparing to do this episode was a tight little ball of string, and it’s all tangled in knots. And when we’re aware that there’s a possibility, for another experience, I just see that tight little ball of string kind of loosen. So you know when you see a ball of wool that’s quite loosely wound, that’s the difference between the tight little ball of string and the availability of possibilities.
So that’s tip number three, being open to the idea that there is always the possibility to have a different experience in any given moment.
We like to feel of course, and our minds like to feel that we’re in control, and that we know the outcome of everything, and we know how things are going to go. But when we can soften a little bit and open up to the idea that there are infinite possibilities available. That, to me, anyway, creates a much better experience of life. My grip isn’t so tight on it, and it it can flow much more easily through me.
That sounds kind of wishy washy, but I guess I mean, it just does, it feels like to me, like, the more open I am to the idea that I’m not in charge, that life is flowing through me, and that it is wise, even when things are going wrong, even when things are not going the way I would like them to go.
I had a different conversation this morning that was difficult and things are not going the way I would like them to go in that situation. And by remembering that there’s a greater intelligence involved and that it is flowing through both myself and the other person I was having in the conversation with and that there are, as I said earlier, infinite possibilities available that could you know, come to light, could occur to someone or could change the situation, that allows me to let life flow to a greater degree within me and just seems to make things honestly so much easier. It lessons my suffering about what’s going on.
That’s the key really, isn’t it, for all of us; we don’t want to suffer. We want to suffer less.
Relying on that universal intelligence, that wisdom that’s always available to us is, to me, it seems one way to be able to do that.
The final thing I want to wrap up with is reminding you I’ve said this before, but I want to say it again, because it’s so connected to what we’re talking about today. A few episodes back, I think I talked about how Michael Singer who’s a spiritual teacher, talks about how there’s really only one practice. And that practice is to relax. That’s the one thing we can do, that will ease our suffering.
That points to exactly what I just said, when we relax, we allow the wisdom of the universe to step in and to flow much more freely through us.
And my friend, Tania Elfersy, who’s been on this show a couple of times, she phrases that slightly differently. She refers back to Sydney Banks who said, over and over again, to look for a beautiful feeling. And that, again, really ties into when we’re talking about this inner critic, that inner critic doesn’t feel good. And when we notice it, when it gives us those signals in our body, another way to say that we can look for the other possibilities are that are available, is to say, look for a good feeling.
There’s a beautiful, or a good, feeling available to us at all times.
It is the thing that will loosen us up, that will change the thinking that’s going on in our heads. When I have a lot of critical thinking, I go through these steps, remember them, I tend to imagine myself stepping into a good feeling, a beautiful feeling. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean I can feel it all the time. But it does mean that I’m open to the fact that it does exist, that there’s a good feeling to be had.
Even if the needle inside me just moves one little notch toward a good feeling, you know, one little notch away from the yucky feelings that my critical thinking have been giving me that my body’s been giving me that feedback, that’s a victory to me.
Circling back to the brain book I was talking about, I imagine that there is a physical result from doing this. So in other words, we are physical beings, of course, as well as spiritual beings. And we have those physical, neural pathways in our brain. And they can be like the grooves in a record. So when something happens, when we’re triggered, like, your spouse doesn’t load the dishwasher properly, and they never do it the way that you want them to do it. The needle inside ourselves can fall into that groove and just go running with all the usual things that we say about the dishwasher and our spouse and how they never listen and all that kind of stuff.
But by practicing the tips that I’ve talked about today, what’s going to happen is new neural pathways are going to be built. So that needle falling into that old groove is going to happen less and less. And that path is going to be built somewhere else.
In other words, it feels like this is both a spiritual practice and it’s going to have some physical results in our brain. Now I’m not a neurosurgeon, and I’m not mapping my brain at this time. But I suspect that that will be happening as well, as we practice these three tips.
I hope that’s been helpful for you. If you’re someone who struggles with a lot of negative self talk, the thing we often call the inner critic, what I’m realizing is it’s not as complicated to change my relationship to that kind of noise, that kind of negative thinking, as I used to think it was. And like I said earlier, there’s a balance.
There’s a way to do this without monitoring our thoughts and adding a lot more work to be done.
And that’s the balance that I would love to see you strike. And so like I said earlier, this isn’t about monitoring your thoughts. It’s not about managing what you’re thinking, because your design is perfect. And it will always let you know when you’re thinking. And when it alerts you to that with the feelings in your body, then you can do something about it, but until then, you don’t need to worry about it. And when that happens, it’s just very simple. Knowing that there are other possibilities and stepping toward a better feeling, knowing that it’s possible to have a better feeling in that moment. I hope that’s been helpful.
I look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. And I will talk to you on the next episode. Bye.
We Are The Peace We Seek with Ellen Friedman
May 23, 2024
When it comes to our mental well-being and our physical health it can be so easy to look outspide ourselves for answers. Ellen Friedman takes a different approach; she guides her clients inward to connect with the innate wisdom and wellness that is already there.
Ellen Friedman guides people home to the sacred space within, where they shift their relationship with themselves, their health, and others. She partners with people who are curious to explore a simple path to wholeness through the inside out nature of life.
In addition to having a Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology with an emphasis in Consciousness Health and Healing, Ellen has a Certificate in Soul-Centered Professional Coaching, and she shares the Three Principles understanding. Her journey has been blessed coaching nearly 1000 divine beings using a human experience to remember who they truly are.
Ellen: I’m so happy to be here with you, Alexandra.
Alexandra: I’m so happy to have you here.
Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got interested in the three principles.
Ellen: I’m always amused where that story begins every time. I was happily minding my own business, enjoying my career as a physical therapist, when the knock on the door to coach came in 2011. And I was like but I love what I do. I thought you had to be miserable to do something else.
Then I started feeling miserable by not following that. I got in my car one day after seeing a patient and I was like, almost without logic, and I said, Okay, I heard you, I’m coming back. So I began coaching in 2011.
Then, in 2013, in a coach training program, one of the instructors introduced a video on the inside out understanding of stress. At that time, it was a really old video. And I remember the feeling inside me, I can like, remember the chair I was sitting in. I remember the feeling. And then I also remember my personal mind going, Oh, but we’ve got techniques and tools and things to do with people.
Alexandra: Moving forward from there was it difficult to get your head around the idea of no tools and techniques?
Ellen: I’m not sure because what was more difficult was trying to intellectually figure out what this understanding was. I spent a long time reasoning with what I was learning, comparing it to what I had already known. Seeing where it fit in, seeing where things didn’t fit in. And at that time, at that time, there were so many free opportunities to learn. I mean, there are today, but there were so many opportunities, and you and I could participate in almost all of them. And, there were also many wonderful paid opportunities and workshops and trainings. And, and you didn’t have to choose because there weren’t the abundance that there is today.
Alexandra: So this was around 2011 or 2012?
Ellen: 2013 was when I first heard that, and then it stayed on the back burner until 2016. But Alexandra, I am so clear that it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been looking in this direction or exploring the principles because we we all see what we see when we see it. And don’t you love it with when clients just see something that you don’t see? I mean, it’s so fun.
Alexandra: Absolutely. Insight doesn’t really have a timeline, does it? I mean, it can happen anytime.
You mentioned being a physiotherapist.
You had an interest in healing, and helping people. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And where that began to if you know.
Ellen: Where was the interest in physical therapy health?
Alexandra: Well, yeah, healing and those kinds of things.
Ellen: I didn’t have any exposure to physical therapy, personally or for family members. So I don’t remember exactly how I landed on it other than healthcare seemed kind of interesting. But nursing didn’t and going to medical school I had no drawn to.
The allied health professions sounded fun and interesting and had a couple of opportunities to work as an aide and, and I was like, Okay, I’m going to do this. And so I went to physical therapy school. And different circumstances in school led me down the path of wanting to work with people who had chronic neurologic or new neurologic conditions. So that was a specialty for me right out right out the gates.
What I really loved about that is, you kind of had to look at the whole person; when someone has an injured back or an injured wrist or an injured knee or have had surgery, it can be very easy to be focused on the body part or the joint. But looking back, I was interested in the whole person. And I remember right out of physical therapy school, I had two patients, both of them had very similar strokes, their MRIs looked similar. And they had completely different outcomes. And I was so fascinated by that.
Alexandra: Oh, that is really interesting. Wow, that is so cool. So transitioning then, I noticed on your blog, you have a post about rest and its importance. I think our culture is so not wired that way. Rest is almost a four letter word.
Can you talk about rest and its importance, and why you recommend it to your clients.
Ellen: I recommend it because it works. Well, there’s so many different things that come to come to mind now. I literally was witnessing miracles or what looked like miracles in the people that I was working with, who had multiple sclerosis, ALS, stroke, brain injury, I worked with a lot of people who survived traumatic brain injury.
When their nervous system was downregulated, they did better, they had less pain, they had less more mobility. And so it just began to make sense to explore that with people and let them figure out what works for them. I worked with a lot of people with MS because I actually trained in a hospital where every patient in the hospital had multiple sclerosis; it was wild that that even existed.
This was before there were any medications to help people with their symptoms. I would notice that almost every one of my patients would be busy doing everything they could before they hit the wall of fatigue, and then they say things like, that’s all I can do for the day or, or I’m okay till noon around them okay till two o’clock.
I won’t get into the details of story, but I’m happy to share it with anyone who who inquires, a patient suddenly went from requiring rest at four hours after she woke up to eight hours. Increasing endurance from four to eight hours seemed impossible. People were taking medications to try and do that. And that wasn’t happening to them while helping.
I noticed that she and what a big part of her treatment program was, was relaxation exercises, and what I call down regulating the nervous system. Rest is the simplest form. Well, maybe not this one of the simple forms of of down regulating the nervous system. I think taking a long, deep exhale is also a very simple way and learning to rest before full exhaustion is so important for all of us neurologic condition or not.
Alexandra: Do you meet resistance when you suggest this now to clients?
Ellen: Well, I’m just going to explore your question a little bit more because I don’t really think that I suggest it to people. I explore with them what happens when they do. What happens when they don’t? I share stories and then they kind of come up with Well, maybe I could try that.
Now, as a physical therapist, I did recall having resistance. No, I can’t, I have to get everything done before noon, because I’m not good after that. And this other clients, she was like, Oh, I’m good to one now. Oh, I’m good till a couple of weeks later, oh, I’m good till two o’clock, oh, I’m good till three o’clock.
She goes, oh, I never have energy after four. And I said, Really, even after what’s happened? Oh, I can’t. Because if I have energy after four o’clock, then I have to make dinner and I don’t ever want to make dinner for the rest of my life. And I said, I can’t help you with, I can’t help you have energy after four, if that’s what it means to you. But maybe it could mean something else. That’s what I said, maybe it means something else. So the suggestion would come in the form of stories and explorations and experiments I love. I love the idea of experimenting. Because you can’t get it wrong in an experiment.
Alexandra: Say more about what that looks like.
Ellen: It could look like we’ll just experiment with resting and not sleeping, or just experiment with tuning into your body. What would it look like to go to the gas station and fill your car before the red lights going put more fuel in me? If you fill up a gas tank in a car, when it’s half full, or half empty, whichever, whichever you see it, then it takes less time to fill up the tank. And so when you rest, you are down regulating the nervous system. And there’s so many different ways to do that. It takes less time.
We can even experiment in a session with you know, I have a lot of people that used to measure their fatigue, and I’m like, Let’s measure energy instead.
Alexandra: So in other words, on a scale of one to 10, this is how tired I am.
Ellen: Yes. But I would say, on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most energy you’ve ever had, how much energy do you have?
Alexandra: I’m going to ask this question from a very personal place. What do you see as some of the causes or some of the primary causes of fatigue? You’re obviously dealing with people with physical issues.
Ellen: Not always. There’s lots of things that create fatigue, and trying to figure them out is no longer necessary for me, for myself, or for my clients. In fact, I’m on the other side of three autoimmune conditions, one of them being chronic fatigue syndrome.
In the past, I would see fatigue as an indicator or as a marker of illness or disease or a reminder that I have something and it doesn’t even enter my mind anymore to be anything other than an indicator of my body saying, Please give me a little bit of rest.
Alexandra: That’s really fascinating to me, that chronic fatigue. And so that was something that you experienced yourself.
Can you tell us a little bit about that journey and what you saw?
Ellen: I was masterful at avoiding discomfort. I have to be honest, I’ve never really shared with many of my practitioners that I had it because there was nothing you could do. It came at the top many, many, many years ago. It came with a lot of ideas around mental health and emotional health.
But then I had a client I was working with a client that had chronic fatigue and Lyme disease. And she started telling me some of her chronic fatigue symptoms. And it was like, oh, like, she’s waking up with a sore throat, waking up more tired than when you went to bed. I was like, Oh, I guess I guess that I do have chronic fatigue. I thought it was just chronic stress. So back to your question again, I’m sorry.
Alexandra: I’m just interested in your experience of chronic fatigue, and how you might see it now, with your understanding of the principles.
Ellen: Well, I have to say, it’s really hard to tap into how I felt, because it was for such a long time, and I can’t even say like it started here. But the understanding that I have now is, whether it’s chronic fatigue syndrome, or any fatigue, I think the mental busyness is a huge component to it.
And as I say that I’m aware that I also at one time in my life had a fairly rigid meditation practice.
I wouldn’t say that I was feeling any better. My fatigue symptoms were not better when I was meditating, they’re probably better now that I’m living into a meditative life rather than having a daily sit practice.
I think there’s so many mental, emotional, and physical contributions to fatigue. Food, environmental toxins, but mental busyness mental stress is a huge contributor for all disease and illness processes. A huge contributor.
Alexandra: I find that so fascinating. Because one thing I know about myself is how busy my mind has been. And it’s gradually slowing down over the years, now that I understand the role that thought plays in our lives, and I still find myself quite fatigued. I described myself as having no stamina. I have very little stamina. I know that that comes from a busy mind. That just seems to be what’s been the constant in my life.
I want to ask you, if you had a client who recognized that their busy mind was affecting their levels of energy, how would you approach that with them?
Ellen: I don’t know. There’s so many different ways. But let’s talk since you brought it up. Let’s talk about you.
Alexandra: Okay, sure.
Ellen: I know this identification with or stamina, low activity tolerance, I had that script running for a long time and not too long ago. And one day, I was somewhere and I hiked six miles. I haven’t hiked six miles in years. And I felt so good doing it and I was like, Oh, I guess I don’t have poor stamina. I guess I don’t have poor endurance. I just thought I did.
I just experiment with what would you like to do more up and do it? I remember the days when I would like okay, I can do this much of a walk or I can exercise and I just see how masterful my personal mind, my ego, was trying to control and manage my life rather than let’s just see, let’s just see, let’s just walk out the door.
What if we just know when we turn around? And what if we push too hard and then we have to take a longer than normal rest? From my PT days, I do remember that telling people if you need more than a 10 minute rest, when you get back then you’ve probably done a little too much. So what? So you rest a little bit more. But the background noise of poor stamina, low energy is, can be louder than we think.
Alexandra: Yes, absolutely. And it’s interesting to see that attachment to my identity of that idea of not having a lot of stamina or energy.
I can almost see myself telling myself that story.
Ellen: For sure. An experiment would be what do you love to do? Where do you love to walk or move?
A couple of months ago, we were at a friend’s house and I said, what is that? And she said, it’s a water rower and I said, I’ve never heard of a water rower. It’s a rowing machine that uses water as resistance. I love the sound of water, no matter how it comes; waterfall, ocean, streams. And my husband’s like, I can’t believe how committed you are to the rower every day. Commitment doesn’t come from here. It comes from I just love being on the rower and I love feeling my entire body working.
Alexandra: Oh, isn’t that amazing? I love that. As we’re touching on this, it occurs to me as well, that it feels like it’s all on me to manage my energy and kind of parse it out in ways so that I don’t run out of gas.
Ellen: I’ve got a great story for that. Before I go to the story of whose energy is that, the other thing back to just fatigue in general, there’s so many contributing factors. I investigated all of them heavily, especially food and where this food was sourced, and all sorts of stuff around food.
And what did that do? It just added more mental pressure, more mental energy to it. And so sometimes, sometimes not. So now, when I have any kind of symptoms that are I just think, Oh, I’ve got pressure on the system. Just got pressure on the system. What does my body want right now? Does it want some breathing? Does it want to sit down and relax back in a chair or lie down?
Alexandra: Nice. Oh, I love that. And then you said you had a story?
Ellen: I was blessed with the opportunity to speak at the London conference in 2019. The conference was Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. My talk was Monday at 1pm and Saturday night, I was committed to officiating a wedding on the east coast of the United States. And I’m closer on the East Coast than I am on the southwest of the US so I landed and officiated the wedding. The next day, got on a plane to Heathrow landed at the airport landed.
As we’re landing, I’m thinking, Hmm, how many hours sleep did I get? Because I was trying. I was like working hard to sleep on the plane. I couldn’t calculate if I had a total of two hours. I remember feeling this oh my gosh, two hours of sleep. How are you going to do this? And I heard and felt, “You are not the source of your energy.”
Alexandra: Wow. That is so cool.
Ellen: I had so much fun at that talk. The whole day was great. And the whole night, I didn’t have any jetlag, I didn’t have any pressure on the system. I didn’t have any fatigue. I loved how I showed up for myself and for the people that were present. That really stayed with me for everything. We’re not the source. Source is the source, right?
Alexandra: Yes. Wow, that’s so great.
Ellen: What happened to you when you heard that? I’m just curious, because I felt a shift within you.
Alexandra: It’s so easy for me to fall into, it’s all on me. Whatever ‘it’ is. So it can be manifesting something, or it can be in a relationship. It’s all on me. Figuring everything out. So I need to keep hearing this message over and over and over again.
Ellen: Is that true that you need to hear it over and over and over again?
Alexandra: I guess every time it clicks with me again, it feels good, feels like a new, deeper awareness that it’s not all on me.
Ellen: And the other thing that has helped me and the clients that I’ve worked with along that journey is, not only is it not all on me. But I’m always going to have some variation of thinking that it’s on me. And that’s what I love most. That’s one of the things I really love about this understanding is that understanding has helped me to really deepen my acceptance of the human condition, and of me as a human.
And that even though I know something, and even if it’s not just an intellectual knowing but a knowing that I’m not the source of my energy, there’s still going to be personal mind ego tendencies to forget it, or to want to grasp a hold of control, because I see that the personal mind, my personal mind, is masterful for me.
Knowing how to maintain the illusion of safety, security, and control and some insight many years back, had me see the perfection and the mastery of my ego doing that. And since then, I’ve had so much humor when I see it, it’s like oh, you again. You’re trying to pull me into thinking that you’re the source of my energy. Hmm, what a clever way you do that. And it was never light hearted with my relationship with myself before. Like I was serious.
Alexandra: It was serious work.
Ellen: It was serious.
Alexandra: Something you said there made me want to go a bit deeper. It was around I’ve lost it now. Maybe it’ll come back. Probably it will. We’ll see.
On your website, you have a mention of healing the beyond dis-ease. Can you tell us what that is and what that looks like to you?
Ellen: Well, first of all, just the word dis-ease I’ve come to know as lack of ease. When I feel a lack of ease and any part of my life it’s a little tap on the shoulder to move into ease, to move into instead of swimming across the current or upstream to flow downstream with ease.
I’ve been blessed to witness so many people who have chronic illness and I hate to say it this way and I’ve been blessed to have so many winners, so many people have deep, emotional, spiritual, mental healings, deep forgiveness for themselves and others in spite of their physical illness not shifting. Because again, for me just like, source is the source of energy. Source is also the source of physical healing.
Alexandra: Right, so it’s in other words, it’s not all on them for the healing, right? I feel personally challenged by living in ease. I guess that’s partly habit. And part maybe partly ego, like you just reflected on; my ego wants to be in control, it wants to manage everything.
Ellen: So that’s the way it works. It no longer makes sense for me to try and make it do anything different other than to recognize and become aware that it’s masterful for me and your ego is masterful for you.
Alexandra: Right and so holding that lightly, like you talked about a minute ago
Ellen: Yes. I think the other thing that can be really helpful is no matter what it is, is like what is it that you really want?
I hear you don’t want the low stamina, the low energy but what is it that you do want? And how would you feel if you had that and 90 percent of the time, it’s the same thing. I mean, that was different people. I’m saying like, take 100 people or 1000 people that I’ve worked with now, it’s all some variation of peace or being in a state of loving and so coming close if that is there something like is that true for you?
Was there another word for you or for your clients that you think that they that people are really seeking?
Alexandra: I think peace is the one that resonates the greatest the most with me personally.
Ellen: I did the doing on almost anything that was possible to find peace, literally on my hands and knees before I believed in anything to preach toward. I meditated for peace 360 days a year. I medicated for peace. I learned lots of skills and tools and techniques to try and calm down.
I’m laughing because it just makes no sense to try and calm down my human and I think one thing that all that effort did was show me how committed I was to it. When I’m moving away from that peaceful feeling I’m just more sensitive to it now.
It was the habit. I was always back here in some variation of chaos or stress or tension. But now I’m sensitive to moving toward or away from it and I can catch myself so instead of in the past, it would have been like what do we do to not be in this tension place? Not possible. But having this sensitivity of you know that I’m moving more in the direction of peace or away from peace has been really a helpful guide.
Alexandra: I want to ask a follow up question. For our listeners, you talked about all the things you were doing to try to achieve peace. What do you do differently now? What’s the alternative to that? You talked about that a little bit about that sensitivity.
Ellen: I want to be aware that I want to share that, it sounds like I’m not happy with the things I did in the past. They all made sense at the time, they looked like good ideas. They were helpful, for sure. But I didn’t know what was possible.
And I would say, I still don’t know what’s possible, I think that that experience of living in peace is ever expansive, that I’ll really, really never know the edges of that.
Now, I don’t have to fix or change or do anything when there’s tension. I feel like tension is just kind of like a divine tap on the shoulder waking me up.
I might choose to stay in the tense place for a moment, but I know, it won’t stay. I know it’s temporary. So if it serves me in that moment to stay there, so be it.
And I would say this, this leads me into this. This other thing, this other area that’s really shifted for me is I’ve become more and more aware of how somehow I mastered feeling when I wanted to feel when I wanted to feel it and how I wanted to feel it. So it was very controlling about my feeling experience of life. I thought that because I could feel and because I could cry and because I could get angry that I felt all the feelings. But I really wasn’t not to the level I’m am now.
I’ve become so attuned or sensitive to my feeling state. So I think of like, my anxiety that I was medicated for. And the continuum of anxiety now, I could literally sometimes feel just a very shift, very brief shift in my breath, where it’s more shallow. And I’m like, oh, that anxiety train is driving by. I don’t have to get on it. The wakeup is that I don’t have to get on it.
At the other extreme, maybe there’s some heart palpitations. But maybe that’s when I wake up to there’s anxiety stirring. Or just a pressure and uneasiness. There’s just this continuum and I just love that I’ve become so sensitive to it, that I don’t spend a lot of time outside of a peaceful state. We never really went into this quiet mind, quiet body, but the peaceful mind, peaceful body really makes a difference. I know that’s what has helped me reverse three autoimmune conditions and other things that are currently healing in my body.
Alexandra: I want to point out for listeners to that what you’re pointing to, is that the feeling that comes always lets us know the truth of what we’re thinking, it’s always there giving us feedback. So that tension that you described, you use that word, is not bad or wrong or something to be managed or fixed. It’s simply a message.
Ellen: An indicator.
Alexandra: An indicator letting you know.
Ellen: I love the metaphor of a barometer, because what a barometer does is it measures pressure on the system. Sometimes I feel it with a shift of a breath. And sometimes I feel it with a shift in my heart rate, it doesn’t matter. Before the understanding that I have now it would have been like, what do I do to avoid the more severe ones? I’m laughing because it didn’t work. And now it’s like, oh, I caught it when it was here. And sometimes I catch it when it’s here. And ad that’s just the way it works.
Alexandra: I love that barometer metaphor. It’s such a good one. And when we think about it, if we spent a lot of time looking at the barometer that’s on the wall and saying, Well, you know, a movement of the needle within this zone is okay. But if you go outside that I won’t be okay. None of that is true, either.
Ellen: I love that expansion, too. It’s not true.
Alexandra: And I love hearing that, for you being able to rest in peace has helped you with these autoimmune conditions. That’s so extraordinary. And so often with guests on the show, too. And I love hearing this. We’ve tried so many things. And again, innocently, like you pointed out, and those things looks like the right thing to do at the time.
Noticing the difference between knowing that we are peace, versus searching for it is so powerful.
Ellen: And for me, it was also a period of time that the knowing that I was peace was way more intellectual than the experience of I am peace. I was really, really kind of, Oh, I know, peace, because I was comparing it to the massive anxiety that I used to write. I’m not saying that I and as I said before, I don’t know, the boundaries, the depths of what peace is available, but I have unknowing that it’s way more than I could ever imagine.
Alexandra: We’re coming toward the end of our time together, I want to ask you to tell us about your project around Mavis Karn’s book, It’s That Simple. Mavis has been on the show, and for the listeners, I’ll link to Mavis’s episode in the show notes.
So tell us what you’re working on.
Ellen: Please do because I’ve had so many amazing mentors. But something happened with Mavis and this book.
She wrote a book called It’s That Simple: A User’s Manual for Human Beings. It’s a series of 15 letters. I read one, two, and three, and I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, I’ve got to talk to Mavis about this. This must be a program.
Something said don’t email her, because it could be a short conversation. So let’s do it. Let’s have a conversation with her. So I set up a time to talk to her and I said, Mavis, I woke up at three in the morning and this book needs to be a program. And she said, Well, what does that look like? So we talked about it and she asked me if I would do it with her.
Then a few minutes later, she said, Oh, you know, just an hour ago, someone asked me the same thing. I think the two of you should go off and do it together. So I ran five programs with her virtual assistant Azul, which was lovely. It was our first time working together. We just jumped into doing it.
We had small groups where we invited people to have the book or not, it wasn’t a book club. And in each session I would read a letter and we would have a shared experience of what people heard, where it made sense, where it didn’t make sense, where the exceptions were.
I just want to say stay tuned to how it’s gonna come out in the world. I am on a new venture to put it out where it’s more accessible to people, anytime a day or night and not just by enrolling in a program. So we’ll see how that unfolds. It feels like a big, well, I could make a good idea that it’s a big project, and let’s let it but when I remember this feeling that said, there’s something else that you can do with this. And it’s easy.
Alexandra: Nice. Touching back in with that feeling. That’s great.
Is there anything that we haven’t touched on today that you’d like to share with our listeners?
Ellen: I love that you asked me that. I want people to know that I’m also really committed to educating and informing people on End of Life Options. And in each state, and each country has different laws and rules. But there are some end of life options that are universal, they can happen and that you can do anywhere.
Knowing what you want at end of life and sharing that with people is so important, because in my health care, working days I saw so many families struggle over thinking that they knew what their loved when their loved one couldn’t speak anymore, or share what they wanted, that they that they knew. And we might know now we can always change our mind.
I’m really committed to educating as many people as I can on that. And I love that conversation as well.
Alexandra: Wow, that’s so fascinating. I love that too. That’s a subject that’s dear to my heart as well, just based on personal experiences. And various other things. So I love hearing you say that.
Ellen: Thanks for having another conversation about that.
Alexandra: Ellen, this has been awesome.
Why don’t you let everyone know where they can find out more about you and your work?
Ellen: I’m always open to an email Ellen@healinghousecalls.com. My website is healinghousecalls. And I also have a healthcare-coaching.com website where I support health care providers, doctors, nurses and others to know that stress and burnout is optional. Even in the workplace, even in that workplace.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes to those things.
Ellen: Thank you so much for a fun conversation, and more than fun, meaningful, deeply meaningful conversation. I’m always open to inviting people into a conversation. I don’t buy a pair of jeans without trying them on. So I don’t want to hire someone or think about working with someone before I try them on.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s a great way to put it. Thanks so much, Ellen. Take care.
Stress Relief for Female Entrepreneurs with Clare Downham
May 16, 2024
We usually think of stress as coming from the circumstances that surround us: busy jobs, busy lives, difficult bosses or clients. But what if stress has another origin? What if it comes from the thinking we have in any given situation?
Clare Downham is the dedicated mentor you need on your unique journey to unlock your innate potential and cultivate a thriving business aligned with your true purpose. As a certified ILM Success Mentor, she specialises in guiding emerging and established female entrepreneurs to embrace their innate mindfulness and harness it as a powerful tool for success.
With a deep understanding of the inside-out nature of our human experience, Clare expertly navigates the complexities of the entrepreneurial journey, helping women to silence the inner critic, dissolve self-doubt and cultivate a strong sense of intuition and self-trust.
You can find Clare Downham at ClareDownham.com and on Insight Timer at claredownham.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
On what happens when we ignore warning signs from our bodies
The false messages business owners receive about having to be ‘on’ and ‘up’ all the time
How motivation ebbs and flows naturally and there’s nothing wrong when we’re at a low ebb
On the cyclical nature of levels of personal energy
How some of our best ideas come during down or quiet times
How we believe we need to be busy all the time and that resting is ‘lazy’
How we so often try to be in a different feeling state than the one we’re naturally in
On overwhelm and its one cause
How being in the present moment starves stress of the oxygen it needs
Alexandra: Oh, my pleasure. It’s lovely to see you.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Clare: I was a primary school head teacher. So our primary school in the UK is aged three to 11. I was in primary education for 20 years. And the last five or so I was a head teacher to two different schools. And I became very stressed, although I didn’t know I was stressed at all, I didn’t have a clue.
I knew there were things wrong with me. But I thought those things were what was wrong with me rather than stress as the underlying cause. One day I went into work, fully intending to start my working day and I took one look at my computer. And it was like, it was like I was frozen. It was like, my body just finally went, “No, no more, let’s go, let’s leave.”
I literally did walk out of work.
And I never went back in the end. Didn’t know I wasn’t going to go back. I thought it was going to have a nap, and have a little rest for a couple of weeks and then go back. But that’s not what happened.
I was initially diagnosed with depression, because I was burnt out. And it looks very similar. Because all your motivation is gone. You can’t get out of bed, you can’t really do anything. But all the way through they were saying it was depression, I kept thinking I don’t feel depressed, I’m not really in a low mood, I’ve just got no energy, it was like it had been syringed out of me.
It was a messy year. I didn’t work for a year, I was off sick for a year. And through a vast part of that it was all depression, depression, it’s depression. So obviously I was taking tablets, I was trying all sorts of things to cure myself with depression. And it was only really much later on in that journey that I realized that I burnt out and realized actually how stressed I’d been and how, as I learned about stress, how my body had been screaming the warning signs at me. But I had just ignored them or not known they were there.
I didn’t deliberately ignore them, I just didn’t know they were there. I didn’t know that’s what they were telling me. So a year went by, and eventually my governing body and the people I was working for needed to know when I was going to come back. And I just didn’t know. I couldn’t give them an answer because I was still not brilliant. And so in the end, I had to resign.
I resigned on the first of April. April fool. I think it’s quite funny that I resigned the first of April, and then didn’t know what I was going to do. Obviously at that point, apart from just, it felt like a massive, I actually got a lot better once that weight had been almost like my thinking. Now I know my thinking about going back to work was really not helping my recovery. So I didn’t know what I was going to do.
Then I got a random email 10 days afterwards which invited me to train to be a hypnotherapist.
This is in 2016 I resigned. And so I thought, well, I’m interested in that thing. I had had a bit of hypnotherapy, and it helped a bit. And I thought, You know what, I’m going to go and I’m going to go and do hypnotherapy. So that’s what I did. Not really with the intention of starting a business just, well, it’s something to do you know, something to learn, something new, I’m always interested in learning new things. And it was only like partway through the course. Well, near the end of the course, when they started to say they started talking about clients, they started talking about business, started talking about marketing, Facebook, all these things and only think about in terms of business.
It seemed I was starting a business completely by accident. That’s my first accidental business. I didn’t say it was a first accidental business. So I started this business and I guess it was probably about the autumn of 2016 when I started going networking and things like that. I started to go to these networking events where they would have somebody do a little 20 minute presentation. And a lot of them were self development and there was a lot of messaging around, “You have to have all these big goals and you’ve got to have a plan. You got to have like a 12 week year plan, you got to have a three year massive or a five year plan and you’ve got to stick to these plans.” She was scheduling your day and there was all this stuff about time management about managing tasks.
What I picked up from that, and wrongly held maybe, the business world seems to think this is right was that motivation wise I was supposed to be a straight line.
Never fluctuating, never changing, just be motivated all the time supposed to get up every day and just smash through everything, and hustle and if I didn’t do that I was going to be a failure as a business owner.
As a result of that, I get into all these different self development things. So I’m reading books and listen to podcasts, I’m going on endless courses. And then I’m doing all the therapeutic look into the past. What’s wrong with Clare? When did she become broken? Was it as a child and those sorts of things? Counseling more, obviously, that was a hypnotherapist plenty hypnotherapist I could tap into, I was just trying so hard. Oh, Miracle Morning, every day, get up, do this ritual in order to make yourself be okay.
That went on for about three and a half years. Now when I say that to a lot of people to go, Oh, God, I was like, for 20 years or whatever. So actually, I think three and a half years, I was very fortunate. It was only three and a half years I was like that. Then in January 2020 I can only say a miracle happened really. And again, I don’t know miracles, accidents, luck, whatever you want to call it. So a friend of mine, Peter, had just finished his training with Michael Neill. He had just done the Super Coach Academy. And he just put a post on Facebook saying, I just need some people to sort of practice on to finish my qualification off. And I was like, Oh, you can fix me then. Come on, put my hand up. Like, come on. Let me come.
I went to his office. He doesn’t live far from me. I cried through the entire first session.
I can’t even remember what he said to me. Only I remember him drawing a stick person. We’d like a lot of squiggles above its head. And I’ve seen Michael Neill and other teachers draw that picture since. I remember that but I don’t remember much else other than I cried and cried and cried. There was so much frustration that I’d done all this stuff. I’ve done everything the blinking gurus have told me to do and I still wasn’t motivated all the time.
That was the starting point. I had some coaching with him. I then started to really listen to Michael Neill’s stuff first of all, I guess. He was my route in. Then lockdown came along. And my in person hypnotherapy business went poof. There it was gone, literally overnight. But actually, that was really fortuitous in the end, because I didn’t really want to do hypnotherapy anymore, anyway.
That opened up quite a lot of space for me to look in this direction. And trained then with Jules and Rudy Kennard. My fiance and I were in the last cohort of people doing pure Three Principles stuff, they’ve moved on to something a bit more multi dimensional, shall we say since then. Everything changed.
Then my business began to be more about that.
Nothing looks the same as how it did, particularly other people. They used to be really annoying. There are a lot of synonyms. That’s really good. My main thing was ranting about other people in their behavior and wanting other people to be different. Yeah, that’s gone. And life just looks a lot more easy.
So that’s how I came across it. And since then I’ve stayed in the conversation, is what they say, don’t they? I’ve explored lots of different teachers, done bits and pieces of all sorts of different things. Listen to a lot of podcasts. And at the moment, Amy Johnson and Clare Dimond seem to be my main people that I’m connecting to. I’ve loved it. It’s been amazing, really. And I’m so grateful that those little accidents happened along the way. There’s way more bits of luck or bits of miracles, I guess, to get me to now.
Alexandra: Looking back at your experience in the primary school, what do you see now about why you burned out?
Clare: Well, first of all, not because of teaching. The first thing when I say I was a primary school head teacher and I burn out people just Oh yeah, it’s such a hard job. Actually, my working life was the bit that was okay. I always felt good at work. I never really felt stressed out about work or anything related to work, although I had taken on a new headship in the autumn of 2014, and obviously I burned out in March 2015. I think it might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back that it was a new headship.
There’s a lot to see very quickly when you’re in your second headship because in your first headship you don’t know that much. So you can’t really see the problems. Whereas when you go into second headship, and you’ve left your lovely school that you’ve just made, all nice and pretty and wonderful, you go into this new place, and you’re like, ah everything’s wrong. There’s a bit more speed to it. And yet, there’s a lot coming in. But really, it wasn’t really that. I also separated from my husband in the autumn of 2013.
And then just, the only thing I can describe it is, now I look at it, and I know, I was trying to control the world out there in order to make myself feel okay. I was doing a lot of online dating. That’s not a great place to be, if you’re a control freak, let me tell you, because they don’t behave Alexandra and they behave appallingly. So many of them. So that wasn’t good.
I also was going out a lot more, doing a lot of salsa dancing, I was going out partying with my friend.
I had a friend who was also a head teacher and also split from her husband. You can just imagine what those nights were like; they involved a lot of wine, and blurry memories. But you know, there was a lot of that there’s a lot of doing doing a lot, and trying to find it out there.
So I was tired all the time. And my mind was very busy with what can I do next to make myself feel better? So it was really all the outside world stuff. That was the problem. And how I was trying to control all of that, to make myself feel okay.
Alexandra: I loved what you said about motivation. And you work with a lot of female entrepreneurs. I had a little bit of an aha moment when you said that; of course, our motivation goes up and down. It ebbs and flows. In the entrepreneurial world, there’s so much information brainwashing about jumping out of bed and achieving your goals and always feeling 150%. And of course, that’s not the way it works.
I’m sure seeing that for you was such a lightbulb moment.
Clare: Massive. I think there’s the word acceptance or surrender or something like that comes to mind.
I’m 53. So I don’t have a cycle of my own, over 28 days now, but I have been looking at like, How does my energy change? Because it still does seem to have these kinds of patterns to it and looking a bit around the moon. There was a new moon last week and I just noticed that I was very much hunkering down and I was writing things. I do stuff on Insight Timer, and I didn’t want to record anything. It wasn’t in that energy to record and then at the beginning of this week, I’m ready to record again. I’ve woken up, I’m ready. I’m energized to do that now.
And like last week, if I went to a networking event in person yesterday, if I tried, I couldn’t have done that last week. I just wasn’t in that energetic space. But I think that one of the things especially for female entrepreneurs, is that you have to remember that the world of business has been – and this is nothing against men – but it’s been created by men, for men by men, just because that’s the nature of how it’s been. The world of work was a man’s world up until not even 100 years ago to be fair, you know, it’s not even been 100 years that women have been in the workplace properly.
I look at my fiance and he just is the same every day.
He just gets up and he just like yeah, I’m doing this thing and I’m just singing. I’m like that some days and then other days I just want to cry and sit in a coma. And he doesn’t seem to get that. He’ll ask, “What’s wrong?” Nothing’s really wrong. I’m just crying and just feel a bit flat and I’m just not in the mood. I’m this undulating energetic thing.
I’m not a man and I’m sure men fluctuate as well, but Bruce just doesn’t seem to. I speak to a lot of women who say, Oh, no, my partner just gets up. He’s just the same every day. He doesn’t seem to really half this cycle thing going on. So I think there’s there’s something about self compassion, knowing that and also realizing that sometimes in those quiet times is actually when I’m still around, I’m slower. Some really cool ideas come through, because I’m not dashing about doing everything and trying to do everything.
Some of my really cool things that have felt like downloads or channeling or whatever you might want to call it have come in those moments when I have been like, oh, I don’t really want to do anything. I just want to sit about and read a book, or whatever. That’s when that stuff comes through.
Alexandra: Absolutely. In fact, just last week, I had a day where I was wanting to be working, had some stuff that I wanted to do and just couldn’t do it. I spent the afternoon just lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Because that felt like the thing that I really wanted to do.
Where I tend to go with that is, oh, no, I’ve lost all my motivation. That’s what starts to happen in my head. I’ll never get it back. I’ll be lying on the couch staring at the ceiling for the rest of my life.
Instead, what happened is when I got up to go and do and make supper, I had two ideas for new programs. So I completely agree about that. The quiet time is often the most fertile time for sure.
Alexandra: In your work, do you find that female entrepreneurs struggle with burnout? And if so, how does that look for them?
Clare: I think it’s not uncommon. I think there’s something around how many different things, women, whether they’re entrepreneurs, or they’re in work, are managing, there’s still there’s still, like, we’ve moved full on into the workplace full on into entrepreneurialship. But we’ve not dropped any of the stuff in the house. We’ve kept it all. So we can’t do it all.
I also think it’s where we’re trying to get to the pushing and the forcing, and the keeping going, when really, we should be resting and really tuning out from our bodies completely and utterly. When I was burning out, my body did a little tap on the shoulder and then it gave a little light tap on the cheek, and then it was literally punching me around their head going, when you’re going to listen to me, I’m dying here. And you’re not doing anything about it.
We just don’t listen. So this busyness, we’ve got loads going on, there’s home, there’s business, there’s all the stuff. There’s also this sense that we’re supposed to be energetically on all the time. So we’re not resting, we’re not taking care of ourselves. And eventually that you can’t, so sleep starts to go around. I mean, that for me, it was massive.
My sleep went completely to pot. And then we go treat the sleep as if it’s the sleep that’s the problem. It’s not really the sleep. That’s not the problem at all. It’s the underlying stress and moving towards burnout. And so eventually, it’s running on this level of adrenaline, it’s just not sustainable for the body.
One of the things I often talk about is, are we going slowly enough and quietly enough to hear the body saying? When our eyes start to feel tired and we’ve got a bit of a headache because we’ve been in front of his screen too long. I don’t imagine many people are even listening to that. I can sit here, I’m middle of doing something and I don’t even go to the loo. I don’t really need the loo, I’m just going to finish this little thing that I’m doing.
No, go to the toilet. Start there. Just start there by listening to the very fundamental signal from your body that is saying go to the toilet. Eeven that we’re not doing, we’re not listening. But we have to be able to go slow enough to do that. And we have to be willing for things to change, and I’m not sure with the drive for money and things and just this concept of success, which is made up anyway. Whether we feel that we can afford to stop or slow down that feels like it’s too much of a sacrifice, I think really, so people keep going and keep going until it’s too late.
Alexandra: Right, and especially when we feel like, the only thing that’s going to get us to where we want to go is that drive forward. We don’t understand the value in resting and taking care of ourselves.
I see that so clearly, as you’re speaking the connection between, of course people have a hard time relaxing, because that looks antithetical to what they’re trying to do.
Clare: I’m just thinking then that The L Word, the lazy word comes up, doesn’t it? I’ve just been on a call earlier with a group of women and one of the women said that on Sunday, I mean, not even on a normal working day, on Sunday, she actually just laid on the sofa and put Netflix on. And it took her a big leap to do that. Because a big pushing through some discomfort, because it was like, Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this. “I should be out doing something. I should be in the garden. I should be busy all the time.”
She had headache, and then the headache went away. And she felt so much better and so much energized, because she just had rested. Sometimes you watch something on Netflix, it just washes out for you a bit, doesn’t it? And it’s just what you need. She was saying how difficult that was to just lean into that and allow that to just happen. Instead of fighting it and having a story about what else we should be doing.
Alexandra: One of the other things I wanted to ask you about is you mentioned this on your website about how managing our feelings isn’t the answer.
Clare: I guess fundamentally, when I was in the thick of all that self-development stuff, that’s what I was trying to do was trying to manage my feelings. I was trying to just all the time be in a different feeling state than the one I was in.
What I see about that now, and it’s that it’s still like developing is that that takes quite a lot of energy. And also, it’s fundamentally impossible to manage your feelings. You can’t do it. So that’s the underlying premises, actually, you can’t do that, it doesn’t really work that way.
But when we are very focused on an emotion that we don’t want to have, then we’re spending a lot of energy thinking about that emotion and trying to fix it, it just makes it worse. It just makes it more unpleasant. And actually, I’m seeing it now as fighting against the present moment. If what is present now is a feeling of anxiety, then, if I sit with that, then I’m really in the present moment, because I’m with this feeling of anxiety.
What I’ve noticed when I do this, I feel like it’s almost like when you pump a balloon up till it’s like really, really full. And then instead of knotting it, you let it go, and it goes whizzing around the room. And so it’s got all this energy and then it just goes up and it just sort of falls to the ground, no energy left.
When you watch these emotions, and you do that non judgmentally, that’s about how long they last. They whiz round and they move around and then they just disappear. I think that’s because you’ve fallen into the present moment, you’ve surrendered, you’ve accepted whatever word you want to use. And it’s just there.
What I see often as well in the female entrepreneurial community is that there’s always work going on to try and feel differently. And it’s taking a lot of time so nothing’s getting done. Like a fraction of the thing if they do because the whole idea is they want to get more done but they’re spending so much time and energy on managing feelings, they’re getting less done.
Whereas actually what happens when we just sit with the feeling and allow it to be there it passes anyway. And then what I find comes very quickly after that is a feeling of lightness, a bit of clarity, often the next step often like, Oh, do you know what, that’s what I need to do next. And then almost like this inbuilt motivation or energy to go do that thing just sort of comes with that energy built in.
Whereas if we’ve spent all that energy, even if we did get rid of the feeling, by the end of all that manipulation, and trying to get rid of it, and whatever we might be doing to get rid of the feeling. By the time we’ve done all of that we’re tired, then we’ve got nothing left to go do the thing that we might have wanted to do.
And the other thing is, as well as that in business, you’re often going to compete against things that feel uncomfortable, like putting yourself out there, let’s just call it that marketing speak. But putting yourself out there is going to sometimes mean that you’re going to butt up against some growing edge of yours. And actually, you could spend hours trying to get rid of this awful feeling so that you can then go do the thing.
But actually, the most potent way to get rid of that is to do the thing. That’s the most powerful thing that just allows that whole limitation to fall away. So instead of going round the houses trying to get rid of the feeling, trying to manage the feeling, just do the thing, like not from a place of hustle. Because those feelings aren’t telling you about the thing anyway. The feeling doesn’t come from that thing.
The feeling is coming from how you’re thinking about the thing.
And when you do the thing, that thinking falls away. So when you see it in that light, it just gets easier. Once you know that that feeling isn’t information about the thing you’re about to do, you can then do it. And that’s got to be quicker and more efficient than going round and round, is trying to chase the feeling away before you can do anything.
Alexandra: Absolutely. For our audience, I’m in a class with you at the moment about Insight Timer. And there have been a couple of things that I’ve bumped up against in that exact way, and I noticed myself, I might spend a bit of time backing away from whatever the thing is, and thinking about it a lot and, and worrying about it a bit.
And then eventually when I did it, it’s never as hard as we think it’s going to be. And all the thinking that I had about that just drops away. So now I’m not carrying the weight of all that thinking that I had about whatever the thing is.
Clare: Absolutely.
Alexandra: We touched a little bit on how women have entered the workforce, but they haven’t let go of the things they were already doing. Raising children, taking care of the house and that thing.
What is overwhelm then, as you see it? Is it tied into having too much to do or is it something else?
Clare: I don’t think it’s helped by having too much to do. However, I do think there’s one thing about being overwhelmed and that’s thinking you’ve got to do it all now. It’s as simple as that.
If you’ve got a list of things to do, you only think about one of them and you go do that one thing to completion, and you cross it off, and then you go do the next thing, then you may not get it all done. But you will just be very present. And you’ll just be very focused on one thing.
I think tied into that is seeing how much thinking we might have about completing the tasks on a list. I mean, there’s that thing, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s absolutely true for most people, you’ve got a list of 10 things, you do eight of them and you mega focus on the two that you didn’t do.
So there’s noticing if we tend to not be very compassionate to ourselves or beat ourselves up about not doing whatever things we’ve not done. Realizing we’re not superhuman.
Tied into that, is when we’re calm and when we’re present, I think it’s easier to say no. And sometimes we have to say no, or we have to ask for help.
I was rubbish at asking for help. I was drowning in my life. And nobody knew. Nobody knew how ill I was getting, because I hid it very, very well. I didn’t ask for help. So there’s all the stuff that is about us needing to keep up some facade of being okay all the time. Because we don’t want to be a burden, and we don’t want to get in the way, or we don’t want to seem to be a problem in some way. But fundamentally overwhelmed is thinking you’ve got to do it all now.
Alexandra: I love that. It’s such a simple definition. And it resonates with me so much. I think of times when I felt overwhelmed and I had so much thinking about whatever was going on. And it really does feel like that pressure. Oh, it all has to happen in the next five minutes. And that was all made up, of course, by me. Such a good point. I love that.
When someone is experiencing that stress, or a different stress, what do you see about dealing with that in a way that’s fresh and new?
Clare: The first thing is just that phrase, dealing with it, as if it’s something to do, rather than something to be seen in a different way. Because I mean, I’ve got a workshop stashed away somewhere, it’s available if you want it. It’s called The Truth About Stress. And it just takes people through the difference between pressure and stress.
Absolutely, in this crazy bonkers world that we live in, where everything’s too fast, and we’re wired into [our phones] all the time. And it’s harder to switch off and all these other things are going on, then there’s pressure but that’s not the same as stress. That’s our relationship with the pressure.
Let’s say we’ve got a busy job or a busy business. And yeah, we could literally go into that business, work our socks off all day. And if we can just, like, close the office door at five o’clock, and go chill out with our family, and have a lovely evening, be really focused on that when we’re doing that, then we won’t experience stress. It just won’t work like that.
In this workshop, I talk about the fact that on a Sunday night, loads of people don’t sleep because they’re already in the working week. And they’re already thinking about what’s to come and how much they’ve got to do and everything.
And equally on a Friday afternoon. Everything goes really well, everybody’s really light hearted, and it’s all cool, because actually, already they’re thinking, oh, I’m going to the beach that weekend, or I’m going to do this with my kids. The thinking is already thinking not even the job is like, Oh, it’s just really easy to do exactly the same, the same things that they were on Wednesday afternoon, or Monday morning. But all of a sudden, it all feels a lot lighter, because their mind’s already traveling forward in time.
As I’m saying that I’m just thinking, if you really in the present moment stress can’t survive, it can’t be there. That would almost be like starving of oxygen, it just wouldn’t be able to take hold. And what’s really interesting about that, from my teaching background, is that obviously teaching is seen as a very stressful profession. I think that is because teachers are not very good at being in the present moment. They are when they’re in the classroom. So a lot of teachers will say I love being in the classroom.
But the rest of the time is really stressful. And that is because in the classroom, when you’ve got 30 kids to manage, you can’t not be in the present moment, because they’ll eat you. They will actually eat you if you’re not properly on it. So when you’re in the classroom, even if you’re dealing with quite a difficult group of children, you’re actually very, very present.
Whereas the rest of the time teachers are fast forwarding through their lives all the time. So in primary schools in this country, the day is broken down into little chunks, obviously, the terms and then there’s a holiday and so all the time teachers are counting down counting down, when’s the next holiday, when’s the next holiday? And then when they get into the holiday, like, Oh, I’ve only got three more days and that’s working. And so they’re always like they’re always out of the present moment.
I think that’s a massive factor in how stressed people are in not just in teaching them sure but in other jobs. But if if we are 100% in the present moment, all we notice when we’re not, and therefore fall back into the present moment, I don’t think stress can get a foothold. It’s like it trying to get up a greasy pole, it can’t do that. If we are in the present moment. I think that’s a quote: the present moment is a greasy pole to stress. Profound.
Alexandra: That’s great. I can really see what you’re saying, because I’m thinking back to my corporate life, the brief moments I’ve had in corporate Canada, and sitting in a meeting was always really stressful for me. And it wasn’t because the meeting was stressful. It was because I was thinking of the three other meetings I had to go through that day. And I was thinking about the emails that were piling up in my inbox while I was sitting in the meeting. It’s such a good point.
And teachers too, especially it feels like a calling.
It feels really sad to me when a teacher expresses feelings of burning out, because this is the thing they felt called to do. And yet they can’t manage the stress of it.
Clare: Definitely is. I don’t know what it’s like over there. But over here I think it’s like 30% of left within the first three years or something. They graduate and go into teaching. Dropping like flies. It is a shame.
Alexandra: As we start to wind up here a little bit, I just wanted to ask if there’s anything we haven’t touched on today that you’d like to share?
Clare: Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head.
Alexandra: Could you tell us about Insight Timer: what that’s like for you and maybe a little bit about that part of your business?
Clare: That’s been just such a wonderful journey. When I first found the platform, I didn’t really engage with it fully. I didn’t really know how useful it could be in my business. But it was this time last year, so may 2023, that I really started to get active on the platform, and it’s just so much fun. I have a lot of fun.
This afternoon, I’ve just been pondering my thoughts on what new courses I might make and what are the content I want to create and that sort of thing. I do find that the creative juices for it really, really flow. I think that’s because I used to create a lot of content for social media.
I was very, very active on LinkedIn. I mean, very, very active, ridiculously. So to be fair. And it never felt like creating a link for insight time. And I think that’s because that you can see your impact. I go on every day, and there’s all these beautiful reviews, and there’s people on my courses saying thank you, this has completely changed my general perspective.
Or on my lives, people saying this is just what I needed to hear today. And that sort of thing. So you know that you’re having an impact on the thing in our work. You know, actually, we do want to earn a living, it’s lovely that you get paid on Insight Timer as well. But it’s just seeing that impact, just getting that feedback to know that what I’m saying is changing people’s lives. And it’s giving people a nicer, happier, more peaceful experience of life.
That is, is huge, really, and you don’t get that from posting on social media, you might get the occasional nice comment, but everybody’s too busy on there. Whereas on Insight Timer, people are really going to find help. So they really are appreciative when they find something that is helpful to them.
Alexandra: So true, and it’s such a different atmosphere than your typical social media platform. Not that it is social media, but just the fact that for someone like you or myself, who feels called to teach and share and try to help people, it’s such a better fit than just shouting into the void on Instagram, or whatever it is.
Clare: Spitting in the wind. I often say nothing’s seems to be landing energetically, it feels more aligned as well you know that, that we are being rewarded financially for the content that we’re sharing and the help that we’re giving people. That feels quite significant as well.
Because I mean, on social media, there’s only one group of people benefiting financially. They own the platform. That’s right. It’s very aligned.
Alexandra: Lovely. That’s great. Well, thank you so much, Clare, for being with me here today.
Can you tell our listeners a little bit about where they can find out more about you and your work?
Clare: Yes, so I have a website called claredownham.com. And I do have a nice little gift that people might want to check out. It’s called the Letter to the Inner Critic.
It was one of those things that came to me and one of those quieter periods that I just allowed to happen. It’s quite fun, but it’s also quite poignant in terms of my own changing relationship with that voice in my head, that seems to twitter away nonsense at me. I think it’s really helpful to people.
So it’s claredownham.com/letter. That’s my website. And people can download that letter there and hopefully enjoy reading it.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes so people can find that at unbrokenpodcast.com. Well, thank you so much, Clare. I really appreciate you being here with me today.
Exploding The Myth That We’re Using Food To Replace Love
May 09, 2024
Old-paradigm psychology can try to convince us that unwanted habits are caused by a need to feel loved or safe or cared for. It can feel like we’re using food, or other substances, to soothe or comfort ourselves. In this podcast episode we bust this myth and look toward the true origin of unwanted habits.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Are you interested in connecting with others who are exploring this understanding? Would you like some coaching and ongoing support with an eye toward resolving an unwanted habit? Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist.
Show Notes
The five reasons an unwanted habit has nothing to do with replacing love
Does it matter where our painful thoughts about food originate?
On the fluidity of thought and how it can change, morph and disappear
How the feeling connected to a thought is going to tell us if it’s the truth or a lie
How it’s not on us to change, manage or control our thoughts
How we are not in control of the timeline of when things change
Transcript of episode
Hello Explorers and welcome to episode 62 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about the really common myth that when we have an unwanted habit where we’re using that habit to replace love that we might feel that we are missing.
So in other words, as it said on the title card for this episode, is food really love? Or is that a myth? I’m going to tell you why I think it’s a myth.
Before I say that, I should say that I think it makes sense that we came to that conclusion. And I know for me, I spent years and years trying to love myself in a way that would cause my unwanted overeating habit to disappear. And none of what I tried worked. I tried things like journaling, affirmations, radical self-compassion. What else was in that arena of loving ourselves? Cognitive behavioral therapy. I took a course I’ve talked about this before. And it was all about creating a loving feeling within ourselves. In order that our overeating habit would drop away. And none of that worked.
I’m going to talk about that today and about what I see now, when we have the thought that we’re using a substance like food to try to replace love within ourselves.
Before we get into that, I want to quickly have a reminder here, that if you haven’t done so already, you can sign up for the waitlist for the Unbroken community.
The community will be launching later this year in 2024. And we will be having some live coaching in the community, we’ll have an online group, we’ll have a couple calls a month live with me. And as I say, all the details are there on that page, AlexandraAmor.com/community.
Okay, so let’s get into this subject of whether or not food is love.
Are we are using something like food and overeating to replace love that we believe is missing within us?
The reason I’m talking about this today is that I had another coaching session with Tania Elfersy recently, and you may have listened to the episode, number 53, where Tania coached me. And so we’ve gotten together another couple of times since then.
Today, we had a conversation about this thought and feeling that I have when I’m putting food on my plate, specifically at supper time. And the thought that I have is, there’s not enough. We talked about that, and what that meant, what that thought means for me. It felt as I explained to Tania, it felt like it was saying to me that I wasn’t loved enough, that that feeling of there’s never enough I’m sort of transferring it to food, but the food represents love that might be absent in my life or had been in the past.
We talked about where that thought might have originated. And I can see that there was a time in my life when that thought probably came into being and how we innocently can assume or conclude that because of the circumstances that we’ve experienced in the past, and that we now have an unwanted habit like overeating that we are substituting one thing for another. That’s where the myth comes in that we are using food as a substitute for love.
I want to share the five things that Tania and I talked about, and explore this a little bit more and hopefully help you see what Tania has helped me to see. And what I’ve seen, during my exploration of the, the understanding that we’re exploring here are the three principles.
The first thing that I want to share is that connected to what I’ve just explained about this idea that we’re substituting food and love is that where that thought and feeling originated doesn’t really matter.
What really matters in this exploration is that we see it as thought. So that’s what seems to really create change, at least, it has done in my experience. And what I mean by that is, in the old paradigm of psychology, the outside in paradigm, if I had been coaching with Tania today, in that old paradigm, what we would have done is gone back to potentially where that thought originated. And then we would have dived into the feelings around when that thought originated, and the circumstances and the places perhaps where I felt an absence of love.
And we would have dug up a lot of the painful emotions around that, and all that kind of thing. And Sydney Banks often talked about how digging into the past to him didn’t make a lot of sense. And it was for that exact reason that digging into the past brings up all these feelings within us.
Now having said that, what I’m not implying is that we need to just bypass our past experience at all. That’s not the intention here. But what I do want to encourage you to see or to try to see is that when we’re having a thought about overeating or about a certain food, I really want you to notice that it is a thought. It’s not something written in stone, it’s not a pronouncement that’s come from someone that you can trust and believe that it’s the absolute truth.
We’re going to talk about the truth; where you can see that what that thought is bringing is not truth.
I’ll talk about how you can tell that a thought like that isn’t true, that’s coming up in one of the points I want to make later.
Initially, I invite you to see when you have a feeling or a thought that’s similar to the one that I’ve described, the first step really would be to see it simply as a thought.
It’s creating feelings within you that thought; we can always tell what we’re thinking by the feelings that we’re having.
And for me, this situation happens at the same time, this thought and feeling so the thought is there’s not enough food on my plate. And the feeling is one of a little bit of fear, a little bit of desperation, a little bit of panic, that kind of thing. Very light. It’s not huge, but it’s definitely there.
I invite you to notice in a situation like that, that what you’re experiencing is thought.
The second thing I want to talk about is an experience from the past. And what I really was able to see today in my conversation with Tania. If you’ve read one of my books, the one called It’s Not About The Food, in that book, I talk about the soda habit that I had, that I’d had for like 30 years, and how when I began to explore this understanding, that habit fell away. And what I saw today was that in the past, before that habit fell away, I felt a very similar feeling about that soda that I would have every day at lunchtime.
That feeling was I need this thing, it’s a treat for me, I’m giving myself a lot of care and love by having this treat every day at lunchtime. And before I started exploring the principles, anytime I tried to let go of that habit, those feelings would rear their heads and become really tricky for me to navigate. And I was not able to do it until I came to this understanding. I quit that habit probably hundreds of times in those 30 years. But I always picked it up again, because those strong feelings of that need for love that I had projected onto the can of soda would overtake me, and I would fall back into the habit.
What I saw today, which was really fascinating was that, since that habit has dropped away, I don’t feel any less loved.
In other words, the love that I feel in my life, from family, from friends from the universe, from myself, hasn’t changed at all. It hasn’t diminished at all, because I don’t have that soda habit any longer. And when I realized that as I was having the conversation with Tania, what I saw was that the nature of that thought was not true. Therefore it wasn’t telling me any bit of truth.
Now, it felt true. In the moment, for those all those years that I had that habit, absolutely, it felt true. It felt like if I don’t have this thing, I won’t feel as nurtured, I won’t feel like I’m having a treat, I will feel bereft, I will feel a sense of loss. And I would feel deprived those kinds of feelings. And so like I say, what I saw today was that that wasn’t true, because that didn’t happen when the habit fell away. I feel just as loved now as I did when I was experiencing that habit.
That also points to the idea that that habit was created by thought.
And it wasn’t a truth at all. It felt like a truth, but it wasn’t. So that was the second thing that I want to share.
One other thing as well about that, that Tania pointed out was, what this also points to is the fluid nature of our thinking of thought, and our attachment to things and how fluid that can be as well. When we think of our thinking as being much more solid and real, and therefore dangerous in that way, of course it can be really hard to shift these habits that we have, these unwanted habits because the thinking that surrounds them feels so real. And what this example pointed out to both Tania and I, this soda habit example, was just how fluid thought really is.
It was attached to this can of soda that I had every day. And then it was so fluid though that it was able to to shift and move and change and the connection that I had between those two things, between soda and love, which felt really, they felt really sticky and glued together. What I see now is that as the habit fell away that they weren’t stuck. They felt like they were stuck together in me.
The truth is, they weren’t an equation, like one plus one equals two. Soda plus lunchtime equals love. That seemed like a real equation to me in the past. And now I see that it’s not that things are much more fluid than that. I’m not sure what other word to use.
The third thing I want to talk about when we talk about the myth of unwanted habits and food being love is that – and I touched on this a little earlier – the feeling that happens when we have a thought about food, the feeling that comes up within us is what is going to point out to us that thought is a lie.
Here’s what I mean by that. When I have the feeling and the thought, when I’m putting food on a plate, that there’s never enough, there’s not enough, that comes with, as I said earlier, feelings of fear, and panic. And it’s a real clench up feeling.
Those feelings are telling me that that thought is not the truth.
The truth always feels peaceful. The truth is only ever going to feel like a good feeling, like a beautiful feeling. So when I’m having the thought of putting too much food on my plate, and how that’s necessary because there’s never enough, and I feel the feelings associated with that thought that information is so valuable about the fact that that thought is a lie.
It’s not the truth, because it doesn’t feel peaceful, it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t make my shoulders drop. It doesn’t make me feel relaxed. I feel like I said earlier, fearful, panicked, worried, a real clenchy concern about that. So that’s another thing to look out for, and observe. There’s nothing to be done when you feel that feeling. But noticing it is really important and noticing the difference between a feeling that brings you peace, and a good feeling, and a feeling and a thought that doesn’t bring those things, a thought that makes you clench up and feel fearful.
That’s your barometer, that’s the compass, pointing to whether something is the truth or not.
And then the fourth thing that I really want to point out in this exploration, and something that Tania I really specifically talked about this morning for quite a while, is that it’s not up to us to manage our thoughts.
She brought this up, probably just via her experience and wisdom around working with people on these things. And as human beings, when we begin to see the nature of our thinking, probably the next that question out of my mouth or question that someone might have is okay, I see that this thought isn’t true, I see that the feelings that I have with it are pointing away from the truth. They’re pointing toward a lie. So what do I do about that thought? How do I manage that thought? How do I make that thought go away? How do I change that thought, which is something that as people with long term unwanted habits, we’re probably very familiar with that feeling, wanting to change what’s going on.
Tania’s point was that there’s no need to do any of that.
This thought that we’re having, that we’re struggling with, that we’re equating food with love is going to fall away because we see its nature.
So the only thing we really need to do is be open to the observation of what’s going on. And that’s a tricky thing to do. And it’s a tricky thing to understand, because our human minds are designed to solve problems.
The mind anticipates. It says, “Okay, I get it, this thought is pointing toward a lie. So now what can I do about that?” That’s natural and innocent. There’s nothing wrong if that happens. I just wanted to bring this up as an important point related to this subject. It can be a little bit challenging to get our heads around this, that we see this thing that maybe we would label as a problem and then you’re asking me not to do anything about it. That seems a little weird.
Where we’re really wanting to put our attention, rather than digging in, and getting concerned about that thought and its presence in our lives, and getting bogged down in that problem solving, what we’re wanting to do is look in a different direction. We’re looking toward the nature of thought itself; that it is fluid, that it will change on its own, there’s nothing we need to do to make that happen.
Our thoughts are changeable, they are using that old metaphor, they are like the weather. They are flowing through the space that we hold for them. We are the sky. And the thoughts are the weather. Trying to control them and change them is like trying to control the sky trying to control the weather in the sky. That’s impossible. What creates change more easily than digging into trying to get rid of the thoughts we don’t like, push them away, manage them, control them, replace them with different kinds of thoughts.
What works better than that, in my experience, is just understanding their nature that they move, and change and flow.
And that that is how they are. They are energy flowing. Thought is energy flowing through us. And we can no more control that than we can control the weather. So that’s point number four.
And finally, point number five. Tania brought up the timeline and how…
…we can get really concerned and knotted up at times about how things aren’t changing in a time frame that we would like to see them change.
I do experience that myself, especially because I’m here in public talking about these things. And there is part of me that wishes that some of these habits would fall away faster than they have. But going back to what I said in the previous point, worrying about the timeline of how these things shift is like trying to control the weather. It is like shouting at the sea, was the example that Tania gave, being angry at the ocean.
Thought is a force of nature that we’re dealing with. And it’s big, it’s huge. And it’s really not on us to control it. It’s going back, as I say to the previous point, it would be like trying to control the weather. And putting energy and effort into doing that really is just a waste of effort. Honestly, it’s just a waste of energy.
Imagine how frustrated you would be if you thought it was your responsibility to change the weather. If you had given that task to yourself, and it’s raining, let’s say, and you have decided that well, it’s my responsibility to change that rain to make it go away, to turn it into sunshine. Imagine how frustrated you would be.
So this final point is about a little bit of allowing, a little bit of surrendering to what’s happening. And again, being the observer in what’s happening and noticing the fluid nature of thought, of your thinking, but not necessarily being tangled up in trying to change that.
What happens is that the more we see the true nature of thought, in all these points that I’ve talked about today, then what happens is that thinking can change on its own.
I’ve experienced that during these years that I’ve been exploring this understanding and so many of my unwanted habits have fallen In a way, almost I would say, almost all of them. I feel like I’m down to the last, I don’t know, 4 or 5%. And that happens, not because I put a lot of effort into controlling my thinking, replacing my thoughts with other thoughts, saying lots of affirmations or trying to use willpower to change my habits.
The more we look in that direction, what I’ve seen is the more change can occur. So I hope that’s been helpful for you today.
If you have any questions, please always let me know if there’s anything I haven’t explained clearly. I would love to hear about it so that I can take another run at it. You can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/questions. That’s it for today. I hope you are doing well and taking good care. And I will talk to you again next week. Bye.
Thriving Is Effortless with Dominic Scaffidi
May 02, 2024
As a long-time coach, and before that an HR professional, Dominic Scaffidi points his clients back toward an awareness of their innate wisdom and ability to thrive effortlessly. He reminds us that we are always more than our human minds can grasp.
As a Master Certified Coach (MCC) credentialed with the International Coaching Federation (ICF) Dominic works with leaders, teams, entrepreneurs and individuals to achieve professional and personal aspirations. He points clients to a realization of who they really are as they focus on creating what they most desire in life.
Dominic is a Registered 3 Principles Practitioner who is grounded in the teaching of Sydney Banks.
Alexandra: Dominick Scaffidi, welcome to Unbroken.
Dominic: Thank you, thanks for the invitation. I’m really looking forward to our conversation.
Alexandra: Me too. I’ve never spoken to you one on one. So this will be fun.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Dominic: I’ve been self-employed as a coach, executive coach, mostly. I deal with leaders and organizations like that. And I’ve been self-employed for about 15 years. Prior to that, tt was a corporate career that I had in very large organizations. The last corporate role that I held was a VP of HR position. And so that’s kind of a bit of that.
My career has continually moved to more and more reflection of what I’m interested in, my passion. So that kind of relates to the Three Principles, in that my purpose in life, I say, is to awaken greatness. Maybe you could say it as to reveal greatness, to reveal what’s within us. And so that’s a link to what appealed to me about the Three Principles.
Maybe seven or eight years ago, I came across the Principles and the teachings of Sydney banks, and they immediately resonated as this is true, this is pure truth. What he was pointing to, it was just obvious, it was obvious that this is just true. And so I became really interested in delving into that into that understanding, which is a deeper understanding of who I really am, my true nature and the nature of reality.
And of course, in my coaching, when I’m working with people it’s really about helping us to look more deeply into who we really are, our true nature and the nature of reality. The more we come to see and understand that, the more I’m going to say, all problems disappear. I mean, that’s just the way it is.
Alexandra: Oh, I love that. And so a follow up question, then.
Do you remember how you came across the Three Principles?
Dominic: I’m a student of many teachings. And one teaching in particular are the teachings of Abraham Hicks. I was follower for many years. And that teaching focuses very similarly on we are consciousness and energy, like so it’s very similar.
I like to say that from that teaching, and teachers, the Law of Attraction, I say that I attracted the Three Principles. And so this and why I attracted them was because it was necessary to my misunderstanding of the teachings of Abraham Hicks. It had been incredibly useful for me. Much of my understanding had contributed enormously to my own thriving professionally, to my business.
I built my business following a corporate career in a way that I would say is effortless. I’ve never participated in business development and trying to get business. Because around the beginning of my self employment, I had come across Abraham Hicks. And I realized, wow, this is, I mean, it would be crazy if it worked. But if you could simply be in that state that is resonant with what you want, what you want, must come to you. And that just didn’t sound very corporate or real. But it works.
It actually works. It’s actually what happens, because it’s an accurate description of how everything we experience comes to us. So it was very impactful. And then there came some point where I needed to go further than this, to see it more deeply. And there were many misunderstandings I had of what was being taught. And the thing about the Three Principles, you’ll agree is it is so rigorous. It is so rigorous.
Even simple things like, well, you don’t need any practices. It’s so rigorous, right? It’s like, well, there’s nothing to do. It’s all about an understanding. And that part I didn’t understand or hear as clearly with Abraham Hicks. Although after I come across the principles, I would go back and say, Oh, my God, they were saying the same thing, that they’ve been saying the same thing. I couldn’t hear it, I was interpreted in my own way.
Following the Principles, it sort of cleared up, where I was a bit off around all this. And it just took it much deeper. So I say I attracted it. And the way I attracted it is I think I was on YouTube, I was listening to some Abraham Hicks stuff. And then what pops up is Michael Neill, and his TED talk, Why Aren’t We Awesome?
I’m like, Who is this guy? What is this? And then I just became intrigued on what’s he talking about. I’ve never heard of Sydney Banks. And that, of course, is the rabbit hole. Once you get a bit of a taste of that, it’s clearly it’s like, wow, this is true. This is powerful. Yeah.
Alexandra: A couple of things I want to ask then is:
Are there any places where you see that the Law of Attraction and the Principles don’t agree? Have you ever encountered that?
Dominic: They disagree or are in conflict in my misunderstanding of one or the other teacher, not one or the other teaching. I misunderstand what Syd was saying, I will see a conflict with Abraham Hicks. And anywhere I misunderstand what Abraham Hicks is saying, is conflicting with my understanding of Sydney Banks, just as it does with teachings of non duality, just as it does with any other teaching.
All conflict is not inherent in what the teaching is pointing to. Every conflict reveals my own misunderstanding of one teaching or the other. So where you see a conflict, it’s a beautiful thing and look in the mirror and see what it is that you misunderstand these teachings, what they point to, are not to what is right or wrong about anything, because what they teach is beyond what is right or wrong is to the essence of what is expressed. They are expressed in words and words are interpreted, and where you interpret incorrectly, then you will arise in conflict. And then you will see wow, that one is wrong. Well, it is wrong according to your misunderstanding. Absolutely. It is. So you might want to clear that up.
Alexandra: When that happens, what do you do or what have you done?
Dominic: What I’ve learned to do, because it was interesting, because when I came across the Principles, I wanted to talk about what I saw was the same. I wanted to talk about different ways that and quite frankly, in Three Principles communities it was more of a reaction of, oh, no, you don’t need all that. Well, I’m not looking for what I need, I’m looking to understand something. But you don’t need that, this is all you need. But I don’t need any of it. What each of them will do is deepen my understanding. All teachings are simply a story, right?
What’s valuable about them is what’s actually true that the essence from which they come. So most people were because eventually I came across lots of people in the Three Principles communities, who had been following Abraham Hicks or followed other teachings. And in almost every case, every one of them had said, Oh, I used to follow them until I discovered this. This is right, that’s wrong. I noticed this as a pattern with most people within Three P. “Oh, I used to do NLP. Then I realized that was all wrong. And now I do this. I used to follow this other thing. And now I follow this.”
I’m like, wait a minute. So you come across this thing and you take a vote and you say this one is better, and that one’s obviously wrong and I toss it aside and I now go forward with this. I almost went that way. And I almost did because I’m kinda like wait a minute, but this one so obviously true. And I’m not sure why. But somewhere in the middle of it, I’m like, but I keep going back to listen here. I keep going. What’s that about? Because why would you go back and listen, if it doesn’t resonate as true?
I keep going back to listen, and the more I listened, the more I’m like, Yeah, this is true. And then I noticed something curious. I noticed. Wow. In fact, this is saying the same thing as what Syd is saying. I never heard that in this teaching before. I always thought this was saying this other thing, right?
What I discovered out of this is that if you can sit in a paradox, or a bit of a dilemma of this seems contradictory to me. Oh, well, I guess I’m missing something. And just leave it alone. Right. Over time, what happened is I’d suddenly go, Oh, my God, I think I know what they’re saying.
And all of a sudden, something would pop up and you’d go, oh, that’s what this means. And so you would see something deeper. But if you’re there, and you kind of go, oh, well, that’s obviously wrong and this is right. You walk away with more reinforcement of your own thinking, and no insight. So somehow, by luck, I ended up more doing that, than I went the other way in terms of you know, who’s right, who’s wrong?
Alexandra: I love that because for me and I was in your Living Miraculously course earlier this year. Folding the two together is such an interesting way to explore these things, these truths about us. And it did bring more questions to mind. But as you add more opportunity for exploration, as well as what I enjoy about it, for sure that confluence.
I want to circle back to when you talked about starting your self-employment journey. In a recent newsletter, you had this quote, “Thriving does not depend on action and effort. It relies on allowing.”
It sounds like you were pointing toward that when you mentioned earlier about starting your business. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, please?
Dominic: There is no plant, no tree, no animal, no human being that grows, comes alive, blossoms or thrives by their effort. Their energy is not required. So there’s something about that. And if you quiet down and notice, you’re not growing yourself, no child is growing themselves. To look at a plant doesn’t clock in work all day, and then clock out and rest for a while, using its own effort to try to keep getting bigger, taller, bring fruit out, flowers, whatever.
So the truth is that your thriving is effortless. It’s effortless. It’s by grace. There’s a difference though between a human being and an animal and a plant. An animal is only allowing mostly allowing. A plant is certainly completely allowing, but an animal is pretty much allowing and what happens is just like us that consciousness is an expression of all that is, a unique expression of all that is expressing blossoming into this expression, unique expression of itself.
The thing with that is this consciousness which is an infinite intelligence, all knowing basically expresses through any form, expressing more of itself uniquely than the animal. There’s no resistance. Take an animal like a bird. And what a bird will do is as the weather changes, it will fly south. And the thing is it flies with no map with no one teaching it. No Google to learn, this is what you’re supposed to do. It’s an nudging, that moves it.
And not one of these birds turns around and says, Why the hell should I fly south, when you look at these bears that just sleep and Hibernate all year like that, and I’m expected to go 1000s of miles. And not one of them says that. There’s no resistance to it. They simply allow this intelligence, which is only for their own wellbeing, only for their thriving to move them. And anything else, like you look like, they’ll be building a nest, they’ll come back, then they’ll build a nest, and again, not with schools that teach them how to do this, just an infinite intelligence, that is knowing, knowing of what’s needed and how it is. And somehow they find what they need.
It’s different in different environments. But none of that matters, because they’re guided. Now, what we call that with animals is they’re following an instinct. It’s an instinct, that instinct is wisdom, that instinct is intelligence. And it’s an intelligence that brings their well being a shortness and thriving, human beings have the same thing. We’re just a bit of a different imagined creature. And us as an imagined creature, I’m not being religious here, just from a more spiritual perspective is, we are made in the image, imagination, we are an image a reflection of the Creator. And I’m going to say is we are a truer reflection of the Creator. And a truer reflection is we are made as creators.
Now that’s a bit of a difference. Because although a bird or you take a beaver, who builds a dam or something, and like that a bird building a nest, see, the thing with them is they’ve been building the same nest 1000s of years, the same damn 1000s of years. But you and I live in homes that look nothing like a home that we would have built 1000s of years ago, looks nothing like it. And what that is, is we were given a different gift of freedom of thought.
We have freedom of thought, we are free thinkers.
And the minute you bring that about, you bring about enormous possibility. And that enormous possibility is for the possibility of greater expansion and creation. You literally can bring what never was before, made in the image of the creator, and a further expression, and we are as creators. And so that beautiful possibility is our greatest trouble. Freedom of thought, I can think anything, right? Including, I’m able to think against myself.
Unlike a bird or an animal, I can literally resist that guidance, intuition and wisdom that comes.
I don’t need to listen to that. That’s not the boss of me. I make my own decisions. And I am free to move as I wish, including against myself. That is pure freedom. You are so free you can choose bondage. That’s what freedom is complete pure freedom. There is nothing off limits to us. We can be or do or have anything. We are limited by our own thinking.
Alexandra: What a great explanation. Thank you. I really appreciate that. So speaking of being or doing or having anything, let’s segue into you recently made a new purchase of a home.
I’d love to know your favorite lessons from that experience. And maybe tell the audience a little bit of the background, as much as you are willing to share.
Dominic: This whole thing was one of the greatest lessons. We can be all theoretical about you can be or do or have anything, you can create what you want and blah, blah, blah, until the reality hits.
We’ve been in a home for 28 years, we’d love it. And eventually, it came a point where you say, are we living here forever? Or do we buy something else? Are we gonna live somewhere else? But for many, many years, we had all kinds of like, you know, I was in a home office. And if you look out the window, there’s a brick wall. I’d always dreamed that it would be so nice to look out and then there’ll be nature. And just a view and light and all of that kind of stuff.
So anyway, it’s all dreams for a while. And, but then there came a point where my, it was really my wife said, Are we just going to just talk about this all the time? Or is that something we’re interested in? So that kind of kicked off something. And by the Law of Attraction, we move to a more open and allowing state.
There are many, many reasons why well, no, not now. And that takes a while. And it’s hard to find something and all the thinking that it poses, because, by the way, to manifest anything. And just to be clear, what is manifestation? You’re not manifesting anything, you are allowing yourself to perceive what already exists. So when you say that you manifest something, a more accurate description is you’re not manifesting something out of thin air. All that is already is. So what you’re doing is, by your own focus, that you experience anything. So all possibilities are available, they’re there.
When you manifest something, you’re simply tuning or focusing toward what you want, or what the desire is.
You’re not bringing something in out of thin air, you are allowing the energy in the direction of the desire to form into the desire not would be manifestation. It’s nothing you’re doing. It’s you’re allowing that instead of right, it kind of look at not by will or determination. I could only notice that my mind was wanting or desiring something. Something that felt better than this. Now, some people would say to you, you shouldn’t go in that direction. You should just be content where you are. But I think I started this by saying we loved our home of 28 years beautiful home, raised a family and it loved everything about it. That was a dream home for us. We were so lucky to have had the home we were in very content in the home and from a place of contentment, it is a very allowing state.
You can’t allow expansion from a place of dissatisfaction or discontentment.
You are in a resistance state. You are pushing against what’s wrong with the damn place that I can’t stand living here anymore. And if anything were to come out of that state, it would be another place you would hate because it would just match. So when you’re somewhere and the desire coming through, then really, when I look back what I was doing was resisting, but we’re really good here and things are all okay. And yeah, but that’s gonna take a while. It’s not easy to find what we’re looking for.
Every statement you make or every thought just distancing between your desire and its experience.
Abraham Hicks says when you desire something, and you expect it, is when you want something in you expected it is. So it’s instant. This is kind of how God, you look at the Creator we’re made in the image of the creator. This is how God creates, let there be light. And light is in the instant it is thought. So it’s manifested in the instant it is thought.
Sydney Banks points to divine thought. I used to think divine thought was reserved, like us, like a big deal. That’s divine thought, right. Until I thought about it a little more divine thought it is pure thought when it occurred to me was divine thought is unopposed thought. God thinks a thought and doesn’t oppose it in the next thought. God doesn’t oppose its own thinking.
We’re a little different. I would love that. But that’s going to take a while to have. The very next thought becomes an opposition to it. This whole thing was like that, and kind of stretched out.
Anyway, at some point. And it was months ago, we started the search, there was a bit of the disappointment in everything we were seeing. And so we were feeling terrible. At some point, my wife and I agreed, and we said, you know, look, let’s just promise each other that we will not move unless we feel the way we felt when we bought this house. So when we know what that feeling is, and if we feel that feeling. Just after that agreement, which followed a huge disappointment of you know, searching and kind of thinking, I think this is a mistake, what are we doing? We’re gonna end up paying, right? So just after that, suddenly, this house shows up.
We were in Hawaii, actually. And it was beautiful and suddenly we get this agent send us a video and they say, You know what? We know this is over budget, but it has so much of what you’re asking for. My wife and I were waiting to check in to the hotel, and we’re by the pool and we watched this video. And we were silent. We watched this video.
We just knew this is our house.
And we’re like wow, I can’t believe that exists right now. I can’t believe it exists where it is, which is just a few kilometers from where we’re living now. And we have family here and stuff. And we really wanted to sort of stick around. But there was so much to it. That was a challenge to my beliefs including the money. This was not the plan. The plan was different. It was downsizing. It was like it was a whole other plan. This is not what I was thinking. This is not what was comfortable. This is not what was predictable.
But here’s the conflict I ran into, I was like I cannot deny the feeling. I mean, how do you deny the feeling? So anyway, we were there and we were like, are common to each other was like, gosh, I hope we get a chance to see it. Because we might not by the time we get back, it’s gonna be like 10 days or whatever the place could sell. Hope we get a chance to see it.
We write the agents and we say we would like to see it. And so we come back and within a day we’d like to get a sneak peek. I want to see it. The minute we walk onto the property it was like that. We’re not even inside the house, but it was like, oh my god, this is our place. This is our property, this is our home. And then all the problems, the beliefs, almost, wow, how is that supposed to work?
How would you do this? The stresses of all that stuff come crashing in.
In that moment, I was just I don’t know, there was a lot that I learned, like, a lot that I questioned, I thought, how could it be that this feeling is so clear and true? And yet, it’s not? How can it possibly be like, how could you have this feeling? And yet it’s not the right place? It’s out of reach? It’s not correct. I was a bit disappointed.
Also, from a law of attraction perspective, to get a perfect match, except you made a mistake on part of it. Like, what kind of law is this? How could this be? You can’t bring something and have it be a match? And then have it be off like that?
So then I thought, Well, maybe it’s not the Law of Attraction that’s off. It could be something else is off here. And that’s when I kind of look more to me. And so in that journey, I started to see it was obvious. Yeah, I’m off in so many ways. And all of them are my own thinking. And the question is, do I want to insist on my thinking? Do I want to insist on what I know, do I want to insist on how it’s supposed to be, how things are, and not be open to new thinking and new seeing? And all of that was interesting to me.
Now, I love that I understood from my understanding of Three P because this was the most important thing from what Sydney Banks said, it was clear to me. And my wife was very clear to me that life is going to be great with or without this house. I’m not making that up? I know for sure. So I see this home. And it’s a beautiful match. And honestly, and frankly, whether or not we ever live in it, life is going to be great. Because life is not dependent on any of this.
So that part was a relief. That is right. So now there was zero attachment. It’s not needed for anything. I don’t need this in order to live a great life. That’s not it. But now though, I was curious, how can you be a match to that? How can you be a match to that?
Because what this is about is the feeling is so beautiful.
And I knew this too, from Syd’s teaching, it says your wisdom is in a beautiful feeling. Well, I got one, fine, got one right here. So your wisdom is in a beautiful feeling. So I thought this feeling will guide. This feeling will guide all the way there. If I can be more committed to the feeling than I am to that damn house.
If I could just be committed to the feeling more than I am to that house, that’s the key.
Because that feeling will lead. Here’s the deal, whether it’s this house or another house, if it’s this feeling, this is the feeling that will manifest. I don’t know if I got it right, as far as this had to be the house. Or maybe this house was just trying to show me what this feeling is. So who cares. The point is, if it’s this feeling, I know I’m going to be it’s going to be an expression of something beautiful. So that was then the journey.
The journey was how do you keep being guided by the feeling?
It was interesting because the way I composed myself, the words, the actions, the way I’m going to say I lead. It was a journey to allow that feeling. That thought to become a thing. And so what I mean by that are things like, you know, we indicate to our agents, we’re very interested the whole bit. And then, this conversation going, but we’ll go at them like this, and then we’ll show the market value is not whatever. And I could feel like, hang on a second. We’re not doing that.
This house is beautiful. I was saying crazy things like, honestly, who is saying crazy things like they built this house and renovated this house for us. They are not our enemy. They are not an opponent here. I was so clear. This was all put together for me. So weird to even say it. But it was just the truth.
Because some changes that were made and how it was done, not everything. I mean, there’s things you gotta fix. But some things you go, Oh, my gosh, like, Who would do this in this way? It must have been done for me. I was very sensitive to No, we don’t talk about them like that. And, and I don’t want to be stealing the house. You know, how can I get it? That’s not a beautiful feeling.
I’ll tell you what inspired me more. I want to be one who could just pay for that house. I want to be one who could overpay for that house. Now, that’s interesting to me. No idea what it looks like. But I would like that. So then, the feeling was better one way than another way? How do I give that more airtime? And be open to what does that mean? To sit in that feeling? And that would lead to thriving and expansion.
So this is a bit of how this journey went. And there was all kinds of stuff in between and drama and all kinds of interesting things. Because, we would be bored if we just thought of something and had it, so it was instead of learning and my greatest learning around, practically speaking, what does all this? What do all these teachings actually mean?
Alexandra: That’s amazing. I’m sure you can unpack that for weeks.
Dominic: There’s a lot in it.
Alexandra: I want our listeners to really hear what you’re saying about following the beautiful feeling. And what I really heard was that was your guide post. That was the thing that you made sure to check in with regularly and make sure that it was leading you down the right path.
Dominic: Yes. The feeling is indicating what you’re thinking. So the feeling is indicating the degree of wisdom in your thinking or nonsense in your thinking. That’s what the feeling is indicating. What you’re feeling is either in harmony with something I’ll say in a minute, or disharmony with it. That’s what you’re feeling.
What the feeling is, is your extent of harmony or disharmony with something. What are we saying the something is, the something is who you really are, your true nature and the nature of reality. That is really truth. There is who you really are, your true nature and the nature of reality. When you think, in a way, that’s true, it will feel good. When you think in a way that’s harmony with the truth of who you are.
It will feel good when you think in a way that isn’t true. It’s less true, you will feel less good. Sydney Banks said your wisdom is only he didn’t say a little bit of it, he said your wisdom is only in a positive feeling.
Your wisdom is only in a beautiful feeling. Why is that?
The Source within you, the creator, of which you are an expression, this consciousness, this energy of all things of which you are an expression. That energy is a very high frequency, high vibrational energy. Human beings would refer to this energy as love, peace, joy, bliss, abundance, empowerment, clarity. They would use words like this to describe what this pure source energy essence, that expresses all things.
That’s the highest energy within you, that’s the highest truth of you. You express that uniquely.
And of course, your expression of that is not all that you are, your expression of this allness is less than it. So there’s a deviation to begin with, right? You are not who you think you are. Who you think you are is but a fraction of the truth of you.
I like to say in Living Miraculously, you may have heard in my programs, I’ll often say you are far more than you think. And forever shall be far more than you think. You cannot think all that you are, it’s not possible. So who you really are is beyond your thinking, beyond anything you can believe. But the fact is, you are thinking, and all that means is you are limiting. Of course you are. You have to, because if you were all that is you would disappear into nothing. All you are is thinking, which is limiting, but that’s not a bad thing. That’s what experience and existence and creation is. An aspect and expression of the art.
So that’s what you are here, we’re one big walking limitation, that’s fine. It’s not a problem. We can enjoy all kinds of aspects of all that we are. So you do that. But as you think, part of what you’re doing is you are expressing all that is uniquely, but as a result that there is a desire within you a feeling a desire, an impulse to be who you really are. Now, look at the dilemma in this. You’re a speck of all.
Within you, there’s a knowing of all that you are. It’s the most beautiful design.
So within you is an impulse to be who you really are. How do you be who you really are? Number one, you’re already that, but from the perspective of course, that’s the only thing that’s actually conscious, but from a person’s focus perspective as the speck that is you. Sydney Banks called it a microscopic aspect of the energy of all things from a focus as that the desire is to be what you are through that.
The all that is, is an eternal becoming, expansion, expressing more of itself.
This is such a paradox because you say, well, all that is is all that is so how would you say it’s expanding? Only one way it can expand and that is to express more of itself, from within itself. From within itself from every aspect of itself like you and I. As you and I expand and thrive and become and be more of who we really are. All that is, is more of all that it is not the most beautiful thing. That’s the impulse you feel.
This is where Sydney Banks said, he said there is only one will, and that is the will of God. So he spoke of free will, and we have free will and whatever. And he said that too. Everything’s a paradox. So he goes, you have free will, you can think for yourself. It’s all free will. And then he says, but there is only one will. And that is the will of God.
What are you saying? You’re confusing? What’s this mean? Well, it means is the only force in the universe, in Star Wars, that called the force, the only will in the universe is the will have the all the of consciousness to know and experience itself. In all the ways that it can. So that is, the only will there is, which is why we also if you’ve heard, we, of course, we’ve all heard, know thyself. Because that’s all there is, we’re here, the only thing driving the only thing wanting is to know thyself.
And that know thyself is from all that is to know itself. I mean, consciousness is aware and aware of what – aware of itself. There’s nothing else to be aware of. So it’s an energy of all things that means there are no things other than it. That is one principal conscious. And so, it is aware of itself. And then what that implies, it is aware of itself, and every aspect of itself.
The whole energy or movement is into a greater and greater and greater knowing of itself, you could say a deeper and deeper and deeper knowing of itself, or you could say it the other way, and an expansion into more and more knowing of what it is and the knowing is expressed and experienced. So it only knows what it experiences and experiences through you and me and through a billion others and plants, animals, trees, minerals, and other planets and all that like so. It’s all consciousness. Almost a bit out there.
Alexandra: It’s lovely. Thank you so much. My eggs feel a little scrambled. I had a guest who used that expression the other day. I love it. That was amazing.
Is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet today?
Dominic: We all make too much of all of this. Life is supposed to be fun. The purpose of life is joy. Syd got to that when he said, we just stop talking about all this stuff and go live life. So you don’t need to study this. You don’t need to take courses in this.
The way it all works is your own life is actually the only teacher you can have.
Abraham Hicks says that they say words don’t teach. It’s odd. We use so many things. They say words don’t teach only your own life experience can teach you. The reason words don’t teach is people have listened to this podcast and I’ve used a lot of words. Well, the only thing you can do with that is believe me or don’t believe me. None of it makes a difference. Whether you believe me or don’t believe me, it makes no difference. These words don’t teach anyone. These words point to something, but they don’t teach anything.
Your own life, though, will show you the laws of the universe. Your own life will demonstrate to you by your own direct experience, who you really are, your true nature, and the nature of reality. And you’ll know that that’s true. How you’ll know that you’ve discovered is you know, what happens in this as I say a bunch of stuff and you listen, but there’s some things that I say. And someone listening goes oh yeah, that’s true. and all that. So it’s not what I said. What?
Syd said, I can’t share this with you, you would have to see it from within you. So, I chatter away, I say a bunch of stuff. And then someone goes, Yeah, that’s true. Well, what that means is that you heard something there. A better way of saying it. You interpreted something, you thought something. And that thought resonated within you as true. That’s your wisdom. Don’t blame me. That’s your wisdom that you just heard. And you know, it’s true. It’s like what’s clear to you? So that’s what, you know, that I’d leave people with.
Relax, there’s nothing serious going on. And you’re fine on your own. Just live your life. It’ll teach you everything. As an eternal being what difference does it make? Have fun with this? It never ends.
Alexandra: That’s a great thought to wind up with.
Dominic, where can we find out more about you in your work?
Dominic: DominicScaffidi.com. That’s the website that will link you everywhere. It’ll give you a link to my Facebook group, which is called Ask And It Is Given: How Thoughts Become Things. It’s a very great Facebook group and it’s where I spend the most time on Facebook is in that Facebook group. I invite you to join at my website, you’ll see a ton of resources of free webinars and all kinds of recordings and stuff that are available. I share lots of stuff, more is coming, you can tell I have a lot to say. You can check YouTube channel, again with my name. So those places and again, from my website, they’ll link all over to those.
Once you get to know me, I always recommend, check out that stuff that’s free, you’ll know whether you resonate or don’t. And once you do, you may consider it they’re not necessary or needed. You may consider group programs.
I do offer group programs like Living Miraculously, which I do with Grace Kelly, a colleague of mine, and other ones that I do as well. And so those group programs are ways that I do, and then a few people I work with one to one and that kind of coaching.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes, for sure. Dominic, thank you so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Dominic: I’ve enjoyed our conversation and this exploration. Thank you for the invitation.
Why Your Habit Proves You’re In Perfect Working Order
Apr 25, 2024
So often we demonize our bad habits. But what if those habits are working to bring us messages about our perfect human design?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist.
Show Notes
Your unwanted habit is not a problem
The good feeling our habits point us toward
How we are designed to return to a state of calm and quiet
How understanding the nature of thought resolves habits
The gift of knowing where our experience is coming from
Transcript of Episode
When we have an unwanted habit like overeating it can feel like there’s something broken about us. Our culture tends to shame those with unwanted habits and it is widely assumed that there is something wrong with anyone who struggles with them. Judgments, including self-judgments, are made about a perceived lack of discipline or lack of self-care.
But what if an unwanted habit like overeating was a sign of all that’s right with you, not with something that’s wrong?
What if your unwanted habit is a solution, not a problem?
For decades, we’ve been approaching unwanted habits as though they are the enemy. How’s that working for us? Not well, I’d say. We only have to look at the rising statistics about obesity or drug and alcohol addiction to see that this seems to be a battle we’re losing. Badly.
In this course, I’d like to explore turning our attitude toward unwanted habits on its head. It’s so easy to misunderstand what an unwanted habit is trying to tell us, so we’ll explore the messages habits are trying to send us and how our unwanted habits are actually a perfect part of our innate design.
If that sounds absurd or ridiculous, consider that until very recently we thought we had only five senses. Scientists now identify more than 20. Things look true until we are presented with an alternative.
I’m Alexandra Amor and I’m an author, a podcaster, and someone who’s searched for answers about my own unwanted overeating habit for the past three decades. Name a strategy for resolving a habit and I’ve tried it. Nothing worked.
Then in 2017 I discovered a field of spiritual psychology that had me doubting my perceived brokenness and instead awakening to the innate well-being that is within all of us. This change in understanding has me looking toward my wholeness, rather than perceived brokenness, and has helped me to resolve so much of what I had been suffering with for years. It has led me back to my natural state of calm resilience. No will power required.
If you are someone who has an unresolved and unwanted habit that’s what I want to share with you in this course.
Lesson 1: Your habit is not a problem
Hello and welcome,
Have you ever found yourself engaged in a behaviour while simultaneously berating yourself for that behaviour? I’m guessing you answered yes to that question because the truth is almost all humans have this experience at one time or another. This is an unwanted habit.
Smoking
Drinking too much
An excess of online shopping
Overeating
And it’s possible, if you’re listening to this, that you’ve tried to stop an unwanted behaviour at one time or another. Our tried and not-so-true techniques to stop such habits often involve things like will power, or distracting ourselves, or tricking ourselves into avoiding the habitual behaviour. We can work really hard to try to force or convince an unwanted habit to go away and leave us alone. Unwanted habits can feel like a monkey on our back, one who is clingy and relentless when it comes to needing our attention.
I personally struggled with an overeating habit for 30+ years. That habit felt like a character flaw, a failing, and a personal weakness. It was also something I was deeply ashamed of. So I traveled the self-help road for all those decades, trying to ‘fix’ myself. I focused mightily on the problematic nature of the habit; that’s where all my attention went – innocently thinking of the habit as a problem.
Among the fixes I tried were talk therapy, EMDR, mindfulness, counting food points, extremely restrictive diets, hypnosis, emotional freedom technique, rational recovery, cognitive behavioural therapy….I could go on. This is by no means an exhaustive list of what i tried.
None of it worked. In fact, my overeating habit got worse over the years.
Looking back now I appreciate my relentless efforts to help myself. I was trying to find a solution to something that looked a problem.
But what if our unwanted habits are actually an expression of the innate Intelligence that is within all of us? What if they are a sign of our mental health, not a psychological failing? What if they are a sign that we are in perfect working order?
Earlier I touched on the fact that unwanted habits are universal. They cross cultural and geographic boundaries. Why is that? Why are habits and addictions such universal human experiences?
Conventional psychological theory says that when we have an unwanted habit that we are trying to bury uncomfortable feelings or soothe ourselves, cope with trauma and the bumps and bruises that occur in every life.
In this course, I’m going to turn your understanding of unwanted habits on its head. I’ll explain how all unwanted habits and addictions have the same origin and how their universality actually points toward their wise nature. We’ll talk about how addictions and unwanted habits are not about the substance that’s being consumed; in other words, contrary to what the diet industry tells us, overeating is not about the food. We’ll explore the feedback and messages that your unwanted habit is trying to communicate to you and how wise these messages are. And I’ll share how easy it is to misunderstand these messages and how innocently we can get caught up in that misinterpretation. We’ll also explore alternatives to the ways we have historically dealt with an unwanted habit.
Let’s begin by talking about the way that we’ve viewed unwanted habits like overeating up to now. It’s easy to experience these habits as problems, isn’t it? We have cravings and unwanted urges that seem to force us into behaviours that we don’t want to be engaging in. We find ourselves eating too much or eating foods that aren’t good for us. Or we consume vast quantities of food only to spend days punishing ourselves in response. These things can become cyclical; we engage in the overeating behaviour, only to regret it afterwards and swear we’ll never do it again. But then we do.
Of course all of this seems like a problem. Especially if, like me, you end up on that quitting and then relapsing roundabout for years, if not decades.
If you’re listening to this then no doubt in an effort to help yourself get off the roundabout you’ve tried many things to break your habit: will power being a very common approach. White knuckling it through days of tuna fish and steamed vegetables. Or maybe tracking what you’re eating, writing down everything that goes into your mouth. Perhaps creating a list of forbidden foods and swearing you’ll never eat them again. Or tricking yourself into different behaviours by emptying cupboards and the fridge and starting fresh.
We’ve all had experiences similar to this when it comes to trying to break a habit. So one very important thing I’d love you to hear from me today is that while you – and I – were doing all those things we were doing them because they made sense at the time. These are the tools we had access to for dealing with unwanted habits.
Restriction. Will power. Wrestling our cravings into submission.
Or trying to.
If you can, in this moment, I’d love for you to offer yourself some compassion around this. It might feel heavy; all the effort and subsequent lack of success that you experienced. But I’ll repeat myself and say you were doing what you knew to do at the time. It was the best solution you had to offer yourself.
In this course I’d like to offer you an alternative. I’d like to show you how your unwanted habit is actually a sign of your mental health. And then explore how when we see habits through this lens our battle with them can slow down and then eventually stop entirely.
Let’s begin with the next lesson where we’ll explore the intelligence behind your cravings.
Lesson 2: Home Base
If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like you to close your eyes (if it’s safe to do so) and settle into yourself. Feel your breath going into and out of your lungs. Feel it filling up your chest like a balloon and then releasing and relaxing.
Now I’d love for you to call to mind a time when you felt content and peaceful. That time might be recently or it might be long ago. Doesn’t really matter when it was. What I’d like you to bring to the front of your mind is a time when you felt a really good feeling. You might have been having a laugh with a friend, or sitting quietly in the sun, or enjoying a concert or sporting event that makes you happy. Maybe you’re creative and can recall a time when you felt particularly fulfilled by a project or the process of making something beautiful.
I’ll give you a moment to bring something to mind.
That feeling, however you may describe it – genuine contentment, happiness, relaxation, fulfillment – for the purposes of this lesson let’s call that good feeling home base.
That home base feeling is your birthright. It is what you are made of.
Let’s do another little exercise. Think about the ideal vacation for you. Imagine for a moment what that would be. There’s no need to overthink it; you’ll know when the idea for what would look to you like an ideal vacation pops into your head.
Now, let me ask you this: If I asked a group of 10 people to imagine their ideal vacation do you think everyone in that group would picture the same thing? Of course not. Some people would picture white sandy beaches and lying in the sun. Someone else might imagine racing down snowy slopes on skis. A third person might picture visiting museums and art galleries in foreign cities. Someone else might imagine spending time at home with their family.
What we can see from this exercise is that idea of ‘vacation’ isn’t a specific place or experience, it’s a feeling.
In our fast paced Western culture how much time do we spend thinking about vacations, planning them, dreaming about getting away from our regular lives?
Why is that?
It’s because we’re searching for the good feeling we hope we’ll get from the vacation.
Now, what does all this talk about good feelings have to do with resolving an unwanted habit, you might ask. Well, it points to the idea that we’re so often searching – mentally or physically – for a good feeling. Imagined lottery wins, fantasy romance scenarios, dream jobs, a super fancy car, greater financial security. A desire for love, connection, peace of mind. Vacations. All these things are pointing toward our innate wish to connect with and experience good feelings.
We are all wired to want to feel good, to have that ‘home base’ feeling. And, more to the point, not just to have it, but to embody it. To experience it deep in our cells.
Nobody wants to be miserable.
Ask yourself, would anyone accuse us of being mentally unhealthy for wanting to experience a good feeling?
No, probably not.
It may sound obvious, but one way that humans attempt to get that home base feeling is by doing things that make us feel good. Things that give us a ‘rush’ so to speak of the good feeling that we are searching for and that we are made of. These things can be shopping, smoking, drinking, sex, drugs, and yes, eating. All these things, and so many more, are things we do to try to manufacture a good feeling.
Think of how you feel when you first indulge in your unwanted habit – before the guilt and recrimination set in. It feels good, right? The first pull on a cigarette or the first bite of a favourite food. There’s a good feeling there, if only for an instant.
That’s one reason why we do it. That’s why we indulge in our unwanted habit over and over again. We are trying to feel that good feeling.
You might say, “Thank you Captain Obvious. Of course habits are trying to simulate a good feeling. Have you eaten a piece of chocolate cake lately? It’s heaven in every bite.”
The reason I bring up this obvious idea, is that it points out that unwanted habits are a sign of our mental health, not of mental weakness or a lack of will power or an addictive personality. Unwanted habits are a way for us to create a simulated good feeling. Unfortunately, they come with baggage attached; guilt, shame, self-recrimination, not to mention their adverse affects on our health. But their origin is innocent. We are always searching for a good feeling and we will do so even when that search causes problems.
We are searching for a good, calm, peaceful, soothing feeling because that feeling – that home base – is our most natural state. And we know this, instinctively, even when we’re far away from that feeling.
Think about babies for a moment. As long as their needs are met – their diaper is clean, they are fed and have had enough sleep – they live in that calm, peaceful place. This is who we are, and this is what our unwanted habits like overeating are trying to achieve.
The good news is that when we begin to see our unwanted habits for what they are – a wise part of our innate intelligence, an indicator of our well-being – then we can let go of some of the baggage that comes along with those habits. And when we stop beating ourselves up for having the habit, that itself is one important step to resolving an unwanted habit.
In the next lesson we’re going to build on this idea of our home base feeling and talk about what unwanted habits are trying to accomplish in addition to creating a good feeling.
Lesson 3: A Quiet Mind
Do you own an Instantpot? They were all the rage a few years ago. (I love mine.) Instantpots are a brand name for what my grandmother called a pressure cooker, which is a pot that cooks its contents with pressure rather than with heat. The pot is sealed and pressure builds up and that’s what cooks whatever’s inside.
If you own either an Instantpot or a pressure cooker you know that there’s a valve that allows you to release some of the pressure in the pot. When you do so it makes a whooshing sound and you can see steam escaping the pot.
In my work I very often use the following metaphor for unwanted habits: our minds are like pressure cookers and our behaviour – our unwanted habit – is the release valve on that pressure cooker. The pressure inside the metaphorical Instantpot is created by our busy thinking. So in other words, our unwanted habit releases the pressure that builds up in our minds from our thinking.
The thinking you experience in life is like the contents of that pressure cooker. It can build and build until it feels like too much to cope with, swirling around inside your noggin, keeping you awake at night, interfering with the concentration required for other things. The solution for the build-up of this pressure is the release valve. That release valve shows up as behaviours that can run the gamut from lashing out in anger, to over shopping, to yelling in traffic, to overeating, smoking, drinking too much, and hoarding, just to give a few examples.
The release valve gets us back to a better feeling, to the home base feeling we talked about in the previous lesson. Even if the change is only incremental, we still feel a bit better. Some of the pressure within us has been released and we are slightly more calm, more peaceful.
In this way, an overeating habit or other unwanted habit is actually a solution not a problem.
I’m going to say that again so you don’t miss it. Our unwanted habits are solutions, not problems.
A habit releases some of the pressure within you that is created by busy thinking. In this way, a habit is a necessary and natural part of your perfect design. Without the release valve the pressure cooker would explode.
This is another reason why your unwanted habit is a sign of your mental health and a sign that you are in perfect working order. That release valve behaviour is evidence that you are looking for a better feeling, that you are wired to search for and crave a good feeling. What that tells us is that you are made of peace and well-being and your habit is evidence of that. Just like a fish will always need water, humans will always need what they are made of; peace, love, well-being. Your habit is a truth about who you are at your core.
We tend to think about unwanted habits and cravings as though they’re a broken part of ourselves, like they’re a flat tire on a car or an app on our phone that is on the fritz and keeps sending us unwelcome alerts. However, let me challenge that by adding another metaphor into the mix: What I would like you to consider is that cravings are actually a barometer. And that barometer is always in perfect working order.
A barometer is a device that tells us about the atmospheric pressure in our geographic area.
A craving – for food or for a cigarette or for a new pair of shoes when you’ve already got dozens of pairs – is a feedback system that tells us about the atmospheric pressure within ourselves.
Barometers measure the layers of air that wrap around the earth that are affected by gravity. We call this the earth’s atmosphere. Changes in the atmosphere affect the earth’s weather systems. The way that a barometer reflects atmospheric pressure is typically with hands (like a clock’s hands) on a dial pointing toward numbers.
A food craving is doing exactly the same thing. It is pointing toward the ‘weather’ inside you.
“Duh,” you might say. “If I feel super stressed I crave a piece of cake. That’s not breaking news.”
You’re right. It’s not. But what I’m suggesting is that the craving itself is not an indication that there is anything wrong with you, even when you’re feeling stressed or triggered by life. There is wisdom behind the cravings we feel that is deeper than a feeling that we want to use a substance in order to try to soothe and comfort ourselves when we’ve had a hard day. What I’m saying is that there is a beautiful and perfect mechanism within us (food craving, or any kind of craving) that lets us know what the ‘weather’ inside us is doing at any given moment. We need that signal (the craving) to remind us of our innate, peaceful nature.
So what’s the alternative to will power and tricking ourselves into stopping an unwanted habit? We all live with thinking in our heads, how can we release the pressure that builds up without turning toward our unwanted overeating habit? Well, here’s where things get really interesting. Unlike other self-help tools I’m not going to direct you toward replacing the pressure value release with some other sort of behaviour. Instead, using a different metaphor, we’re going to look at the nature of what’s in the pot itself.
Lesson 4: The Nature of Thinking
At this point in our exploration you might be thinking that the solution to the pressure cooker metaphor in the previous lesson would be to change our thoughts so that they don’t build up in the pressure cooker.
And perhaps you’ve even tried to do that in the past. Using mantras or positive reinforcement to change your thinking around your habit.
However, we’re going to look in an entirely different direction. We’re going to look away from positive thinking and monitoring or calming our thoughts, and instead look at the nature of thought itself. When we understand what Thought is and how it works, our unwanted habits can become unnecessary.
In order to do that, let me switch metaphors from the one in the previous lesson. Imagine you lived in a world where no one had explained to you how a bathtub drain works. Every time you took a bath, afterwards you’d have to find a way to empty the water out of the tub. You might take a bucket and scoop out the water and carry it through your house to the front door, and then take it outside and dump it somewhere. Then you’d have to go back to the tub and scoop out some more water and carry that outside, repeating that process until all the water was out of the tub. Emptying the tub would require a lot of effort on your part, and create a lot of extra stress for you. Plus there would be mess to clean up afterward, drips of water on the floor of your home.
Not knowing any other way to empty a tub, you’d go through this laborious process until the day someone explained to you how drains work. They’d show you that there is a drain on the bottom of the tub where, when open, allows the water to flow away on its own. There’s nothing else for you to do. Once you see this you’ll never empty the tub with a bucket again.
The understanding that I’m exploring in this course is like that information about the drain. I’m pointing out to you how tubs, drains, and water work. If it’s not clear, the water represents your thinking. As you begin to understand this, and as your understanding deepens, you’ll see there’s less and less for you to do with your thinking.
Our thinking flows into us from a source other than ourselves, stays with us for a time, and then moves on without us having to do anything about it. Sometimes the water is crystal clear, sometimes it is murky, but the thing that never changes is that it flows, it moves of its own accord. That is its nature.
We can see this in action in the following examples. If I asked you to think exclusively about pink elephants for the next 10 minutes, and told you i’d give you a million dollars if you could do that, would you be able to do it?
As much as we’d like to think the answer to this challenge would be yes, we know it’s not possible, right? Especially if you’ve ever tried meditating. Thoughts pop into our minds, sometimes at random, often rapidly, one after the other. No doubt you’re familiar with the expression ‘monkey mind’.
Are you the master of all that thinking? Can you control every thought that comes into your mind?
No, of course not.
So if we’re not in control of our thinking – which I know is a radical concept – what is?
Continuing with the bathtub metaphor from earlier, if we took a ‘positive thinking’ approach, we would be trying to control the clarity of the water that comes into the tub. That’s a ton of work, and it’s fruitless because the nature of water is that some days it’s clear, and some days it’s not. (Where I live, when we have big rain storms, the water can get very murky indeed.) Being concerned with the quality of the water in the tub at any given moment (positive thinking) is a waste of energy because in the next moment there will be different water in the tub. And then again in the moment after that.
Instead when we focus on understanding the nature of water, knowing it will continue to flow no matter what, we can relax about what the tub is holding at any given moment.
In other words, when we begin to see that thought is flowing through us, like water, like energy, we can rest in the understanding that battling with a craving is like trying to manage or organize the water in a stream. By seeing our thinking for what it is, we can relax knowing that any given thought, including a craving, will be followed soon by another thought. And then another. We don’t need to latch onto the craving thought and manage it.
The other important thing to mention in this discussion of the nature of our thinking is that just like the water in the bathtub, our thinking is designed to settle down all on its own. You could have a toddler in that metaphorical tub, splashing around, having a grand old time with toys and stirring the water up until it slops over the edge of the tub. But the nature of that water is that if you leave it alone, if the toddler stops splashing, the water will settle. There’s nothing you need to do to make it do that. In fact, getting involved while the water is settling will likely only stir it up a bit more.
Your thinking is exactly like the water in that tub. Leave it alone and it will settle down all by itself. No doubt you’ve experienced this, probably on more than one occasion. We’ve all had moments where we were upset about something or angry and then we got distracted. For a moment our anger is entirely gone and we’re focused on something else. Of course, that anger or upset can return, but in that instance did we make it go away? No, it settled down, like the water in the tub, when we weren’t agitating it.
Our unwanted habits, like overeating, are an innocent way that we try to manage the water in the tub when it’s stirred up. Engaging in the habit is a distraction, like I mentioned a moment ago. We become distracted from our busy thinking, if even just for a moment.
But when we understand the nature of thought, the need for the unwanted habit lessens. We begin to rely on our innate design, knowing that if we leave our thinking alone it will settle on its own.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this lesson, resolving a habit like overeating doesn’t come from forcing behavioural change, it comes from understanding the nature of thought. And from understanding your beautiful, innate design that is always pointing you back toward the peace and calm.
Lesson 5: Life Inside Out
I’ve thrown a number of metaphors and new ideas at you in these lessons. If what I’ve said feels like it has scrambled your eggs a bit, that’s okay. That reaction is common when we’re learning something entirely new that contradicts so much of what we’ve believed about ourselves for years, if not decades. Especially if you’re someone like myself who is a natural seeker and has long wanted to find an answer to an unwanted habit.
So as we wrap up, let me briefly go over what we’ve discussed.
You are made of peace and calm and a good feeling. That’s who you are at your core. Your desire to learn and grow by listening to courses like this and being here on Insight Timer proves this. We are always wanting to connect with the innate love that we are made of.
Your unwanted habit is not a broken part of yourself. There’s nothing you need to fix about it. It is, in fact, part of the universal intelligence that includes your beautiful and brilliant human design.
Your unwanted habit is both a solution and a barometer. It is a solution because it is a way to release some of the pressure inside you that results from a busy, overactive mind. And it is a barometer because when you feel an urge to indulge in your habit, that urge alerts you to your state of mind.
Your brilliant and innate design knows how to settle down that busy, overactive mind. You don’t need to do anything to make that happen.
These lessons are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring this new field of spiritual psychology commonly called the Three Principles or the Inside Out Understanding. These principles were first articulated by a man named Sydney Banks and it is to him and other teachers who follow him that I must credit for everything I’ve shared here.
It’s so easy, especially for seekers like us, to get caught up in what can feel like a perpetual race to fix ourselves. I admire that impulse in others, and in myself, – it comes from a very pure place – but it can become exhausting. Until I came across this understanding, I felt like I was on an endless self-help treadmill, always running but never reaching a goal. There was always something else to fix or change about myself.
However what I love about the understanding I’ve shared with you today is that it is always, always pointing us back to our innate well-being. There’s nothing we need to fix or change or improve. It’s all there within us, and it always has been.
Exploring this understanding is like having the clouds in an overcast sky gradually part. The blue sky was always there, we just couldn’t see it. The more I am reminded to focus on the sky – the eternal, infinite, entirely whole sky – and not on the clouds, the more the clouds thin and move out of my line of sight.
If it’s not obvious yet, the understanding you’ve just explored in this course is about more than food, more than eating, and more than resolving an unwanted habit. It’s about your true nature and how brilliant and beautiful that is. It’s about the perfection behind our human design and how that design is always working for us, not against us. It’s about how we are always healthy, always whole even when we are struggling with something like an overeating problem, and how that ‘problem’ is itself pointing us back to our innate wholeness and well-being.
Unwanted habits are, surprisingly, a language of love and of wisdom. When we see them for what they are every aspect of our life is changed and sweetened. Life becomes a joyful, gentle exploration rather than a journey filled with disheartening trails and challenges. Trials and challenges are part of life, of course, but they have less weight when we view them knowing we are all infinitely resilient and that we can rely on the well of peace that is always at our core, and always available to us.
My wish for you is that this course is the beginning of your exploration into all that you are. And also that you remember, as often as possible, that your food cravings, or shopping habit, or video game addiction, are not a problem. When we see them for what they really are, we begin to see that they are a gift. And that they are whispering, “You are well. You are whole. You are love.”
I thank you so much for exploring with me. And I wish you all the very best on your journey.
One Sunday afternoon in April a traveller and a podcaster meet and share a drive through the mountains of Vancouver Island. As a result, the podcaster is deeply moved by the message the traveller, and the universe, had for her.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Clarification about the traffic light metaphor
Trusting a good feeling that comes with an unusual experience
Following that good feeling
Listening to nudges from the universe
Listening to the feeling behind the words someone is sharing
Learning to relax as a spiritual practice
Noting the miracles and synchronicities that happen to us
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Michael Singer’s books are The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment
Hello explorers and welcome to Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. This is episode 59. Thank you for being here with me today.
I want to remind you that if you’re interested in joining the Unbroken Community, or at least getting on the waitlist there, you can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/community. That’s going to be an interactive twice monthly group call, lots of interaction with me, lots of support, lots of community, as the name implies, and connection with your fellow explorers. And all the details are on that webpage. As I said, AlexandraAmor.com/community.
Second thing. Last week in Episode 58, partway through, I talked about the red, yellow, green light of truth of tuning into or leaning into connecting with our intuition about moving forward, which is going to connect to today’s show, actually. My friend who listens to this episode pointed out to me, she said, “When you’re talking about the red, green, yellow light, are you seeing that visually?” which made me realize, Oh, I didn’t really explain that properly, then.
The light metaphor that I used, really just explains a feeling.
So when I say I would get a green light in my body, what I mean is, I feel it somewhere inside me. Now I specifically feel that feeling in my solar plexus, that’s the place where I always feel everything. You know how we talk about it, we have a gut feeling, I think that’s where that expression must come from. Because I always feel those things in the area of my solar plexus. Sort of behind my belly button. That part of my body.
When I feel green light feeling it’s there. I don’t see a green light or anything. Same with red, and then yellow. The yellow light’s kind of interesting, because it’s either it’s a little bit binary, you know, it’s a yes or no, very often. And I guess sometimes it feels like a well, you know, maybe maybe not, there’s a bit of hesitation there, it’s less, perhaps less dramatic than a full a no, full stop. So that maybe we could classify that as yellow light.
In your own experience, you might, if you give the traffic light metaphor a try, if you’re practicing it, your experience might be different.
Maybe you feel the feeling somewhere else in your body.
Or maybe it’s more of a knowing than a than a than a physical feeling. Mine has a little bit of physicality to it, it’s a knowing for sure. But it’s there’s also definitely a feeling going on, in like I say in my solar plexus. So I wanted to be clear about that. And clarify. Thank you to my friend for asking that question. I appreciate it.
When I’m recording these episodes, where I it’s just me talking, I’m just staring at the computer screen and talking into the microphone. And it’s easy to get rolling along and forget to explain things as clearly maybe as I should. If someone’s not there to ask questions. It can be easy to just sort of barrel along. So if you ever have a question, same thing, and something like that, where something’s not clear, that I’ve talked about, I hope you’ll submit that and let me know.
Okay, so on to today’s episode, which I haven’t as I’m recording this, I realize I haven’t got a title for it yet. But that’ll come next.
I want to tell you a really great story about something that happened to me just three days ago.
I wanted to share this for a number of reasons, which will become clearer and I’ll explain more about that as we get to the end of the actual story itself.
A few days ago, I was driving home from visiting my friend, the same friend who asked the question about the traffic light. And it’s a quite a long drive. It’s three hours, I live in pretty remote area. So I was coming along through this area of Vancouver Island, it’s actually quite well known. It’s called Cathedral Grove. And you can stop and park your car. And there’s all these enormous cedar trees. It’s kind of like the redwood forest in California, these just gigantic trees. And there are trails through the trees. And it’s a really popular tourist area in the summer.
The speed limit goes from 80 down to 50. You have to really slow down because there’s people crossing the road. So I was just toodling along, on my way to the last town before I get onto the highway, which is really just a two lane road, to come to my town where I live on the coast. And as I drove through this Cathedral Grove area, there was a young fellow standing on the side of the road, and he had a backpack. He had one of those cardboard signs, when you’re a hitchhiker just sort of a rectangle. And he’d written on there in sharpie, the nickname for the town where I live.
The town is called Ucluelet but the nickname is Ukee. He had this sign that said Ukee.
Right away, I just had the strongest feeling that I needed to pick him up.
And then, for a couple of reasons, my brain got involved, and I didn’t pick him up.
The first reason was that I needed to go to the next town, the last town before I came over to the west coast of the island, I needed to run a bunch of errands. And so in just a split second when I saw him and I got that knowing feeling, a green light, we could say, I need to pick this guy up. I thought I can’t do that, because I have these errands to run. And when I’m running the errands in Port Alberni, which is the name of the town, I’m not going to leave a stranger in my car while I do that, and, or make them get out of the car, and then lock the car while I’m in the store.
I also didn’t want him sort of trailing around. My mind did all these calculations in like I say, a nanosecond. So that was the first thing.
The second thing was that I’m a woman travelling alone. And he’s a man. And it’s not the safest thing to do in those circumstances for a woman to pick up a hitchhiker. It’s not something I do. It’s not something I had actually ever done until I moved here to the coast. I won’t go into all the details about why it happens sometimes here on the coast, but it does. But I’ve never picked up someone outside of town, let alone two hours away from where I live.
And my brain also said, you don’t have to be responsible for this guy, just because he’s going to the same place that you are. So all this is racing through my mind. And simultaneously, well, the wiser part of myself just knew not only that I should pick him up, or could pick him up, but that it was meant to be that I would pick him up.
I keep driving. And because of this little battle now that’s going on between my head and my and the wiser parts of myself, I start thinking, “Should I turn around, should I pull a U turn?” I’m looking for spaces on the road where I can do that. Then if I did that, I’d have to do another U turn back where he was. And then another part of me is saying, you’re not responsible for everybody. You don’t have to pick this guy up, just because he’s going where you’re going. And so I just carried on.
But that little struggle continued within me for longer than what might have been typical; it really kept going.
And there’s this big hill that you climb, so I’m driving up the hill thinking oh, geez, you know, I really should have picked that guy up. And then yeah, but I couldn’t I have these errands, blah, blah, blah. So around in circles I went. I come to the town Port Alberni and I go and run my errands. And it probably took me, maybe half an hour, maybe 45 minutes. Trying to remember what I did. Yeah, it probably wasn’t any longer than that I had to drive to a few different places, run these errands might have been close to an hour, but I don’t know.
I go to my final stop, I do the errand. I walk back out to my car, I get in my car. And I’m sort of mentally saying to myself, Okay, is there anything else? Sort of checking my list. Is there anything else I need to do now? Or is that it? I talked to myself about it. And I say no, I think that’s it. I think I’ve done everything I needed to do. So I go to put my seatbelt on and start the car up.
I say out loud in the car by myself. I say, “If I see that guy, between here and Ucluelet I’m going to pick him up.”
So off I go. And sure enough, about five or seven minutes into the drive there he is on the side of the road with his little Ukee sign near a gas station coming towards the outskirts of town. So I pull over and I unlock the doors and he climbs in, puts his stuff in the back seat. And off we go. So right away, I could tell he was just the loveliest guy. He’s traveling around the world.
He’s originally from France. And he’s probably 25 or 27, something like that. And this is something that he’d always he’s always wanted to do. He’s going to take about three years and really trying to a whole bunch of different places. Some places he’s going to work. Here in Canada, he doesn’t have a work visa so he was doing something called I think it’s called work away. It’s an app. And the reason he was coming to Ucluelet was some people had connected with him on the app. And he was coming to help them build a deck or something. In exchange for that, because he didn’t have a work visa, you get room and board basically.
So we chatted and I peppered him with questions because I was just so fascinated by what he was doing.
And this is the information that came out. And few other things about how when he was 10 years old, his family, it’s him, his mom and dad. And then him and his three brothers traveled around the world for a year. So that was maybe where the seed got planted about his love for travel. And he shared the other places that he was going to go. And the different countries and the reasons that he was going there.
He told me a little bit about where he’d been so far and the things he’d done and that kind of stuff. And at one point, while he was talking, I had asked him a question he was answering. I silently in my head just said to the universe, okay, you know, this is really fun. And he’s a nice guy. This is really interesting. And I’m really curious about the reason that he’s here. Like, what’s the message here?
The reason I said that to the universe was because it just felt so magical.
What happened and that magic wasn’t like you see in the movies where there’s a big booming voice like in Field of Dreams, where there’s a voice that says you need to do this thing, you need to pick up this hitchhiker. I didn’t have any visions or anything. It was just a really strong, like I say, knowing I needed to pick this guy up and bring him with me to our town.
I was really curious what’s going to happen? What is this situation? What am I going to discover or see or learn or?
I was really kind of excited as we drove along and curious, like I say really nice feeling of curiosity and enjoyment. His English was impeccable. I was so embarrassed. English is the only language I speak and here he was, he grew up speaking French and then he was speaking English impeccably, like I say. I think there were two words he couldn’t think of; one was hail. He described it as like snow, but little hard balls. And then there was one other phrase, oh, it was a sailing phrase. To get to North America, he had sailed from Italy to the Caribbean with a guy, same sort of thing, a work exchange thing. No sailing experience, by the way, and he just did this.
So, I had posed my question to the universe. And if nothing had happened, if it was just a nice journey with this young fellow, that would have been fine, too. But we’re partway along the drive for maybe, I don’t know, 45 minutes in. I could really tell that it based on the stories that he was sharing, and his attitude and the experiences that he was talking about, that there was just this deep trust in him of the universe that he would be, and I don’t know, if he would use that phrase of life, maybe he might say, I don’t know that he could just go along, and everything would work out.
I asked him if he had had any difficult experiences. And he did describe a couple, specifically with the captain of the ship that he had sailed over from Italy on. So it wasn’t a naive attitude that he had or a Pollyanna ish about it. He was very grounded. And intelligent, I could tell well educated, but also just really felt I could just feel him resting in the trust that he had in life, and that it would guide him and lead him and show him the way.
So I specifically asked him a question about that.
I reflected back and said, “Gee, it really seems like you trust that things will work out. Here you are all by yourself, traveling all around the world.” And I guess the reason that that question came up for me was because of where I had seen him the first time by the side of the road.
He had explained at some point in our conversation that he had got a ride earlier. He had come all the way from Victoria. I think he said I was his seventh vehicle that had been in that day. And so that really struck me; the unpredictability of that really struck me and how much trust you have to have that things will work out. It’s about five and a half or six hour drive if you just drive straight through from Victoria to where I picked him up. And so that’s a long way.
Anyway, so what was I saying? So he had a ride from another part of the island, and that person said that they would take him all the way through to Port Alberni, which is the town where I picked him up. But he knew they were going to come up to this Cathedral Grove area that I talked about with the big trees. And he really wanted to see that. It is really spectacular. He didn’t want to just pass it by. So he said to the guy that he was with, could you drop me there? Because I’d like to explore and they guy said of course. So that’s where they stopped, and he dropped this fellow off.
What struck me about that was that here this fellow was in a vehicle that would take him much further, but he let it go. Because he wanted or he felt compelled or interested to go to Cathedral Grove and have this little walk around. It was something that interested him and felt good to him. There was a good feeling about that. So he did it.
He just trusted that another car would pick him up when he was ready to leave that area, which was true, it did happen.
And then that another car would pick them up after that, and he would get all the way to where he needed to go. So the question that I asked him was about that was about trusting the way things are unfolding. He went on to explain. And as Sydney Banks always says it wasn’t the words that were really intriguing to me. He did talk about not having expectations. And that when you don’t have really strong expectations about things, things do just tend to unfold in a nice way.
But it was as Sydney Banks always says, It was the feeling behind the words.
The feeling just was that he really trusted that he would be okay. He embarked on this big adventure. And he talked about how every day, every moment. I don’t remember the exact words, but just about trusting what was happening and letting things unfold.
And like I say, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t ever think there are challenges in life. He certainly did. And he had had some. But the sense I got was how deeply relaxed and grounded he was in his home, in the world, and in the universe, and he knew that it would take care of him. It makes me emotional, actually, as I say that, as I connect with that feeling.
When that happened, when he said that, it was it was like somebody rang a bell in my head. It was like ding, ding, ding. This is why this guy is here. So I’ll talk about that a little bit more now, about my reflections about this experience, and what I think or what it meant to me.
And then I’m going to ask at the end of the show for you to share anything, any experiences like this that you’ve had, if you have something that really reflected back to you how we can trust the world and the universe, I guess the universe is maybe a better way to say that. So, reflections, a couple of things were going on for me.
The first was that I really gave myself permission to trust the feeling to pick him up.
I really appreciated that I did that. I do think it was the right thing to do to not pick him up in Cathedral Grove. I think maybe that was just where the seed was planted by the universe. Because it would have been super awkward with me running errands in in the town and I guess maybe I could have dropped him off somewhere and then picked him up later. I don’t know. But if I had done that, we wouldn’t have had such a deep conversation because it’s an hour and a half from where I picked him up to Ukee. So that was really a good amount of time for a really good deep conversation. Whereas if we had only done the shorter run from Cathedral Grove to Port Alberni, it’s only about 15 or 20 minutes and it just wouldn’t have been the same. I trusted the feeling that I got about picking him up.
I really enjoyed feeling that feeling and following it and not letting my head talk me out of it.
As a woman traveling alone, of course, there were a dozen reasons why I shouldn’t have picked up a man traveling by himself. What I’m not saying is you should pick up all hitchhikers. That’s not at all what I’m saying. It’s just that in that moment, in that circumstance, I felt a sense of rightness and safety. Or maybe not safety so much but just rightness and clarity about the nudges that I was getting from the universe.
I appreciated that I listened to that. I didn’t ignore it. I stayed calm and I guess passing him by the first time gave me a little bit of time to adjust to the idea because I did think about it a tiny bit when I was running my errands, not a whole ton, but he would pop into my head every once in a while. So I could sort of reconnect with that feeling and, and feel the rightness of it again.
One of the things that I do struggle with is feeling safe and supported by the universe.
It’s something I think about a lot. I think about it, where to find that feeling of safety. And of course, it will come it does come insightfully and I think gradually over the years, the last few years, it has definitely grown in me that feeling of trust, and safety. But just personally, I tend to have such a, or have had such a strong grip on life, and really being an overachiever and controlling things and feeling a sense of hyper responsibility about everything.
I know where it comes from; it comes from how I was raised. All these things come from somewhere. And this is the way that my mind reacted to a lot of instability, a lot of fear as a child, a lot of not feeling safe, not feeling protected by my family, but the opposite feeling afraid of the people in my home who were supposed to protect me. So it’s something that I explore a lot of the time is how to get from where I am to where this traveler was mentally, spiritually.
I’d love to be more like him. To just put a backpack on and go travel around the world for three years would terrify me, although I’m twice his age, but still, I couldn’t. He was so relaxed, he was just so deeply relaxed. It was amazing. That was the first lesson that trusting of myself trusting of this nudge I felt like I was getting from the universe. Not talking myself out of it, or letting myself feel afraid. And instead, leaning into the good feeling that was there.
The second thing that felt so cool, that I’ve been reflecting on ever since, is specifically the message that came through that this guy had about trusting the universe.
So this is very meta, it’s like two layers of the same thing. I trusted myself to pick him up. And then the message that he had was, trust the universe. Trust that you’re going to be okay, that the universe has your back. I nearly laughed out loud when when he started talking about his approach to things and how he trusted what was unfolding because it was just so perfect. Like I say, it was just so meta. This whole experience.
I felt very protected, or really, really cared for in that moment by the universe.
Because I thought, here’s the universe working really hard to get me a message that I am safe, that we are all safe, even when we’re in difficult, challenging circumstances. We are safe. We are more than just our physical bodies, of course. Even when we’re ill, even when we’re in really not great circumstances, we can never be disconnected from the essence of ourselves. And that is the thing that we can trust that is made of the universe. It is that connection to universal wisdom, universal insight, to our well-being. It is so innate.
It’s the fabric that we’re made of, we can never be separated from it.
So this was such a nice reminder about that. And yeah, like I say, it meant so much to me that the universe was working hard to get that message through to me. I don’t take that lightly. I really, really appreciated it on that day. I’m still kind of high from it, it was just really a nice experience.
And so what else have I got to say about that? Well, a couple things.
One is that I belong to a as we’re wrapping up here, I belong to a mastermind group that meets on Tuesday mornings. And last week, one of the ladies in the group mentioned that Michael Singer has said – and I don’t know where and I don’t know when he said this. He’s an author and a spiritual teacher. He wrote The Untethered Soul. And The Surrender Experiment. He surrenders to what’s happening in his life and says yes to everything. It’s been a while since I’ve read it.
My friend on this mastermind call last week said, “Michael Singer says that really, there’s only one practice. And it is to relax.”
And man, when she said that I resonated so much with it. Because relaxing, this is what I took from what she said, relaxing, means that we trust, we trust that we are held, and that we’re safe, and that it’s okay to not be hypersensitive, like I am, at time at times hypervigilant. We’re safe. And we can relax.
And it’s a paradox too, the more we relax, it feels like the easier things get, because we can respond to those cosmic nudges, and follow our wisdom, our instinct or our intuition much, easily more easily than when our mind is in overdrive. And it’s trying to figure everything out and control everything and make sure everything’s happening in the right way. And all that kind of stuff.
When we relax we become more deeply connected to the flow, essentially, of the universe.
That’s what I’m aiming to learn to do more of. That’s my growing edge. And we all have them all the time. But this is the one that I’m particularly interested in, at this moment. Michael singer said the only practice we need is to relax. And so what Sydney Banks would say, he would use slightly different language, he would talk about following a good feeling. But those two sentences, phrases are pointing to the same thing.
It’s the same thing that that those two men are talking about. They are talking about tapping into Universal Wisdom, and intuition and wellbeing, and all those things that bring a good feeling and which is an important point to make. Throughout this whole thing, this experience with the hitchhiker it was mostly green lights, all along the way. The only time I hesitated, like I say, it was there in Cathedral Grove when I didn’t pick him up.
And yet, at the same time, that that was his own green light in a way it felt that felt like the right thing to do in that moment.
And then the moment changed and it felt like the right thing to do to pick him up the next time I saw him. So, yeah, a little example of following our own wisdom.
And then the final thing I want to say is I just want to reflect back. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this on the show or not; I took Dominique Scaffidi and Grace Kelly’s class at the beginning of the year, we started in January, called Living Miraculously. One of the things that Dominic and Grace suggest is keeping a list somewhere of miracles and synchronicities that happen to us. And the purpose of this is to do exactly what I’m talking about; it is to teach us that the universe is there for us, that it is supporting us and loving us. And we are connected to safety at all times.
The way that we see this in tiny, tiny ways, and in big ones, is through what they call miracles and synchronicities.
That could be anything from some people really feel a sense of that connection when they see certain numbers, let’s say when they happen to look at the clock. And very often it has a certain set of numbers that a digital clock, or here’s a funny example that I wrote down today, actually. In the last 24 hours I’ve seen heard two mentions of a play, based on the SE Hinten book The outsiders. Now, I didn’t know it was a play. Of course, I read the book as a child, because you do and saw the movie then when it came out later, but hadn’t thought about The Outsiders in a million years. And then twice in 24 hours, somebody mentioned that it’s a play.
It’s like little love letters from the universe. They call them synchronicities, which is so perfect. These things that are just little nudges, little winks from the universe saying, Hey, we’re here, and you are loved, and you are cared for, and you are always, always loved and safe. And all those all those good feelings.
I keep them in an app on my phone. And what can happen is then, as we remember to write these things down or make a note of them, is you can go back and look. And suddenly you’ve got a list…right now I’ve it’s only been what January, March, like three and a half months, and I’ve got a list of dozens of these synchronicities. So for me, it’s been a really fun practice noticing that, and then given my desire to really learn about how it feels to connect to that kind of safe feeling that my hitchhiker friend had. This is one way to remind myself, it seems that that exists. So that’s why I do it. And if that sounds like fun to you, it’s something you could try as well.
I think my throat is getting dry. That’s probably enough talking for today, I would really like to hear if you have any reflections on this idea of safety in the universe and feeling confident enough to let things unfold and flow and how that makes you feel. Maybe you’re great at it already. Maybe it’s something that like me you’d like to develop, maybe you think it’s hogwash, and that there’s no way that we should follow that kind of impulse.
Whatever it is, I would love to hear your thoughts and reflections and like I said early earlier at the top of the show, you can send those to AlexandraAmor.com/question.
I think that’s it for today. I hope you are doing well and taking care and I look forward to talking to you again next week. See you then. Bye.
Our bodies are the vehicles in which we move through life. Our thinking can be the fog that sometimes fills up the windshield we are looking through. Thankfully, we all have factory installed GPS to help guide our way.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
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Transcript of Episode
Hello, explorers, and welcome to episode 58 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about the windshield of life. I’ll get into that in just a moment. And it is really the one thing I think that when we see it about life, when we understand this idea, this metaphor, it really does change everything, including our ability to deal with things like anxiety, or depression, or unwanted habits like overeating. So we’ll get into that in just a second.
I do want to mention again about the Unbroken Community that I’m starting up. So if you’re interested in joining a group of like minded people, having some one-on-one coaching from me, meeting regularly, twice a month to do that, and learning from the coaching that other people receive as well, go to alexandraamorcom/community. You can learn all about what I’m thinking of for this community. And learn more about the details, including the 10% off that you’ll receive for all my books and courses, and a library of videos that will be available, all that kind of stuff, Alexandraamor.com/community. And there, you can sign up to join the waiting list.
The community hasn’t started yet, if you’re listening to this, as I’m recording in early April 2024. But I want to gauge the level of interest and just see if there’s enough interest in having a group like that. So that’s where you can go to learn more about that and sign up if you would like further information when the group comes together, and when it will be meeting and all that kind of stuff.
All right, let’s get on to this metaphor that I’ve got for you today about the windscreen of life.
This came to me the other day, and I jotted it down, probably more than a week ago. And I’ve been sort of contemplating it ever since. I really like it, I think it really explains a lot about what we’re trying to get our heads around when we’re exploring this inside out understanding. So it looks like this.
Picture a car, for me, any kind of car doesn’t matter what kind of car it is, could be your car could be your fantasy car, whatever it is. And that car is going to be a metaphor for us for the way that we move through life. And in every car nowadays, anyway, there’s always a windscreen protecting the driver and the passengers, the interior of the car from what’s on the outside. And so like I said, yeah, the car is a metaphor for you for your body. It’s the vehicle that you are using to move through life.
The windscreen is our ability to see.
It’s as clear as possible. We want it to be clean and clear so that we can see what’s happening outside of the vehicle, outside of the car. And then what happens?
Have you ever gotten into your car and this happens here in the environment in the geographic area where I live in the fall and winter. And the atmospheric conditions are such that if the car has been sitting outside for a little while and I get in it, it has that thin film of fog on the inside of the windscreen. It’s not frost or anything on the outside, it’s on the inside. And that is going to be what we’re going to use for a metaphor for our thinking. So to a lesser or greater degree.
As we’re moving through life in this vehicle, there’s always like I say to a lesser or greater degree, there’s always a layer of that thin fog or mist inside the vehicle. And in the old paradigm of psychology, and in the self help world that so many of us are so used to being a part of, the strategy that we had for dealing with that fog on the inside of the windscreen was first of all, we were kind of oblivious that it was on the inside. Seems to me, we almost treated it as though Well, I guess the best way to say it is we, we treated it as though it was something we could control. And that it wasn’t something that was created. Just by the very nature of being in this vehicle of having a vehicle to move through life.
We treat that fog as though it’s a problem, like I say and and like something we can control. But the thing is that that fog is always there. And it’s not something we can control. And like I say it can be thinner or thicker at different times, depending on atmospheric conditions, nothing to do with us.
That fog represents our thinking, it represents Thought.
And the reason I say that this is such a powerful thing to see. And that once we see this, it really does change everything. That’s because in the past, in the old paradigm of psychology, what we would do is really wrestle with that fog that’s on the inside of the windscreen. And that wrestling is exhausting, because the fog is there. It is its own energy. It’s there of its own volition. And like I say it’s thicker. Sometimes it’s thinner at other times, at times, sometimes it seems like it can go away entirely.
But other times, it seems like it’s just really thick. And we’ve got the defogger on, and we’re blowing air at it. And maybe we’ve got one of those little sponge things or a rag. And we’re trying to wipe on the inside of the windscreen to get the fog to go away. And maybe it does for a little while on one area. But then when we’re focused on another area, it comes back on the first area that we were working on. And that wrestling match that we’re having that energy that we’re expending trying to control the depth and the thickness of the fog on the inside of the windscreen really does take up a lot of our energy a lot of our time.
And it’s fruitless in a way. Because that fog is going to show up now and again.
In the case of a human being, it’s kind of with us all the time, our thinking. And it’s really not a problem. So let’s imagine that it’s a kind of fog that is on the inside of the windscreen, and it’s irritating. But it’s not preventing us from driving the vehicle, we can still drive, we can see the road, it’s safe to do so. And we can move forward in our lives. When we recognize that the fog for what it is, that it’s just there. It’s not something we need to control or maneuver or manage in any way that and that actually, and this is the one of the magic points about it.
When we leave the fog completely alone, it tends to get thinner on its own.
So it will almost disappear. And our view through the windscreen becomes as clear as it can ever possibly be. But like I said when we wrestle with it when we try to control it and manage it, that’s when it fights back in a way and gets thicker and heavier and makes it more difficult for us to move through life.
What happens when we recognize that the fog is just going to be there and we relax about that?
First of all, there’s a couple things going on. One is that we can see or understand that the vehicle that we’re in, is perfectly fine as it is, it works. It’s in great working order. And the fact that the fog is there is not a problem. It’s in this kind of magical metaphorical fog, it’s not impeding our view of the world. And our battle with it, in the past, was the thing that was causing us the most stress and discomfort, and believing that the fog is an impediment to us, living our lives and moving our vehicle through the world, is the thing that really got in our way the most.
When we see the fog for what it is, for its ever presentness, it’s a gift, this is where the metaphor kind of breaks down a little bit. But, you know, our thinking is a gift, it’s a creative gift. And without it, we wouldn’t be able to have the experience of life that we have. So recognizing that, and recognizing that we don’t need to fight with the fog on the inside of the windscreen are two really big steps toward finding peace of mind.
Recognizing that this experience of life is on the inside of us, just like the little fog is on the inside of the vehicle. So the world out there beyond the windscreen is simply being itself and doing itself, our experience of that world is affected by the thickness or thinness, the placement of the fog on the inside of the windscreen, and we can’t have an experience of life without that windscreen being there. It’s the thing that enables us to see the road to see where we’re traveling, and that kind of thing. So without it, we can’t have this experience of life.
That’s why the fog and the thinking are gifts.
All of this might sound fairly simple, this metaphor about the vehicle and the fog and the wind and the windshield. But it really is that simple. And the more and more that that we begin to see where our experience of life is coming from, that it’s coming from within us and that and that it’s always coloring what we see. Like I say that’s when we stop wrestling with the fog, that’s when it can. I guess we could say that things become lighter in the vehicle. There’s not so much stress and anxiety and a lack of peace of mind. Because we understand that we’re not having to wrestle with the outside world and make things different.
I wonder where the metaphor is for the wisdom that’s carrying us through life?
That’s the operation of the vehicle. So this vehicle that we’re in, which is the thing that is taking us through life has a magic GPS, it has an inner compass that’s installed into the vehicle. For every single person, there isn’t anyone who is without that inner compass or GPS. And it can guide us on the road, when we stop thinking that our job is to wrestle with the fog, and make the fog go away, and be upset about the thickness of the fog. And the placement of the fog, when we relax and understand that this GPS is on board. And it’s always there.
All we have to do is listen for it, it will guide us. That is the universal wisdom that is installed with every single person who’s ever been and whoever will be, that is our connection to two universal wisdom to the innate well being that is within us. I think that’s a really important part of this metaphor is to see that there’s an alternative to being upset about the fog that’s on the inside of the windscreen, that what we can do instead is turn our attention to the inner GPS that’s within us. And it will guide us along the road.
How do we do that? Well, it’s innate within you.
So the way that you pay attention to your GPS is going to be unique to you as well. And I could give you some examples of the way that I pay attention to my GPS, and maybe I’ll give you one quick one just for fun.
I think it was Jack Pransky who I first heard talking about the traffic light metaphor, about letting our innate wisdom guide us. So the metaphor is that within us, there’s this red, yellow, green light system kind of indicators, I guess would be a better word. And when we’re making decisions, and when we are trying to find our way in life, we can feel within us when our body reacts to something with either a red, yellow, or green light.
I really enjoy playing with and paying attention to this part of the inner GPS, in big ways and small.
In big ways, when we have really big decisions to make, it can be a little bit harder, especially at the beginning, to be able to discern what kind of a light am I getting? Is my body giving me a red light saying no, that I shouldn’t take this next step? Or is it giving me a green light? Or is it somewhere in the middle?
What I do, or what I try to do in my day to day life, is really pay attention to that traffic light system, even when it comes to small things. Like if I’m out and about and I’m wanting to run an errand, and I’ll all wonder about, will a certain store, do they have the thing in stock that I’m looking for? Maybe they were out of it last week. And they said they were going to get it back in. And so as I’m walking along the street, I think oh, I could pop into that store and pick up that thing. And then I wonder is it there? Have they received it yet?
I’ll just play with my inner compass, my inner traffic light and see what kind of a light I get; red, yellow or green. And then I’ll probably go into the store and just see what happens. See if it matches the feeling that I got about the traffic light. And what I’m finding is happening is the more that I play with that, the more that I rely on my inner GPS/Traffic Light and the more that I use it in small instances, as they can be as small as we want, the more I’m getting a real attunement for those the feelings in my body, the red, yellow and green feelings.
I’m becoming much more clear when I get one of those certain lights, and what that feels like within me. So that’s been really fun to play with.
Then what happens is, when I have bigger decisions to make, things that feel like there’s more at stake, and maybe there’s just more risk involved more, I’m a little more fraught, I’ve got more thinking about whatever the decision is, or the circumstance. Because I’ve practiced, I’m practicing, and I’m building up my connection to that inner GPS / traffic light, it’s easier to find that feeling when I have a bigger decision that’s going on.
I wouldn’t necessarily start out practicing this on things like a decision about a house purchase, or a humongous job change.
Practicing it on smaller things, really builds up that muscle, that connection that we have to this inner GPS that’s built in that factory installed in all of us in all of our vehicles.
One of the nice things that I find about really being attuned to our inner GPS, is that I can be so much more relaxed about decision making.
In the past, when I had to make decisions about anything, the only place I had to go to was into my mind into my thinking.
I would think about pros and cons. And if I make this decision, maybe this will happen. But if I make it, maybe that will happen. So that’s something to consider. And my thinking would just become more and more and more sped up, especially if the decision was large. I would find myself circling around and changing my mind, making a decision, and then my mind would get chatty, so then I would change it and do and decide the opposite thing, or something like that.
Whereas now, when I feel that green light go on, I trust it, I know exactly what’s happening.
Even if I get a red light, or perhaps I should say, especially if I get a red light, about something, and it’s something I really want to do, it’s a decision that mentally I would have agreed to. But then I get the feeling in my body of a red light. I’ve really learned to trust that to not second guess it.
Of course, at the beginning, I did. I would second guess it. I had many instances where I did that. But that taught me as well. So I would make a decision going against the feeling I had in my body of a red light. And then down the road, I would realize, Oh, of course my inner GPS was right. I shouldn’t I shouldn’t have done this, or this was not quite the right choice. I should have chosen the other thing, whatever it was. So it’s all a learning experience.
I really appreciate that, about this little traffic light metaphor. And as I’ve been recording this episode, I’ve realized that it really fit in nicely with the windscreen metaphor that I that I that came into my mind a week or so ago. So I hope that’s been helpful for you.
If you have any questions, please let me know if anything hasn’t been clear. Alexandraamore.com/questions. You can fill out the form there and I will answer your question on a future episode you can be anonymous if you’d like that’s fine too.
I think that’s it for me right now. I hope you’re having a great day and I will talk to you again soon. Take care. Bye.
Leaning Into Curves with Dr. Linda Pettit
Apr 04, 2024
Life has an unerring knack for presenting us with challenges and opportunities for change. Dr. Linda Pettit explores our innate intuitive nature and how we can use that to help us navigate the curves that life brings to us.
Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit is a distinguished author known for her insightful work, including her acclaimed memoir, Leaning into Cuves: Trusting the Wild, Intuitive Way of Love.
With over five decades dedicated to writing, four decades immersed in counseling psychology, and two decades serving as a spiritual mentor, Dr. Linda brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her practice as a speaker, writer and mentor.
Unafraid to delve into divine wisdom, deep feminine knowing, and intuition, Dr. Linda empowers her clients to tap into their innermost truths. Through her guidance, she inspires and facilitates the release of pure love, allowing individuals to express their authentic selves fully.
You can find Linda Pettit at LindaSandelPettit.com and on Instagram at lindasandelpettit.
Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Discovering that anxiety is thought created
What if being calm and in a good feeling is how we’re meant to exist?
The only thing that ever gets in the way of love is our thinking
Using self-reporting instruments to gauge how clients were being helped by the Three Principles understanding
How our intuitive knowing is a life raft for us
How mystical experiences are the norm or all of us
Examples of listening to intuitive knowing and letting it guide us
Why waiting for the moving parts of life to align is important
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Linda’s book Leaning Into Curves
Book: The Butterfly Effect by Andy Andrews
Transcript of Interview with Dr. Linda Pettit
Alexandra: Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit, welcome to Unbroken.
Linda: Thank you. Good to be here.
Alexandra: It’s lovely to have you here. So why don’t we begin with a bit of your background?
Why don’t you tell us who you are and when you came across the Three Principles?
Linda: I have kind of an interesting background. I started out in journalism and public relations. And then I found my way into the helping professions. I was a counseling psychologist for 30 some, 35 years. And now I do speaking, and writing and mentoring.
I came across the Three Principles about what was exactly 21 years ago. So when I met my husband, who many know in the Three Principles world, Dr. Bill Pettit, he’s a psychiatrist. And he had been mentored by Sydney Banks, the man who shared the principles originally. Or boy, even at that point, I think it had been close to 20 years. And so I got introduced through Bill.
Syd was still alive then so he would call our home just about every other weekend. And we would put him on speakerphone and he would teach, share with us. He was very interested in mentoring both of us; Bill as a psychiatrist to me as a psychologist in the understanding.
I will say, it wasn’t an easy immediate sell for me.
Alexandra: That was my next question. Tell us about that.
Linda: Bill should be the one that it was a pretty, I believe, at one point, as I recall it, it was actually in an airport. We were waiting for a flight and I got so triggered that I said to him, “If you ever mentioned Sydney Banks, again, we are getting a divorce.”
Just to give your listeners, in case they struggle with the understanding, I certainly know that. And in a way, interestingly, it was kind of incremental. Sometimes I would struggle with it. And sometimes I wouldn’t. Because I knew right from the start that there was something there. And I could see that it was settling me so that I was having less and less anxiety.
Then as I began to see that anxiety was entirely thought created. That was really beautiful. It wasn’t something that just parked on me, sat on my head, and I was completely powerless over it. That was my, my primary struggle, I would say, was with being anxious. I’d been pretty anxious all my life.
From the time of being a small child, even to the point of having some degree of obsessive compulsive behaviors, but not a full blown disorder where I had rituals and things. Although I was a counter; I used counting to calm myself, but more just a general, anxious approach to the world and a tendency to worry.
I could see that that was settling down. Although I don’t know that I could have told you exactly why. But it was kind of like, I used to think of it this way that I lived from a place of anxiety. And occasionally, maybe 20% of the time, I would stretch into these areas where I wouldn’t feel anxious, or I wouldn’t feel worried. And I would wonder about that. Where to go? How did that happen? I’m feeling pretty good right now.
Then I would snap back into that place of being anxious.
As I started to get insight to how powerful thought was, and how thought was creating the experience of being anxious what I gradually felt over a number of years was that it was like, it wasn’t that I didn’t never get anxious again. But the positions reversed. So 80% of the time, I was pretty calm. And 20% of the time, I might stretch into those zones again, where I felt really anxious or worried.
But I knew what was happening. I knew I was innocently using the power of thought to create this experience that was manifesting in my body in the state that I called anxiety. And so gradually I was less and less worried and less and less anxious to the point now where I just really don’t experience it very much more. If I do it’s a momentary fleeting thing and then I come back to myself.
Alexandra: As a psychologist, did you have times when you were helping others about anxiety?
Linda: Yes, really my whole practice was about people who were having a lot of anxiety or depression. I’d always done a lot of work with people in transition who had had some kind of something happen in their lives that interrupted life as they knew it. And they were transitioning to some new understanding and, and along with that was coming this experience of feeling lost or anxious or depressed.
But I was committed to a thought that I had. And the thought was that I was not going to share this understanding professionally, until I really saw it personally. And so I didn’t, even though I was very aware of it and was studying it and learning about it from Bill and from Syd and others in the Three Principles world, I didn’t share it professionally for several years. And then I had an experience, which I actually talked about in my new book.
It was really one of those funny synchronistic experiences where I was kind of ticked off at bill, we, you know, we were newlyweds, and we were struggling a little bit with adjustment. We’re very different people. He’s very extroverted and outgoing. And I just tend to be by my nature, really more quiet, slower tempo. And so we were having some struggles, and I stomped downstairs to my office in a full blown, you know, like, what a jerky is kind of moment, and sat down at my desk.
I reached in for a financial file to do some work on on our finances, because I manage those and I opened the file. And I don’t know how this got there. But on the top of this particular file was an excerpt from the book, The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. And I remember thinking, how did that get there? Because I don’t like that book. I had read it. And I didn’t think much of it, which is really in itself pretty interesting. But I read the excerpt and it said, there was a conversation between two of the Pooh characters.
One of them is saying, “Oh, that Winnie the Pooh, he’s just the sweetest, kindest, most loving, tender wise knowing being.”
And the other one says, “Oh, yeah, he is all of that. And it’s just too bad that he’s the exception to the rule.”
And the other one says, “You know, that might be, but what if he’s the rule in action?”
I had this moment, Alexandra, where it was like an insight. And I just thought, what if Bill, because he’s so calm, and he’s so compassionate, and he just rolls with things, and he doesn’t get really upset with me, just kind of stays with me when I’m in these little snippets.
What if he’s not the exception to the rule? What if he’s the rule in action? What if that’s the way we’re all meant to be?
In that moment, I became a student. I thought, you know, what if? What if I don’t have to live with the level of anxiety that I do? What if I don’t have to live with a level of reactivity and drama that I sometimes do? I wasn’t out of control and we never yelled, we never had big, awful arguments or anything. But I walked around more than I wanted to in a feeling of being very stirred up inside.
He had been trying to share the Three Principles. And he will tell you now that he realizes that he was probably trying to be a teacher to someone who wasn’t a student. And so he had a role and what happened, but when I had said to him, finally, you just need to back off, he did back off. And I think when he backed off, and I had the ability to just sort of observe a little bit more without feeling pressured to be different or to change. I just created a space.
And then I found that that excerpt from Hoff’s book and it just became real clear to me that this could be the answer I’ve actually been searching for. The other thing that I think was a factor is that at the time, so this was 22. We’ve got married in 2003 so this was 21 years ago, or 20 to 21 years ago, I think the understanding was being taught primarily as a psychological understanding. And as a psychologist, I was struggling to see:
How is this different from other cognitive therapies?
I was already a student of cognitive therapies and used them in my practice. And I truly didn’t see, I saw glimmers, but not the whole picture, how this was very much different. And what happened for me is that as the spiritual understanding of them fully unfolded, and I began to see, oh, this is the answer to love. This is the answer to how I can stay connected to love.
The only thing that ever gets in the way of love is my thinking.
I’m never severed from it. All of the prior spiritual understandings, and my psychological understanding came together. And that’s when I really started progressing in understanding and began to share it in my practice. And in case there are other helping professionals who might listen to this, when I started sharing it in my practice, I talked with Syd and I said, “I think I want to do this. But I’m not sure that I know how to do it.”
And that is kind of a whole story to what he said, but what he came to was, well, if you’re gonna give this a go and share it purely, don’t try to mix it with other things, just share it purely and see what happens. But, Alexandra, I was so fearful that I wouldn’t be doing my job. Because it was so much less directive than other things. There were no rituals, there were no things people had to do that I decided I would measure every client so that I had proof that they were getting better or not. And I had done that somewhat. But I really started to do it.
I started to do some very high quality instruments, self report instruments, but still well researched, and had every client fill them out every third session. And somewhere that data is buried somewhere, it may have been destroyed, because it was so long ago.
I actually started to get very good data that people were getting better, significantly faster. I could sense that I could see it anecdotally. But I also had the data to back it up to the point that actually I had insurance companies, because mostly in mental health then and I think still now a lot of payment comes through third party payers in the United States. I would have insurance companies call me up and say, How are you producing these results?
Alexandra: Wow. That’s amazing.
Linda: So the results sort of hooked me it was kind of like, Oh, okay.
Alexandra: There’s someone here.
Linda: And I never looked back from that point. I ran a solely Three Principles based practice for a very long time.
Alexandra: I love hearing that. That’s great. I didn’t know any of that. That’s lovely.
Along those lines, I wanted to talk about transformative change today. And one of the things on this is one of the topics that you speak about and on your speakers page. In the section for mastering transformative change you talk about intuitive knowing and I love this phrase being our life raft.
Could you talk about intuitive knowing being a life raft?
Linda: Yes. So where the principles point is, is that we are all sourced in this formless energy. You could call it many names; I like to call it love, or wisdom or intuitive knowing. It’s a source that as I see it is evolving. It’s creating. It’s conscious, it’s aware, it’s moving through us. We are made of it. We are one of the forms of it.
One of the forms that it takes in us is thought. So I literally see myself as being pulsed through with thought. But I also see myself as been having been given the gift of thought to use, however I choose to. I have this incredible power with thought to create anything out of any experience or circumstance that’s in front of me. And yet I also see that there is a divine aspect to it, that of always moving in the direction of love, always moving in the direction of higher evolution, higher consciousness, more common sense, more peace, more joy, more brilliance.
If we’re aligned with that, if our thinking and divine thinking is aligned, then life is beautiful, even the most difficult experiences in life, and have their own beauty. And so I think about now, and so many of us feel so adrift, I was talking to a woman yesterday who is a developmental psychologist, and she was saying to me parents, she’s a young woman, and she’s got young children. She said, parents right now are feeling very adrift. They don’t know how to a parent.
We’re coming out of this generation where, and in this therapeutic environment that says that what parents did many years ago was was terribly traumatic. And most of us were raised with a lot of trauma and a lot of challenge and we’re all in therapy dealing with that.
And now, as parents, we’re all wondering, okay, how do we do it?
We don’t want to do what was done to us. We don’t know what to do want to do it our parents to do us. But how do you do this? How do you do it when you’re dealing with behavior. And you’re dealing with a world that feels so chaotic. And you’re dealing with circumstances that our parents didn’t have to deal with.
I have a daughter who’s going to be 40 this year, who has two young children. And not long ago, she had her little little guys were locked down in their school, because there was an active shooter near the campus. Now, it wasn’t, thankfully was not a terribly dangerous situation. But the children did go through an event where they were locked in a room and knew that someone was outside the school with a gun. And so my daughter had to had to process that with her kids, and she has to process safety issues with her kids that I didn’t have to deal with.
That’s just one example, people feel right now very adrift and very uncertain. And it feels like a lot of structures that held held my generation or the generation in front of me, and maybe the one right after me into place have crumbled. And they’re looking for answers. And what if the answers are always inside of us? What if the answers are always in our intuitive knowing?
What if all we have to do is go inside and look beyond our fearful thinking and our egoic thinking, and we will always find an answer there?
I trust that. I absolutely trust that in my life. But part of why I trusted is because I tested it. As I wrote my book, Leaning Into Curves, as I look back on a lot of experiences, I really saw that what at the time, I thought were sort of mystical experiences that were special to me. Especially because I’m a woman. Women are supposed to be more intuitive. I now look at that and I just laugh. It’s like no, no, wasn’t anything special about that. That’s how life works. That’s how love works.
I document in the book that when I met both of my husbands it actually happened both times. The moment I met them, something clicked inside of me. And I knew in both situations that I was meant to have long term relationships with both men.
Now with my first husband that was really interesting because he was a Roman Catholic priest. And was actively practicing at the time and he was also going into alcoholism treatment the next morning, the night I met him. He was 20 years older than I so he was an unlikely soulmate Believe me. But I knew because of what I say is that the eyes of love flew wide open and in that instant, and I saw possibility. I saw something that could be created and I knew it.
Same thing with Bill my my current husband. The day I met him there was something that happened, and also a couple synchronicities that happen that I won’t go into right at this moment. But that made me pay attention. And I thought, there’s something here. I remember the thought, which I describe in the book, I am meant to have a personal or professional relationship with this man, I just don’t know which, but that we are going to be connected going forward was really clear to me.
Along the way, in both situations there’s always been this sense that if I just get quiet, and if I can find my way to a quiet feeling of lovingness.
If I ask, I will get all the information I need to know what to do next. I know that that’s absolutely 100% true for all of us that we are sourced in love, are made of love, love is intuitively guiding us. And if we can remember that more and more and more and little, little by little by little, and look for that, then all these things that look so big and so problematic, and so complex and conflicted. We’ll find our way through them was one of the things that actually motivated me to write the book, I was already writing it.
I had a number of reasons for writing it. But one of the things that really caused my own motivation to leave for leap forward was that I ran across two articles. One was in The New York Times, and one was in The Washington Post. So these are pretty big newspapers in the United States. And one of them was an article about therapists, and how therapists were being asked to integrate the intuitive arts into their therapy practices.
So this there, this reporter was interviewing therapists who were saying, Oh, my gosh, I’m being asked to to help people figure out oracle cards and shamanistic practices and psychic visits. And I don’t know anything about those things. Or, or I do know a lot about those things. I’m really excited about the fact that my clients are bringing these things up. Because what I read was, Oh, my clients are wanting to know about the spiritual dimension of life.
The part of life that that unfortunately and dangerously, we have dismissed as woowoo or as unscientific and impractical. And so people were at least going into their therapists and saying, You know what, I think there’s something here. I think there’s something in the spiritual stuff.
I think there’s something in this intuitive stuff for me; we need to talk about this.
So it was coming from the ground up that therapists were being asked to address the spiritual and the intuitive, which I see is one in the same thing.
The other article, which was even more fascinating, I’m not sure which paper was in but someone had decided had somehow gotten wind of the fact that psychics across the country during the pandemic were busier than ever. And so they sent a team of reporters out and sure enough all across the country. They’re they’re dealing with psychics of all kinds; clairvoyance, clairaudience, card readers, crystal ball gazers, everything, and they’re all saying the same thing. Oh, my gosh, we can barely take more clientele, because we are so busy.
I read that and thought, oh, isn’t that interesting that if you don’t, and I’m not discrediting those arts, there’s no doubt. Can we all have access to intuition? And there are many spiritually evolved people who have very special gifts in that area, who can be really helpful to us. But the reality is, the truth is, the deep absolute truth is that that psychic knowing, that intuitive knowing that wisdom is inside all of us.
That was a beautiful thing that I had seen with the Three Principles understanding that yes, we are guided, yes, there is Mind behind life. It is coming through us through the divine thought system. And all we have to do is turn our attention to it and it’s right there. It’s just right there. And it always has the next right answer.
All I can say is that’s why I wrote my book is because my life has been proof of that. And the book is a set of stories about how that came through to me and how that affected my life decisions, including some really, really big difficult experiences. So that’s why I see coming back to your question. That’s why I see. intuitive knowing is a life raft is it’s, it’s cheap.
It’s inside. It just takes getting a little quiet. Just takes getting into a little bit of a beautiful feeling. Takes trusting it, asking for it. And it’s right there.
Alexandra: Could you give us an example from the story when intuition was your life raft?
Linda: Actually, I thought of one that wasn’t from the book. Let me see which one from the book that I would want to talk about. Oh, I there’s one that comes to mind.
When my first husband, my late husband and I, we had been married a number of years, and we wanted to go live in West Virginia. A pathway opened up for me to go to doctoral school in West Virginia. We had no money. How many times do people come to me and they say, I want to do XYZ. But I have no money. I hate my job. I want to do something different. But I have no money. You hear that a lot.
One of the questions people hear out there in the coaching world is if you weren’t worried about money, what would you do?
And people will have these ideas. But money is the obstacle or money is the block. And we didn’t have any money and doctoral school was expensive.
I talked to my mentor, and this is described in the book, his name was Bob and I said, Bob I, and how I even got to him. I did not go in with a question about my life. I actually went in with a question about my daughter and are having some struggles. She has temper tantrums. And I’m not exactly sure how to deal with it. Bob had said to me, I don’t really think this is about Laura’s temper tantrums, I think this is about you not paying attention to something that’s coming up in you that wants to assert its independence, that wants you to assert your independence.
I thought about that, and I came back to him. And I said, Yeah, I really want to do something new with my life. I want to go to doctoral school in psychology. I said, Well, we don’t have the money. And he said, what’s the first step? And I said, Well, the first step is to take the Graduate Record Exam. So how much does that cost? So I don’t know 75 bucks. Have you got 75 bucks? Yeah. Then you got money to go to got doctoral school, then go take the first step. So I did.
But then I got admitted. And my late husband, Jim and I needed to move to West Virginia to where I’d gotten admitted, didn’t have any money. We went looking for housing, and couldn’t find housing, finally did find housing, put a security deposit on it. But really didn’t have money to pay for anything beyond the security deposit or to pay for school.
The training director where I had gotten admitted said, I’ll find you a teaching job.
And then Jim started looking for jobs down in West Virginia. We started to do what made sense to do. But the moment came for us to take the apartment that we had found. And we still didn’t have funding for my doctoral program, Jim still didn’t have a job. We were facing a moment of decision. And we both went inside intuitively, kind of sat together and said, Let’s just really consider this because this is our make or break moment. Either we choose it, or we don’t. We have to we have to choose.
We both came out of that and said, Well, what came to you? And we said to each other, we got green lights. We got to go ahead. But how? Well, we’d paid for the security deposit and the first month’s rent, we had that covered. And a plan clicked into place where Jim would stay at his job up in Toledo, Ohio, and I would go down to West Virginia and occupy the new space. So we found a way to get through the next couple of months. I was living down there. He was living up in Ohio, commuting back and forth. So we got those two months covered.
But then we came to the second point. I’m supposed to start school on Monday. It’s Wednesday, the week before I still don’t have a job, the university still hasn’t been able to find me a teaching position. Jim still doesn’t have a job. So we’re on the phone together. What do we do? Do we abort? Do we say we’ve got to stop? And again, we listened within and, and both of us just said green light, clear green light. Jim went into his employer and said, Okay, I am following through my two weeks notice is up on Friday, I will be leaving and going down to West Virginia. He came down to West Virginia on Friday.
Friday morning, I got a call from the director of training at West Virginia University and he said, I think I found you a job. I want you to go talk to this woman who’s in another department, ed psych. And I went and talked to her and bottom line, I got a teaching job that paid my entire way through doctoral school. I ended up with not a dime of debt. I taught my butt off. I worked really hard.
What was really interesting is: Jim came down, and the following Monday, back to back, it was almost like because he had made the decision. And we had committed back to back three calls that offered him jobs in West Virginia. And by the end of that first week, he was gainfully employed. There’s a movie, it’s one of the Crocodile Dundee movies, there’s a place where Harrison Ford is being chased by the bad guys. And he comes to a big crevasse, a huge canyon. And his spiritual teacher is on the other side.Hecan’t figure out how to get to the other side. And the spiritual teacher says jump.
As soon as you jump, the bridge will appear.
That’s what happens. He jumps and the bridge shows up and he gets across and then the bridge disappears. And the bad guys can’t chase him. That’s what happened was that it took jumping. And then the bridge appeared. And it took trusting that intuitive knowing and and the life raft just showed up. And we were off on an entirely new chapter of life.
I’ll tell you a really little story about that. This is not in the book. After my first husband died, suddenly in an automobile accident on Christmas Eve, about two weeks later, I was in a really bad state as anyone who’s known a sudden bereavement that comes really shocking. It’s a big challenge to the system. And I was beside myself with anxiety; I was agitated, and I was walking around the house just not able to sit still. I couldn’t think straight, and having a really difficult time. I I remember being so overwhelmed, I thought I’m going to crawl out of my skin, this is going to kill me, my heart is going to explode, I’m in such a bad place.
I asked for help. I said, God, you gotta help me because I don’t know how to get through this. And all of a sudden, I heard this voice in my head, like a very gentle patient, I don’t even know androgynous sort of voice that said, “Linda, go write your thank you notes.” And I thought, “Go write my thank you notes?” And I thought, well, that is a task that I have to get done.
So I went over and I sat and and my late husband had been a missionary priest for 20 years and he had connections all around the world. And I had gotten scores of emails from people this was when email was brand new, who had known him saying what a wonderful man he was. While going through all those notes, going through all the bereavement cards I’d gotten my heart just kept getting filled up over and over and over again. I realized as I was sitting there, wow, I’m calm again. I’ve come back to myself.
Now if I wrote a book on grief, and I said, here’s a to do. When you feel really anxious and overwhelmed in your bereavement, write your thank you notes. I think I would highly discredit myself. But that was a common sense, intuitive knowing that came in that moment that saved me. It spared me tremendous pain and tremendous difficulty and brought me back to myself.
I could document dozens of moments where my journey through grief was all about that, that in the moment, there would just be an insight that got me through the next thing, and I began to really trust that.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s lovely. So beautiful. Thank you for sharing those stories. I really enjoyed that.
Just before we start to wrap up, I’d love to ask you about what about when things go wrong? We trust a feeling I guess is what I mean. Have you encountered that at all?
What about if we trust something, and it doesn’t turn out?
Linda: Absolutely. I think that there are lots of different ways I could come at explaining what I see about that. But one of them is that sometimes, something that originally looks like, oh, that didn’t turn out the way I expected it to, or I thought it should or could, in the long run proves to be the better choice. And we see with the value of elapsed time. Oh, that was perfect.
There’s a beautiful book out right now that people are talking about called The Butterfly Effect. It’s very simple little book that really talks about that beautifully that we just don’t know how in the grand scheme of things. That certain answers that we get that seem counterintuitive, actually are intuitively right.
And then sometimes I think there’s a timing delay. I’ve had many times when I’ve asked for help, and it seems like nothing happened. And I once heard, a woman named Mary Webb Martin, she was actually presenting alongside Sydney Banks at the last, I think it was the last event I heard Syd speak at, she shared this metaphor. And she said, sometimes I think life is like your she said, I’m a sailor, I’ll get out on the water. And my sails have caught the wind. I’m just skating along enjoying it.
Then the wind dies down. And there’s nothing, and I don’t have a motor. And so I can’t go anywhere, I’m just really feeling stuck. But all I have to do is have faith that the winds will pick up and when the winds pick up, I’ll be able to move again in in a certain direction. And Syd said that’s a really beautiful metaphor. Because there are a lot of moving parts to life. There are a lot of moving parts to life. And there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that we don’t always know about.
We don’t appreciate the mystery of that. But sometimes we just have to wait for the moving parts to align. And there’s a quote. He says, When you accept the mystery, you join the mystery. And so when I have moments like that, that it feels like something that I thought I was being intuitively guided toward, didn’t work doesn’t work out, or it doesn’t work out on a timetable that I expect it. I’ve just come to know that there’s something bigger afoot and to trust the mystery of that.
Alexandra: That sailing metaphor, that’s one I’ve used on myself as well that I remember reading a book about a fellow sailing from here, Vancouver Island, to Hawaii, and how inevitably, you usually get to a space in the Pacific Ocean where the wind completely goes and you can’t turn on the motor because you don’t have enough petrol to get to Hawaii. So you just have to wait it out. And, of course, just like you said, inevitably, the wind does pick up again. So yeah, I love that.
Linda: Sometimes it takes you in a new, better direction. Just because you’ve been committed to a change in direction. The change happens.
Alexandra: Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been such a pleasure, Linda, thank you so much for talking to me today.
Your new book is called Leaning Into Curves. And it’s available everywhere, I’m assuming online.
Linda: Ebook, paperback and hardback. And the audio book is forthcoming. I’m going to be recording that myself. So it should be available pretty soon.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes so that people can can find that as well.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share today before we wrap up?
Linda: I think we started to talk about transformative change. I love working with people who are going through transformative change and transformative change is not the kind of change that most of us go through, we change our hairstyle. It’s usually some life event critically disrupts the path we’ve been on; could be a job, change a job loss or loss of someone in our life, business disruption could be anything.
I love working with people who are going through transformative change, big change. And in the therapeutic community right now, there’s a lot of focus on trauma informed therapy. But one of the things that’s not being talked about enough is, I think, is that many, many people experience huge amounts of post traumatic growth. They actually not only return to their baseline functioning, they exceed it.
The transformative experience becomes a spiritual portal for transcendent spiritual growth. So what I found in working with people is that one of the things that we need to do is allow space for grief. We need to allow space to mourn and embrace the embodiment you talked about being in a body, being in a physical life and having to deal with sometimes the big context sport of life.
And then I think a big step in that is forgiving life, that we got handed tough circumstances to deal with forgiving life and forgiving ourselves in thinking that we weren’t big enough to rise to the challenge. Because the spiritual nature that we have is always capable of rising to that challenge. And then if we ask for help, and listen, there will always be the intuitive knowing the desires that point us in new directions. And then from that point, it’s just about embracing the desire and consciously creating from that desire.
Alexandra: Lovely, beautiful, thank you.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Linda: Probably the easiest place and thank you for asking. You’ve been such a wonderful, thoughtful, gentle podcast host.
When we strive for perfection are we doing ourselves a favour or adding unwanted stress into our lives? When it comes to eating well and resolving an overeating habit, I think embracing the beautiful messiness of life is much more helpful.
Click the image below to learn more about the Unbroken Community.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes:
The top 3 ways perfection is a mistake
How needing to be perfect increases the amount of thinking we’re dealing with
Why perfection is boring
How important the messiness of life is
On the unkindness of perfection
Transcript of Episode
Hello explorers and welcome to episode 56 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about perfection, and how it’s a mistake.
Before I jump into that I wanted to mention, in case you didn’t hear me last week, that I’ve put together a page of information about a community I’m starting, called the Unbroken Community.
You can join a join up for the waitlist for that community at:
I want to find out if there’s interest in this sort of thing. So there’s a whole bunch of information on that page that I just mentioned, about what the community will look like, when the group coaching calls that we’ll have, the pricing and all the other details about what’s involved, whether it’s a good fit for you, there’s information there about that, and whether it isn’t.
I think it’s always really important in these situations to make it clear what the offering is, and one of the ways to do that is to make it clear that this might not be a good fit for you. If so, you’ll see a little list of bullet points about that as well. So lots of information there.
Check it out: AlexandraAmor.com/community if you’re interested in connecting with me, connecting with others who are wanting to resolve unwanted habits, like overeating, but it could be any kind of unwanted habit as well. Because as I said last week, they all have the same root cause. So yeah, check that out.
All right, so now let’s talk about perfection. In the last few weeks, since I had my coaching call with Tanya Elfersy \that you can listen to on episode 53.
As I said, a couple of weeks ago, my eating habits have been way better.
I’m so grateful for that. And I’m really happy because it feels like I turned a corner. I had had more insights, learned some more stuff as we do. It’s an ongoing journey. It’s never over is it really? I think as long as we’re alive, we’re going to be continuing to learn.
Since then, since that corner that I turned, I’ve noticed some more some thinking and more thinking that I’m comfortable with about perfection about holding myself to a standard when it comes to eating that feels a little bit perfectionist. It feels a little bit like holding an elastic really tight, you know that feeling? I know from personal experience that when I hold that elastic really tight, and really hold myself to a standard of perfection, that eventually the elastic snaps and I dive into eating badly.
So what I wanted to do today was explore that a little bit, explore that feeling of wanting to be perfect, and how it can become a bit toxic in and of itself. And that’s why the title of this episode is perfection is a mistake.
What I’m going to outline is three ways that I thought of that perfection is a mistake, ways that it can become toxic. I’m sure there are many more than this. But these are the three that came top of mind as I was preparing for this episode. So here we go.
Number one, perfection really gets us into our thinking.
This was the first sign for me that I was leaning towards wanting to be perfect was that my thinking becomes a bit revved up. In other words, I noticed that I’m having lots of thinking about food and about what I’m eating and how I’m doing. On both ends of the spectrum notice that actually to kind of congratulating myself on one end, and feeling good about how I’m eating, which is not the end of the world, that’s not terrible.
But the problem is that then the pendulum does tend to swing to the other side as well. And it any kind of little, not any kind, actually. But there are some foods that I might want to eat that where my thinking gets more revved up than with other foods. So for example, I had a couple of glasses of wine on the weekend that just passed.
That’s something that can really trigger my perfectionistic thinking.
What happens, I think, when we get into having a lot of thinking about things like this, and about trying to be perfect, is that it can be a little bit like a dog chasing its tail. There’s no way to be perfect. And this is why aiming for perfection is a mistake. And if we feel or maybe I should say, if our thinking believes that we should be perfect, that we are obligated to be perfect all the time about whatever the issue is, in this case, it’s food, then that can become its own kind of problem.
And it can contribute to or add itself to all the other thinking that we have about these kinds of issues. Now, I do want to do a little sidebar here and say that, as someone who’s had this unwanted overeating habit for 30 years, and has tried so hard to fix it prior to finding the Three Principles, with self help and willpower and rules and all that things.And maybe you are too.
I’m just inclined to have a lot of thinking about food.
I can observe friends when we’re out for dinner, or when I’m in situations where I’m meeting with other people. And maybe, you know, maybe it’s not true, I can’t tell what other people are thinking. But it often seems like other people who have not had an overeating habit, have a lot less thinking about food. And that makes sense to me.
When we have some sort of habit that we’re trying to resolve, our thinking does get really revved up about it.
And of course in previous episodes, I’ve talked about the pressure cooker, and how the habit is a solution to all that thinking that’s going on. So what else do I want to say about that? I guess the main point is just that holding ourselves to a standard of perfection, when it comes to an unwanted habit. And this is what diets really encouraged us to do, right? You’re either on the wagon or off the wagon. And I think that’s kind of a toxic way to look at things.
So what I’m realizing lately is that I’m living my life, I’m doing the very best I can. And adding a whole bunch of thinking to myself, to my world, to my life about being perfect, and having the perfect diet and eating perfectly all the time, is going to end up creating more problems than it solves. So that’s the first way that perfection is a mistake.
The second way that perfection is a mistake is that perfection is really boring.
When you meet somebody who seems perfectly perfect and has it all together, I really can’t think of anything more boring. It’s the messiness of life that’s really interesting, right? We don’t like it a lot of the time. But that’s where we really connect with our fellow human beings and perhaps even more importantly, that’s where we learn.
I really fell on my face at the end of 2023 and early 2024 with falling back into some overeating habits that I didn’t like.
That whole time, while it was frustrating and confounding, and I was not feeling great about myself. It created suffering for sure. I’ve mentioned that before it was a really great learning experience. It taught me a whole bunch of things, some of which I mentioned on Episode 54.
It was a really good learning experience. I learned so many things.
I think I may have said this in one of the episodes, when things get tough, that’s when we learn. So if we were perfect all the time – and I know that’s our natural inclination, and we do want things to be resolved. If we were perfect all the time, we wouldn’t learn a thing, we wouldn’t have any of the experiences that lead to insight, and that lead to learning, and that help us to connect, and have empathy for others who might be going through a similar situation.
So that’s the flip side of perfection, the messy, sticky, untidy part of life, is really full of lessons and beauty and connection. And so that’s why I think being perfect is boring. And it’s not necessarily something we need to aim for, at all.
The third reason I think that perfection is a mistake, is that it’s unkind.
This connects back to the previous point, we are messy human beings fumbling our way through life, divine beings, as that quote from Sydney Banks that I talked about in the episode with Tania, and then the follow up episode, we are divine beings walking through this world, trying to find ourselves and that’s messy, unpredictable journey. And while we’re doing that life is throwing us curveballs all the time. And we’re just stumbling forward trying to do our best.
In that circumstance of being a spiritual being having this very dense human experience it seems to me it’s really unkind to expect perfection from that human being, from that experience. And it’s interesting, because we don’t expect it of anyone else, do we? But we really do expect it of ourselves, which is such a shame.
I always try to anyway, in my life, I fall back on what is the kindest thing that can happen in this moment?
What is the kindest way that I can be with this person, whether it’s myself or someone else?
That’s about all I have to say about kindness and perfection. So those are my three. That’s my top three list, about how perfection can be a mistake, it can get in our way.
I also want to say too, as we’re wrapping up here, that it can be our default position to expect perfection of ourselves. And that’s how our culture is set up. We’re graded in school, we are assessed for our performance at work.
We, especially in the whole Instagram of it all we see other people’s perfectly curated lives, and expect that for ourselves. And our life, of course, doesn’t look like that; the toilet has flooded and the dishes aren’t done and the dog is just thrown up on the carpet or whatever it is.
I think there’s just such an expectation and we have this disease of comparisonitis comparing our insides to other people’s outsides. And that can get really toxic and add to the problem of unwanted habits. So hopefully, we can all learn to be a little kinder to ourselves, to not hold ourselves to such a high standard and to cut ourselves a bit of slack as we’re walking through this world, finding our way learning and growing and connecting with one another.
I hope that is helpful for you today. I hope that you are doing well and taking good care. And I will talk to you again next week. See you then. Bye.
When was the last time you felt deeply heard? Nurse and Three Principles practitioner Wendy Williams shares the impact deep listening has on both the listener and those being listened to. We also discuss the priceless benefits that understanding every human’s innate resilience can have for nurses and other healers.
As a nurse educator and clinician for over 25 years, Wendy Williams helps people facing extraordinary (and ordinary) challenges to move forward with grace and ease. She is an experienced mental well-being educator.
As Wendy sees it (and teaches it), we are meant to thrive in this world, but sometimes we get stuck. Whether it’s being swept up in the whirlwind of everyday life or struggling to overcome a major life hurdle, getting back on track, and moving forward can, and will, happen quite naturally. Wendy’s deep experience mixed with her practical and kind-hearted teaching & education point the way forward.
You can find Wendy Williams at ForwardWithWendy.com and on Facebook at Find Your Way Forward.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Paying attention to work we’re naturally drawn to
Recognizing an awareness of our innate well-being
How in any circumstance in life we can react in any number of ways depending on our thinking
On the universal intelligence that flows through everything, including us
The benefits for healers like nurses of knowing about our innate resilience
The difference between deep listening and active listening
Wendy: Thank you very much for having me. I’m excited to be here with you.
Alexandra: Oh, I’m excited, you’re here as well. So let’s begin with a little bit of your background.
Tell us about yourself and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Wendy: Sure thing. Well, I live in the northeastern part of the United States near Boston, Massachusetts, I have been a nurse for more years. I got married at the ancient age of 38 to a guy that I just adore, even as we speak, I adore him.
I have been a nurse, like I say, for a very long time, specializing for years in conditions like HIV AIDS, cancer, hospice, so I’m a real pro at the bedside when people are saying goodbye. And, a lot of what I do happens to do with ongoing or chronic pain.
I’m still practicing as a nurse in that regard. But I’m also having a real focus on bringing the Three Principles to a wider community in health care, because a lot of my sisters and brothers in health care are kind of tired and burning out a little bit, especially after the pandemic. So I’m excited to extend the ripples, as I say, for the awakening, that certainly the Three Principles is brought to my life and many people that I know.
Alexandra: Wow. You’re not just dealing with giving people flu shots, and mending broken fingers.
Those are some pretty deep human experiences that people are having when you encounter them.
Wendy: Absolutely. It was an interesting thing, when I was a brand new nurse I worked on what we call a medical surgical floor, which is a catch all phrase, meaning somebody broke a leg, somebody’s got appendicitis and but just kind of general routine things that you need to be in a hospital for for a bit. There were a lot of orthopedic problems on that floor, broken hips, broken, knees, whatever.
There was this one lady in there who had cancer in her bones. And so a lot of what we had to do for her was find a way to make her comfortable, we knew that the cancer wasn’t going to ever leave that was going to be, , part of her last days. And so that is what we call the report in the morning.
The new nursing staff for the day arrives at 6:30 in the morning, and gets the report from the night nurses who says this is what’s going on, this is what people need. And it was interesting to me, I said, huh, this is kind of interesting to notice that all the other nurses were like, Oh, that lady in seventh with the bone cancer. And I was like, bring the lady with the bone.
I was a young woman, I was 20 to 23. And so that was a clue. I said, Hmm, I’m drawn to that. I feel interested in that. And it became very, very clear to me that every loved one that was standing around her bed, wringing their hands, or holding their hands or crying, was also my patient. It wasn’t just the person in the bed.
As I look back, I feel very blessed that that was a gift that was given to me. A clear path was said, “You’re good at this, what you’re doing.”
You’re not afraid. I used to say to other nurses, when nurses were trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. To your point, some people are very well suited to bandages and broken fingers and flu shots. And some of us are drawn to other things.
I said, if you feel like when you go and buy a house, and it’s up in flames, and you feel like you want to run in and get people, you might be a cancer nurse or an oncology nurse, or a nurse who likes to work with death and dying. But if you want to run away and go call the cops or call the fire department and say I’ll be right here when they come out, but I’m not going. I said but I was one of those people said I gotta get in there and get somebody. I think it just was just kind of the way I’m built. I’m designed.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s so interesting.
You noticed it at such a young age. I mean, 22 that’s really young.
Wendy: It was my first job. It was this general medical surgical floor and then as a result of working with that lady I found my next job at a very well established cancer center here in Boston called Dana Farber Cancer Institute. That was the next job and so I built my career on a foundation of getting to know people well at very difficult times.
Now, lots of cancer patients do very well, and go on. And I so I hope this is interesting to you. But anyway, so some nurses, again, , if they say, All right, what’s wrong? Oh, you need a flu shot? Got it. Let’s give you the flu shot. Okay, next. Okay. What do you need? You need a new bandage. Okay, got it. Next.
I was the one that said, Oh, you need chemotherapy this week? How’s it going? Did you have a good rough time last week? Oh, yeah. Okay, well, we’ll fix it this week. And then I would see them the next week, and then the next week, and then the next week. And then I might say yeah, you don’t need more chemotherapy, we’ll see when five months with your checkup. And I’ll make sure I’m there.
So there are some nurses, some healthcare providers that love that kind of longer path of relationship and building on that. And then there are some people who say, I just want to go in, take care of you and move on. Like a labor and delivery nurse. Let’s get that baby. Okay. Next, let’s get that baby next. Whereas an oncology nurse, or, , other chronic illnesses, really enjoy that longer term association with people.
Alexandra: When in your career did you run into the Three Principles? And what struck you about it?
Wendy: Quite late. I’ve no problem telling you, I’m almost 66 years old, and I’ve been a nurse since I was 22 or 23. But I discovered the principles, let’s see, if I had to do the math right now, I’d say like eight years ago. So when I was 57 or 58.
And it was a really interesting little rabbit hole of YouTube videos, what I’m talking about?
Alexandra: Yes.
Wendy: I was working on another avenue of deep interest to me, which is relationship health, how marriages can be a soft place to land. There’s a lot of medical literature out there about people who do better after a heart attack, or do better after chemotherapy, or their symptoms aren’t as bad if they have a soft place to land at home with a really solid relationship. So that intrigued me, that kind of marriage of relationship health with physical health. That was intriguing to me.
So I was looking in the direction of developing a coaching business regarding marriage health, or relationship health, a lot of evidence bases out there for that sort of stuff. And so there was this guy, Steve Chandler, he’s really smart. He knows what he’s talking about. I was like, okay, like, as a coach, like, okay, Steve Chandler, and Steve Chandler said, the best or the smartest, or the most accomplished psychologist of the 20th century, George Pransky.
And I said, George Pransky? Never heard of that name. Now, I wasn’t always in psychological realm of nursing care. But I was like, George Pransky, I would think I would heard of him. I’ve heard a few is the best psychologist of the 20th century. So of course, I rabbit hole my way over there.
One of the videos was of George Pransky and Steve Chandler talking to each other. And if anything, about George Pransky, and Steve Chandler, that they talk very much like this: very articulate, very slow, very deliberate. And this was in the days before I knew that you could speed up a YouTube video. So I felt myself going, please, I’m begging you wrap it up. I know what you’re gonna say next. Could you just speak more quickly?
And the funny thing was that in the beginning of that particular video, as I recall it, Steve Chandler said to George, he said, George, have you heard that if you and I ever run out of clients, we can have another job making videos or audios for people who want to go to sleep? Isn’t that great? So the two of them just laughed and whatever. And I was like, Yeah, ha, that’s funny.
I heard something. It was like a Lego piece just went and just fell into place.
There was something in the talk about the Three Principles. I don’t know the words. I don’t know what was said. But it was that feeling and a recognition. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word until this moment. It was a recognition of, Oh, I’ve always known who I am. I’ve always known that every patient I’ve ever come across, every person I’ve ever dealt with in my life, I’ve always known that they were made of good stuff, and good stock. And I’ve always known that we are ideally suited to live in this world that we’ve been put in.
But there was something that said, See, I wanted to show other people there was nobody in the room but me, I’m like, see, this is what I’ve been talking about. And I couldn’t put words to it. But it was this recognition of, yes, yes, this is how we work. This is what we’re made to work like, and all the bumps and valleys of life and chemo this day, and my kids are coming to visit tomorrow. And, all the peaks and valleys of life. We can do it.
We know how to ride the waves.
But somehow we’ve been told waves are bad, you got to figure out why you have waves, you got to whack the mole, I call it whack a mole, you got to manage your stress, manage life, . And I said, I just knew, I just knew, and from I’ve just been a very happy woman to be hanging around with these people and learning from some of the teachers who knew Syd Banks personally. I’m in a Three Principles practitioner in a program now to kind of put a stamp of approval on that. And so anyway, it’s been a wonderful, a wonderful I, like I say recognition and waking up to, I always knew this was the way it was.
Alexandra: You mentioned the word stress there.
One of the things I noticed on your website was you said that it is possible to live beyond stress. So tell us what that means to you.
Wendy: Fill in the blank, beyond stress, beyond burnout, beyond anxiety, beyond depression, fill in the blank. Again, I think that there are circumstances and things that come up. Nobody really wants to have a cancer diagnosis.
But not every person that has a cancer diagnosis, falls into a funk and just sits there night after night, wringing their hands and in anxiety.
Some people just say, alright, well, I guess I better cut back on some work hours, and I’ve got to make room for chemotherapy. I’ve always wondered when I’d like look like when I was bald. There are some people, they get light hearted about it. And then there are other people going, I can’t lose my hair. Oh my gosh, what are they going to do with this?
I’m not judging any of that. I’m just saying there’s a variety of experiences, a variety of ways that people can take their circumstances and so far beyond stress. Words are so inadequate as we’ve heard in the three principles, it’s so inadequate, is it literally beyond? Is it underneath? Is it beside? Is it imbued? Beyond sounds good to me.
There’s a group in the UK, Beyond Recovery. There’s a place of inner resilience, quietness, the stuff that makes the same power that just gave me enough oxygen when I just took my last breath right now, right now, and a breathing out the same power that is able to filter in the oxygen, take out any of the germs that might be floating around in here and expel them and create the right amount of carbon dioxide to breathe out to keep me oxygenated, healthy. That same power that I don’t think about except what I am right now is at work in me to bring my mind and my heart.
Okay, you got cancer. Okay. But you also have three children that you love. Okay. You also have, I don’t have three children. I just made that up. But, it can filter things out and bring me back to a steady state. In nursing, we call that homeostasis. So there’s a place beyond what’s going on. And it’s not to say to ignore what’s going on, or to think positively about it. Positive psychology? No, I’m just saying that whatever is coming our way we do have the ability, capacity.
It’s part of the design. Our friend Mavis Karn calls it divine design.
And so beyond stress, beyond burnout, there’s a place sort of like somewhere over the rainbow. Again, I haven’t thought of that before today, either. But we’re bluebirds, we fly beyond the rainbow. And there’s a place and it’s always, always always there. Just like it’s always always always working to make my oxygen levels work.
I mean, right now, I’m digesting food that I ate two or three hours ago. I’m not sitting there going, gee, I hope, I hope my gut’s working. I wonder if I’m taking out enough carbohydrates from my food? I hope so. Do you think, gee, I really hope that I’m getting enough, my kidneys are clearing out my urine. Gee, I hope I don’t have to think about that.
And we have been, I have been, maybe you have been, enculturated through growing up in the 20/21st century, that I have to worry about every time I have an anxious or a difficult thought, oh, what does that mean? What do I have to do about that? Oh, there’s something to be done. All this, I need to follow that rabbit trail, as opposed to saying they come. And they go.
One thing I say to my clients is, if you could look back over the next the last six months or your whole life and add up the number of things that have actually worked out the way you dreaded that they would, how many hours have any of us spent going oh, gosh, I can’t believe it. , like, right now I have a I literally have a relative that’s in some legal trouble. So how many hours? I literally haven’t spent that money in the last six months, because I now know.
Had this happened years ago, before the Principles, I would have been wringing my hands, calling up 10 different lawyers.
What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? Calling up friends who’ve had other friends that have been involved with law law problems? I would have been asking my whole church to pray, we need a prayer service. Not to say that I haven’t I literally asked people to pray for our situation. And I literally have said, I wonder what could happen. But it’s been such a small amount of time.
When I look back over the last six months, what it looked like six months ago was very, very dark. It has not been resolved. Where are we? March of 2024, the situation has not been resolved. And it isn’t anywhere looking as dark as it did six months ago, I could have spent hours. And I would have spent hours, days months of my life wringing my hands. But things come and they go, and just because I look at something and size it up, doesn’t mean I’ve sized it up accurately, or that things can’t change.
There’s just always something beyond and what I have thought about worried about in the last number of months, or anybody anyone has if you feel like answering it, but how many things have you worried about that have actually materialized the the way you worried about them? I mean, when you look back and go, what a waste of time. What a wast of time. I could have had those hours back. And so today, I’ve got them.
Do I get caught up and anxious? Sure I do if I’m in a lower state of of mood or whatever.
Do things look really real and solid and like, oh boy, this is trouble come in. Sure. And there’s also thank goodness, like an eighth of an inch of awareness. A little bit that says, Oh, you’re having a rough time right now. Look at you having a rough time. And it’s not like I talk myself out of it. Sometimes I say, Yeah, I’m having a rough time, and I’m gonna go get a chocolate bar, and I’m gonna get really mad, and I’m gonna call 10 friends.
Sometimes I’m aware but there’s a little bit of space that I cherish from knowing the principles. It’s just the awareness that this too, shall pass. It always has it always will. Every wisdom book in the world that we have access to says the same thing. And, it’s thanks to Syd Banks and the Three Principles that it’s worded in such a way that it that Lego piece just kind of dropped in.
Alexandra: I imagine for nurses, especially, and doctors, healers, knowing that the patient is as resilient as anybody else, must be such helpful information.
Wendy: Yes. Helpful information in terms of me as a nurse going, you got this. You may not be able to see it right now. But you do. You’re absolutely right. It’s absolutely wonderful to be able to sit there and not be pulled in, if you will. And it’s also wonderful, as a healer. I love that word. Thank you. Not that I am the healer. A healing presence is to create an environment or a special a space, where allowing that person to verbalize cry, wring their hands, uninterrupted, deeply listening to them. In some circles in health care, they call it generous listening.
It’s been unbelievably wonderful to really hear people reach their own conclusions. Or say, Oh, maybe I should move to my sister’s because she’s got a house all on one floor. I’ve got a broken hip. Maybe I’ll just ask my sister. That’s a good idea. Now, do I know anything about her sister’s house? No.
But if somebody’s going, Oh, my gosh, how am I going to I live alone? What am I going to do? My hip’s broken, I’m not gonna be able to climb my stairs, I’ll have to hire somebody. By listening to them. It’s a great idea. Sounds good to me. I might be able to add my two cents worth, which is when you get to your sister’s house, make sure there are no scatter rugs, because those can really trip you up when you’re on your crutches or on your walker. So get rid of the scatter rugs when your sisters might be able to add two cents. But that’s just a really easy example. But yes, to answer your question, it is a wonderful thing for health care providers to be able to know that.
Alexandra: You mentioned deep listening there. And we talked about this before we pressed record.
There’s a difference between deep listening and active listening.
Wendy: Health care providers worldwide are taught to active listen. Which is to do exactly what you’re doing. Oh, good. I hear you without necessarily saying the words. I hear you. Or there’s something called mirroring. Like if somebody’s sad and crying and just go right. So let me get this right. You said that you’re worried about your stairs at your house with your broken hip? Because you live on the second your if I’ve got that right. Oh, I do have a right okay. And did I hear it right that you said that you have a sister who has a Oh, okay.
Active listening is literally remembering, recalling, mirroring. It’s a wonderful tool. And what seems to be the golden ticket when it comes to listening is clearing my mind and as the listener to say, I want to see the world as this person sees it. I want to feel the world as this person feels it. So I’m just going to literally just listen. And it doesn’t mean it hurts. But I don’t have to remember what they’re saying. I don’t have to, I just have this sense of interest, and curiosity, and patience. And let the person just go.
It really levels the playing field. A wonderful person in the world called Rachel Naomi Remen. She’s a physician, and she’s in her mid to late 80s now, but she’s written some wonderful books, and she’s written some really stellar bits about the boat helping and fixing while they come from a good place. And that’s what doctors and nurses, and health and social workers and psychologists do, we want to help and we want to fix. There’s a little bit of a power imbalance there. I’m a helper, I’m a fixer. I’m in a good place, you’re in a very upsetting place, and you need my help. I want to go in there and fix it.
When you do some generous listening or some deep listening just to human beings it’s just so much more therapeutic, kind, trusting and the resilience of everybody.
When we listen from that place of no judgment. And I don’t mean judgment, like, oh, you’re a bad person, but judgment meaning Oh, I know what you mean. Oh, I’m adding one plus one equals two. I know. I know. Yeah. The broken hip. Yeah. Just listen, just listen. It’s very, very different than active listening. It’s like 180 degrees different than active listening.
Alexandra: I love that description. That’s great. I had an experience recently of listening to someone. I was trying, honestly trying to practice just having a calm, quiet mind. And this person had a tiny little problem. I don’t even remember what it was. And as I sat and listened, she worked her way around to the solution. She had come to me with a question, and I just stayed quiet and calm.
She figured it out herself. It was so beautiful to see.
Wendy: And did she say Oh, thank you so much. You help me so much. But yet, we do do something because it’s vastly different. Can you think of the last time that somebody listened to you? And just and they didn’t leave?
We know what it feels like when somebody’s present with us whether they’re talking or not talking, nodding or not nodding.
We know what it feels like. Everybody knows what it feels like to really have somebody listening to them. And we know what it’s like to have somebody distracted. Like they go look at their phone. Oh, what? I’m sorry, what did you say? We know what that feels like. And so you can say, I didn’t do anything. You arrived at this conclusion yourself. Very true.
That’s why I have a program with a colleague, Laurie Carpenos. I think she’s been on your podcast before. The Gift of Deep Listening. It is a gift to give. And when you’ve given it and you’re the listener, there is something magical that does happen in that space, that third space, that interplay between two human beings, that you walk away feeling there’s something really special in it.
So yeah, there is a big difference between the two. That’s a great example that your client or whatever, had that experience with you and and you look back and you go, I didn’t really say anything. You figure that out yourself. How many coaches would have done that not said, All right. This is what we need to do. You need to meditate, take two deep breaths and call me in the morning or whatever. Right? Give them a list.
Things like, okay, let’s make a checklist, the good column and a bad column. And there’s lots of tricks and tools that have their place sometimes and have worked in the past. But there’s something really valuable about the Three Principles. Knowing that we’re already uniquely able to live in this world that we live in. And when some other person is able to listen to us and hear us. We get to realize that again, ourselves and pick up our mat and walk.
Alexandra: With our busy lives, and how distracted we all are, when you’re teaching about deep listening do you ever get pushback about oh, I don’t have time to do that? Especially I guess I’m thinking of nurses.
Wendy: I haven’t worked with a group of nurses yet. The people that have taken the class deep listening, read the description, and go, Oh, I’m interested in that. So they’re already coming prepared with an interest in learning more about that.
What I can say, that I have seen over time, is that people are a bit gobsmacked and how simple it is, and how much they gained from it on both sides. When you’re in a class or in a workshop, go off and listen to another person for five minutes and let them listen to you for five minutes. And the subject is your favorite book, it’s something a bit contrived. But even in that, as opposed to like, I’m in a muddle, something’s really upsetting, I’m going to call my best friend, I’m just going to ask her if she can just listen to me.
I’m recalling my own stepson who’s 35 years old now. But I remember when he was 17, he was sitting in my dining room saying, I can’t even hear myself think, I can’t even hear myself think. I didn’t know the Principles then. But I’m like, That makes a lot of sense. And I remember my heart going up to him, I wish I could help you quiet your mind so that you could hear yourself, because he was just full of all these different voices, teachers and mom and dad and stepmom.
If he’s 17, and he knew the inside was the direction. So the pushback is not really because again, people kind of self select in here. I’m curious when we introduce these things to versus and so forth. And there’s a number of health care providers in the Three Principles world who are on board and they get it. They know what it’s like to listen to their patients or listen at work, listen to their colleagues. Listen to their boss. A beautiful Northstar to follow.
I’m looking forward to figure out how much pushback but I can imagine with anybody you think you don’t have the time? And I don’t know how much time do you really need to listen to somebody before they can reach a conclusion? Hours? Days?
I was just reading The Missing Link before we got on the call. And one thought, you don’t have to be in therapy 42 years to get well, or to release yourself from mental strain or difficulty. It’s just one thought. I remember in my early days of the Principles, my issue was, what is the one thought? What is the thought? I didn’t realize it was counting. I thought he was giving content. Like it’s just one thought, and I’m not telling you what it is you’re gonna have to figure it out. And I was like, oh that’s what they mean. My one thought, Okay, I got it.
Alexandra: It occurs to me, too, that when we know that that place of peace exists within us, we don’t need 15 minutes to quiet our mind down in order to listen.
We hopefully can just drop in.
Wendy: And then it’s sort of like, wow, it’s always been there. You mean I don’t have to count all my oxygen molecules? Oh, it’s always been there. My lungs have always operated this way. Ever since I was born, I’m 65. Now, I didn’t realize, Wow, what a relief, I have a lot more time in my day now that I know what I have to kind of oxygen molecules. I mean, to me, it’s very similar to that, like, we really don’t have to be quite so revved up, whack a mole, managing stress, scanning the horizon, counting the beans, we can literally just kind of sit back and go. My mind and my heart and my body and my soul know how to recalibrate. But I keep overriding the system.
I’ve been taught since I was little to override the system. Western cultures have been taught to override the system. I think that there are probably a lot of I don’t know, what’s the right term these days developing nations or whatever. People who don’t? I don’t know, people who live differently than I do. Who are like, yeah, yeah, don’t worry. They don’t worry about a lot of these things. The internet stuff. What people all over the world. Just don’t? Don’t think like this. Don’t worry about these kinds of things, don’t get wrapped up by these kinds of things.
Alexandra: Exactly. We’re coming close to the end of our time together.
Is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet?
Wendy: That’s a really good question. I don’t think so I really have loved the way this conversation was very organic. I really appreciate that when people share their experiences with one another, like you shared your experience with coaching somebody else, I shared my experience I’ve got as a nurse, there’s something really restorative and connecting. About coming from that place, sharing life in life, person and in person.
Versus let me tell you about the last five courses that I’ve taken in the last eight books I’ve read about Three Principles. And I want to share some data points with you and some studies. And so I guess that would be something I would want to share with people is to really take full advantage every time you can of being with another human being in the grocery store line, at the bank. In your home. Online. There’s so such tremendous beauty in all human beings. I’m reading the book by Jacqueline hollows called…
Alexandra: Wings of an Angel. She’s been on the show as well.
Wendy: So good. So good. We’re talking about hardcore, locked up. For many, many years, criminals in the United Kingdom. Jacqueline Hollows is able to just go, aren’t they just lovely? Aren’t they just the yummiest person? Can’t you just see how tender hearted and sweet they are?
I don’t know if everybody could see that. It’s just an extreme example. So I’m not walking around with people who are in prison uniforms and carrying billy clubs. But sometimes I can say I am from the United States of America. I’ll let that just sit there like that. Just like that.
We’re in weird weird times. And I well, actually in Canada, too. I know that there’s a little bit of interesting, trying to stay balanced as a citizen in Canada and United States. I’m 65. I don’t remember being mad at people before. And I feel you shouldn’t think like that. You shouldn’t vote like that. Where did that come from?
If I can apply that. Remember, wings of an angel. Prisoners, like everyone is a beautiful example of divine engineering. You just sit with people and be with people and sharing just real stuff. And I mean, we didn’t go deep like when I say real stuff, I don’t mean, like the most deeply personal things, we just shared our experience of living as women wherever we lived.
It doesn’t take much. I encourage people to really trust that human beings are pretty amazing and cool. And have a listen. And trust that they’re beautifully made from the inside out.
Where we can find out more about you and your work and about your class that you’re putting on with Lori?
Wendy: The next one is actually going to be a weekend one, we’re calling it Five Hours for the Gift of Deep Listening. So it’s a weekend coming up – April 5 through 7, 2024. Which again, we’re going to be watching this a year from now it won’t be but that’s okay.
A great place to find me is on my website. It’s forwardwithwendy.com. And Lori and I do and you’ll see on the page different programs that we have. I think that’s probably the best place
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes as well, to those things. Thank you so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Follow-up To Last Week’s Coaching Call
Mar 14, 2024
Last week, on episode 53 of Unbroken, Tania Elfersy coached me around my overeating habit and the return of that habit after months of having it resolved. This week I share the moments that had the most meaning for me and also expand on some of the highlights to offer greater clarity and understanding for those who are dealing with an unwanted habit like overeating.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How the words we use in this exploration are pointing to a feeling
Why did I forget what I know about the drive to overeat?
How wrestling with ‘problems’ makes them sticky
How we can use even healthy food to quell the drive to overeat
How our feelings are always an accurate barometer about our state of mind and/or connection to our well-being
Why awareness is enough to change an unwanted habit
Hello explorers and welcome to episode 54 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m back with a follow up to last week’s episode 53 with Tania Elfersy where she coached me. So I’m going to go through, as I mentioned, and pull out the things that really stuck out for me, the highlights, and talk about what resonated with me, maybe provide some clarity if things weren’t clear.
Tania and I are quite good friends, we’ve known each other for over four years, we are in a mastermind group together. So I suspect that we were able to shorthand some things. So I just want to pull a couple of those things out, and make sure that it was clear to you the listening audience.
Before we begin, a couple of pieces of information I wanted to share.
One is that because of Tania’s coaching session with me, my eating is back on track, I’m eating in a way that really works for me that feels good. And that feels healthy. And it doesn’t feel disordered, for lack of a better word. I don’t feel that drive to overeat anymore. I just feel really good about the way I’m eating. So yay, that’s a victory.
The second thing is that if you’re listening to this when it comes out, I have a new course that’s coming out on Insight Timer.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with food or eating, but I thought I’d mention it anyway. If you’re familiar with Insight Timer, it’s an app that you can download to your phone, obviously. And it started out literally as a as a timer for people who wanted to meditate. And they’ve expanded the scope of their services quite a bit. I’m on there as a teacher, sharing things about unwanted habits and eating and all that kind of stuff.
The way it works is that if you download the app you can access a whole ton of stuff for free. So you don’t need a membership to access a number of different files there. It’s all audio. I have two tracks on there that you can listen to. So if you just search for my name, Alexandra Amor on Insight Timer, you’ll find those two tracks. They’re very similar to what I talked about here on the podcast.
And then the new course that I released. Courses, which are more than one audio track, are behind a paywall. So if you happen to be a subscriber to Insight Timer, then you’ll have access to that course. And it’s called How To Tell If A Group Has Cult-Like Tendencies. So obviously, this is based on my background, having been in a cult for 10 years in the 1990s. It’s something I’m passionate about sharing information about helping people to understand what cults are, and specifically how they work and how we can notice when we’re getting into a situation which, you know, doesn’t feel comfortable. And we can gauge or analyze whether or not it’s actually a cult.
If you have a paid subscription to Insight Timer, give it a listen and give it a review if you have a moment, that would be great. It’s always helpful to have reviews and other people’s opinions about how the course is. It’s not long, it’s roughly five, five-minute audio lessons.
The other thing I wanted to do was give a shout out to a couple people who reached out to me after my podcast from two weeks ago, where I was talking about how I was struggling and that kind of thing.
A big shout out to Pam H who reached out to me and we have a lovely conversation and a little chat about our journeys with food and with all the things. It was really nice to connect to you Pam and I just really appreciate the kindness and the care that people exhibited by doing that. It was really really sweet to see I mean obviously that’s not why I did it, but then for that to be the reaction, the response. That was really really nice.
Okay, so on to today’s call. If you haven’t listened to Episode 53, I recommend that you go back and do that first. Because pretty much everything I’m going to talk about now is related to things that come up during that conversation with Tania, where she coaches me about my relapse, as it were.
I hate using that word, it sounds so serious. And I don’t know, very kind of clinical, there’s something about it, that just really bothers me. It sounds dangerous, having a relapse. need to find a different word for that.
All it was that my habit came back after months of being away. I really fell on my face in terms of trying to sort it out. And then Tania helped me get myself up on my feet again. So that was great.
So the first thing I want to talk about is that she, the thing that really resonated for me or one of the things was that partway through the conversation:
Tania talks about how the feeling of the drive to overeat that I was experiencing was a message.
Like I always say these things are feedback. We’re not broken. They’re not letting us know that there’s anything wrong with us their feedback. And she just said it’s so simply that feeling was letting me know that I had fallen off the path of truth. That’s what she had. That’s how she described it. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit. Because when she said the path of truth, I knew exactly what she meant.
And the words, those words, specifically “the path of truth” aren’t what’s important in what she was saying. So that’s the phrase that worked for her and that she used, but we could say that we had become the feeling was letting us know that we’re we had become disconnected from our divinity. We could say they had pointed out that we were forgetting about our own well-being. We could say they were feedback about our thinking and our state of mind.
When we get caught up in our state of mind, that’s when we forget about our innate well-being and divinity. So, if those words didn’t really ring true, or not ring true, if they were if they didn’t resonate for you exactly the path of truth. That’s okay. It’s what they’re pointing at that’s really important.
The only tool we have to point to our divinity is language, is these words that we use, especially when we’re on it on a podcast format.
It’s important to remember that it’s not the words themselves that matter. It’s what they’re pointing to.
I’ve been listening to some Sydney Banks recorded conversations lately on his YouTube channel, and I noticed in one how much he was saying that it’s not the words that matter. It’s the feeling behind them. That’s how he phrases it. And so the feeling is what we’re pointing to. There’s another… see, it’s so hard with language, there’s something else beyond just our human experience, and, and our experience of thought. That’s what we’re trying to point to, that there’s an experience beyond, that there’s a part of us that is not limited by those things. And so that’s what Tania was pointing to, and I really got it right away.
I’ve been reflecting since then, of course on why did I forget about that?
Because I was saying things to myself, this is feedback. It’s telling me that I’m caught up in my thinking. And the answer is probably not perfectly clear to me. I think sometimes we just need help, sometimes we just need someone to remind us of what the truth of ourselves is. And as I talk about later in the call, and I’m trying to remember do I bring that up here? Maybe so maybe I’ll talk about this now, but later in the call. I talked about how I realized through that conversation with Tania, that I had been really wrestling with the feeling of the drive to overeat, the feeling of that, wanting to eat more than his, wanting to eat in a way that wasn’t comfortable for me.
I got caught up in wrestling with that feeling and what happens when we, as I talked about all the time, when we wrestle with something, it gets sticky. That’s the thing that makes it sticky. Because we believe it’s real, we believe it’s a problem. So even though I was saying to myself, this isn’t a problem, I know it’s feedback, I still was looking at it as a problem. I guess that’s the simplest way to say it.
In some part of myself, an unconscious part perhaps, I was seeing this as a problem.
And what Tania was able to remind me of and bring to light is that these things aren’t a problem. They are a message from the wiser parts of ourselves.
One thing, actually, in my conversation with Pam, who I spoke to after the episode two weeks ago, that I wonder if I haven’t made clear enough is that during that relapse, or whatever we’re gonna call it. I talked about being drawn to rice and potatoes. And I don’t think I spent enough time explaining that I wasn’t demonizing rice and potatoes. There’s nothing wrong with rice and potatoes. They are a healthy part of any diet, or almost any diet. And by diet, I mean, just a way of eating not a way to lose weight.
The reason they were bothering me was specifically because I had been trying to avoid starchy foods. Starchy foods have started to give me as I age, a little bit of acid reflux. So I was trying to avoid them for that reason. And I could tell that I was eating them as comfort food. And I think one of the reasons for that is that I don’t eat anything sweet, really anymore. I’m allergic to wheat. So I never ever eat cake, or cookies or anything like that, simply because I can’t. And the stuff that is gluten free that you get in the grocery store just doesn’t taste great. I’m just not interested at all.
My focus on rice and potatoes was just my way of my body expressing the drive to overeat, and then trying to get a message to me. That’s all it was. So I hope that’s clear. If it’s not, let me know. You can always send a question to AlexandraAmor.com/questions.
This is an edit that I’m inserting, something I’ve never done before. But after I stopped the previous record, or stopped the recording of this episode, I went to the grocery store where we have the best ideas. And I realized there were two things I wanted to say that I neglected to say about this rice and potatoes issue that might help to explain or explore what I’m pointing to.
The first thing is that it’s not about the food, as the title of my book says.
It’s never about the food. The self-help industry and the diet industry don’t understand this. And this is why you and I have experienced so much failure when it comes to diets and self-help and all that stuff. Because it’s not about the food that we’re eating. It’s about the feeling that’s inside us that’s trying to wake us up. And when so when I talk about eating rice and potatoes, I’m just talking about the thing that happens to scratch that itch for me in the moment.
It’s not about the rice and the potatoes. They are not a problem.
Where I want to be looking is at the feeling that’s within me and understanding what that feeling is trying to say to me, and as we’re exploring, what that feeling is trying to tell me is, I’ve fallen asleep to my own innate well being, or I’ve forgotten my own divinity, however you want to say it. So just an important thing to remember. It’s never about the food. It’s not about the food.
And a great example of this – and this is why I’m adding this edit in mostly, that I thought of while I was at the grocery store – is a story from Christine Heath. So Christine Heath is, I think, one of the founders of the Hawaii Counseling and Education Center, which is a mental health facility that is Three Principles based. She studied with Sydney Banks. And she has a podcast with Judy Sedgman. And the podcast is called Psychology Has It Backwards.
Christine tells a story on the podcast, and I’m sorry, I don’t remember what episode it is. Because it was quite a while ago, now that I listened to it. But she tells a story about her own drive to overeat. She doesn’t call it that: those are my words. But she talks about a period where and I can’t remember what was going on, but where she really felt strong urges to overeat. And the interesting thing was that she was and, and forgive me, I may be messing up some of the details. But she was intended to be a really, really healthy eater, really focused on healthy food.
The way that she dealt with that drive to overeat, was to cook and then eat an entire head of cauliflower.
This is just such a perfect example because it points out a couple of different things which are really important to see.
One is that the drive that we’re feeling, the urge that we’re feeling to overeat can be satisfied in a way by anything as long as it has meaning for us.
So just as I was satisfying that feeling temporarily with rice and potatoes, Christine was able to do it with a completely healthy food. I mean, if you said to somebody, Hey, I’m eating too much cauliflower, they’d go what’s the problem. That’s not an issue. But she knew, probably because she could feel the feeling inside her. That desperation, the drive to overeat, the urges to have too much food in her stomach, those feelings were within her. She knew it was disordered what she was doing. And also, an entire head of cauliflower is too much food for anyone you know, that’s too much cauliflower.
She knew it was that she was experiencing something that needed resolution.
And that was the way that her drive to overeat was expressing itself. So I want to point that out, because it’s so important to see that we can experience these feelings, these urges to eat and we typically think about them around food that might be labeled as unhealthy; chocolate, or potato chips, or candy or sugar, cake, all that kind of stuff. But it’s not about the food. Because we can have this feeling about anything. We can have it about cauliflower. Right? And that was what Christine experienced. So I wanted to share that. I thought it was really important to point out and I had forgotten about that story.
I haven’t probably thought about it in 18 months or two years or something, but needed to share it. So Okay, now we’ll carry on.
The second thing I want to point out and it’s related to that first thing about the path of truth is a reminder that:
Our feelings are always, always letting us know whether we’re connected to the path of truth or not.
And again, fill in that phrase with whatever you want. They’re telling us whether we’re connected to our divinity or not. They’re telling us whether we’re connected and remembering our well-being or not, whatever phrase you want to use. They’re a barometer. And they’re such a good gauge of whether or not that’s happening is the best way to describe it.
You can always trust the feelings that you have in your body, they are the perfect gauge for whatever’s going on with you.
Let’s take an example of being in a relationship, as opposed to something having to do with food. If you’re in a relationship with someone, and you’re having a disagreement with that person, and you suddenly feel all stirred up inside and angry, perhaps, and frustrated, and really tense and wanting to get your point across or victimized or whatever it is, that feeling is letting you know this is probably not the moment to have a conversation with your spouse or loved one.
And if you if you step away, your mental state will return to one of calm and quiet and peace, because that’s the way it’s designed.
Tania talked about that as well about how this awareness is everything.
This is a really good moment to talk about that. So what’s happening when we feel the drive to overeat, or we feel like shouting at our spouse, or whatever it is, that when we become aware of that is this is another thing that Tania was really pointing to about how important that is. And really, it’s just the awareness that we need. So when we become aware of what’s happening, that we have a feeling in our inside ourselves, that’s not good. That’s not just doesn’t feel like a good feeling. And we all know the difference always all the time.
Then it becomes the responsibility of our divine engineering to adjust that situation, to shift it, to resolve things.
That’s where insight might step in. So what one thing that was really important that I hadn’t seen before that Tania said was that we we can really rely, I guess I just I saw it at a new level. I shouldn’t say I saw it for the first time. But I definitely saw it at a deeper level is that awareness is what we need. And then we can rely on our divine engineering. So a few episodes ago, I talked about, I think it might have been episode 52. I talked about is there a way to cultivate insight?
I had started to go down that rabbit hole with myself, maybe looking for practices to cultivate insight. And after the call with Tania, I realized, actually, there isn’t really a need for that, because awareness is everything. And once we’re aware, and we’re aware that our divine engineering will take over and shift things for us that we will have insights, then that’s enough. That’s all we need to do.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you creating a practice if you want to, to see if it would create more insight, but I can really see that, that where I want to look now is in the direction of simply being aware of how I feel. And as soon as I’m aware of how I feel, and I know that’s a message. If I’m having a bad feeling or if I’m having a feeling that bothers me, that’s not comfortable. That feels yucky. The awareness of that is 99% of the battle. And then I just need to remember that’s a message. Like I said earlier, that’s a barometric reading, letting me know where I’m at.
When we have those yucky feelings where we’re at is we’re disconnected from our own sense of well being or our own sense of divinity or our own path of truth, however you want to phrase it. So that was the next point I wanted to make. And then what else have I got written down here? Oh, geez, I think I’ve covered most of what I had made notes about.
I think looking back serendipitously, that quote that I brought to Tania, right at the beginning of the episode was really interesting because it reflected exact exactly what we talked about on the call.
You are a divine being walking through this life trying to find yourself.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are spiritual beings, divine beings, you might say, aspects of the Divine, walking through a human world, having a human experience, and trying to remember our own divinity. I’m sure millions and millions of people have walked through their entire lives without realizing that without recognizing, and I would have if I hadn’t stumbled across this understanding, without recognizing that we have this engineering that’s in place, that we don’t need to do anything about that.
As soon as we’re aware of how we’re feeling, it takes over. And it will bring us back automatically and naturally, every time to our center, or our sense of well being or our connection with our divinity. So you Yeah, I thought it was really cool that I had just heard that quote the night before. And then, like I say, it pointed to everything that Tania and I talked about on that episode.
And the one other thing I thought of. Or I guess that’s, well, let’s connect it to that, actually, to our divine engineering. I thought of this little analogy, if you’ve seen the movie, Finding Nemo. And it’s an animated movie by Pixar. And there’s there, the characters are little fish, there’s a blue fish, who’s looking for his son, Nemo. And there’s an orange fish, of course, and you’re probably all familiar with this, but just in case, you’re not named Dory. And she’s on the journey with the dad fish trying to help him find his son. And Dory has short term memory loss.
And related to this idea of our divine engineering and to the fact that we don’t need to do anything to once we’re aware of what’s going on that we’ve fallen off the path of truth that our that our engineering, Tania call that our system then kicks in, and it supports us and it creates the insights and the changes and all the things that we need to carry on and return to a really good feeling. So it’s like being Dory in in that ocean. In other words, so Dory loses her memory and people keep reminding her about things that she’s forgotten.
When we’re walking in this world, we’re doing the same thing. We are constantly forgetting and then waking up to it, forgetting and then waking up to it. And asking ourselves how can I fix this? How can I make this different? How can I change my unwanted habit? What sort of willpower tools can I use to do that? What sort of regimen or structure or that sort of thing can I use to stop myself from eating the thing that I you know that I really crave but that I don’t want to be eating.
People ask what can I do to return to being connected with my well-being?
That would be just like Dory saying, What can I do to return to the water? What can I do to return to be in the ocean. And of course, she’s never left the ocean. And it’s the same with us, we’ve never left our divinity. It’s always there. So just like Dory is swimming through the ocean and forgetting things, and then being reminded of them again, she is always, always in her natural state, in her state of being a fish in the ocean. And there’s nothing she needs to do to return to that state of being in the water and being a fish.
It’s the same with us. And when we I know, it can be a little bit hard to get our heads around that a little bit. Because we can feel so separated from, from the Divine parts of ourselves from our well being, especially if we’ve been caught up in the self help world like I was for 30+ years where everything is focused on the problems that we have, and fixing those.
I wanted to bring that up as a reminder, and I thought that was a good visual, because so many people have seen that film. And I have heard it brought up before as a metaphor about our divine engineering and who we are, that it is like a fish asking about what’s water. So yeah, I thought that little analogy might be helpful.
I think that’s about all I have to share on this episode. I mean, there was so much that I appreciated about that coaching call with Tania and just a big shout out to her because it was so special for me, especially to be able to speak to somebody who I’m friends with, and who I trust. And who knows me. She knows me really well. I just really appreciate you, Tania Elfersy. It was so good, having you coach me.
And of course, the intention of releasing that coaching call was to be helpful to others. So I really hope it was helpful for you. And that thing, some things stood out to you or resonated with you.
If you have any follow up questions about the call, or anything that I’ve said here today, you can leave a comment on the blog post if you go to unbroken podcast.com and then scroll down. This is number 54. And if you click on that, you’ll go to the blog post. And then if you scroll down to the bottom of the blog post, you can leave a comment.
I would love to hear if something resonated with you or if you are puzzled by anything. And like I said at the beginning, you can also go to if you want to be more private, you can go to AlexandraAmor.com/questions and submit a question there as well.
I think that’s about it for me today. I hope you are doing well and taking good care and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye.
It’s Not All On You with Tania Elfersy
Mar 07, 2024
You’ve heard me struggle for the past few months because I’ve had a relapse into my overeating habit. I finally wised up and called in my friend Tania Elfersy to coach me. In this episode, Tania shares so much wisdom and teaches me many things including that awareness of what is truth and what isn’t is so important and that once we’re aware our divine design will take things from there.
Tania Elfersy has a passion for revealing rarely discussed truths about women’s life-cycle events.
She is a transformative coach, speaker, writer and educator. Since 2015, Tania has been supporting women through perimenopause and menopause, allowing them to reach natural symptom relief, and a greater sense of well-being.
You can find Tania Elfersy at TheWiserWoman.com and on Facebook @TheWiserWoman.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
The truth is always in clarity, never in a bad feeling
What is an unwanted habit telling us about?
What happens when we fall off the path of truth?
The importance of being aware of our experience in the moment
How wrestling with what we’re feeling makes it ‘sticky’
How it’s not on us to fix how we feel – it will fix on it’s own once we’re aware of having fallen off the path of truth
When we are calm solutions arise
Transcript of Interview with Coach Tania Elfersy
Alexandra: Thank you for being with me here today. I really appreciate it. And here’s the funny thing. I had a couple of insights in the last couple of days that have felt like they’ve been quite helpful.
I was listening to some Sydney Banks stuff while I was cooking the other night. And I guess it doesn’t really matter what was said, but he said,
“You are a divine being walking through this life trying to find yourself.”
I really resonated with that. It really encapsulated everything we do, and just shifted something for me. But let’s talk about the stuff that’s tricky. Because that’s where the juice is.
My main question is if you felt stuck, what do you do in that situation?
Tania: That’s why I often feel stuck. Because I’m such a human. I don’t fly on my little enlightenment cushion. And sometimes, it just occurs to me that the feeling is telling me what’s true. So I fall back into the feeling. And ponder on that.
I’ve checked this out now for about six, seven years. Because it’s not enough that I’ll tell you, the feeling is pointing to what’s true. And in that sense, as I’m sure you know, that is the feeling of clarity. And everything else is not true. So, again, I could tell you this, but until you’ve really experienced it. I’m still surprised when I get that. And I’ll give you an example, really, it’s not, I guess it’s not like a stuck example, but it’s an example of that.
I was trying to go to sleep, I’d almost fallen asleep or I just about falling asleep. And all of a sudden there was a huge bang. I mean, boom. And so I’m going through my mind and I’m like, okay, it doesn’t sound like it with a missile. Unfortunately, I know what that sounds like. It doesn’t sound like there’s a bomb. I know that. But there was definitely something.
I was just lying there. I wasn’t moving. And I suspected my husband might have heard it, but I thought maybe it was asleep. I didn’t want to wake him up. And so I was going through what maybe it’s a new kind of bomb that I haven’t heard before. And it’s a new kind of weapon and a new kind of thing. And then I was like listening for would there be sirens. Because we’re still in the war. There will be sirens and I’m not hearing any sirens or maybe it was further away but it was still quiet out there. Hang on.
I got up and I checked the news and there was nothing in the news. Maybe they’re hiding it from us. Maybe it’s so bad they’re hiding. Right? So this is all going through my mind. And it is 2am. So it’s like, by the time I got up, it was 2am. I think it was like kind of falling asleep that one time. So that whole time, I was just like, lying there, having all these emotions. And then I came back to bed and I woke up my husband. “Did you hear that?” And he’s like, “It’s thunder.”
I don’t know why I didn’t catch it as thunder, but I didn’t. So then I had this whole hour. And of course, if I had tuned in before, I would know. Because it’s always true. It’s always true, even if the truth we can say, is something that we would classify as uncomfortable.
The truth is always in the clarity, and it’s never in the uncomfortable feeling.
It’s so profound. Right? And like I said, you have to test it to believe it. Because we’re always going to say, Well, surely this this one, this one is, you know, this one is not, it’s not going to be this one isn’t. But it is and, and even if, like I said, even if there’s a situation where we think, Well, this, this is terrible, like in any sense, like, it’s not even that it’s the story we attach to the situation that’s making us feel uncomfortable.
Alexandra: Okay, so applying that to myself, when I felt like I was having a relapse, that’s what I’m calling it, but holding that term lightly, in October, which is sort of when it started. I get the feeling of the drive to over eat. And what you’re saying, putting that in personal terms, is that the truth isn’t there in that feeling. It’s in clarity.
When I feel that feeling, knowing that it’s not true, is one place to look.
Tania: I’m sure there are a number of thoughts that are coming through at that time for you. Like what happens?
Alexandra: I feel disappointed right away. I hope it’s very temporary, a day or two, which this time it wasn’t. And then I kind of went into a passive mode of just waiting for insight about it. And that eventually led to frustration. So that was my process. Does that help?
Tania: Can we go back a little bit more. What happens you’re talking about, how you feel yourself. So what happens in that? You just said, I have the feeling to overeat? I can’t remember the words used or something. But what what’s that?
Alexandra: The drive to overeat is what I call it. It’s this specific feeling. How can I describe it? It’s a feeling of being gripped by a drive, like I said, to eat in a way that I don’t want to eat, to engage in a behavior that I don’t want to do. And it feels so compelling that if I tried to just use willpower to not do it, which I have done in the past, it’s futile. It’s like holding a beach ball under the water. It’s just you’re fighting against Mother Nature, and it’s just going to pop up eventually.
Tania: And what’s going on? Like it seems like there’s something underneath that there’s something before that.
Alexandra: I don’t think so. Can you give me an example?
Tania: What’s the thought there?
Alexandra: It doesn’t really come as a thought initially. It’s a feeling – that’s why I call it a drive. It feels kind of desperate, and compulsive. But until that moment, I had been doing just fine. So it doesn’t feel like it’s triggered by thinking.
With your example with the bombs, of course, or the thunder, that noise was the trigger that created a lot of thinking, is what you’re saying. And in this case, there isn’t really something like that. A trigger like that.
Tania: But then it’s like, I want a piece of cake, or I want the whole cake.
Alexandra: In this case, I want rice with my dinner, and which I’ve been trying to avoid, and wine. And, there’s a bit of, one glass of wine isn’t enough. It has to be more than that. Two or three.
Tania: Okay. So, I want wine with my dinner. And then what happens?
Alexandra: And then I have it, and so there’s food on my plate, and it’s too much food. I can see that it’s more food than I actually need. But I feel that feeling of desperation. And I eat it, and I feel some sense of pleasure while I’m doing that, and then afterwards, I feel sort of disgusted with myself disappointed. Unhappy.
Tania: So I don’t even know if this is the right place to live. But it feels like it might be like to go back, like so you make yourself the rice. And you know that you don’t want to be eating rice. So what happens back then, that you say, I’m going to make myself rice because
Alexandra: Oh, because it will come this feeling of desperation, this drive to overeat, it will make it go away temporarily.
Tania: Hmm. Okay. And the feeling that away then. There’s something back there. That seems to me that’s the start. And it’s kind of a snowball, right of everything else that we can just try and excuse or say okay, or whatever, but there seems to be like something at the beginning. That’s rising up. And saying, if you’re calling it desperation with desperation for what,
Alexandra: I know it’s funny now. I just react to the feeling I don’t really examine it.
In a way I could say it’s desperation to just make the feeling itself go away. I feel the feeling and then I feel compelled to make it go away. And I know the thing that will make it go away, which is a large meal. And then what else what else?
Tania: How can you say the feeling that will make it go away?
Alexandra: Practice. I mean, it works. You know, it does work.
Tania: There’s something behind the desperate like, a tiger I’m desperate to eat. I’m hungry, or I’m desperate to eat because I’m sad, lonely. What was that?
Alexandra: That’s really interesting. Consciously no, there’s not that feeling there. And I know what you’re pointing to. That has been the case in the past, where before I knew about the principles, I would have a bad day or have a feel angry or upset and I would eat the thing in order to soothe myself from that experience. Now I know that my moods go up and down and I’m not trying to solve a feeling or a mood are a thought at all. It’s habitual, it happens at the same time every day.
For the rest of the day, I eat just fine. And I’m happy with the way I eat. And then it just happens that right now, at this time at supper time, I feel this drive to eat compulsively.
Tania: Because again, I wonder what’s there? Right under what’s there? Because there must be something that’s there. And there’s no judgment about what’s there. Just I wonder what’s there? I wonder why I’m then having to create this decision.
I wonder why I decided that was something terrible with the thunder, see what I mean. And so I can say, well, because I was feeling a bit sensitive about the war stuff and stuff like that. But I wonder what’s there? And it’s like, there’s no, I guess, there’s no answer. But like, I would wonder, what’s there?
Because it seems like there’s some something going on there that then says, I must eat. And then there must be something afterwards, because there’s some feeling that you’re getting, and I know, talking to other women who have challenges with eating that’s a wide range. And they will say I had these cookies today. And I thought, well, I have cookies, too. But I saw them thinking about it. So was it possible that you could have the rice and then do like, Okay, I just had the rice. Full stop.
Alexandra: Theoretically, I think what I noticed is that I’m responding mindlessly to that to that feeling of…it’s really good to talk about this, because it’s making me break it down into smaller pieces.
I feel that feeling. And I know from experience that willpower doesn’t work. So fighting against it won’t accomplish anything. So I don’t do that. So I kind of take that off the out of the equation.
Do I have a lot of thinking about it afterwards? Yes, definitely. Because it feels like a problem, for sure. And there’s definitely a lot of thinking about it while it’s happening and afterwards.
The way that I’ve seen it over these years of exploring this is that the feeling of the drive to overeat is letting me know that there’s more to see about my state of mind. The feeling is always letting me know where my thinking is. But in this case, my thinking isn’t somewhere specific. It’s not that I’ve been thinking about having a bad day, and I’m trying to solve that problem.
So the best way I can find to say it is the feeling is letting me know that there’s more to see about my true nature. That’s why that quote from Sydney Banks at the beginning touched me so deeply. That there’s something in between me and my understanding of my divinity. So that’s as that’s as the best way I can describe it.
Tania: Might it be simpler than I think? Perhaps you’re describing it because you’re saying the feeling allows me to see that there’s something more to see.
How about if it’s simpler than that? And it’s just showing you that you’ve fallen off the path of truth.
That’s it. It’s okay to hire another brain, but it’s just not your truth. Yeah. And then, we don’t have to, of course, go in and analyze. What’s the thought? What’s taking me off this path of truth? We can just know I’ve fallen off the path of truth. Now, what do I want to do?
No judgment, I can fall off the path of truth. A similar example that comes to mind: sometimes if I shout at my kids, and then I realize all kind of half sentence there really is a better way to do this. So I explain to them what you want, but I might keep on showing them just because I’m on a roll. And then I may apologize if you know, it’s gone too far.
Or I’ll come to them. I was like, Okay, well, what I really wanted to tell you was this. Sorry, I shouted. But it’s okay. That I shouted. So it’s okay to say or, or not, this isn’t true for me. But here I am off the path of truth.
Alexandra: I like that. It’s so simple. As you say, it’s so simple. I’ve fallen off the path of truth. Hmm. That’s really profound. I love that.
Is there anything you do to get to get back on the path of truth?
Tania: No because as soon as you see that, that’s awareness rising up. You don’t need to control it. I don’t need to Okay, come up faster. You know, come on faster. So I’ll stop shouting and it’s rising, okay.
Which means that naturally, I’ll start maybe taking a dip between challenging my kids or something, because there’s a slowing down. That happens naturally. I don’t need to manage that because the awareness is the only thing we ever need. I’ve fallen on off the path of truth. Where’s the truth in this moment? No idea.
Alexandra: So you don’t go consciously looking for the truth at that moment, or insight?
Tania: No, because since I’ve fallen off the path of truth, I’ll be in a great state of mind. So whatever is true isn’t necessarily going to come to me in that moment. But just the awareness, start slowing things down. So it seems that in this thing that must happen before desperation that we don’t know what it is yet, right?
There could be a time when there’s just an awareness that comes the foreground, and you say, Oh, I know this isn’t the path of truth. No judgement. Right? I could also go down the path of I’m such a bad mom. What the kids are going to think? I’m traumatizing my kids. I’m not setting a good example. That’s very unhelpful. So I wouldn’t do that. But I can totally be in the awareness if I fall off the path of truth and still doubting it. And it’s okay. Because I’m human. I’m not machine.
Alexandra: And so in a way, it seems like there’s trust there that you’ll get back on the path.
Tania: At some point, yeah. That is a good point. And you have the center.
Alexandra: And then also, there’s something in there about knowing that what’s happening isn’t the truth. Maybe we’ve already said that. But I see it a new way. Just now. That’s the awareness. I guess. That yeah, that whatever’s happening. isn’t real in a way. Isn’t the truth.
Tania: Yeah, right.
Alexandra: Yeah, that is so simple. I love that.
Tania: And it can keep on because we can see at any moment, right from that moment that you feel like there’s some desperation, okay, I’ve fallen off the path of truth. And maybe you’ll see it a bit. And then you’ll see a bit more, and then you’ll see a bit more. And then it doesn’t matter when you when it really lands because it will land.
And maybe it’s when you’ve cooked the rice, but you haven’t eaten, maybe it’s after you’ve eaten the rice, but it will land and then there’ll be a gentler experience of it all. And then maybe you’ll eat the rice. And maybe you’ll have a glass of wine. And it’s just like, and then you’ll see it completely.
So there’s no judgment. But it’s there. We say don’t practice but it’s almost like the practice helps it. Because once you’ve seen it so many times, you know that’s all I need. All I need is that first glimpse of awareness. That’s all I need to see. And then I don’t need to worry about it anymore.
Because right then I’ve moved into remembering what’s true, which is not this, and I know it’s not this because then I know it’s a feeling. But like I said, you can hang out doesn’t matter.
Alexandra: And so you just repeated again: at the beginning you said the feeling is telling me what’s true. And so that drive to overeat it’s the same thing but reversed. The feeling is telling me what’s not true. It’s a yucky feeling. You feel gripped by this habit. And it’s yucky. And so that’s telling me it’s not true. This is not the path of truth.
Tania: This is the reason why I think I need to eat this. That’s making me feel yucky is not true.
Alexandra: Okay, I’m writing this down.
Tania: I guess it doesn’t matter but it’s worth remembering. We really don’t need to then but where’s the truth then? What is the truth? It’s about the one no we don’t need that tool that comes by itself that just rises to the surface. And that will appear in perfect time for us to see it.
Because, of course, if you’re in an insecure thinking state, and, and truth comes to mind, you’re not going to hear it anyway. So don’t worry about that. But once you see the awareness, open up, that’s the bit, then you’re in a better position to hear something that’s true, which may be like, Oh, maybe I’m not desperate. Maybe I don’t need that.
Alexandra: Say that again? Do you remember what you said?
Tania: You may, through the opening of awareness, there’ll be a shift. Then you can say, well, maybe I’m not desperate. Maybe I don’t need to eat that. But that will come in gentler. But you don’t have to bring it in.
Like what I said before that was like, if you’re worrying about when you’re going to hear the truth, you’re not going to hear it because you’re in an insecure thinking. You don’t need to worry about it. Because even if it’s like, hearing the truth of what’s going on right now, you’re not going to hear it. So you just do the awareness, things slow down, and then there’s opening, and then all the light can come in, and then maybe the truth will appear. And maybe it won’t even appear that maybe it will pick the next morning. And it doesn’t matter.
Alexandra: Yes, because of the awareness. I think where I tripped up these last five months is I knew I needed awareness. I knew I needed an insight to shift me out of what was happening. But somehow I went about looking for it in the wrong way.
I think what it was was, I believed that feeling – the drive to overeat – was real. I believed it was real. And I believed it needed a solution. That’s what it feels like inside me now. And instead of what you’re describing feels so much lighter, holding it in a much lighter way. And just knowing this isn’t real, this isn’t the truth. And knowing that is enough.
And then as you say, I love that you say, “The truth will rise to the surface.”
I can see to that. That it was just a habitual battle. I just didn’t know any better at the time not to engage. I was gripped with it. I was fighting with it, wrestling with it that whole time. Even when I was saying I’m trying to just let it go and let it be what it is. I can tell now looking back that yeah, that I was really wrestling with it.
And what you’re describing, as you, as we said, is so much simpler. Just knowing this is not the truth. And I’ll say it again. I just felt like it was something I had to fix. And so when we’re in that mindset, I’m sure that just makes it grip tighter.
Tania: Yeah, yeah. And there’s a lot of responsibility on us.
Alexandra: Yes, I was taking it up completely on myself. Say more about that.
Tania: The best thing that I can do in any moment is just have the awareness. This isn’t true. Right. And that’s actually about sort of presence. I don’t know whatever would make sense to you, is it like pulling into presence? Oh, in this moment, Oh, I get that feeling not uncomfortable, calm richer. That’s it, that’s all that’s needed, right?
And then the system then just falls into place, it’s going to fall into place anyway because it could be longer after you’ve eaten the meal and the wine and the wine and it will fall into place. Or it could be quicker. And it’s just like as you spend more time in with this understanding, we fall back quicker into wellbeing into a sense of ease.
So if I can just remember, oh, what’s my awareness? Okay, that isn’t true right now. That’s it.
The system takes care of itself. I’m not responsible for it.
I don’t need to find out what’s true. I don’t need to work out whether I need to eat the rice or not eat the rice. I’m just going to do whatever comes to mind anyway. Great. So it’s not on me. And it’s not spiritual bypassing? No, it’s not it’s because the system there. I can trust that it works. Because it really works. It works for you every single time.
You’re not responsible. You can use your understanding to be an awareness to remember that that’s it. That’s all it takes. It’s that quote from Sydney Banks, right, “You’re always thought away from a different feeling.” And that dropping into presence or remembering the feeling or seeing it’s not true, whatever it is, that’s going to just one switch and the rest is taken care of.
Alexandra: Wow, yeah. Oh, that’s huge. I guess I’ve been thinking it was on me. I know that insight, and I’ve known that insight isn’t on me but I feel like I’ve been responsible for everything else. Now I see you’re saying there’s a lot less for me to do, as we say.
I loved what you said about the system will take care of everything else. You’re saying the way that we are designed will take care of everything else.
Tania: It’s so loving.
Alexandra: Nice. Wow. That’s so big. Thank you.
I just see this at a whole new level now this whole thing about how the feeling we’re having is always telling us whether we’re on the path of truth or not. And yeah, just always, always getting that feedback and then if we’re not just being aware of that is enough. This isn’t a good feeling. Therefore it’s not the truth. Ah wow that’s amazing.
Tania: I wonder if now if you read the Sydney Banks quote if it means anything different for you.
Alexandra: “You are a divine being walking through this life trying to find yourself.”
I think it reads the same way. The metaphor that occurred to me about that is that it was like we look through a windscreen on a car. And you know how windscreens can be foggy sometimes. And that fog is created by our thinking, and our lack of trust and how we work and all those things. And the more we see about that, the more the fog just starts to melt away.
What’s left then is our divinity we can see it clearly. Which is what we’ve been taught talking about this morning.
Tania: Because that all in you. I call it divinity in your pocket. It’s always there with you. It can never leave. There’s this divine system, beautifully designed. And it’s always working in our favor. And that’s the divine in us. And then there’s this tiny surface of freewill that we can create all this stuff with. And then we can just let it go. And remember, and then we’re back. Right, and then divine essence.
Alexandra: So beautiful. So brilliant.
Tania: Simple, simple.
Alexandra: I wish I’d asked you to help me four months ago, four and a half.
Tania: I’d said it must be perfect. Because how could it be anything else? Because you may have heard it and then and then we could have had a conversation and you wouldn’t have heard it.
Alexandra: I can see that. I can just really see how despite all that I’ve learned or had learned up until now there was still an element there of battling with this feeling. Battling with that drive to overeat, wrestling with it. And as soon as we start wrestling with something, it just grips even tighter. So it’s really clear to me now, I didn’t realize of course, that I was doing that. But that’s what I was doing.
Thank you. That was really, really incredible. Very, very helpful.
Tania: Another story comes to mind.
I don’t know if I shared yesterday on the call about for the Insight Timer lives we made 10 megabytes per second for the insight time alive? I was using with the spiritual team. Immediately from the spiritual team, I heard, be in touch with your ISP. And I was in touch with the ISP. But they couldn’t solve it for me, because they told me be in touch with the infrastructure provider. And then when I talked to the infrastructure provider, they’re telling us, we with a cat running around with my energy.
I’m screaming at them, the infrastructure people. And I remember as I’m screaming at them, I’m like, this isn’t the way. I don’t know why I’m doing this. But I’m screaming at them. What can I do, I was really even some foul. And I’m not very foul, but there’s some context. And, and then in the end, I got it, I couldn’t even work it out what to do, because they were like, You need to connect to the fiber. And the ISP was also like, trying to get me on to the fiber with them. And it was just like, the next one hour, I’m like, I don’t need that fiber right now. I just need the ISP to be both provide.
So the thing is that I’d heard that at the beginning. But I needed somehow goes through this whole thing. And me being aware, like sitting in their conversation, shouting, screaming at them. And being aware, this is definitely not the way. And then the ISP said their thing and I realizes, Oh, I just need you to give me the infrastructure that we’ve got right now and give me the upgrade.
Do you see I could have got caught up in that screaming? I’m so terrible. Why didn’t I just listen to that? I knew the answer was at the ISP. Why did I have to go to that whole thing? But it doesn’t matter. I don’t do that anymore. I used to though.
I used to if I was in the situation of having night sweats or whatever it was. I teach this stuff woman doing having all these symptoms again. I’d have the whole story running. And I could also just in that conversation and me screaming at these poor folks. The truth is they’ve been into my house and caused damage and whatever it is just like not really appropriate.
But it’s just, I just don’t go there. I don’t mess around in that because it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good. And maybe I just needed to have the conversation and remember how awful their service is. And then I can just feel completely fine just dropping them and going over to the ISP. And like, whatever. But at any stage that could have been a much bigger fear for stress inducing something.
And even in that shouting stuff, which could be like you trying to battle with the rice or with the wine or whatever it is. It could be that and then you can be like, Oh, but it’s just like it happens. It’s finished. And then you just calm down. Right, and so I just calm down the next morning. Oh, that’s what you need to give them a call.
Alexandra: It’s an important point, when you calm down, that’s when the solution came. It had come earlier, but that’s when you kind of figured it out.
Tania:
Right, right. But then like, it’s the same with you. And these five months, you could say, Well, why not? Why not? What if you had to just go through it? And then you can be in the place where you see something that’s going to be transformative.
Alexandra: Definitely. And there’s no sense regretting it now because it’s over. So dwelling on it is not going to help.
Tania: The family will tell you that.
Alexandra: Yes, yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Tanya. This has been monumental.
Insight creates change. This I know for sure. Not willpower. Not restriction. Not even information. Insight. But what happens when we get tired of waiting for insight? What if we want to change and just…aren’t? Can we cultivate insight? Is there a way to seek out insight without layering more thinking onto a situation?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Struggling with being in the back of the spiral for 5 months
Looking for answers in universal intelligence in an active way
Are spirit guides the same as universal intelligence?
Is there a way to access guidance when we need it?
Not wanting to share what I’m not embodying
Is unresolved trauma causing what I’m experiencing?
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
George Pransky’s new book The Secret to Mental Health
Hello, explorers, and welcome to episode 52 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m happy to have you here today with me. Thank you for joining me.
I’ve got a couple of housekeeping items before we launch in here.
The first is – and probably no one cares about this but me – I’m going to change the numbering system of the podcasts. Again, I’m sure nobody cares. I used to number them like q&a Number five, and then regular number five for the interview episodes. But now that there’s just one episode per week going out, I’m just going to number them sequentially. I’m not going to break them out, like they were being broken out before. So if you’re wondering about that, and I’m sure you weren’t, there you go. Now you have an answer.
The second little bit of housekeeping I wanted to mention is:
George Pransky has a new book out, it’s called The Secret to Mental Health.
I haven’t read it yet. So this isn’t a review or anything. But I wanted to mention it in case you were interested in picking that up. George Pransky has been around this understanding for a very long time. He was one of the very first students who worked with Sidney banks. He and Roger Mills and Elsie Spittle were people right at the very beginning hearing from Mr. Banks, way before he started calling it the Three Principles. It wasn’t really called anything then.
He has specialized in relationships, he has a really good book called The Relationship Handbook.
That’s one of his earlier works. And so this one new one is called The Secret to Mental Health. I’ve downloaded the sample to my Kindle app on my iPad. So I’ll be starting in on that very soon. When I get finished with the mystery novel that I’m reading, that I’m really enjoying, that I couldn’t put down last night.
I just realized as I hit record, I haven’t figured out what the title of this episode is officially going to be when I put the little illustration up, and the blog post and everything.
What I want to talk about is universal intelligence and universal wisdom and whether or not there’s a better way, a more active way, to access that.
And here’s why. As I mentioned, for the last few months, I have felt like I’ve been in the back of the spiral. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, if you go back a few q&a episodes, I talk about what that means. How our learning and growth is like a spiral, like a corkscrew shape, like a corkscrew lying on its side. And it’s always moving forward. But we have these times where we’re in the back of the of that curve. And it can seem harder, and things get tougher.
And yet, when we know that when we know that that’s just a natural part of growth, and learning and change and life and our progression through life, then it’s a lot easier to deal with, because we don’t think it’s a problem, or a something to fix or that we’re broken. It’s just part of the way stuff works just like winter is part of one of the seasons. We might not like it, some people love winter. But some people don’t but that doesn’t mean that winter is a problem or that it’s a broken part of mother nature or anything like that.
I’ve been wanting to explore or I’ve sort of very recently come to touch on this idea of exploring different ways to connect with universal wisdom because I’ve been in the back of the spiral for really for about five months. I think it started in October 2023. And this is Leap Day 2024 as I record this and put it up. I’m late recording and I’m late recording because there’s because of being in the back of the spiral.
I just feel like I’ve lost a lot of momentum in my exploration of this understanding.
I don’t feel very motivated. I feel kind of like depressed except not quite as deep and dark as I’ve been depressed in the past. I just feel a little blech. And normally, I really enjoy my work and enjoy everything I do. And feeling that way has really got my attention and it’s got my attention, then it’s been going on for quite a while.
The other thing that’s been going on for quite a while is that my eating habits.
They were so great last year but they have slightly gotten worse since October. And I’ve been doing and I’m going to give you an analogy about that in just a second. But I’ve been doing all the things I talked about on this podcast in order to sort of manage that or deal with it. I’ve been approaching it is that the right word? Receiving it, receiving that unwanted drive to overeat as feedback, not as a problem. It’s feedback, it’s universal wisdom, and the wisdom in my body, trying to get my attention. It’s telling me about my state of mind.
I’ve been looking upstream rather than downstream about that.
Trying to as much as I can to look toward the nature of our experience as human beings. Look toward the nature of thought, rather than downstream, which is looking at how can I control this? How can I change my habits with willpower and structure and lots and lots of rules about what I can eat and candied? Because my experience tells me that that way madness lies.
There’s just no relief in that. I’ve tried that for 30 years, it didn’t work. It just made me unhappy and feel even more broken than I already did. So I don’t want to have anything to do with that. That’s just not where I’m going to look. So I’ve been doing all the things that I talk about. And really, it hasn’t shifted, it’s been five months. And that’s too long. According to me, according to this right now, it’s just been too long.
I’m suffering, and I don’t like that of course, none of us do. And so here’s what I’m also doing, which is something a little wacky, and you can decide whether you want to stay on board with me or not.
A friend of mine got interested in mediumship recently.
I was into all those sorts of things when I was in the cult. We talked about all that kind of stuff, channeling and spirit guides, and all those things. I had really shut that part of myself away because of the associations that I have with the cult. But when my friend started exploring, and I got interested as well, and was listening to some podcasts and it was a good distraction, actually, from the suffering that I was experiencing, about overeating.
I started to think and this is very recently, like, within the last week, we talk about and I talk about universal wisdom, and universal intelligence, and the intelligence of the universe that is within all of us and within everything all the time. And it’s never separate from any of us. And so that got me thinking, well, the other thing I often talk about is that insight has its own timing.
In my personal embodied experience, insight has been the thing that has created change in my life. And yet I felt at the mercy of when it would arrive. And it has done a lot. And it has created tremendous change in my life, which is fantastic.
What if there was a more conscious, more mindful, more active way of tapping into insight of tapping into that universal intelligence?
So then, when I started to think about the subject of spirit guides and the way that mediums talk about spirit guides. And it’s always struck me as kind of this magical mystical thing that maybe some people have access to, and some people don’t, or some people have a talent for, and some people don’t. And or some people rely on that guidance and others don’t.
I started to think given that we are all one, we are all made of stardust, and the trees and the flowers and the earth, everything we are made of stardust with, the universe is made of stardust, and we are as well. And that’s a physical representation. Or way to say that we are all connected, we are all aspects of the universe that has come to this world to have this experience. And we’re all connected in that way, inside that Universal Intelligence. And we’re all connected by things like love. What if this opened a doorway, this idea of spirit guides, and I’m using finger quotes, Not to disparage them at all. But just to point out that, this new idea that I’ve it’s not a new idea, it’s an old idea, but it’s something new that I’ve stumbled across.
What if there was a way to access our guidance, and to initiate insight or receive insight, be more open to it when we need it?
In a more active way than I’ve learned about with the three principles. So that’s what I’m exploring lately. I don’t know if that’s if this is going to be a thing, if it’s going to help or if it’s a distraction. I suspect there’s a way to go into this in a very head like way, with a lot of thinking about it, and trying to force things to happen.
And then there must be a way to go about it, which is what I’m trying to do, in a very heartfelt way. In a very calm, quiet, not needing to add more thinking to a situation, but listening. And that that idea of listening, came about via one of the mediumship podcasts that I was listening to. The host talks about how there’s that in meditation, this is her approach her practice, that it’s meditation is really about listening. And of course, she’s talking about listening to her guides, or angels or whatever. And so I translated that into what if it was a practice for listening to universal intelligence, especially around when we’re having a challenge with something like an unwanted habit.
I don’t have any answers to those questions today, or to all those what ifs, but I’m here to tell you that that’s what I’m exploring.
I’m doing it out of a bit of a sense of frustration with this, spending so much time in the back of the spiral at this point in my life. Because I felt like, I really felt like last year, the my overeating habit was gone. And now it’s back, it’s back in a very small way. And it’s very specific, in that at supper time, I’m just eating a little too much. I’m eating, as I’ve talked about rice and potatoes, and I’m having wine with those things. And again, not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things with any of those foods. We don’t want to look in that direction and demonize wine or rice.
But I very clearly know the difference between when I’m eating in a way that’s healthy.
That’s not a response to the drive to overeat. And right now at supper time that’s not happening. I am eating in response to the drive to overeat. There’s a real need in me at that time of day to comfort myself with those types of foods and again; not a problem. And I know that and those things are the valve right on the pressure cooker, they are a solution, they are letting pressure off. So my question becomes, okay, then tell me what, where that pressure exists, tell me not so much what I can do about it, but provide me the shift in consciousness that I need, in order to see things differently.
Sitting around waiting for that shift in consciousness, that insight just stopped has stopped working for me.
So this is what I’m exploring. Can I turn on that tap? Can I listen for insight and promote it in my life, and in my quest for peace and, and resolution of an overeating habit. And then related to this, too, so there are a couple of other things I wanted to say about that. One of them is that I think one of the reasons that the passion has gone out of me about what I’m talking about, and sharing on this podcast and elsewhere, and teaching about these three principles, is because for these last five months, I feel like a bit of a fraud.
I feel like I had it handled, and then the problem came back in a big way.
It doesn’t feel like I can be someone who can talk about resolving an overeating habit. At this point in my career, if I haven’t done that. Up until now I’ve been sharing everything I’m learning and the habit was shrinking. It was just gradually getting smaller and smaller, and these different habits that I’ve talked about were falling away, which is fantastic. I think it was great that I talked about it as that was happening.
And then and this is probably just a mental construct, but and then I was in a place last year where it felt like it was resolved. And now it feels like it’s back again, just in that very specific time of day. But still, I don’t think I can be talking about having resolved and overeating habit when I haven’t done it, when it’s come back in that way. So that makes me sad.
I can’t share what I’m not embodying. That’s not fair to talk about that kind of stuff.
Have the principles made a huge positive impact in my life? Absolutely.
And they’ve practically eliminated so many other issues that I had, one of them being anxiety disguised as urgency. So I could definitely talk about that. This overheating issue is kind of been the core thing that I’ve been wanting to resolve. And on that note, then also, the other thing I can say, too, is that I’m really exploring feedback, because it feels to me this idea that our habits are providing feedback about our state of mind, because it really feels to me and I mentioned this a couple of episodes ago, like I’m down to this sludgy part in the bottom of the cup. And so that maybe there are some really core issues there that need to be resolved. I just don’t know, I don’t know if that’s the truth.
I know that some practitioners of the three principals talk about how, and I shouldn’t maybe I shouldn’t even really say this, because I’m not really familiar with all their work. But a couple of people who have been on the show, I’ve seen them on social media talking about how the principles don’t help resolve absolutely everything and that our lives are not all made up of thought. We don’t entirely live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our experiences.
And that’s fine. I mean, if that’s what they want to explore, I’m not judging them at all. We all have to do our own thing and explore what’s the truth for us.
It has occurred to me to wonder, is there some trauma left in my body that needs to be healed in some other way?
Is that’s why the habit is there? It’s trying to alert me to it’s trying to give me feedback about that. That’s that when I refer to the sludge in the bottom of the coffee cup, that’s what I’m referring to. I went down a trauma rabbit hole last year, at some point, meaning that I looked into somatic therapy quite a bit. And then it just felt like I was layering more thinking into a situation, and that was unnecessary. I didn’t need to do that. So I stopped looking in that direction.
All I have right now is questions. I don’t have answers.
Which is fine. I mean, that’s what life is about, right? And these are the times in life when things get tough. This is when we learn, when I I’m frustrated and flailing and failing. This is the good stuff, this is when I will really learn and hopefully have insights. And I have been having some, they just haven’t been enough to really shift that problem. And so actually, now that I’m saying this, I realized too, this is a really beautiful, important time. Maybe I shouldn’t say important, but this is a really beautiful time.
If I can find some clarity about this, then being able to offer that to the world would be would be a gift.
I saw a little movie trailer recently, where one of the characters says,
“We don’t save ourselves, we save each other.”
And that really struck me in the heart, I love that, and I’ve always felt, it’s always been so important to me, to try to share whatever I learned whatever it is, and I’ve always been that way. Even when I was a self-help junkie, trying to share books and stuff that I learned with other friends who were suffering. So that was one thing I wanted to say.
And then the other thing is that the principles aren’t a well… here’s how I’ll say this:
There ain’t no cure for life.
That’s a motto I should have up on my wall, because it’s something that I returned to again and again. Life for anyone is never ever going to be perfect and completely smooth and happy and joyful in every single minute. I don’t even think that should be our objective. I find that because of the principles now that I can really ride out the really difficult times with so much more peace and ease. But that doesn’t mean that the principles have eliminated any kind of struggle or difficulty from my life. I still have challenges. And that’s not the principles’ objective. They’re simply describing what is happening with our experience.
There is an element of that when we understand that description it really does ease our suffering because as our thinking slows down and settles down and there’s less and less and less of it, then a were just so much calmer and quieter. And we’re more open to insight.
I was reflecting back on, for example, Episode 22 of Unbroken when I talked to Maryse Godet Copans. She has been a person who has always really struggled with anxiety and symptoms of anxiety. And for a long time those symptoms because of her understanding of the principles really reduced or went away. And then in the episode we talked about how she had a period where they came back. And so does that mean that that they failed that the principles failed her? No it doesn’t seem to me and she didn’t seem to feel that way either. Life was just happening.
And she says that in the episode, life is just lifing. And it really it seemed that the return of her symptoms really deepened her understanding of what her experience is made of, and what her suffering is made of, and how that suffering can be alleviated by understanding where her experience is coming from. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I highly recommend it.
So in other words, she can be a person who can talk about reducing anxiety symptoms, I think, completely fairly and a completely authentically. So is it the same? Is it the same for me?
Can I talk about reducing an overeating habit without having completely resolved it?
Here’s the analogy that I talked about earlier in the episode that came to me that I want to use. First of all, I’m going to interrupt myself, and say that so many unwanted habits are things that we can let go of entirely, and there’s a real bright line there. That’s a legal term. But you’re either doing the habit or you’re not.
So for example, binge eating; you’re either binge eating or you’re not, and then you know the difference. You’re either smoking or you’re not. If you’re had problems with alcoholism, you’re either drinking, or you’re not. And there’s a real black and white essence to that.
Overeating isn’t quite the same.
But I would say, for any, maybe you can relate to this, if you have an overeating habit. I know the difference when I’m eating just for even for pleasure, or I’m just having breakfast so that I can get on the road or do whatever it is, I’m going to do. I know the difference between that feeling versus when I’m eating because of this drive to overeat that I feel within me that feels compulsive, it feels a little bit out of control. I feel like a bit of a bottomless pit.
Alcoholics sometimes say one drink was too many. But 10,000 was not enough. It’s that kind of a feeling like there’s not enough food in the world to soothe this feeling that I’m having. So in a way with an overeating habit, there is a bright line. But at the same time, eating is not a habit that we can give up.
We can’t just stop eating the way that someone can stop smoking.
So there is that element to it. And along so along with all of this sort of thinking, I had this analogy the other day, and imagine that someone is a smoker, and that they smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. And they’ve tried for 30 years to quit. And the smoking problem really drives them crazy. And then imagine that they discovered the Three Principles. And over a period of years, it really changes so much about themselves and about their anxiety, which is one of the things they were using the smoking to deal with.
They end up going from smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, to just smoking three cigarettes a day. So at the end of the day, before supper they have a cigarette, after separate they have a cigarette, and then before bed, and that’s it. And whereas before they were smoking all day, every day, all the time. That is a huge change that that person has gone through. It is so much better for their health. You know what they’ve done all that change that they’ve made, they’ve clearly had huge shifts inside to be able to make such a dramatic difference to their smoking habit.
And throughout the rest of the day. They don’t care about smoking at all. They don’t think about it. They don’t crave it. It just doesn’t matter to them at all.
Is that person entitled to say that they’ve resolved their smoking habit?
So that’s the analogy I’m using about myself. And in my mind, I don’t think so. Is that person still a smoker? Like I say, have they experienced huge change? And is our thing so, so much better? Yes, of course. Absolutely. Can they say that they’ve resolved that habit? No, they can’t. So that’s kind of where I’m at.
I can’t, at the moment really say that I’ve resolved this habit. And with symptoms, like I talked about with Maryse in episode 22. I don’t know, this is something I’m wrestling with lately. Is that different? Are symptoms of anxiety different than the drive to overeat? And I want to say, no, they’re not. That’s life coming to life in both cases, inside that person. And it’s a thing that can make the person feel broken, or like there’s something wrong. Hmm, this would be a good topic, maybe for a future episode, just comparing and contrasting those two things.
So in other words, let me say, I think that Maryse is perfectly entitled to talk about her anxiety that she used to have, and the fact that it came back isn’t a failing on her part. I think she’s still entitled to teach and share about the principles. But for somehow, somehow, for myself, I’m not giving myself that grace, which is interesting.
It’s been good to talk this through with you today. Thank you. I knew some of what I wanted to say today, but not all of it. So that’s really helpful.
This is all just such a mystery, isn’t it? Life can be so mysterious, and so simple yet at the same time, and I guess I’m just feeling at the moment, like I don’t have any answers. And I’m feeling you know, in the soup, myself, and in the back of the spiral. But as I say, this is the place for learning.
So anyway, that’s, that’s all I have for today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. This has been really good for me to share. I hope that of course, as always, I hope that you have found it helpful. And if you have any questions or comments or anything about anything I’ve said, Do you want me to clarify anything?
If you want to add anything, please do so you can go to go to AlexandraAmor.com/questions. And fill out the form there and I will answer happily for you.
Until next time, take care. I hope you’re doing well. And I will see you next week. Bye.
Loving Relationships with Lori Carpenos
Feb 22, 2024
Author, therapist and coach Lori Carpenos has seen that what affects our relationships the most is our state of mind. When the couples she works with see that ‘working on’ their relationship is not the answer to a loving relationship, that’s when everything changes.
Lori Carpenos opened a private individual, couples and family counseling practice, in 1994, to pass along something she had stumbled upon in 1985, when she was privileged to meet the late Sydney Banks. As a result, her life changed in ways she could never have imagined at that time.
She maintains a private practice in West Hartford, CT as a therapist, life coach, business consultant, facilitator, and writer.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Starting out as an art teacher
Resonating with Sydney Banks’ exploration of innate mental health
On recognizing that ‘working’ on a relationship only makes things harder
How we all fall back into love when our minds are quiet
Getting on the wrong bus with our thinking but knowing we can choose a different ride
How we all always have all the love we need within us
How arguments originate from our state of mind
On being single and our relationship to thought about that
How we are all in relationship with our thinking
Transcript of Interview with Lori Carpenos
Alexandra: Lori Carpenos, welcome to Unbroken.
Lori: Oh, thank you, Alexandra. It’s nice to be with you.
Alexandra: It’s great to have you here. I’m so happy to meet you.
Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to find the Three Principles.
Lori: Well, they actually found me. It was quite by happenstance. I’d never heard of Sydney Banks, never heard of the three principles. I was an art teacher in Massachusetts, and I got a master’s in expressive arts therapy. I had this idea I wanted to do art therapy. And the place for that was California.
So I was 25 years old, and I decided to quit my tenured art teacher job. Much to the dismay of my parents. They tried to stop me. But I felt called in retrospect, when I realized it was not to be an art therapist, because I’m driving across the country. Because California was known as the land of New Thought and new things. And art therapy was supposedly really big.
I get halfway across. And I’m listening to a program, NPR, where they’re talking about a bill that had just passed in California, eliminating art, music, all the extra curricular activities in hospitals, schools, and I couldn’t believe it. It was like I was hearing something that was not true. And I’m thinking well, I’m halfway there. I already quit my job. I don’t have a job back on the east coast. So what do I do?
I decided to keep going. I didn’t have a job. I knew one person in Northern California where I was headed to. No job, a cocktail waitress with my master’s degree my pocket. And one thing led to another. Well it’s a long story not to get into. But the crux of the matter was, I got into a relationship with a boyfriend, who had gotten the degree from California trans personal psychology, and he was heading to Florida, to the Advanced Human Studies Institute, which you probably heard was the first training place in, in, in the world, actually, at that time. So I thought, well I’ll go with him, of course, I’ll go with him, I’ll be closer to my family, then.
I went out to California and this is now three years later. I did get a few part time jobs as an art therapist in the VA hospital, and also in Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. And both of those were really interesting situations. So I landed at the Advanced Human Studies Institute, and I’m going to a talk by this unknown person to me, Sydney Banks, and it was like somebody turned a light on in my head, is the only way I could explain it.
I suddenly realize that the trajectory of my life is not completely up to me. That there’s some flow that is beyond me. And what I realized later, is how else to describe something like that, but I was drawn, I was driven to drive all that distance, by myself alone in my car with whatever belongings I had at the time. I realized later that it was really was a calling to be part of this understanding the which now we know is the whole paradigm shift in psychology.
Alexandra: And what happened next? Where did where did this road take you?
Lori: At the Advanced Human Studies Institute, and I wasn’t a student, but my boyfriend was a student for a year, and I saw that he was calmer, more settled down. And so I decided to take the year training. And that’s where I met so many people from that are familiar to you and some of the listeners.
I learned from them as much as I did from Syd Banks because they would have insights. And I would realize, yeah, I see that true. When you hear truth, everybody knows that. It resonates, it makes perfect sense. You can’t debate it.
Alexandra: I’m just curious, was he there all the time, or was he coming and going?
Lori: He would come and go, yeah, he would come and go. Roger Mills was there all the time. I know you did an interview with Jack about Modelo, the project that Roger did in the in these projects. And I wish there at that time, but I did not meet the people who were involved in Modelo until a conference many years later. And just the stories were so incredible, incredible how people’s lives changed.
What was called in there was a newscast about it and they called it the wild wild west. That’s what modelo was like the Wild Wild West with drug dealers and shootings and all kinds of things. And to see these women, they were mostly women who were heads of the household, to the children. And at this conference, one of the women said that we all thought that we were third generation welfare recipients. That’s who we thought we were. So that’s how we behaved in the world.
We behave according to how we think of ourselves. And then she said, one of them discovered that they were had a had a program nearby that they could get a GED. A high school certificate, and one by one, they did that. Some of them actually became social workers. Some of them to this day, you can see them on YouTube that they are providing services to other people who are troubled and don’t know who they really are.
Alexandra: Wow. Oh, I didn’t realize that. That’s really interesting.
Where did your professional life take you?
Lori: Ah, good question. Well, there was a very good friend of mine, Hazel Fosse, and people will recognize her name, she’s no longer with us. But Hazel suggested that I get a license as a marriage and family therapist, because that was a way that I could share what I had learned and what was helping me so much, and all of my relationships. And so I did that. I followed her suggestion, how to get some extra courses and, and do an internship.
I spent a year at the Advanced Human Studies Institute after my year training as a counselor. And I got a license as a marriage and family therapist. And that’s pretty much where you know what I’ve been doing ever since.
Alexandra: Let’s back up a little bit.
Tell me a little bit about what your life was like before you learned about this understanding, before you met Sydney Banks. And then what it was like after.
Lori: Well, that’s another great question, because I didn’t realize that I was depressed. I had a lot of fun, being an art teacher and being in Boston at the time, and I had friends and boyfriends. But in my master’s program, it was recommended that we all get into therapy. So I did that. I got a diagnosis. I got a diagnosis.
They sent me to the Jung Institute in San Francisco. I took a battery of tests, and they came out with dysthymia and long term depression. So that explained to me that everybody’s life was not difficult. Right, I guess so then I started to think, Oh, I really have a problem. And so you can imagine what a relief it was to be around other people who were learning from Syd, learning that there’s no such thing. There’s no such thing as mental health disorders.
There’s a wonderful book coming out about that and when I was entering this world of therapy, in order for people’s insurance to pay therapists, you have to give them a diagnosis. I was so against that. But I discovered I could use a diagnosis called the adjustment disorder. And I tell people, that’s the diagnosis I use because we all go through adjustments in life.
I’ll never forget what Syd said. He said that, in the future there will be one diagnosis to us. And it will be the misuse of the ability to think. And that made perfect sense to me because I did not go from having a label as depressed to going to having a pretty carefree life. I can’t say some of it was overnight, but over the years, it just keeps getting better. Because I see when I get tangled up in my personal thinking, and I let it go it’s like, why would you hold onto a hot rock? Can you drop it, you’d let it go? Because you don’t want it to burn your hand?
It’s the same thing with thinking that there’s something wrong with you and thinking about all the things you don’t like, and all the judgments and expectations we take on about how life is supposed to be. And to find out that it’s all coming from me. The outside world is not telling me that I’m not good enough, or there’s something wrong with well, so I’m for people diagnose if somebody else is telling me there’s something wrong with me. So it was me telling myself a lot of hogwash, and believing it.
I sometimes get these thoughts, well, you could do better but then I don’t have to believe it. I don’t have to act as though that’s who I am. It’s not who I am. And that’s really what I came to see is that we all, everybody has, in essence, a spiritual essence that goes far beyond what we concoct with our brain with our ability to think.
We have this amazing ability to think. I couldn’t be here with you if I couldn’t think my way here. But boy, do we use it against ourselves unnecessarily and, and to wake up to that, and there’s not a person in this world, no matter what their circumstances have been. Because I’ve worked with people with the most unbelievable traumatic events in their past. And they see through it, that that’s over. And, in fact, they wake up to the fact that they have what it took to get to go beyond it, to get past it to leave it behind them.
Alexandra: You mentioned going into marriage and family therapy, and I saw this mentioned on your website that one of the things you want couples to learn is that they don’t need to work on their relationship. And so tell us about that.
It sounds so contrary to the standard way that people go when they are having trouble in their relationship.
Lori: Oh, yeah. It’s the standard way, right? Couples come in, and will write to me or they’ll contact me we have to work on our relationship. And when I get to talk to them, I can explain to them that the idea of working on anything, is typically not very pleasant. That you have to do something that you don’t really want to do.
So, when anybody learns that, it just takes getting back into a quiet mind. A quiet state of mind that’s not judging their partner, that’s not blaming the other person. Because the judgment and blame is coming from us, from the thinker. It doesn’t come from out there. It doesn’t come from another person doesn’t even come from an event. I mean, bad things happen. But it’s how we think about it. And how long we choose to think about something that we can’t fix.
Alexandra: Does this idea really surprise couples at first?
Lori: Some but some it lands on them like it makes perfect sense, yeah, we’ve been thinking that we’re really in trouble. And we have to do something that’s going to be awful and time consuming and expensive. And so they build up this aversion to him even talking to me. And an aversion to talking to each other. Leave that, in, that’s just really something now, people will be show afraid to talk to their partner. And there is not anything that a person has to be afraid to share when they’re in a loving, peaceful state of mind.
Alexandra: I imagine if you’re seeing that the relationship is a problem and then going in and talking about it, of course, that would feel yucky. It wouldn’t feel like a good thing to do.
I imagine when people see the difference of going into something with a calm, quiet, state of mind must be quite revelatory.
Lori: When you think about it, that, like you say, a problem. If people think that they have a problem, it’s just going to get them all worked up and get them thinking about whatever they think the problem is. But people can relate to this, because they know that they have had moments where they weren’t thinking problems. And it was like, they fell back in love with their partner. Yeah, out of the blue, that their head clears, their mind clears and they get a feeling of falling back in love. This love is always there.
We’ve all heard not just in the Three Principles community, but in so many spiritual communities that that’s where we are. And we can witness that. When you look at children and babies. They go right back into love.
Alexandra: Yes. Right.
Lori: They go right back. They cry, they need their diaper changed. They’re hungry. That’s taken care of. And then they’re just smiling. Nobody teaches babies to smile. Where does that come from?
Alexandra: And you know what it occurs to me, there’s that famous couples therapist, and the name is escaping me right now, who had the Love Lab in Seattle? Do you know who I’m talking about? Well, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Anyway.
They said that they could observe people in couples, and they could tell if the couple would last, or if they wouldn’t, just by observing them for a while, a day or two. And the premise was that the people would kind of come to the relationship from a loving place, is what I’m seeing now. But what came out of it was they created a system for kind of doing that artificially.
I think what I’m seeing is that they had seen what we’re talking about, and sort of we’re just framing it slightly differently.
Lori: I do you know what you’re referring to, okay and they were observing couples who were angry at each other. And then they would say, well, this couple isn’t going to last not realizing that it’s a temporary condition. And when they observed couples who loved each other, even though they were mad at each other, they would say, Well, I love him to death, but he really upsets me.
And they had the idea that that would last and like you said, they started to try to create that artificially. Like we call that outside-in in the Three Principles community because it’s trying to use a technique or create something that’s not coming from them.
That’s why it’s such a paradigm shift in psychology that recognizing that everything, The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, is coming from us. Whatever thinking we’re in, yes, you can’t get away from your thinking, but you can realize that it’s like you just got on the wrong thought wave. Like getting on the wrong bus. You get on a better bus that’s going to take you to a better part of town, where you want to be?
Alexandra: That’s such a good analogy. I love that.
One of the things that you also mentioned on your website is that we are expressions of universal love. You’ve touched on this with the analogy about babies. And how when we know this, it can ease our suffering.
Could you talk about that a little bit?
Lori: I love that question. When you realize that you already are – you could call that universal love. – you’re not looking for somebody else to complete you. To give you love. You already have all the love you ever need.
Is it wonderful to be in a loving relationship, exchanging the feelings of love? Sharing the feelings of love? Absolutely. But it’s not necessary to have a beautiful life, because you we already have everything we need.
So it’s impossible to blame somebody if I’m not feeling good. Makes no sense. Who am I going to blame about that? Now I could look at the person and who’s saying nasty things to me. And I could say, well, of course, I feel bad because he or she is saying something really nasty. But it doesn’t tell me that anymore.
What it tells me is the state of mind that that person is in. I know you’ve seen this, too, that you could still love somebody who’s saying something nasty to you, because it doesn’t say anything about you. It just tells you the state of mind of the speaker. And you want to love them more than because you feel bad for them that they’re a bad state.
Alexandra: I love that and I love that you said we always have all the love we need. That’s such an important point.
Coming to a relationship with that awareness, I imagine, it’s like having a completely full cup, as coaches say. You’re completely filled up yourself. And I just imagine that that changes the dynamics of a relationship so much.
People wouldn’t be looking for the other person to be all the things they need them to be.
Lori: Right. I hear a lot from couples about how one feels controlled by the other. And when that person labeled as controlling, realizes that they don’t need their partner to be a certain way in order to live a nice life. Then they can let their partner live their life the way they should live in. They’re not dependent on how their partner lives their life.
Alexandra: It’s just lovely.
I’m assuming you see transformation in relationships when people start to get this.
Lori: Yes, especially I would have to say the old therapy model is one hour a week. And what happens with couples that they’ll wake up during a session if they come one hour a week. And then they go about their lives. And they’re sucked back into the prevalent thinking in society, which is, before this paradigm shift, which is out there, we have to fix what’s out there, we have to fix the other person. So it’s almost like a rubber band.
But when people come for longer stretches of time, that makes the big difference. And when they come to like for an intensive, it’s called different things, retreat. I like that. I like that term. So they’ll come for even just three, four days, sometimes longer, but three, four days in a row, and I will work specifically with them. That makes the biggest difference, then they go back and the world is still the way it is, but they don’t get sucked into it. Because they’ve really seen what a difference it makes to just really be in the best state of mind that they can find in any given moment. And nobody’s there 100% of the time but when we’re not there, we know to not take ourselves so seriously.
Alexandra: I was going to say over the course of three or four days, there would be that natural ebb and flow of our state of mind. And I imagine you can point out to them, though, this is what’s happening.
Lori: Exactly. Even in an hour session, there’s an ebb and flow. And I can point out to them, you see how the differences right now, are you feeling? Yeah, that’s a good point. Because people don’t realize, when they go into the lower stage, or into a higher state of mind, they don’t realize it until it’s pointed out to them. It’s like riding an elevator of life.
Alexandra: What do you think is our biggest misunderstanding about being in a relationship?
Lori: I think that people don’t realize how much they want a connection. Everybody wants a connection. As they felt connected in the beginning where they wouldn’t still be together. And then they lose the connection because of expectations and dissatisfactions and judgments and criticisms. And then show connection is what people are looking for. And they don’t realize that they’re the ones that are creating the disconnect. Again, so now it’s coming from them.
And another thing I’ll mention too, which was fun, it’s in the book that I co-authored with Christine, The Secret of Love, that we both laughed, because we’re both marriage and family therapists. And people always come to us saying that we have to work on our communication skills, that’s been the catchphrase in society for so long.
And it’s erroneous, it’s wrong. It’s not communication. It’s listening. People don’t have a problem communicating, they communicate when they’re angry. And it’s a whole different thing when you communicate when you’re in a nice state of mind.
Alexandra: Yes, I can see that when we’re in a low state of mind. We tend to get really chatty, I know, I do. I go on and on and on and I can feel my mind circling back around to the beginning of an argument when it gets to the end. And you’re right, it’s the listening, though, that makes the big difference.
One other question, I want to ask you about relationships.
Do you think it’s possible to create positive change if only one person in the couple is interested in this understanding?
Lori: Another great question. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And the perfect example of that is the very first chapter in The Secret of Love. And it’s on Chip and Jan, the couple and from Saltspring. They talk about this on YouTube videos. So it’s it publicly known that Chip was very resistant. Jan just saw something so deep when she heard talks by Syd Banks, it just kept getting reinforced more and more for her that her state of mind was everything.
Even when he was out of sorts, that she might get into an argument for a moment and quickly say that’s it. I’m not doing this with you. So let’s talk later, when we’re both feeling better, and she go off she do her thing and, and come back and over a period of time, and it wasn’t right away.
Chip himself said that he was very stubborn. He would say, I don’t want to know about this thought business. I don’t want to hear about it. But something clicked somewhere along the way.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s so great. And because it’s inside out, it has to do with ourselves and our thinking that even if the other person never came on board, it would still make a huge difference to the to the one person who is exploring this.
Lori: Absolutely. So that’s also part of expectation, not expecting the other person to have a higher state of mind to be in a nice, loving, calm, peaceful state. You’d be where you want to be without needing the other person to be anywhere other than where they are in the moment.
Alexandra: I imagine that has an effect too, on the other partner. Someone I interviewed recently on the podcast, referred to it as a tuning fork.
If my vibration has changed, and it’s peaceful and calm, that probably has an effect on the other person in the relationship.
Lori: Right. And then every so often, you’ll hear well, I want some of that. Show me what you’re learning. That’s what happened to me when I saw my boyfriend’s state of mind. And that’s when I got involved. And I said, Okay, I’m going to do a year – and it doesn’t take a year anymore. Back then we had no resources, there was no videos there.
Today, there’s just so much. People don’t have to move from West Coast to East Coast. And the group of us would travel to hear said, wherever he was speaking, and now you could just sit in your living room and turn on YouTube. A whole different world.
Alexandra: I’m so grateful for technology, the way that it can share everywhere all over the world. It’s lovely.
You have you potentially have a new podcast coming up for single people. Tell us about that.
Lori: Somebody else came up with the name and I love it. It’s called Taking the BS out of Being Single. And that was an outgrowth from a course that I do called Finding Deep Connections. And that’s for single people as well.
Single people have a lot of thinking about why they need to be single, why they don’t want to be single, why they shouldn’t be single. There’s a lot of thinking going on in that world. As a marriage and family therapist, and just a person living in life, to see that it’s always a relationship with our own thinking. Whether we’re single partner married, married for 40 years, it’s always the relationship we have with our own thinking. The person is next to us, or a 100 miles away.
It’s so simple. So maybe it’ll just be one episode of the podcast. That’d be it. It’s your relationship with your thinking. There you go.
Alexandra: As we begin to wrap up here, is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you would like to share?
Lori: I don’t think so. You really covered so much. Maybe just if I could tie it together.
Everything we talked about is in relationship with their own thinking, the state of which is the state of mind we live in. And it’s understanding how that works, how we work as thinking beings, given an amazing gift to think. And the free will to think up, down or sideways.
We have the free will when I’ve had clients who say sometimes I just want to be bummed out, and I hang out there for a while. And I say, Great, as long as you know that it’s you’re choosing that. There’s no judgment. No judgment. But the trick is knowing that somebody is not bummed out because of what somebody said to them, or a situation or an event. We’ve seen people rise above situations that are beyond imagination.
Alexandra: Thank you for pulling that all together. That’s great.
Where can we find out more about you in your work?
Lori: Well, my website is under construction right now. It’s going through a lift since it’s been around for a long time. And I kept adding things to it. And now it’s all over the place. So we’re pulling it all together. But it is 3principlestherapy.com.
Alexandra: Perfect, okay. And I will put links in the show notes. And so people will be able to find it there. And your book is called The Secret of Love.
Lori: Unlock the Mystery, Unleash the Magic. There’s another book on Amazon called The Secret of Love, and it’s a romance novel.
Alexandra: Thank you so much, Laurie. It’s been so great chatting with you today.
Lori: I really enjoyed it, too. Thank you for inviting me.
Alexandra: My pleasure. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye.
In instances where our bodies and our innate wisdom are speaking to us, it can be tempting to see those messages as problems. But when we see them for the wisdom they carry and stay open to the messages these ‘problems’ have for us, we begin to see that they are always trying to help us on our paths as human beings.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
When a good sleeper encounters a bout of insomnia
Discovering insightfully that is people pleasing tendencies keeping me awake
How insomnia does not mean that I’m broken or that my ability to sleep is broken
How insomnia, like overeating, is feedback about our mental state
What is insight and how does it arrive?
On the universal intelligence that is always flowing through all of us
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 50 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
Before we get started today, I want to have a little mini celebration with you. Because this is q&a Episode 50. That means there are 100 episodes have Unbroken now. 50 episodes like this q&a one and 50 interview episodes. I’m pretty happy and proud of that milestone and I thank you for being with me here along for the ride, however long you’ve been joining me.
It’s a real pleasure for me to be here to do this every week, and to share what I see with the aim of helping others, of supporting and uplifting and sharing what has made such a big huge difference in my life. So here’s to another 100 episodes. I aim to be around for the next year as well.
February 14, 2024 will be the one year anniversary of the current website and the Freedom From Overeating course and Unbroken podcast. So we’ll celebrate that as well.
Today’s q&a episode is going to involve a bit of a story.
I’m also going to give you some background to give some context for what I’m about to share. And this story today has to do with insight, it has to do with our unbrokenness, which is really nice given that this is the 100th episode. So let’s get started.
I’ll begin by telling you that about towards the end of 2023, October or November, there came a situation. I should back up a little further. I’m on the board or I was on the board of a little nonprofit that exists here in the town where I live. It’s a nonprofit housing society, independent living for seniors in the Ucluelet area. I’ve been on the board for a couple of years. And there’s one paid position in this organization. And the building is just a small, like, it looks like an apartment building. It has 10 apartments, all for seniors.
And it’s independent living, like I said, so everybody is independent.
They really don’t need any kind of assistance with mental health or physical chores or that kind of thing. Some of them can get care workers to come in, but 80% 90% of them don’t. It’s like an apartment building. And there’s one paid position. And it’s an administrative position that is 15 hours a week in the building. The woman who had been doing it was of retirement age. And also, she had been with the organization for five years and had brought the people, the tenants through the pandemic. And so she was feeling a little bit burnt out.
So at the end of 2023, the board kind of came to a little bit of a crisis point in that this woman wanted to retire. And we had done some interviews looking for someone to take the position and couldn’t really find anybody who we felt would be a really good fit either because they weren’t available at the times we needed them to be or that kind of thing. And in the end, I actually had an insight. I was in the shower one day, and it suddenly occurred to me, “Well, what if I did that work? What if I committed to doing it for a year?”
Like I say it’s just two or three hours a day. So I could do it in addition to doing this work here that I do for Unbroken and Freedom From Overeating. And it would help with the board that I was on that was in a bit of a pickle.
And it would also give this business, AlexandraAmor.com, a bit of it, it felt like it just needed some space and some time to grow and to find its feet. With any self-employment venture you know they say when you start a new business it takes three to five years before it really comes into its own and has a lot of momentum and is earning its keep so to speak, that that the finances go into the black. And so I thought, well, this job with the seniors housing is doable in terms of it’s just a couple of hours a day. And I would be earning a little bit of income on the side from that, which would give this business, a little bit of space, a little bit of space and time to evolve and to find its feet.
So it seemed like a really good fit.
And because the idea came to me insightfully it felt good.
I sat with it for a while and then I put the idea forward, and it was accepted. So fast forward, it’s now February 2024. And the job is going really well. And I’m encountering real problems sleeping.
I’ve always been a really good sleeper. I’ve never had any sort of serious bouts of insomnia. I always fall asleep the minute my head hits the pillow. And in fact, I need quite a lot of sleep. I tend to be somebody who needs eight or nine hours a night. And I come from a family of nappers, so I’m also good at napping. So when these problems with sleeping started to crop up, it became a little bit worrisome.
The way it’s showing up for me is that I go to sleep okay but then I wake up in the middle of the night, sort of 1, 2, 3 o’clock, and I can’t get back to sleep. I can feel my mind just really revving up, really super revved up, I guess that’s the only word I can use with thinking. And it is about the job that I have.
Sometimes it’s so churned up and so speedy, my thinking, that I can feel it in my body as well. My body has this electrical feeling. It’s not physical, a physical feeling. It’s more like, energetic. So that started happening at probably at the end of the year, end of December, and then it’s carried on through January, and into February.
It’s not every single night, but I would say it’s probably four nights a week, which is not great.
And what it means is that it’s interfering with my daytime routine. It’s interfering with this job, with my Freedom From Overeating stuff, my website and the podcast and everything. Because the time that I do have here at home to work on those things, I often have to have a nap. That cuts into the amount of time that I’m able to devote here.
It’s been bothering me, and it’s been on my mind. And then it happened again last night. I woke up at probably about 3:30. I was awake for a couple of hours, lots and lots and lots of thinking about this job. And the challenges that we have there. What happens is that the person in my position, I’m the person that everybody brings their problems and their grievances and their questions and their concerns and to. There’s 10 tenants, so I’m the recipient of all that stuff from every tenant. And not that every tenant is complaining all the time. That’s not the case. But if there’s a challenge or a problem, I’m the logical place that the person comes to talk to.
I’m also the point of contact for the board. So if they have any questions or challenges or problems, I’m also the point of contact for the contractors. So we have, so the tenants are provided with one meal a day they get their evening meal provided by the building, as it were. And so there are two chefs that are on staff that split the days between them the days of the week. And there’s a maintenance guy, and it’s just, it’s a lot.
So last night, I was lying in bed, once again, awake in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling and flopping around trying to find a comfortable position so that I could fall back asleep. And it wasn’t happening. And thinking about we have a meeting today actually, as I record this, that’s going to be a bit fraught. I was thinking about all these things.
And then I had a little insight, which was so nice.
I was thinking about why is this challenging? I know that we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our experiences, I know that for sure. And I know not to be too concerned, like when my mind is really stirred up at night, and I’m lying there in the middle of the night worried about things. I know not to take it too seriously. So I really take it with a grain of salt. And just let it happen, like a thunderstorm. I just let it roll by. And don’t try not to grab on to any one of the thoughts in the middle of the night and turn them into a bigger problem. I felt like I was managing all that stuff really well.
And given my understanding of the principles, too. So what I was thinking about last night was, like I said, Why? Why is my mind so sped up? I’m really familiar with this kind of administrative work, I’ve done it my entire adult life. And I’ve been self-employed basically since 1999. And the job itself, like the paperwork, and the all the things that go on is not that challenging. It’s pretty quiet, actually. Which is probably why the job is only funded for 15 hours, a weak and totally manageable. And so this is all the stuff that I was thinking about in the middle of the night.
Then it struck me – this was the insight – the people pleaser in me is really struggling with pleasing all these people.
And like I said, there’s a lot of them, there’s 10 tenants, there’s seven or eight board members, there’s five or six contractors. That’s a lot of people to please when you’re a people pleaser. So that struck me and was really incredibly helpful.
I’ll go back into my background now a little bit and share where this people pleasing tendency came from. And then I’m going to go forward and talk about what I see about what’s going on, and also what I can do about what’s happening now that I know what’s going on. So going into my background a little bit and how I became a great a people pleaser.
I’ve mentioned before, my dad, sadly, was a rage filled alcoholic the entire time that I knew him while he was on this planet.
He passed away a couple of years ago. But as a little child, a tiny little girl, I just remember being afraid all the time. And so as children, of course, one way that we deal with something like that, is to become a people pleaser, to really turn ourselves into a pretzel, to try to make the person happy.
As children, that’s really a survival mechanism. Because we need our caregivers to like us, to be pleased with us, to be happy with us. That keeps us alive. Really, when we think about it, in terms of the primitive parts of our brain, our caregivers being connected to us, and protective of us and all that kind of stuff, pleased with us, is to the primitive parts of our brain, what keeps us alive. So I totally get where that comes from.
And my poor old dad, I have so much compassion for him now. And for his life. He never really had a chance to be anything other than a rage filled alcoholic. He was raised by a woman, my grandmother, who was so she got married probably in the mid 1930s, to my grandfather. And she was incredibly intelligent, probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, and ambitious and driven and loved to work. And unfortunately, her husband, my grandfather, refused to let her work because it was the 1930s and husbands had that kind of control over their wives. And that makes me incredibly sad.
She would have been an amazing business woman, slash employee, whatever she chose to do, she would have been amazing at it. That makes me feel really emotional. I feel really sad for. So what ended up happening was that she stayed home, she was a homemaker. And she had a child just by default, because that’s what you do at that time, and so she had my dad and wasn’t into it at all. I don’t think treated him very well at all.
As a result, he became an adult who was filled with rage, and the way that he chose to soothe himself was with alcohol.
It makes total sense. I talk about all the time how our unwanted habits are a solution, they’re not a problem. And that’s exactly what his alcoholism was, it was a solution. His head was just must have been full of razor blades. That’s the way I describe it, like just angry, unhappy, self judgmental, horrible thinking all the time. No sense of self appreciation or self esteem, I don’t think or gentleness with himself or compassion for himself. I mean, if I had ever you use the word compassion with him, he would have said, define compassion, I have no idea what that means.
So naturally, he became an alcoholic. Of course, he did. And was one until the end of his days. And that makes me really sad as well. So anyway, this was the person that I was raised by. And that’s where the people pleasing comes in.
I thought about it a little bit over the years and noticed it in myself, of course, off and on. And when, in the old days, when Oprah had her TV show, I would really relate to when she had people pleasing episodes of the show. But I don’t give it a lot of thought on a day to day basis. I probably haven’t thought about it in years. And it’s not the way I define myself, certainly. But I do have these people pleasing tendencies.
I want everyone around me to be happy and calm.
When people get angry and upset, I really take it personally. I feel like I need to fix whatever’s going on, it’s my responsibility to fix everyone around me, which is not a great personality characteristic. But there it is, here we are. So, in the middle of the night, last night, these were the connections that I made that this is what’s causing the stress and the busy mind that’s waking me up in the middle of the night.
I notice it at other times of day too. I notice when I’m walking home from the little job, I can often be thinking a lot about whatever happened that day or what needs to happen the next day or the troubles that people have brought and laid at my doorstep. And I can also notice, sometimes when I’m wanting to be doing other stuff, like when I’m wanting to be working on things for my website, I’ve mentioned I want have a lot of creative projects that I want to be working on that instead, my mind will be preoccupied with the stuff that’s going on, at the seniors housing.
So this occurred to me last night about the people pleasing, and that it was a big relief, and very shortly after that, I was able to roll over and go back to sleep. So that was a really big deal after probably, I don’t know, six weeks, seven weeks to see what was actually happening. I knew that the busy mind stuff was related to the job. I just hadn’t connected the dots closely enough about the people pleasing stuff. So that was a really helpful insight last night.
Now we come to the point of this episode. That’s all the backstory.
I bring this up because I think it’s really helpful to see all this stuff for a number of reasons.
These are things that I talk about on this podcast and in my work all the time. So I’m going to outline them now and I hope that they are helpful for you.
The first thing I know is that I’m not broken. I am unbroken.
There’s nothing wrong with my ability to sleep. There’s nothing wrong with my circadian rhythms, there’s nothing wrong with even with my mental state. None of that stuff is broken or needs fixing at all. So that’s the first point. It’s important to note that, because I can take that worry off my plate. I don’t need to go down a rabbit hole of brokenness. Is this a problem? Am I broken? Is this never going to fix itself? All that kind of stuff. Any kind of thinking like that is not even on my plate. It’s just gone. I don’t even worry about it at all.
Which brings us to the second point. This busy mind stuff that’s happening for me in the middle of the night is feedback.
This is what I talk about all the time: we’re always feeling our thinking.
And it’s always giving us feedback about our state of mind. And so in this case, I feel it in the way that I wake up, it’s so strong, obviously, that it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I guess maybe it’s adrenaline, and that’s what wakes me up, because my mind is going so fast. And that is feedback about my state of mind that my thinking is really stirred up.
Building on the first point, this situation that’s happening with my sleep in the middle of the night, is not a problem. It’s information, it’s feedback, it’s letting me know. And eventually, I was able to connect the dots, it’s or I guess I was able to connect those insightfully. It’s letting me know that I have this people pleasing tendency, and that there’s a way to do this job that I have without feeling responsible for every person who crosses my path. And now, of course, logically, I do know that every single person here lives in the world of their thinking, and that if someone is upset about something, I don’t really have any agency over that. I can’t change their mind about what they’re seeing and what they’re thinking.
In the middle of the night, I remembered, Byron Katie has this expression or thing that she says about how we’re only ever there’s only three kinds of business:
there’s my business;
there’s your business; and
there’s God’s business.
Very often, when our thinking gets stirred up, we are not in our own business, we are in somebody else’s business, or we’re in God’s business. I can really see that. That’s a really concise way of saying where my thinking is going.
As a people pleaser, I’m in other people’s business all the time.
I’m wanting to make them happy. I’m wanting to please them to change their mood, to make them be calm, if they’re upset, to make them stop being angry if they’re angry. That’s what’s going on when I’m people pleasing. At least that’s how I define it. So the second point is that this waking up in the middle of the night is not a problem. It’s feedback, it’s information. It’s was letting me know, that this was going on. And so I really appreciate that.
And building again on the first point, because I know I’m not broken, my sleep habits are not broken. I do know how to sleep, I don’t need to go down any kind of a rabbit hole about medicating myself. I found myself a few days ago getting a little bit tense before I started to go through my little bedtime routine. Thinking I would of course naturally think, oh, no, am I going to have more problems tonight? I can see that there’s a way to go down a rabbit hole with that, that on to this original situation we would build another layer of busy thinking. Anticipatory worry about how I’m going to sleep on any given night.
I noticed that I haven’t been too caught up in it. And I hope that that It really slips away entirely now that I see what’s going on.
Then the third thing I want to say is that probably my first question in the middle of the night to myself was how do I not do this?
How do I not be a people pleaser? What do I do? Give me three tasks to make this go away and I’ll do them. Absolutely. And of course, as I talked about all the time, the route to change doesn’t lie there. It doesn’t lie in finding logical solutions to being a people pleaser. At least this is what I see. And this is how I live my life now. And what really works for me.
What creates change is insight.
And we can see this already, because the thing that created the change in me, the deeper understanding about what was going on with my sleep was insight. I didn’t come to this people pleasing conclusion, logically. I felt it land with me last night as I was mulling all this stuff over.
There’s no real specific way to define insight. It’s going to be different for everyone. And it’s going to be different for everyone at anygiven time. I’ve talked in the past about how sometimes it feels like insights are almost invisible. They happen sometimes without us even noticing. I’ll just notice a behavior that’s changed or a concern that has slipped away. And that seems to me has happened insightfully. My brain hasn’t decided to have that happen. It just happens because of a shift in my own consciousness encouraged by, supported by having these kinds of conversations and staying in this conversation about our innate health and well being.
So how do I stop being a people pleaser?
I stay open to insight. And it may happen noticeably. I may notice a big insight about pleasing people, or how not to do it. Or it may happen invisibly. But I know that that’s the way to change. And I would also bet that having had that insight last night, that that was a big step towards resolving this situation that my mind might now be able to settle down. Because there’s been this shift in my consciousness, and I know what’s happening.
I’ll even consciously say to myself, I can tell moving forward that I’ll say things like, if I’m chatting with someone at the office, I’m not responsible for this person’s feelings. Not I’m not going to say that out loud, of course. I’ll just say it internally, just reminding myself this person is entitled to however they feel, that’s their business. And it’s not my business to fix them, or change them or make them feel any different.
Of course, I’m going to do my job and address their concerns and all that kind of stuff.
But the extra added layer of unnecessary responsibility is the one that I want to let go of. The layer that says I’m responsible for everybody, and how everybody feels. That’s a huge weight. No wonder my mind was going crazy in the middle of the night! That’s a lot of stuff to be carrying around.
So I think that’s about all I have to say about that particular situation. I wanted to share it specifically because it’s unrelated to food and even unrelated to unwanted habits. Although I suppose you could say people pleasing is an unwanted habit, but I just thought it would be useful to see that something so disconnected from an unwanted overeating habit. And yet the same principles apply as to how I’m dealing with it.
Not getting tangled up in the content of whatever was going on. Remembering that whatever’s happening universal intelligence is always working for me, it’s not working against me. So that was something I probably should have mentioned earlier in the feedback section, that our bodies are so wise, there’s always this wisdom and universal intelligence flowing through us. And it’s always speaking to us all the time.
This was one way that it was speaking to me trying to get my attention.
To let me know that there’s a way to do this job that I’ve taken on that doesn’t destroy my sleep, that doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of being there at the apartment building with the tenants who are just extremely lovely. I really enjoy connecting with them. It’s a real pleasure and an honor honestly, to be there, and to be in service to the elders in some of the elders in this small community. So there’s lots that’s great about this job.
It did cross my mind a couple of nights ago, I wondered whether I needed to let it go, to resign. I didn’t want to do that because I made a commitment for this year to be in the job until at least November 2024. But my sleep was so disturbed that I thought I don’t know if I can go on like this any longer.
That’s probably enough talking for me. I hope you’re doing well. I hope this has been helpful. I hope you can see that, like I say, everything that I talk about applies to this situation, as well as to an unwanted habit.
I am sending you lots of love and hoping that at some moment today, you are able to connect with your innate well-being and resilience and resourcefulness and to the wisdom that flows through you always. And I will see you again in a couple of weeks. Take care. Bye.
Resolving the Habit of Discontent with Nikon Gormley
Feb 08, 2024
Nikon Gormley had achieved success as a top-level athlete, but he was still searching for answers. He wanted to feel calm during his taekwondo matches so he began looking in all the usual places. It wasn’t until he discovered the Three Principles that things began to click into place for him. Now he coaches others about the innate resilience and well-being that we all possess.
Nikon Gormley is passionate about guiding people to unleash their true, full potential so that they can experience greater levels of success, purpose, and well-being in their lives. He helps people understand and experience the beauty of how their minds work, harness the power of insight to navigate life with more clarity and ease and achieve more with less struggle, less anxiety, and less pressure.
Nikon is also passionate about Taekwondo. He have been practising Taekwondo for 25+ years and has a 5th Dan Black Belt. He has trained and competed around the world as an elite athlete.
You can find Nikon Gormley at NikonGormley.com and on YouTube @nikongormley.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Training as an Olympic taekwondo athlete
Searching for ways to be a better athlete
Growing a business at its own pace, rather than out of insecurity
When the habit of being discontented stops being interesting
Nikon: Thank you for having me, Alexandra. It’s pleasure to be here.
Alexandra: It’s so nice to have you here.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you discovered the Three Principles.
Nikon: My background started as a taekwondo athlete, as a young boy, as a martial art taken as a Korean martial art. And being called the athlete side of it, right, there’s a martial art side of it. And there’s an athlete side of it, because it was the Olympic sport in Thailand, it’s just very popular, we have it in our national Olympics, or we can get University scholarship scholarships for it.
I started when I was 12. And I played for about 20 years. And being in a sport, you develop this thing where you just want to be better, you get obsessed with yourself not being good enough, and you get obsessed with wanting to be better. And apart from doing everything I physically could to be better and training, I knew I had to work on my mind.
I wanted to be calm during competitions.
It’s a combat sport. So there’s a lot going on, there’s people yelling at you, there’s someone trying to kick you and you got to kick them have a good story about that after so. I really went around all the houses, I studied everything I could from the law of attraction, or affirmations or like NLP, anything, in hopes that would make me a better athlete. And nothing really worked.
I always thought it was my fault. Like, maybe I didn’t visualize the right details, or maybe I didn’t say the right affirmations in the right order. Maybe I didn’t write script it good enough, and then I got fed up. But it wasn’t great.
And then finally, I read the Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neal. I didn’t understand it. But something clicked. There was something inside of me like this makes sense. I was like, Oh my god. Finally, finally. And then something funny happened.
I was competing at the Thai National Olympics, I was competing for a province who had hired me to compete for them at the games. And I didn’t care anymore. I stopped caring about what was on my mind, I stopped caring about not being confident and just want to enjoy the game. So it’s probably one of my last Thai National Olympics.
And I was like, honestly, go enjoy myself. And sure enough, everything just was flowed. I had the best time ever. I got to compete against the number one seed who I lost to, but I really enjoyed that match with him. So much so that after I lost him, I was like, Hey, that was a great match. Thank you so much for your time and energy. And how’d you do this? How’d you do that? And I’m watching myself. This guy just kicked your ass. Why are we so friendly to him?
Because it didn’t make sense not to be. And then from there that was like, Okay, I need to know everything I need to know everything I can about this. And similar to you. I read all the books, talked to all the people. I hunted down all the teachers that I could find and just sit with them and talk with them and learn from them. And since then, my life has bloomed in incredible ways.
In our conversation, we talk about the magic carpet ride. Dr. Joe Bailey talks about that where you get on the magic carpet ride. And it just takes you to places. From there, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just been an incredible journey where I noticed more of the time I stopped finding myself in the right place at the right time. And being more noticeable when I was off track.
That’s a big thing. Being more noticeable. Like this doesn’t feel right. I’m off track or my mind. My mind is out to lunch. I’m insecure about this. I’m done. And it just kept getting better and better and better. And what to me it’s like an evergreen renewable energy source right as keep seeing more. I was telling talking to a mentor last night in a group and saying like, I think I see you about this much. But that much is enough to have a beautiful life.
Alexandra: That’s such a good way to put it.
Nikon: That comes from a joke. You want to hear it? The joke is Adam Sandler was receiving his Mark Twain prize, and had all his comedian friends come and share stories and send up bits for Adam. David Spade got up and he said, “Adam Sandler. $8 billion in movies. This much talent.”
So if you’re listening this much is not a lot. I thought about it like, yeah, it’s kind of like us like we see this much, but that’s enough to have a beautiful life.
Alexandra: Yes, that’s so well said, I love that.
Nikon: And now we’re here, you know?
Alexandra: Carry on, tell us about what you what you do.
Nikon: So some of the things as a result was like, Okay, well, what happened? How did your life bloom and to think more, I got to work with all my favorite teachers. I got to build a beautiful taekwondo business. We have 12 branches around Thailand, we teach 400 kids a week, we have 15 staff. We recently hit like our new revenue highs.
But the best part is, we didn’t really feel like we were working that hard. We’re just enjoyed doing what we’re doing. I have a coaching business that I love. I get to work with corporates and people around the world and doesn’t feel like work at all. I have a national radio show, under the Ministry of Education by Thailand, and I’m sitting here going, I don’t know how this happened. I just kept showing up.
Whereas before this conversation would have been, oh, yeah, I hustled my butt. I grinded my way to this, but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. And that’s how we’re here.
Alexandra: Do you fold any of the ideas from the principles into when you’re teaching kids about taekwondo?
Nikon: Sure, that’s a good question. I would say the thing that folds into that is sheer presence of just showing up, and really being with the kids. I’ll tell you our secret sauce for anybody listening for wondering how Super Seven Taekwondo does what we do, we only have one strategy with the kids. And our one strategy is to simply be really happy to see them. Really, really glad to see the kids. That’s all we do. Anybody can teach taekwondo but having the presence to really be with kids and be genuinely happy to see these little human beings.
Alexandra: That’s so great. That makes me emotional. That’s a beautiful approach.
Nikon: I think the other part of the more technical is not technical is, it’s how we build business in the taekwondo business, because it grew from like one branch to 12, from 10 kids to 400, over 10 years. That was very much the principles, because for the longest time, it was hovering around five.
Once I got into the principles, it like it, like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, like really fast. And I was wondering about it. I realized the way myself and my team approach the business changed. We stop worrying about it so much. We held it lightly. And we slowed down a lot. And we let the business grow at a pace that the business wanted to grow, not when our insecurities wanted to grow.
Alexandra: That’s amazing. One of the things that I read on your website was that you were an overachiever in the past. Can you talk about that a little bit?
You mentioned on your website that you were probably overachieving to escape how you were feeling.
Nikon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. For anybody else’s who has ever felt not good enough. So interesting. So a lot of people feel that my reaction to that thought was if I could just achieve enough I could feel good about myself. If I could just achieve enough people would give me the time and attention that I wanted. And that was my response for most of my life. I just kept like, it was nothing interesting happens. Interesting thing happens when you have that reaction to that thought is nothing is ever good enough, either.
I don’t know what the cartoon is, but something who like there’s probably a word for it. Like when you when you keep trying to feed yourself things you don’t really need so it’s never enough.
Alexandra: Dr. Gabor Mate talks about the realm of hungry ghosts. They have big bellies and tiny mouths.
Nikon: That’s one that one. Where no matter how much success or money or accolades, it just didn’t do it. I remember winning gold medals in taekwondo and looking at it and then being happy for like a day and then okay, I guess I need to get some more. It’s just never enough. It was never enough.
And of course you feel really bad about yourself because you’re trying to you’re trying to feed this ghost that never, never stops. I wouldn’t I really stopped once I got into the principles and I saw it once I saw it. I was like, well that’s weird. Why would I need to achieve these things to feel good about myself like I’m okay.
In Mavis Karn’s beautiful book, It’s That Simple, she talks about you’re okay. For me it was Michael Neill, Mavis Karn, and Dr. Bill Pettit, who really drove that noticing home until I saw it in myself like, oh, yeah, I’m actually okay.
That’s the beautiful thing about this conversation, is that we don’t see how much of our life are operating from these reactions to our thinking to our thoughts.
Like, given that I’m not good enough, I’m going to overwork myself, I’m going to pedal to the metal to try and achieve things. And, I’m grateful for it. Because in a very roundabout way, now that I’m working with corporates, and the teams are young, they’re like, 23 to 25, they’re fresh out of college. I see it in them.
I had a beautiful conversation with a young AI engineer – that’s a weird thing to say: they’re are AI engineers now. He said, What’s something you think I can improve upon? And I said, Well, there’s nothing you can improve upon. But this is what I would give you, for you to not need to prove anything to me or anybody here and for you to slow down and just really enjoy the work.
There was dead silence for a good 30 seconds that felt like forever. And I said, Well, that was a good career for me. And he said to me, how did you know that? How did you know that I don’t feel like I’m good enough? And I said, Because me too. I thought it was like when the penny drops, like, oh, that’s why I had to do that. So I could do this.
Alexandra: One of the things that occurs to me is that when we’re over achieving, what we’re searching for is a good feeling.
But we’re searching for it out there, in the accomplishments and in the gold medals and that kind of stuff. When really, it’s here.
Nikon: Yeah, and it really, it’s like pollution. I’m gonna call it pollution, because it doesn’t just affect the feeling it affects everything else, because it becomes a habit of being discontent. I got that from my teacher, Mavis Karn. And I was like, Whoa, you have a habit of being discontent with where you are. And it keeps you from really enjoying, and being grateful for the life you have. Because you’re not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.
Alexandra: That’s so well said. I love that.
How did you resolve that habit?
Nikon: It was one of those things where in this conversation, it was one day I saw it. And it stopped looking interesting to me, being discontent with my life. One day it just stopped looking like a good idea. And just like that it dissolved, which I’m still discovering, and I’m sure you are too, in this conversation at all, like how that works.
You don’t have to change it and have to replace it with a new belief or a new habit of thought. It just didn’t make sense. It really doesn’t make sense. Why would I do that to myself? And to my surprise, once I stopped being discontent with life, my life got even better.
It was as if the habit of being discontent took up space in my bandwidth that kept me from really seeing things or experiencing things. And when I stopped doing it, there was more space in my life for prosperity, for abundance, for good things and clarity, but I didn’t know it. I just kept filling my bandwidth with you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough. And nothing is good enough, even though how nice it looked.
And then also in that journey, is Oh, you didn’t tell you in that journey. I would like Well, let me go to the other side. Let me talk to like some Olympic athletes and world champions and unlike people who are super wealthy, they probably solve this problem. When I started spending time with them, I realized that they too didn’t know how to solve this problem.
I remember I hung out with before the Rio Olympic Games a Spanish athlete. I’m not gonna say his name. He had a gold medal from the London Olympic Games. He had come to visit the Thai team and I had friends who knew him and we went out to the bar for drinks And he’s like, you want to come like, of course, I want to go meet this guy. And I’ll never forget it because I met this guy and I was so disappointed at how normal he was, and how he was just normal human being.
I was like, that’s not right. An Olympic gold medalist cannot be normal human being. I talked to him and I watched him and I noticed like you two had insecurities. And I was like, Do you want an Olympic gold medal? He should be like, God, you know, and he wasn’t. And then I think all these things were pointing me to look deeper. Like, well, it’s not the Olympic medal. It’s not the gazillion dollars. Like, it wasn’t that so I made it. It helped me to look in a different way. I’m really grateful that life pointed me here. And I saw it.
Alexandra: What a great lesson. For any of us, for all of us.
Nikon: Have you ever experienced things like that for yourself? Like, in not feeling good enough?
Alexandra: Absolutely. And in fact, in the present moment, I’m wrestling with a feeling of wanting to be a secret. So I’m looking at that and, and contemplating it and seeing where it might lead me. I don’t know yet. We shall see.
You have a YouTube station. And I was watching a few of your YouTube videos. And you’ve mentioned Mavis Karn, who I’ve had on the program.
The lesson that she taught you about how our emotions work to bring us home to ourselves. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Nikon: Sure. So credit to Mavis Karn, who shares this with anybody who will listen. All emotion is really designed to guide us home, and our feelings are barometers of what’s going on in our minds. And the idea is that whatever you’re feeling, you put your put your hand or whatever you’re feeling, and you let it take you somewhere.
I think our habitual reaction is to not to follow it. And the idea is, you follow it, and as with all emotion, it takes you home. It’s taking you somewhere inward to a place of calm. It’s like a light in the storm. That’s what it looks like to me. And the feeling of home is that that’s our default setting of home.
As I’m saying that fresh now, it occurs to me how cool it is that that is built in. In most of my life, and most people I reckon, where we’re taught to deal with our emotions, like we need to change it, it’s not good enough, you need to go do something about it. If you’re sad, should go for a walk. If you’re happy, then like you should do more of the stuff that makes you happy, to keep to keep being happy.
I think what Mavis is pointing to, or I’m seeing more of is, is you have built if something built into your system that has always taking you to okayness and we do really well when we’re okay, when we’re calm and clear. Mavis says nobody gets stupid when they’re peaceful.
When we’re calm and clear, we’re cognizant, we’re aware, we’re awake. We are more gentle with ourselves and other people. Just takes us home. I know you could do that I like I too thought, Oh, happy, good, sad, bad. I’m still discovering how that works. How our divine engineering works, that you could just feel what you’re feeling no matter what it is and let it take you home.
Alexandra: I love the feedback aspect of that awareness that our feelings are always letting us know what our state of mind is like in a given moment. That built in divine engineering, as you say, as Mavis says.
Nikon: What I’m curious about is I think most people will do that exercise when they’re not feeling good, anxious or sad or overwhelmed. I’m curious to see what happens when we do it when we’re really happy to see where does the feeling take us.
What occurs to me is I’ve been surface happy for most of my life and achieving things where like, I’m really happy because I achieved this. And it was, it was a very quick come and go it was like a hit of dopamine, achievement. I wonder if this points to a deeper place of well being where it’s like, I don’t want to say happy but you’re well from the inside out. That has to have some kind of effect.
Alexandra: For sure that calm, peaceful, contentment.
Nikon: That’s what I love about this conversation that we can explore and see fresh.
Alexandra: Me too. It feels bottomless. We can just keep going, keep seeing things. I love that about it.
One of the other things I wanted to ask you about was worry. You have a video on your channel and you talk about how we can become afraid of certain thoughts. And which can create worry or add on to worry.
But that actually, our mind is trying to help us with those thoughts. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Nikon: Sure. The nature of worry is it’s made out of thought that we have a very strong reaction to and I think we have a lot of premises about that thought. In my work, and I’ve seen for myself, okay, as an athlete, I thought if I didn’t worry about competing, I wasn’t going to prepare hard enough, or I was going to make a mistake. The more I worried, the more prepared I would be to compete, not knowing that that worry was taking my attention away from being really present in the mat in the ring.
I look at it fresh now and I really see it as a misunderstanding, where it wasn’t meant to help me over prepare. I used it the wrong way. All it was trying to tell me that my mind was going a little too fast. That was the first when I first saw about it.
Now, looking at it at a deeper level is I didn’t know that you could not be interested in it. I didn’t know that. You could not be interested in worry. Like you can see it, you could feel it and go you know what? Not today, I have stuff to do. I didn’t know you could do that.
I didn’t know you could choose what to pay attention to.
I thought you could feel it and then okay, worry. Okay, I know what that is premise done. I didn’t know you could say not today. I’m gonna focus on being right here right now. And it looks different to me now. There’s being worried about something and knowing that you have to do something. The knowing has a very different taste to it, where you just know you need to double check something or your friend.
It might feel like worry, but you just know in your heart like, oh, I need check on my friend, I think something’s there. Or I need to maybe not be in this situation right now. Because it looks like something’s off. And it’s a very intuitive feeling.
I found that once I stopped paying attention to worry, those things became stronger. It’s almost like less noise, more signal. And what looks different to me now is because the signals are more clear, I’m more able to navigate my life. Previously, I would call it worry. But now I’m like, I think no, not this way. That way.
Alexandra: So the worry was pointing you want to go in a different direction?
Nikon: Correct. And instead of what I think I think we worry about being worried. Yes, we do. And all life says I was trying to go that way. I didn’t you know all this other stuff that you’re putting on it, dwell on it. That not helpful.
Something Michael Neill said about it that I found really helpful is that we are made really well to deal with what’s on our plate. We are not made so well to deal with everything else that’s in our mind.
I think when we react to worry, the thought of worry, when we don’t catch it and we don’t see it. We like I should really be worried about being smart. And then we create these thunderstorms in our heads. And it takes our attention away from the directional sign that said Turn left here. That what it looks to me.
I have a national radio show under the Ministry of Education of Thailand. I think it’s my third episode, it’s a two hour show. And people can call in and get coaching live and ask questions. So this lady calls in and I asked her like, Hi, welcome to the show. Do you have a question?
She says, “No, I don’t have a question. I just wanted to tell you that you’re not rolling your r’s in Thai correctly. And I thought you needed to know that given that you’re on the radio.” And she said it just like that, and I’m going. A funny thing happened because I saw that I’m not gonna be on the radio anymore. You can’t speak properly.
But I don’t think that’s a good idea to go that way. I’m just going to thank this lady for correcting my Thai speaking on national radio, bless her and say good luck. And that was it. And then this was, I think, in the first 15 minutes of this two hour show, so I had an hour and 45 minutes to go.
The worry did occur me like, I wonder if this is going to throw me off. And it didn’t, because it wasn’t that interesting to me, in my head. I saw the worry. And I’m like, You know what, nobody else called and told me my Thai sucked.
But I think that’s what’s on offer here for everybody listening. When you really spend time to really notice your thinking and really see what we’re pointing to, you get to do stuff like that, where things just roll off your back.
Alexandra: The other thing that occurs to me too about worry is that there’s this universal intelligence that I was not aware of. Nobody had talked about until I was 50 years old, or whatever it was. And we can rely on it. It’s always there, the wisdom and the intelligence that holds us up.
So we don’t have to be so over prepared and worried about what’s going to happen and thinking of all the different scenarios, and how will I deal with it? If this happens, how will I deal with that? If somebody corrects the way I roll my rs. We don’t have to do that?
There’s an intelligence that will guide the way in the moment.
Nikon: Absolutely. I remember as a taekwondo athlete studying really high level athletes, because it’s been so curious; how do they do what they do? And what are they doing that I’m not doing? I remember one interview with Jade Jones and Jade Jones is a double Olympic gold medalist. And when like the legends, and she’s from the UK, and they asked like Jade, “how do you prepare for your matches? Do you watch tapes? Do you know how do you do this?” And she said, “I don’t do any of that. I just show up and respond to what happens in her own way. Because I really don’t know what that person is going to do.”
And the way it was she articulated more because she doesn’t. She’s not in this conversation, understanding she said, because if I watched her videos, they’re probably not going to do exactly what they did in that video. I need to be really present with the person in front of me.
Another athlete in Thailand, who is also an Olympic gold minister. Funny, Her nickname is Tennis, but she’s really great at taekwondo. Go figure. Before her match, she’ll sit and watch her opponent in fighting other people like before she fights them. Tennis will come and sit down and just sit and watch. I looked in her eyes like in when I was when she was doing this on video and I realized she wasn’t analyzing she was just absorbing and getting a feel for her opponent before she before she fought her opponent.
I thought that was the coolest thing. But you could tell she was just absorbing like a sponge. She wasn’t like okay, this one that one. Remember that he uses his left leg. That blew my mind looking back at it now. And that’s what we’re talking about being on offer because she’s not worried about it. She’s able to really be present and see information at a much higher level, which we I’ll have that ability we all do is don’t know it.
Alexandra: Speaking of which: for our listeners, what I tend to do when I prepare for a show is send my guests the questions in advance and you specifically wrote to me and said, Do not send me the questions in advance, which I loved. I thought that was so cool. So tell me about that.
Why did you ask not to have the questions in advance?
Nikon: Michael Neill did that to me. I was like, What do you mean, he’s like, You didn’t even want to look at like, Nope, don’t look at I want to show up fresh. And I’m like, I didn’t get it. Then because that was like, a few years ago I didn’t get why he did that. But now I do.
I realized, credit to him, he is more interested in fresh than stale thought, so stale thought like stale bread, old thought that’s kind of been there. While general reactions, he’s had to similar questions like, he’s far more interested than seeing from the edge. And me and my word, but we were too worried. Do you understand at the edge. And now, I too, am more curious about seeing from the edge.
I’m so curious about seeing with the edge with you. That’s what I love these conversations. So we get to see from the edge together and see things we’ve never seen before. I’m having a great time seeing more about worry. I’m seeing more about old premises and thought like this is this is the best morning ever.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s great. I’m glad to hear that. Well, thank you for that. Because it’s interesting doing this show, some people appreciate the questions and others say I glanced at them, but I’m not really all that interested.
And no matter what everyone still shows up in the present moment. They don’t have a choice, do they?
Nikon: How cool is that? That’s a really good thing to point out. There’s no right way. You always have to see from the edge like, No, you don’t do what occurs to you. Someone’s divine engineering or signals might be like, there’s a question in there that you’re reading to look at, that’s going to be helpful for you. And you should look at that question. And they’ll say, please send me the questions. And for me, it was I really want to see fresh with Alexandra, I want to stand at the edge with her and see what we see.
Alexandra: I remember Michael saying he spent a year one year and every presentation he gave, he decided not to prepare at all. And he said, I think what he said was, a third of them were fantastic. A third of them were really not great at all. And a third we’re sort of mediocre. So just like you say, sometimes preparation is required, but sometimes not.
Nikon: I’m really grateful for Michael testing this out on behalf of all of us. Thank you, Michael. Now we can learn from your like, okay, need to prepare a little bit.
Alexandra: We’re just about out of time. So I wanted to wrap up with a couple of things.
You have a program going on now with Mavis. It has started already as we’re recording this, correct?
Nikon: Yes. And it’s starting, but you can still join. It’s four weeks. I guess I can tell; it’s four weeks and Azul and I, we decided that we wanted to create two more bonus sessions, group sessions, because people were joining from all around the world. And not everybody can make it in the timezone.
It’s 10pm Bangkok time, and it’s 1am Australian time, and we wanted to give those people a chance to connect. And it’s one of those conversations where that’s what’s cool about this conversation is it’s not a conversation where it’s linear, where you have to join the first one to make sense of the rest is you can step you can step in at any at any one of the four weeks and have just a good time. And you’ll get the recordings for the whole thing.
Alexandra: What’s it called?
Nikon: The Divine Engineering of Us. And it’s based on a chapter in Mavis’ book, It’s That Simple. And it’s about learning how well we’re made. So we can be in life at a higher level of consciousness. And for me it’s clarity because you’re not spending time trying to deal with stuff your head, like I’m not good enough, I need to be good enough.
Can I share one thing about that?
Alexandra: Yes.
Nikon: Since seeing that, and uncovering it, I saw so many things. Like for example, I saw that my ambition was really insecurity, that if I didn’t achieve enough, I wasn’t going to be good enough. And now I don’t care anymore about those things, about what I wanted.
Or like earlier in my life, now, I really appreciate simplicity. And how I’m so grateful that I don’t need a lot at all, to be really well. I think that was the biggest insight from seeing that, that I don’t need a lot at all, to have a good life. And I was listening to a podcast with Katt Williams. A brilliant conversation has like, so like millions and millions of views. It’s like two and a half hours long, but people watched it.
Katt Williams said something to the effect of if you didn’t go to bed at night, and if you knew that that was your last day on earth, like that wasn’t a bad day. Like, that’s pretty good. And that’s how I feel now. Like, if today was my last day, and I had I got to talk to you and just do what I was going to do anyways, like, that was a pretty good day. I couldn’t say that before. So I can’t I need to, I have so much I need to achieve and then legacy. And now my slow, good.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s beautiful. I love it.
The other thing I wanted to touch on is that you have First Free Tuesdays. Tell us about that.
Nikon: When I was coming up in this conversation, the only way to access really great teachers like Joe Bailey and Mavis Karn. And my company would be to join their programs. And that was like, like, I don’t think they meant to do that. I just think they didn’t know how to make themselves available.
So I promised myself, because I’ve been really blessed, I think, in my life, and I want to give it back. So I thought, Okay, I’m going to dedicate an hour a month, I’m going to open my door, and anybody, anybody who wants to come and just have a conversation, or hang out with a group of like-minded people to come. It’s called first three Tuesdays, and it’s open office hours with me.
And it’s not one of those things where I only give you 20% of what I have. You get 100% of Nikon and my curiosity and my questions and this this type of conversation. And it’s what I really wanted, when I first started this in this conversation, to somewhere I could go and just hang out and just be like, I think that that’s part of I want to pay it forward.
Alexandra: People can find out about that on your website.
Nikon: Yes, on my website, on my Instagram, on my LinkedIn, I share a lot about that. And it’s always there. It’s always if you type in my name, and you’re looking around, you’re always finding the first free Tuesday. It’s my it’s my gift for all the things I’ve been given.
Alexandra: Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share before we wrap up?
Nikon: I reckon I want to give gratitude to you for all the work you’re doing and, and just bringing people in having these insightful conversations because you don’t know who this is articulated the right way. You don’t know where this conversation is needed. In the places it will bring light to in which rooms it will bring light to we don’t we never know. And we’ll probably never know.
But I have a hunch that because these conversations exist, the universe, God will bring them to the right people who really need them. And I think that’s so cool. That that you’re doing this and the people you’re interviewing, and the rooms at this conversation will light up. But we’ll never know about so much gratitude, respect and admiration for you and the work you’re doing.
Alexandra: Thank you so much. That’s so lovely. I’m happy to hear that. I’m so grateful for technology. Yeah, that feels so special to me that we can have this conversation and then share it with the world. I love that.
Where can we find out more about you in your work?
Nikon: We have Instagram at Nikon.Gormley. We have LinkedIn I’m pretty sassy on linkedin.com. My Website, NikonGormley.com. And there’s a YouTube channel @ Nikon Gormley. And that’s about it.
I’m still learning how to create stuff and there’s gonna be a lot more content coming out. I got a camera, so I’m going to learn how to use that for YouTube.
And for people who speak Thai, there’s a radio show every Sunday from four to 6pm on 92 FM. If you speak Thai, there’s that. We’re doing multi language. We got to light up all the rooms we can.
Alexandra: Yes, that’s right. I will put links in the show notes as ever.
Nikon: Thank you. And if you if you listen to the radio show and you have ideas about how I speak Thai, please send me an email. That would be much appreciated. Don’t call in and tell me. I can do that. It’s okay. But I prefer the email.
Alexandra: That’s great. Well, Nikon, thank you so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Q&A 49 – Noise Vs. Signal In Weight Loss
Feb 01, 2024
When we’re looking to change an overeating habit we can innocently get caught up in the noise in our heads that talks about diet plans and strategies for mastering new habits and willpower. Alternatively, what creates real change – including dropping an unwanted habit – is learning to pay attention to the ‘signal’ that is available to all of us. That signal is universal intelligence and it’s built into us and it’s also built into our unwanted habits themselves.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Looking in a different place for answers to things like an unwanted habit
Paying less attention to the noise of our personal thinking
Relying on universal intelligence, wisdom and insight to help us change
Practising learning to listen to signal rather than noise
How our unwanted habits are feedback about the noise we’re listening to
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode 49 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with some comments, a discussion, an exploration about the signals that we receive versus the noise that’s going on within us, and how that this can affect an overeating habit and resolving that habit and weight loss and all those yummy things.
I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately in my personal life, and I do, of course, all the time.
Specifically, I’ve been thinking about change, because I’ve been feeling a little bit stuck.
I think I might talk about that in more detail on a future Q&A episode. But it’s just this feeling of having resolved sort of 98% of my overeating habit. And the residue that’s left the sticky stuff at the bottom of a cup when you’re having – I don’t drink coffee, but I think sometimes if you’re drinking coffee, the sort of the sludge at the bottom is thicker than what you’ve been drinking. That happens for me when I drink hot chocolate. So the chocolate at the bottom of the cup is always a little thicker than everything else.
I’ve been contemplating that. And because of that, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to share on today’s episode. This came up during a conversation with Nikon Gormley, and he’s going to be on the show next week, February 7, I think, or 8th or whatever the Thursday is. And he brought up this metaphor that Michael Neill talks about, which is a metaphor for change.
It’s a metaphor for what’s happening within us.
It’s a metaphor for paying attention to the spiritual nature of ourselves, rather than just paying attention to our personal thinking, all that kind of thing.
I wanted to talk about this because I think it’s really important to see the differentiation between what we’re looking toward in this understanding, the landscape where we are going to for answers, versus the landscape, the places that we’re used to going for answers. When I say that, what I mean is, we’re used to looking for answers to things like a ton of effort. We’re used to looking to create change with effort, and willpower, and structure the programs that we follow, and those sorts of things.
In this Three Principles understanding where we’re looking for answers is really quite different than that.
You’ve heard me talk about upstream and downstream. So this is the same sort of subject, it’s the same subject, essentially. And I’m going to use different words to describe what I talked about when I talk about upstream and downstream. I like the consistency, that pretty much all the metaphors we talked about in this understanding are always pointing to the same thing. And when it starts to come together for us, it’s it can seem so simple. And when it hasn’t kind of clicked yet, then it can seem a little bit complicated, but please rest assured that it isn’t.
So we tend to think of change as requiring a lot of effort. And this, of course, comes up at the beginning of any year because people are talking about things like dry January, and developing new eating habits for the new year. And taking 90 days to change a habit and that kind of thing.
What I see now is that change happens in a really different way than we, with our personal thinking, tend to think it does.
That actually is really reassuring when we come to these places of stickiness of where we feel a little bit stuck, or it feels like there hasn’t been any change or movement in quite a lot of time. That’s what I’m feeling lately. I’m just dealing with this last stuck 2%. It feels like to me that that may not be the case, maybe it’s something different. But that’s what it feels like, to me, just in my personal experience at this moment.
Let’s now talk about this signal versus noise metaphor. What Michael Neill means when he’s referring to more signal, less noise, that’s how he tends to phrase it, is that when we’re looking for change, and even when we’re looking for guidance, or help with making a decision, or anything like that, what we want to turn toward is the signal in our life, we want more signal.
We want to pay less attention to the noise in our heads.
And what those two things are, the signal is that Universal Intelligence that I always talk about. The innate wisdom that is within each of us, that is signal. It is clear and clean, and universally intelligent, just as the name implies, and there’s so much potential in it, and creativity. And it’s accessible to everybody all the time. And that’s where insight comes from. Insight comes to us via that signal.
Noise, on the other hand, is our personal thinking.
I’ve talked in previous episodes about how our personal thinking, our minds are like a closed loop system. Our minds know what they know. And there isn’t really any new information coming in from just our little personal minds, our personal thinking, anything new and creative, and unexpected. And all that good stuff is coming from Universal Intelligence, via insight.
I’ve talked about how our personal thinking is more like artificial intelligence.
There’s a lot of information there, I’m not denying that at all, a lot of information there. It’s limited in scope. The artificial intelligence only knows what we’ve fed it, the information that we’ve given it. And our personal thinking is a bit the same in that way that it only knows what it knows. And it only knows what it’s been taught and what it’s understood up to this point. Anything fresh, and new and unexpected, or creative is going to come from another place, it’s going to come from Universal Intelligence, and wisdom. Whatever word you want to use to describe that.
We’re always going to have noise.
There’s always going to be personal thinking that we’ve got, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how we are designed. And the challenge becomes learning to hear it, to hear the personal noise, of course, we’re going to be aware of it, but not listen to it, if you see the difference.
In the past, for example, I would have listened to all that noise. And I’ll just give you an example that just occurs to me now. I’ve talked about how I think I talked about it in It’s Not About the Food, how I tried so many different systems and plans and self-help approaches for weight loss and for resolving an overeating habit that I ended up, over the years, circling back to ones that I had tried before and trying them again and failing at them again.
So that’s an example of responding to the noise.
I was innocently, innocently looking for a solution, of course, as we all are, to something that was causing me suffering.
And because I didn’t know that I could access universal wisdom, Universal Intelligence, then the only place I could go was to the noisy place, to the place where my personal thinking would come up with new plans and new or old ideas for how to manage an overeating habit and control it. And really get it under wraps, and all that kind of stuff.
I brought up my personal struggle at the moment, specifically, so that I could say that, at this time, while that struggle is going on, while I seem to be dealing with the sludge in the bottom of the cup, I’ve noticed how easy it is to get to get pulled away by my personal thinking, and for my personal thinking to imagine that it has the answers. And what I prefer to do, and what I’m learning to do more and more all the time, is instead, to listen to the signal.
I want more signal less noise, when it comes to resolving the last little bit of this overeating habit.
And that can be tricky to do, because our personal thinking is so loud and persuasive. And if we’re at the very beginning of this journey, like I was a few years ago, and we don’t have the experience of listening to the signal, and waiting for the signal to tell us to bring us insight, so that we have a higher or a shifted level of consciousness, when we’re not sure that that’s going to show up for us. And we haven’t yet experienced what it’s like to be able to trust that that’s there, then of course, it’s harder. It’s harder to trust it when we’re not practised at that.
When you’re learning to swim, it’s sometimes can be hard to trust that the water will hold you up. But eventually, we all begin to realize that that’s the case. And it’s universally true. There isn’t anyone who couldn’t go into a body of water and float. It’s the same for every single person. And when we begin to see that and begin to trust that the signal is there, then that’s when we can we begin to see more change for sure.
If I haven’t said this already, it can be easy, even now in my personal experience, to be pulled into the noise.
What I’m doing at this time is just remembering that the signal is there, and that it will guide me out of this place. And that listening to the noise, paying attention being distracted, trying to dive into what would we call it the particulars of the overeating problem, like the particular bits of the habit that are that are torturing me right now. And trying to figure out how to fix those things, kind of manually, like making rules about not eating this kind of food on that kind of a day that kind of thing. That’s where the noise lies. That’s noise for sure. And and what we’re looking for is signal.
One of the ways that we can do that, one of my favorite ways, is to remember that any kind of unwanted habit is information. It’s not a problem.
It’s not something that’s broken about us. It’s not something that we need to fix about ourselves. It’s information. It’s feedback. That overeating habit itself is letting us know letting me know at this time that I’m paying too much attention to the noise or that there is noise there. There’s some noise, some personal thinking that’s going on that I’m paying attention to, and that I’m perhaps blind to that I can’t really see something that’s not true but that I believe is true.
The habit itself is what alerts us to the fact that this is going on. It’s saying there’s a better way, there’s a calmer, quieter, more connected to source version of yourself. And if you manage to not get caught up in the noise, then that connection to Source will show you answers about what’s going on with you in the moment. And what that noise is specifically about like, it’s, it’s usually something like, at least this has been my experience.
It’s usually something like unsupportive beliefs.
Thinking that doesn’t serve us and of course, a belief is just a thought that we’ve thought a whole bunch of times. And it’s kind of been ground into our neural pathways. But there’s thinking there that isn’t serving us. And it isn’t one specific variety.
Whatever it is for you, in any given time, is going to be different than what it is the next time or what it is for me at this moment. But that signal that you’re getting, that dashboard light, as some people put it, is the habit itself, your habit. Your unwanted habit is letting you know that you are listening to the noise, and that there’s an opportunity now to instead turn toward the signal.
Back in Q&A episode 44 I talked about the iceberg metaphor, if you remember.
The iceberg metaphor is that in this understanding, if you picture an iceberg in a body of water, what we’ve done in the past, what the noise has got us to do when it comes to changing an unwanted habit is climbing to the top of that iceberg, and chipping away with our ice pick and trying to change the iceberg that way. And that’s what the noise gets us to do. It gets us to take that kind of action, like I talked about at the very beginning of this episode.
Whereas in this understanding, what we refer to is that if we raise the temperature of the water, the iceberg melts all on its own. So when I talk about raising the temperature of the water, what I’m talking about is listening for signal and having insights. And then the temperature of the water does rise and the iceberg melts all on its own.
I’ve shared examples of this in my book, It’s Not About the Food, where I talk about my soda habit that fell away all by itself. I’ve had so many other habits like that just fall by the wayside and not even know nudge me or bother me anymore at all, without any effort on my part other than learning about this understanding and learning to listen for the signal instead of listening to the noise in my head.
I was thinking about this the other day; I happened to be walking down the aisle in the grocery store with the potato chips and cookies and soda and all that kind of stuff. And I couldn’t remember the last time I had a craving for something like that. I used to have potato chips nearly every day. In the evening that was my evening snacky food and that just never happens anymore.
I struggled with that for a long time, and then it just it just fell away.
The more that I listened to people talk about this understanding, and the more that I grasped that we benefit so much from leaning toward connecting to universal wisdom, and Universal Intelligence and insight, and that, in that place, I wish it was a place I could actually physically point you to. But by paying attention to that, that is where change comes from. That’s the landscape that creates change.
So what we’re doing in this understanding and on this podcast, is we’re exploring a way to have more signal in our lives and less noise. And I think that’s about all I have to say about that.
I hope it makes sense. I hope it’s been helpful for you. If you’d like to hear more, or if you have a follow up question about this subject, you can go to AlexandraAmor.com/question. There’s a form you can fill out. And I will answer your question on a future episode. It can be anonymous.
I would love to know, what trips you up.
What doesn’t make sense about exploring this understanding? Where do you feel stuck in your exploration? Is there anything that that just isn’t resonating for you or isn’t quite making sense? And having that information for me is really helpful, because then I can answer that question. I can create an episode that answers that question. And because if you’ve got that question, no doubt more people do as well.
So that’s it from me. I hope you’re doing well and I will talk to you again next time. Bye.
The End of Self-Help with Gail Brenner
Jan 25, 2024
Psychologist and author, Dr. Gail Brenner, shares about the healing power of being present and compassionate with whatever is going on within us. And how when we begin to recognize that there is no ‘out there’ in our lives – there is only our perception – that we begin to suffer less.
Gail Brenner’s interest in suffering and the end of suffering is long standing. Like you, she just wanted to be happy. She put together a functional life of work and friends, but was continually plagued by anxiety, confusion, and relationship troubles. In her search for peace, she came across spiritual teachings about the nature of happiness. And she made some life-changing discoveries including that the more she became disinterested in thoughts—any thoughts—the happier she was.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How meditation can teach us to be with our experience
Having compassion for everything that arises within us
How believing what the mind tells us can be a source of suffering
Welcoming and relating to all the different parts of ourselves with out judging them
How we can get stuck on the path of healing
How happiness is our natural state
How peace never leaves us, we simply place our attention on other things that we believe cause us suffering
The feeling of separation that is at the root of trauma
How there is no life ‘out there’; there is only what we perceive
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Rumi poem: The Guest House
Transcript of Interview with Dr. Gail Brenner
Alexandra: Dr. Gail Brenner, welcome to Unbroken.
Gail: Thank you. Very happy to be here.
Alexandra: I’m happy to have you here.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to realize you didn’t need self-help?
Gail: My background, how far back should I go? I’ll just start professionally. I’m a psychologist, and I’ve been a psychologist for a long time. It’s a profession that drew me many years ago. We heal ourselves as therapists or practitioners, and as much as we help other people. So I think that was part of my motivation early on.
My training was pretty conventional. And then things started really moving and shifting and changing for me, when I started meditating. This was about a little over 20 years ago at this point. I had been in therapy myself for a very long time, and didn’t at this point, I can say, I didn’t get a lot of change from that, that I was looking for. So I kept looking. I had this spirit in me of like, well, there’s got to be something else out there to help with the way that I my version of suffering.
I started meditating. And that really started changing everything, because of the way meditation teaches us to be with our experience. So to be aware of what’s arising in us; sensations, emotions, whatever it is. And when I first started meditating, I was shocked at how many different energies I found in my body and different emotions that I didn’t even know were there. And the fact that I was suffering started to make sense, like, oh, there’s a whole lot going on in here that I didn’t realize, and that is probably something I should pay attention to.
That was the beginning of a spiritual path for me. So combining my psychology background with my interest in spirituality, really supported my quest to find happiness and discover how to be happy. And whereas happiness I knew it was possible, there was some spirit in me that no matter what happened, it, the flame didn’t go out. And then when I started realizing the possibility that maybe there was the possibility of not suffering so much, I was really on fire about that and wanted to know. I went to number of spiritual teachers and had different insights and realizations along the way. And led me to the point where it’s, it’s an ongoing path.
Now it’s nothing’s finished. And there’s always something alive for me like right now, what’s alive, for me is just compassion for everything that arises in us, like every single nuance of our experience, and really turning toward that and welcoming that and loving that.
You’re probably referring to the title of my book, The End of Self-Help. What I mean by that is, there’s no self here that needs help. It’s the title of your podcast, Unbroken. There’s nothing here that’s broken. There’s nothing that needs to be fixed. There’s just different energies and emotions and experiences arising and learning how to relate to all of those in a way that feels aligned and supports our essential wholeness.
Alexandra: Thank you for that answer. One of the things that I was really struck with in The End of Self-Help, was you talk about having been on several spiritual retreats and your journey with psychology, and then it was a lunch, I think, with Rupert Spira that you had, where he pointed out well, what’s the consistent thing that’s there? So your feelings and your thoughts, our thoughts, change. What’s constant? And you realized it was this observer presence. Those are my words. So that was the consistent thing.
Could you talk about that a little bit for us?
Gail: Well, what he showed me is that it was really about time. And he was he pointed out how it takes time to suffer. These are my words, not exactly his. But it takes time to have stories, it’s takes time to have a personal identity. There’s a past, present and a future and now and then, and even to say this statement, I am unworthy, or, I feel inadequate, to have language takes time.
So if we believe anything that the mind tells us, because the mind is only exists in time, then that can be the source of our suffering. And when there’s the realization that time is not ultimately real, there’s a certain reality to it, but it’s not the ultimate reality. Everything just collapses and into this infinite presence. And it’s not capable of suffering at that point.
Alexandra: Related to that, there’s this quote that I love from the book that says:
“When you know, you are presence, the simplicity of being aware, rather than the complexity and confusion of what you’re aware of problems lose their impact.”
I just love that.
I wonder if you could expand on that a little bit for us?
Gail: When we go into the mind and believe the stories that are there. When we look at our histories, or we want a better future, there’s a limited personal identity that’s at the center of that that thinks that there’s something missing. And that that’s a myth.
I’ve come to discover that there’s nothing missing. But if there’s a felt sense that there’s something missing, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, that can be a beautiful inspiration for a deeper inner investigation of knowing.
This happened to me a lot; teachers would say something to me like, well, there is a possibility for an end of suffering. And I didn’t know that in my own experience. So that made me curious, oh, well, they know that. And somehow, I believed that. It made me look at my own experience, and keep coming back and coming back and coming back, because that’s what we need to do.
We need to look within and not wait for the insight or go to the right teacher or read the right book or whatever. It’s an ongoing, endless, really beautiful investigation of what’s here, what’s true, what’s real, and getting a deeper understanding around that.
Alexandra: I like hearing that you say it’s ongoing, that there is no bottom to it.
And so obviously, you’re still discovering things. Is that true?
Gail: Very much.
Alexandra: There’s no destination that we should be aiming for.
Gail: There isn’t. And it’s the opposite of a destination because we think a destination is out there or in the future. Or if only this, or if only that, if only I got it, if only I knew what he knows. Then if there’s an if then then there’s time. And then there’s a projection into the future. And what that means is there’s something missing here and now. And if there’s something built to be missing here, and now there’s something to be investigated.
Alexandra: If any of our listeners are self-help junkies, like I was, how do you suggest that we take the first few steps of getting off that roundabout, as I’m calling it.
Thinking that there are things that are wrong that we need to fix?
Gail: It’s a journey. There’s nothing wrong with self-help and an interest in that, and if it helps, which I think in some ways it can. Some of it can help some people some of the time, and that’s wonderful.
But if there’s a keep looking, keep looking, keep looking and not finding then there’s something else that’s needed in that. If you keep doing the same thing over and over and it’s not really getting you what you desire, what your heart is wishing for and speaking to you, then there’s something else to be done. And that something else is to look inward to recognize that that need for self-help is based on a sense of brokenness, or inadequacy.
What we really talk about here is a complete 180 on that. There’s nothing wrong with any part that arises, any emotion, any anything, and discovering how to relate to those different parts. But I’m really hearing your question like, how do you inspire people to get off the path of self-help?
I think these journeys happen in their own time in their own way. And the questioning, always inquiring not taking anything for granted, not leaving one stone unturned. So, for example, when someone says to me, I’m depressed, I don’t take that at face value. To me, that’s the beginning. I’m getting super curious about what is actually happening in their experience that they’re labeling as depression, because depression isn’t direct experience. Depression is a word that we have some commonality in what it means. But it’s a label for something. So we need to know very specifically what is arising here now.
Alexandra: Do you think at different times, in a person’s life, a word like depression can mean different things?
Gail: Yes, absolutely. I’m not sure if people know what it means, which is that’s the curiosity about it. Like, what is it that and these words get thrown around, and they’re common in our culture? And, so if we get if we really come down to the present moment, if just like what is happening right here, right now, turning the attention into that. The turn from our minds into our bodies is helpful and our direct experience, like what is actually happening now.
And then we find there’s a contraction in the chest or there’s a fluttery feeling in the belly, or there’s a story running over and over and over in a loop that you didn’t even realize was there. And then then we can start opening up learning how to be with those different experiences that we notice.
Alexandra: Do you see an intelligence and in that?
Gail: Yes, absolutely. There’s sometimes we need guidance, I think for lots of people it’s not a path we can go alone. My offering weaves together this path of awakening and understanding the truth about reality, with the investigation into early trauma patterns, which I find fascinating.
And by early trauma patterns, I mean, what happened to us when we were young, in our families that didn’t get resolved, those very sticky places, and how we bring them into adulthood, and we take them to be our identity, when they’re actually not because there are a limited identity. And looking at that, from the perspective of wondering like, who am I what is the truth of by being? What is the truth about reality in the here and now? And to do that we need to untangle those early trauma patterns, those places, tender places in us where we’ve been stuck for a long time.
Alexandra: This is one of the things I wanted to ask you about, because I know you have an interest in this and I saw several blog posts on your website.
You’re saying that trauma can live in our bodies. What happens when we begin to in investigate that or be present with it?
Gail: So what happens when we begin to investigate it, we start to become aware of the actual pattern and even pattern is a vague word. So I’m interested in the body, the attention and attunement into the body is super useful. And I would think important in this investigation, what’s happening in the body, what young parts are being activated?
What emotions are present, what are the stories and beliefs and expectations that are running? The starting place might be suffering here and now in our daily lives. Like if there’s a struggle in a relationship, or, in general, people have struggles with relationships, which was the case for me, a long time ago, I just had trouble with all relationships. And so the questioning is then like, Oh, what am I bringing into that situation? What is arising in me?
And then that’s the beginning. What are the feelings that I feel? What’s the urge? What are the tendencies that I’m bringing in, and then bringing that back inside, into our own experience to understand like, oh, that happened because of whatever was going on in my family when I was three, or five or even earlier than that. And we get an understanding of why these patterns are here in us.
Then we begin to be able to turn toward them with kindness and care and love and unconditional, welcoming and acceptance. And that begins to soften them. So if we’re caught in a some kind of condition pattern, it’s like we’re in love one lane going back and forth, back and forth, for, you know, decades, many of us. And so what we do is bring our attention there and begin to have a great and bring everything together.
Because there’s division there, there’s separation, like, oh, there’s a feeling I had to submerge many years ago, and I can’t bring that out into the light, it’s too scary or unsafe. But we bring about a sense of safety so that we can investigate those deep inner parts, the long-standing patterns and feelings that we have. And with that sense of safety and holding and loving, which is what we always wanted anyway, and maybe didn’t get as much as we needed.
There’s a softening that happens. And when there’s a softening, they’re not so much in charge, and then there’s more space, and then we have more options. And then we can be more present. And then we get to look at things in a fresh way, rather than with that veil that’s been over our eyes, maybe for decades.
That’s how this focus and investigation on our early patterns that developed how that plays a very usual a common role in how people get stuck on this path of awakening, but also where the freedom can be there.
Alexandra: Oh, say more about that. That’s curious for me, how people get stuck on the path.
Gail: If these patterns are unknown to us, I always tell people become an expert in how you suffer. Really get to know what it is that happens in here. Why? So that you can see it.
That’s one reason so that you can, if you’re completely absorbed into some kind of pattern, like say, you’re a people pleaser, and your attention is out there. And all you’re doing is pleasing, pleasing, pleasing, there’s no space to learn how to be with yourself. So we slow things down, and we turn inward.
We take the time to do this very sometimes subtle and precise investigation about what’s happening in the body and what young parts have been activated and all of what’s arising in the present moment, and turning toward those parts with our loving attention and then that creates the space for something new or a new way of being.
Alexandra: There’s an exercise, talking about the flip side of this, that you mentioned in The End of Self-Help about thinking of something that brings us joy, and then dropping our focus on the thing and just feeling the joy.
Can you tell our listeners about that?
Gail: We often, in a common way of being, we want to seek out something to give us joy, or fulfillment or satisfaction. And there’s an ‘if only’ mindset around that; if only I had that thing, that good relationship, that promotion, whatever it is, then I will feel happy or joyful.
But happiness is our natural state, actually, when we stop the looking outward for it, assuming that we don’t have it. And we start to bring our attention in toward our experience. And then we notice what’s there, and we’re lovingly, with all the different parts, being with all of those parts. And then we look beyond that even to what’s outside of all forms.
There’s a field, an energetic field, of aliveness. And we can learn to recognize that it’s always here and always has been here, but it’s just been covered over by our attachment to positive states or finding and not finding the end of our suffering out there.
But we look deeper than the emotions, deeper than our personalities. And we go into the bare bones of the present moment and open to the energetic field that’s here. And as everything falls away, and this is what I was describing, time just collapses, we’re just here and alive and aware, and there’s a tremendous feeling of well-being that comes there.
That’s possible for all of us to discover, at any point in time. It’s not for special people. It’s not special, it’s the nature of how things are all the time. So, there’s always the possibility of discovering that, that happiness or we can use different words of peace or ease or well-being or a sense of fulfillment of not missing something, sometimes it comes as stillness or quiet. This is our, our natural state from which everything arises.
Alexandra: Do you have a practice yourself about touching that space daily?
Gail: I have many practices. I love practices, and I actually feel that practices or some kind of regularity or intention along this path is helpful, I even want to say necessary. Very few people have a lot of insights or go further with their desires without a commitment to it. And it’s a hard commitment. And we can put out a prayer for it, but not just a prayer, there has to be action behind it.
I love practices. I love practices around understanding our trauma patterns. Really, for me, the main one is meditation; just getting quiet and opening and being and then just knowing that and having that be a very familiar, known place, even though it’s fresh, always it’s still the capacity, that we have to find that over and over and over.
And then the possibility of bringing that knowing into our daily lives, which I find fascinating. When somebody cuts me off in traffic or something disappointing happens, then all of a sudden, we’ve left that peace and happiness, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. Our attention has just moved onto something else that we believe to be the source of our suffering in that moment.
So how to work with that to release our attachment to the objects and the thoughts the expectations the emotions they need. And coming back winding it back to the stillness that’s always here. The fulfilled infinite empty energy of life, resting here, then we know it as the source of peace.
Alexandra: You mentioned meditation as practice.
If someone doesn’t have an affinity for meditation or has tried it and it didn’t work, is there something else another a different kind of practice they could try?
Gail: There’s a lot of things. First of all, if someone’s having trouble meditating or can’t or whatever, a guided meditation. Choose that and maybe start one minute a day, because for some people it’s just really, really hard to sit still and be. Start small, that would be one thing.
Another is a practice of attention into the body, which I love, which is just sitting and paying attention to, you could do it as a scan or as whatever sensations are prominent and appearing. But just getting curious about sensation. And that in and of itself is a huge practice in presence. Because we get to notice more and more the subtle sensations.
Ssome people aren’t very comfortable by their habit of being of paying attention to the body. So we can start by just putting the fingertips together and feeling the pressure there. And just getting curious like closing your eyes like, Oh, what is that? So we close our eyes, we take away the fingers and the forms that are in front of us. And we just feel the sensation there. And just like, oh, just getting curious, what is that?
What is that like? Putting our attention right on that sensation. And getting intimate with it and knowing it and making space for it to do whatever it wants to do expand or contract or dissolve or whatever, it doesn’t matter. But opening our attention into sensations in the body or energies. Some people feel frozenness or a sense of numbness in a body that it’s hard to access. But even that can be a fascinating experience to turn toward and get curious about.
Alexandra: You mentioned guided meditations there at the top. And you have quite a few on your website. Am I right about that?
Gail: Yes, I have some meditations.
Alexandra: We’ll mention your website address at the end of the show. But yeah, if people are looking for something, they can definitely find them at your website.
I should have asked this question earlier when we were talking about trauma. But we you mentioned in again, in The End of Self-Help about the feeling of separation, that is at the root of trauma.
Could you expand on that and share with our listeners about what you mean by that?
Gail: At a feeling level, I think we all kind of know what that means. We just feel separate from the world from life. We’re in our heads trying to figure things out.
Say you have a conflict in a relationship, blaming the other person or, we’re in our head. And there’s not a sense of unity there. There’s a sense of a me and the other person, a me and even separate from other parts of myself, there are parts of myself that are too shameful to go toward or too, too difficult, too challenging. I don’t know how to feel the feelings that I know are buried in me somehow. And there’s that fragmentation.
There’s a sense of different energies and ideas and parts and emotions. It feels chaotic and sometimes challenging for us to be with. And when isn’t a sense of separation, when that’s been healed, or we realize the wholeness that is the essence of who we are. There’s a sense of well-being there’s always in a little kind of anxiety or discomfort in set and separation, that something isn’t right. There’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong with the world, there’s something wrong with life.
And then we go into our heads trying to figure it out. But when we can give our attention to that separation, we can get really interesting, especially in the body like, Okay, I don’t feel comfortable in myself or my life. Why is that? And go in and discover what is it in our bodies or maybe our emotions that’s bringing about that sense of dis-ease and bringing our attention to that so that we can see what that really is which is just a sensation arising in awareness.
Alexandra: It strikes me that that sense of separation could almost be described as an absence of love or compassion. Would you agree with that?
Gail: Yeah, I would agree with that actually.
Alexandra: I think of traumatic experiences in my childhood. And that feels like the root of the whole thing; that I felt there was an absence of love, or connection, I guess, compassion.
Gail: Split off. That’s a really good example, just to be very concrete. Say that something upsetting happens to you, as a five year old, and there isn’t the environment. And this is not in any way to judge parents, because they’re always doing their best. I encourage people to really get that as much as they can, because the blame just keeps the victimization going.
When we stop blaming, then we can soften and start to look at like, oh, compassion for the other, eventually, but also compassion for ourselves, we were just in a difficult situation. Say that something upsetting happens. And we don’t get the attention to the emotions that we need and the care and the support. And the knowing that it’s okay to feel that way. And it’s okay to express an emotion if we don’t get that.
Especially chronically over and over and over for some of us for years, what do we do with that emotion, it gets stuck in the body, it can’t get resolved and freed up. So it gets stuck in the body, and we feel tense in our bellies, and then we push it away. And we try to make sense of it. But we can’t, because we’re not looking at the full picture of it. We don’t have the skills to do that.
And we don’t have the safety, which is another key factor, it doesn’t feel safe for us to be ourselves with our own experience. And we’re going to split something off. And that’s the sense of separation that we can’t open to and include everything because it just feels too difficult. And then it becomes a habit. And then we build strategies around that of avoidance or being outside of ourselves and high achieving. Lots of strategies that we can create in our lives.
And then, that the source of all of that is that sense of having split off something so that we can’t feel whole. And then of course, the medicine is to bring all the parts the energies welcome it all. And this takes time. It’s not like magic, like I just welcome everything. No, because some of these parts are very shocked and traumatized and scared to come out into the open. We just take the time, little by little to create this safe space for these cut off parts to come back into awareness.
Alexandra: Makes me think of that Rumi poem about welcoming every visitor.
Gail: The Guest House.
Alexandra: Yes. I love that.
One of the final things I want to ask you is how is our experience of life a projection of our inner state?
Gail: There’s actually no life out there. There’s only what we perceive. So if our perception is veiled by negativity, low self-esteem, fear, a sense of lack, that something’s missing. That’s how we see the world. So and that’s how we can I want to say miss-perceive situations.
We assume that someone did something because they don’t like us. Somebody didn’t call you and they said they would. And then if you’re behind that veil of unworthiness, you might conclude, oh, that’s because that person doesn’t like me, or they weren’t thinking about me or they don’t pay attention to me.
When the reality is if we take away all the veils, they were busy, whatever was going on in that other person’s world, but we project what’s here in ourselves. So if we are believing that the world is unsafe, that other people aren’t going to be there for us that we fail. This is the energy that we show up in situations in our life with.
And this is what we project out onto whatever is happening. So the world is a projection of our inner state. But if our inner state is clear, if it’s open, if there’s not attachment to the suffering, if there’s the sense of wholeness and not the sense of separation, then we’re way more set up to see through the eyes of love, and not fear, love, and not separation, love and not lack. And we can we have compassion, and we see things tenderly, we just melt.
That’s another practice I like. Go into a busy place a cafe or something and just see things, everything you’re seeing through the eyes of love. And just get curious, like, how is that to see without the veil of separation? Very illuminating.
Alexandra: As we’re starting to wind up today, when it comes to The End of Self-Help, and the end of suffering, is there anything we haven’t touched on that you would like to share with our listeners?
Gail: The biggest support is to be very kind with yourself during the process. So if you’re struggling to get an insight, or struggling to feel better, and skip over suffering, which is normal, and I have compassion for that we all want to, none of us really wants to suffer. There’s this human tendency to want to skip over the hard places in us.
But what this path really asks of us is that a growing capacity in ourselves like more and more expansion into the possibility of including everything, which means the really hard places, the tender places, the rejection, the abandonment, the fears, the terror, the rage, all of it. And little by little, like letting that come in.
I want to add in a way that that feels doable. So we don’t want to overwhelm ourselves, either. I’m a big fan of doing this kind of work, of inner investigation, in a group setting that’s led by a leader that has a sense of how to be with these kinds of practices and paths. And we can’t do it alone.
Actually, there’s a saying that trauma happens in relationship. And it happens, because we’ve had inadequacies, let’s say in our relationships, and it heals in safe relationship. So we don’t really know how to bring a sense of safety to ourselves, which is what we need, ultimately. And we can do it, it just takes some time to learn it and get the experience with being a safe anchor for ourselves.
It helps to get the exposure and experience in a group or with other people who can offer that safe space. I want to emphasize kindness to ourselves, and the willingness to stay with it. And trusting yourself. So a lot of us in when we have struggles we learn not to trust ourselves and not to trust life, and it just doesn’t feel very good to be in life with that mistrust. And to find spaces, people where you can begin to trust again, because that trust is our natural state, actually.
Alexandra: Thank you for all of that.
Gail, where can we find out more about you and your work?
Gail: My website. GailBrenner.com. And there’s a lot of content on there; blog posts and interviews and guided meditations. There’s different tabs; an audio tab for the meditations and there’s some video on there as well. I do pretty much weekly groups, so and they’re open for everybody, everybody’s welcome to come. So you can find out about them there or sign up for my newsletter and I send out an article every week because I like to write and I hope it’s a support for people.
Alexandra: Great. I will put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com for that.
Thank you again for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Gail: Thank you I appreciate you inviting me. Kindness is my message.
Alexandra: That really shines through. Thank you. Take care.
Q&A 48 – What does being calm have to do with weight-loss?
Jan 18, 2024
In this excerpt from It’s Not About the Food I share a story about the surprising thing I learned at an Equus training and how it impacts the drive to overeat.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Transcript of this episode
It is early autumn 2014 and I’m standing in a covered outdoor riding arena. Beyond the open walls I can see the California sunshine warming the desert landscape. Here inside, it’s a bit chilly in the early morning, and I’m wishing I’d worn a light jacket.
The arena is huge, probably nearly the length of a football field and almost as wide. The ground is covered in brown dirt, and where the sun comes past the walls into the building, I can see dust motes floating in the beams. Within the larger arena, there’s a temporary round pen that’s about 40 feet in diameter. I’m inside that pen and I’m not alone. With me is a brown and white horse, whose name I didn’t catch, and we’re going to spend the next few minutes bonding.
I’m here at ‘horsey camp,’ as I call it, in my latest attempt to try to heal the drive to overeat. I’ve flown from Vancouver, British Columbia, to very Southern California and spent money I don’t have in order to spend two days doing what’s called Equus training.
I love horses and grew up around them. My dad started me taking riding lessons when I was about four years old. So this is a comfortable and happy place for me. However, we’re not doing any riding this weekend. I and the other ten or so women in the class will all be doing our work from the ground. Which is why I’m standing in the round pen with a paint horse.
Over the next two days, we all take turns in the round pen with a variety of horses. The premise of the training is that we’re going to learn about ourselves by being in the pen with a horse, both by seeing how we react to different situations and also by seeing how the horses react to us. Horses are highly intuitive and sensitive creatures. Though they are large, they are prey animals, not predators, so they’ve evolved to be keenly sensitive to their environments and to changes in the energy around them. As such, they give immediate feedback about a person’s state of being, often pointing out patterns of behavior that we aren’t aware of.
The objective of the first exercise we do is to get the horse to trot, or canter, around the outside edge of the round pen. Individual trainees like me stand in the very center of the pen and encourage the horse to move without shouting or running at it. You might have a coiled lead rope in one hand that you can gently slap against your leg, but that’s all the guidance you can give to the large animal looking at you with wary eyes. You’re essentially moving the horse with your energy. Letting it know what you want it to do by holding the intention in your mind and being clear and calm. (We’ll get to why calmness matters in a minute.)
I’ve traveled to this foreign land, crossed an international boundary, rented a car, and booked a hotel with the hope that this silent, brown and white animal with pointy ears and a soft muzzle will show me what’s wrong with me. I want to know why I feel so broken inside and why, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to conquer the drive to overeat.
The horse and I look at one another for a few moments while I receive instruction from the workshop trainer. Outside the round pen, my fellow workshop participants are watching, which is really uncomfortable for me. I hate being the center of attention.
The workshop leader, Jill (not her real name), lets me know I can start anytime. I picture in my mind what I want to happen, gently flap the lead rope against my jeans, and make a clucking sound with my tongue. The horse starts to move, trotting counterclockwise around the pen.
After a few moments, Jill says, “Get her to canter,” so I hold that intention in my mind and, miraculously, the horse starts to canter.
I can feel the connection between me and the horse. My self-consciousness about being watched disappears and my attention is entirely focused on the present moment, here, in this round pen with this brown and white horse.
“Now make her turn around so she’s going in the other direction,” Jill says.
I keep my energy at the center of myself (I’m not sure how else to describe this), step ever so slightly to my left, and imagine the horse turning around and running in the other direction.
And it does.
I’m elated.
“Now slow her down.”
I calm my energy down, sort of like pulling a blind down over a sunny window, and the horse slows down from its canter to a trot, then a walk.
“Excellent,” Jill says. “How was that for you?”
I turn my back on the horse and look through the bars of the round pen at Jill and the others who are standing in the dirt outside it. I can hear the horse coming up behind me and eventually it comes to stand beside my right shoulder as I describe what the experience was like for me. I turn slightly and place my hand on the horse’s withers while I speak. Someone in the group takes a photo of me and the paint horse, and to this day, I have that image pinned to my fridge.
As I said, I grew up around horses, but this experience was entirely different than saddling and unsaddling, walking, trotting, and cantering (heels down!), and jumping over little rails. There was more connection between me and that brown and white gelding in those 20 minutes than there had ever been with any of the horses I’d ridden as a child and teenager.
And yet, I leave the weekend disappointed.
I get to spend a couple more sessions in the round pen with different horses over the course of the weekend and each time it is as effortless and powerful as the first time. Others in the group have different experiences, and several have big, cathartic moments that are akin to a breakthrough in therapy, except they do it standing on a dirt floor and sobbing into the neck of a doe-eyed gelding or mare. I don’t experience this. I don’t come any closer to understanding why I feel the drive to overeat, and I leave the weekend grateful for the experience but very sad. I had wanted to be fixed. Surely spending all that money and traveling all that way would have resulted in some sort of healing awareness. But it didn’t.
I do learn one thing, though, that sticks with me from then on, and it is this. Every wild horse herd has a lead mare. It is her responsibility to guide the herd to good grazing areas and to sources of water. She will also alert the herd to signs of danger. And the most interesting thing about a lead mare is that she is not necessarily the toughest animal in the herd; she’s not necessarily the strongest, fastest, or biggest. She’s the calmest.
Now, if you’re an equine biologist you might dispute the veracity of this claim, but I love this as a metaphor. It points to the idea that being calm serves us.
This little nugget of information stays with me in the years leading away from that workshop, popping into my head every once in a while. And once I discover the inside-out understanding, I will see how it is a helpful metaphor for our human experience and for healing the drive to overeat.
Problems as Illusions of Thinking with Jack Pransky
Jan 11, 2024
When coach, speaker and author Jack Pransky first heard about the changes happening in the community of Modello, Florida, he knew he had to find out more. Pretty quickly he ended up writing a book about Roger Mills’ work using the Three Principles in that community, which was radically changing lives. Since then he’s written several books about the understanding, including its history, and he continues to be passionate about sharing its simplicity and impact.
Dr. Jack Pransky is a Three Principles Author, Trainer and Practitioner: a Coach of Coaches and a Counselor of Counselors.
Jack is a national and international consultant, speaker, and author who has worked in the field of prevention and community organizing since 1968.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Jack’s book Modello about a housing project near Miami and its turnaround via the Three Principles
The challenge of changing minds in the world of prevention and traditional outside-in psychology
How using our intellect to get through life isn’t as easy as relying on our innate wisdom
How we can only think ourselves away from wisdom
On consciousness as its role in making our thinking look vividly real
Transcript of Interview with Jack Pransky
Alexandra: Jack Pransky, welcome to Unbroken.
Jack: I’m very happy to be here.
Alexandra: So nice to meet you.
Jack: Nice to meet you too. It’s a pleasure.
Alexandra: Thank you.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in the Three Principles.
Jack: So many people have heard this story that I have a hard time recreating. I was involved in the field of prevention for many, many years; prevention of problem behaviors, alcohol and drug abuse, child abuse, domestic violence, delinquency, or things like that. I got to the point where I sort of knew what I was doing. And, decided to write a book about it, called Prevention, The Critical Need.
Just before that book was about to go to press, I was invited to a Prevention Conference. Roger Mills was speaking. And I was suspicious, because I just spent three years of my life trying to find out what worked, and I’d never heard of this guy. But when he brought a couple of people with him from the housing project that he worked in, he was talking about how the housing projects, which is a horrible place, had gotten completely turned around. I could tell from listening to these people that their lives would never be the same, like something deeply had happened with them that we were not used to seeing and prevention.
So that’s what got me hooked. I ended up asking Roger Mills if I could write a book about happened in Modello. And so I did that. And then I had to find the source. And the source was Syd Banks. And the rest is history.
Alexandra: As they say. Well, that was one of my questions.
Tell us a bit more about that book and about the community of Modello.
Jack: Modello was known to be one of the most difficult places near Miami, Florida. It was really kind of a horrible community to have to live in. Because there was violence everywhere. Drug gangs were in every corner. There were shootings, tremendous domestic violence, tremendous abusing kids, crack addiction, it was just horrible.
Roger Mills, thought this would be the place to test out whether Syd Banks’ ideas, what he had uncovered, would work in a place of that magnitude, as opposed to the individual people who were hovering around him at the time. And so he went in there, armed with only his knowledge and understanding of the Three Principles. It might not have even been called Three Principles then. And hope, and being able to see through the presenting behavior to the core of health and beauty inside people.
He also never gave up, even though a lot of them wanted him out of there and did everything they could to get him out of there. A few people at first started catching on. And then they got together as a as a group that served as both a kind of like a parenting course and PTA and also doubled as a tenant’s counsel for the area.
Little by little people started catching on more, and even though maybe 10 or 12 people really caught on to it, and their lives changed completely. It had a ripple effect throughout the whole rest of the housing project and the whole housing project changed. And it took two and a half years.
Alexandra: When you wrote the book about this experience, so you mentioned that you wanted to get back to the source of where this idea had come from.
Did you at that point track down Sydney Banks and talk to him?
Jack: I did. I heard that my cousin George Pransky was doing a seminar with him in Vancouver. And I was supposed to be doing a prevention training in Atlanta, I believe. They were paying for me to get to Atlanta and back. So I bargained with them to ship me over to Vancouver and back. At that time, staying over Saturday night made it much, much cheaper. And so I bumped into Syd Banks.
At that time, at first he said he couldn’t see me and couldn’t talk because he had people coming in from all over the world. But then somehow, I ended up at a lunch with him and bunch of other people. And that’s where he literally blew my mind apart. I wrote that story up in Seduced by Consciousness. It’s an amazing story to me. But that’s only because what happened to be is indescribable, so it’s in my head, my own head.
Alexandra: You mentioned your work in prevention. So this must have affected that tremendously.
Jack: I tried to then convince the field of prevention that going in the Inside Out direction was more efficacious than going outside in. And I was basically met with deaf ears. I mean, some people caught on, and that was beautiful. And their lives were changed. And they were able to help others even better. But as far as the entire field goes, No.
Because at that time, interestingly, this whole notion of what first was called research, proven programs, and then was called evidence-based programs and came in and so they started only paying attention to the program’s prevention programs that had a lot of research behind them, that showed that they were good, and they put all of their money into that. There was no room for innovation.
Anyone in the Three Principles world or health realization, as it was called, at the time, didn’t have big money for research. All the little research that we did was showing great effects, but we couldn’t show it on like a peer reviewed kind of level that we can do today.
Alexandra: Wow. And did it end up changing the field of prevention?
Jack: No.
Alexandra: Oh, still to this day.
Jack: To this day. I’m not totally giving up on it. But it’s harder to do from a retired or semi-retired perspective.
Alexandra: Yeah, I imagine.
Jack: I am apparently doing a keynote speech for the New Zealand and Australian Mental Health Association in May, and talking to a bunch of traditional psychologists. And we’ll see how that goes.
Alexandra: Oh nice. Have you been to Australia before?
Jack: I did a keynote for their organization, many, many years ago when I was first getting into the principles, but I was doing it on prevention at the time, but didn’t know enough about the three principles then to speak with it with great authority.
Alexandra: One of the things I wanted to talk to you about today was you had mentioned in a blog post recently about the wisdom of waiting for clarity, and especially in a crisis. And this is one of the first things that I really learned from the Three Principles. And it may have been from your, your book, actually, that where I first saw that mentioned just that.
There’s no need to rush into making a decision that waiting for clarity is such a valuable tool. I’d love for you to talk about that a little bit.
Jack: Well, first of all, if it’s really an emergency, and you have to do something right away, then you have to do something right away. You do whatever you can do in that situation right away. But more often than not, we tend to react to crises and emergencies through our typical knee jerk reaction kind of thinking. And if we do that, it’s not going to come out that way.
Our wisdom is embedded in us, in our spiritual essence. And we can only hear it when our mind quiets, and clears. It’s always speaking to us. But we can only hear when our mind quiets or clears. And that’s what we want to be guided by in life, with crises or pretty much anything.
When I learned to do that, instead of plowing ahead with my typical thinking, it really changed everything. Now I really take a step back, wait for my mind to clear. It doesn’t always happen right away. And I know that when I hear wisdom, speak to me, it has a like a knowing and a certainty about it. That feel that sounds different, and it feels different. And so that’s what I am guided by. And that’s what I hope to be got.
Alexandra: Me too. I noticed when I was first learning about this understanding, because preparing the questions for you, I was sort of reflecting on this. And when I was first exploring this understanding, I noticed that if I was in a situation, and I felt like I had two choices, and neither of them felt quite right, and I hadn’t had that moment of clarity, I would get impatient after a day or two, and I would just pick one, and carry on that way.
Inevitably, it wouldn’t work out as well. I learned that sometimes clarity takes a minute to arrive. And there was never any pressure. I wasn’t in an emergency situation. I just had to learn to wait for that feeling.
As you say, it’s a very specific feeling when the right answer comes along with clarity.
Jack: It also doesn’t always sound logical. The wise thing to do doesn’t always sound logical. Sometimes it sounds really weird. And I’ve learned to trust it anyway. It’s hard at first.
Alexandra: I was so used to trusting my brain. And I still slip up sometimes. And that’s okay.
It was a new muscle that I had to develop.
Jack: It’s actually not even a new muscle. It’s like a releasing of all muscle. The wisdom can come up to us, through or through us, from God knows where.
Alexandra: The first book that I read of yours was Somebody Should Have Told Us. That book introduced me to the idea of not thinking our way out of problems, which was really new to me, and a little disorienting at first.
Can you talk about not thinking our way out of problems?
Jack: Well, in a way, it’s just what we were just talking about, because we all have intellects some are stronger than others. And for the most part, we have tried to use our intellect to get through life. And it hasn’t always worked because the place of wisdom and insight comes from a completely different realm. It’s something that really does come through us and not is manufactured by us. But the intellect is kind of manufactured by us.
With wisdom, we’re releasing all the stuff that we know. And we go into I don’t know mode. And I don’t know mode is a really beautiful because it clears the decks. And it allows for things to bump up to us, to come into us. And it’s such a beautiful thing when that happens.
I was talking to, I think I put this in Seduced by Consciousness, I was talking to a medical doctor one time, doing some coaching with him. He applies his intellect, to everything. And so I said to him, if somebody comes to you, and you’ve gone through all your intellect, and something isn’t quite right, and you don’t know what it is, do you bear down and apply your intellect more? Or do you take a step back? And wait for clarity.
He said, I take a step back, and I wait for clarity. Now, he was not doing it with his primary relationship at home. So I said, Well, if it works there, why wouldn’t it work there. But he couldn’t, perhaps, couldn’t handle that idea, for some reason. Because he had different thinking about what a relationship with dealing with the relationship was like, and what dealing with at work, medical practice was slow. So, that was a very interesting conversation. I’ll never forget it.
Alexandra: Is there anything you could say more about when we’re learning to trust this wisdom that already exists within us? Anything you can point people toward about that?
Jack: Well, yeah, what’s worked for them? In the past, they didn’t know what was going on. In my trainings, I used to ask people all the time, what are you doing when you get your best ideas?
People would come up with things like taking a walk, which is before I’m going to sleep, just when I’m waking up, when I’m in the shower, doing the dishes. The common denominator and all of those things is the mind relaxes.
That’s what we want to happen if we want to really see our way through things, we want our mind to relax. And the tendency is to do the opposite. The tendency is to bear down so that we can get it right because sometimes stepping back and waiting for clarity feels too passive or something. But it really isn’t. We could bear down and really make something happened. But as you described at the beginning, it doesn’t always work out.
Alexandra: So many big decisions in my life, I find every time I’ve gotten 10 miles down a road and then realized I didn’t want to be on that road it was because I forced a decision and didn’t wait for clarity. Every time.
Jack: And the other part of what is built into our spiritual essence, is pure peace, and pure love. And that’s what exists or resides in everyone. Even people, like the people in Modello who were having all of those horrible problems, everyone. And when we can first see that, well first find ourselves, then see that and other people and then help people see that in themselves. That’s what really makes a difference.
And to know that we can only think our way away from it. That’s the most humbling thing to me of all. We’ve got all this beautiful stuff inside us, which is there already. We’re looking for it, but it’s there already. And yet, we can only get in our own way. There’s nothing about the three principles that is more amazing to me and humbling than that. And when people catch on to that their lives change.
Alexandra: That’s so great. We touched on prevention earlier in your work, both before and after you found discovered the Three Principles.
What is the spirituality of prevention?
Jack: Well, the spirituality of prevention was something I actually got into before I found the Three Principles. Very few people in the prevention field were looking in that direction. But I was on a spiritual search before I bumped into the Three Principles which then screeched to a halt.
Before that I was going all over the place. I was reading all kinds of spiritual books, I was listening to spiritual talks. And I was trying to grasp what about those things could be applied to the prevention field. And so that’s what spirituality prevention was about, essentially.
There were practices like meditation, and yoga, and all those kinds of things. And it was all over the place. And myself and a couple of partners of mine, we had formed a group called prevention unlimited. And we put on the first spirituality of prevention conference in the in the country. And that was right about the time when I was starting to first get into the Three Principles.
I gave a workshop there on that, on that day, and now, I really see the principles as the only real way to get a grasp on spirituality and prevention. I may be prejudiced, but it really has worked for me. I’ve seen so many lives change as a result that most people who work in prevention don’t see. And so you couldn’t knock me off the step.
Alexandra: And so often, when it comes to things like addiction, people are talking about recovery.
With prevention, what sort of communities or groups or you’re dealing with people who are vulnerable to those kinds of things?
Jack: Anybody really, but particularly communities that what we used to do in outside in prevention, is you we would we would give people information. We would teach skills, we would build supports, we would create healthy environments, in the hope that those things would help people’s minds to change and they and they would experience healthy self-perceptions.
Which would in turn help people have a sense of health and well-being about themselves. And that was, that was the idea.
Prevention from the inside out, changes that completely around.
It starts with the premise, as I was saying before, that we all have health and well-being inside us already. It’s just covered up with by our own thinking, and when we can point people in that direction, then they start to see that in themselves. They start gaining healthy self-perceptions. They work to change the conditions in their environment. They make things better for themselves around themselves. And that’s how prevention starts from the inside and goes out. And then when a critical mass of people and a community like Modello catches on, it can change entire communities.
Alexandra: Does Modello still exist?
Jack: I hear that it’s been completely turned into a different kind of housing. But even at the time, Hurricane Andrew came by and wiped out the entire community. I went down there a month after that. And the place has been blown apart, literally. Half of everybody’s house is gone. And so you couldn’t really tell whether it would have had lasting effect over the years. Except if you trace the lives of the people, which is what I did. And their lives continued to be healthy and change even in the face of that.
Alexandra: Wow. What a testament, given that, everything they’ve been through. That’s amazing.
Jack: Yeah. And it is the model for how this can be so helpful to humanity. I personally wish that more people involved in the Three Principles were taking it into communities. Once Roger Mills died that emphasis fizzled.
Alexandra: I remember from your book about Modello, that it did take some time for him to get a toehold in there. And it seemed like a real challenge for him.
Jack: Well, he had a really good attitude about it, it would be a challenge for most people. It was a little for him. People did everything in their power to get you out of there. Which you can totally understand. But his attitude was, of course, they’re going to be acting this way toward me, given the way that they’re thinking, force attitude to it. But that’s not the way they really are.
So yeah, it’s more difficult than coaching people one on one. It’s more difficult than going to businesses. It’s more difficult than working in groups with people to go into communities like that. But it’s the biggest bang for the buck, you could say.
Syd Banks always had this feeling that the Three Principles were meant to be helpful to humanity. And that we are to be of service to people. And that, to me, needs to be and continue to be the primary emphasis.
Alexandra: I love that. That’s great.
Speaking of which, you mentioned you’re sort of semi-retired now. I noticed on your blog – we’re recording this in very early January 2024 – you thought of December 31 as kind of the retirement day of last year.
Jack: Oh, it didn’t work out that way. It’s kind of a joke, really. But I consider myself semi-retired to being fully retired. I pretty much wait for people to find me if they do and if they don’t, I’m happy. I have worked to keep me going.
Alexandra: You mentioned the word service and I love that.
When something has a feeling like that I imagine it’s impossible to just set it down and walk away.
Jack: It is. I’m afraid to say that it is. I really do still I have this. I don’t know whether you’d call it an urge or desire or something to be helpful to humanity as much as I can. So even though right now, most of my focus is on writing a book about my hobby, music, I still cannot. When people contact me about doing something like yourself, I can’t turn away from it.
Alexandra: I love that. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. So we’re getting sort of towards the end of our time together.
Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share?
Jack: Well, I want to re-emphasize something. The principles really, at its essence, only means two things:
That we have this pure spiritual essence, embedded in our pure consciousness, connected to the purest part of Universal Mind, which gives us everything we need, and we can’t get away from it, even if we try.
And then we have thoughts.
And we can, in our thoughts get picked up by our consciousness, and consciousness, its job is to make it look real. So it sends it through our senses. And it makes it look very, very real to us. Which is why we get deluded into thinking that it’s reality, as opposed to just an illusion of our own thinking.
When we’re able to see our problems as illusions of our own thinking, we are free. And those two things, to me, are all we need to know about the three principles. And it’s only a question of going deeper into what those two things really mean. People make it very complicated. Syd Banks was always telling us, we make it much too complicated, just beginning to grasp a tiny bit of what he was talking. Took me years to get there.
Alexandra: I would say that the title of your book Seduced by Consciousness is a really simple encapsulation of that idea.
Jack: It makes people scratch their heads at first, which is good. But whatever we think and believe, with more thinking, we’re going to get seduced by as reality. Very tricky. Because it’s almost like the ego’s job to make us believe it. Because it doesn’t want to relinquish itself. It’s like holding onto itself, dear life. It will do everything in its power so that we don’t realize this.
Alexandra: So true. That’s so great.
Where can we find out more about you and your work, Jack?
Jack: My website is not really that active, but it is InsideOutUnderstanding.com. People can look me up on Facebook, /Jack Pransky. I posted a couple of things that I’m doing in my semi retirement one thing I’m excited about is when I go to Australia, I’m working with a couple of people to do a training now in Bali, which is on my bucket list. So things like that, or keep me going.
Alexandra: Nice. I will put links in the show notes to your website. And we’ve mentioned your books a couple of times. So let’s just talk about that. So your books are mentioned on your website as well. They are.
Jack: Somebody Should Have Told Us is probably my most popular book. It’s the one that people look to for an entry into the three principles a lot. And Seduced by Consciousness is the advanced version of that.
Modello is just an incredible story. And I’m not saying that because I wrote it because it was incredible story before I wrote it down of how step by step and the story of how this horrible community was completely changed around.
Parenting From The Heart is based on the Three Principles. One called Hope for All, which is interviews, extensive interviews with people whose lives have turned around but Three Principles and then are going off and working with others.
Paradigm Shift is about the history of the Three Principles. I’ve co-written a couple of books for kids, little kids, and one curriculum for middle school students. So I’ve been involved in writing. Plus, I’ve co-authored a bunch of research articles, peer reviewed research articles with Tom Kelly. So that’s what I that’s what I do mostly, and I’m a writer.
Alexandra: I’m so glad that you captured the story of Modello and also the history of the Three Principles in Paradigm Shift. It feels so important that those things don’t get lost. And I love that you did that. They must have been enormous projects.
Jack: They were much bigger than I thought they were going to be.
Alexandra: I think it’s so important historically to see to see how that have those things happened. Well, thank you so much, Jack Pransky, for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Q&A 47 – How our thinking is like a television
Jan 08, 2024
It can be so easy to get caught up in the drama of life and experience suffering because of this. But when we begin to explore the nature of our thinking and see that it is a spiritual energy coming to life within us, our suffering eases.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
New schedule for Unbroken podcast – Thursday’s only for the next while
Coming up in a Thursday episode I’ll talk about coming out of the back of the spiral
How thinking works like a television
What we experience is only every going on inside us
When we see this it makes resolving an overeating habit so much easier
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 47 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate it.
Before we kick off today’s subject, which is how is our thinking like television, I wanted to do a couple of quick housekeeping items.
The first one is that we’re coming up to a year of Unbroken podcast, which is very exciting. I started on February 14 to 2023. And this episode that I’m recording now will go out on January 8 2024. So almost a year of episodes. 47 Q&A episodes and 47 interview episodes. I’m really proud of everything that I accomplished in this past almost year.
And as we do, I’ve been contemplating things over the holiday time when I had to had a few days off. What I realized is that I have some projects that I’d really like to work on in this coming year. And that releasing two podcast episodes a week is a bit of an impediment to that. It’s a lot of work, recording two episodes per week. So what I’m going to do is change the schedule up a little bit, and switch to one episode per week.
Starting the week of January 15 there will just be one episode of Unbroken each week on Thursday. And I’m going to alternate between interview episodes and these this type of solo shows that I do, where I talk about what I’m seeing, and what the insights that I’ve had and what I’m observing, and that kind of thing. So yeah, like I say, that’ll start the week of January 15.
January 18 will be the first of that kind of episodes.
And it’ll actually be an interview with I think it will be with Gail, Dr. Gail Brenner. So you can keep your eyes and ears open for that.
And then what else? What other housekeeping did I have? Oh, yes. I’ve talked a little bit lately about being in the back of the spiral. If you’ve listened to previous episodes, I’ve mentioned that a couple of times. I’ve come out of the back of the spiral. So that’s exciting news. And I’m really thrilled about it.
So I think what I’ll do is I’ll talk about that on the first solo episode after I make this schedule change. So that’ll be later in January, maybe the 18th or something like that, I think. I’m not quite sure. I’ll talk about what that was like, for me the insights that I had the things I’ve seen. And I’ll go over again, what it meant to me to be going through the back of the spiral, and how even on the darkest days, it was nice to know that it was just a natural part of the learning and growing process like I talked about on a previous episode, so stay tuned for that.
Okay, so today, I want to get into this metaphor that I heard recently, and how I think it relates to the Inside Out understanding. And this was a metaphor that I heard from a man called Bruce Greyson. He’s a scientist who specializes in near-death experiences, if you can believe it. This had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the Three Principles or the Inside Out understanding. I heard him on Lian Brook-Tyler’s podcast, called Waking the Wild. And then I also heard him on another podcast and I can’t remember whose it was but he is a really interesting guy.
Really fascinating studies that he’s done about near-death experiences, and what people experience when they have that kind of a situation that goes on. But none of that matters for this episode of Unbroken.
What does matter is, he used this really great metaphor, so I’m going to borrow that metaphor from him. I can’t even remember what he was talking about this or what it meant to him, but he had this great metaphor about television, and how when we watch a television – and these days, of course, we watch a lot of things on our laptops to TV shows and stuff like that movies – we know that whatever’s going on on the show isn’t happening inside the TV set, or inside the computer. We know for sure, from probably a pretty young age, maybe not super young. But eventually we figure it out that those aren’t little tiny people walking around inside the TV set. They don’t live in there.
The show is actually being broadcast from somewhere else.
It’s coming into the television set from somewhere else. And when Bruce Greyson shared this metaphor, I thought, Oh, that’s really close to, or a really good description of our experience of thinking as well. And the reason I say that is because our experience of thinking is coming to life within us. But it is coming to life from somewhere else.
Thought is a spiritual energy that’s coming to life, coming into us, and then creating our experience via consciousness.
That’s how we’re experiencing the world. And one of the things I thought of that was parallel to this metaphor that he was using, was that everything that so for example, I was watching over the holidays, the show Slow Horses, which is based on a series of books, it’s a show on Apple TV. And it’s entirely set in the UK, mostly set in London. And what I reflected on was that, when I’m watching that show, and it’s based in a place like London, in a way, I know that I’m not experiencing London, as it really is.
I’m experiencing what the television show is showing me about London. But I don’t think that that’s all that London is, is just what they’re showing me.
When it comes to our thinking, there’s a real similarity in that we are only ever experiencing what we’re thinking.
And we can, it’s kind of a paradox, but we can never really be experiencing what’s going on outside of us. Everything that’s happening, whether it’s our boss, or our co-worker, or our flat tire on our car, or our experience of food, we’re only ever experiencing what’s going on in our thinking. So the parallel to this television metaphor would be like, if you were never able to visit London, and the only way that you were ever able to experience London was through a screen. So through a television screen or through a computer screen, if you were using looking at Google Maps, or Google Earth.
If that’s the only way you could experience London, that’s similar to what’s going on when we are experiencing anything in the world.
Because we experience it via our thinking. And when we’re new to this understanding, it can be a little bit challenging to get our heads around how that might work. But pretty quickly, we can see that that’s actually the truth. One of the easiest ways that we can see that this is true, is that you can just simply go to a movie with a friend or a group of friends and ask them all at the end what they thought of the movie, and you’ll get several different opinions right about that.
We can do that about a meal or about a day out in in a city or about a conversation with somebody. If I’m having a conversation with somebody in there somebody there with me, listening, their experience of what happened can be completely different than my experience. And what that points to is what’s going on with our thinking and where our experience of life is coming from.
It’s coming from Thought, it’s coming from the thinking that we have about that situation. And like I say, it can take a bit to get our heads around this. And the thing that I found, I find still find too, a little bit perplexing is that, so there’s no real reality.
There’s no absolute truth about anything, because we are only ever experiencing our thinking about that thing.
I bring this up, because when it comes to resolving an unwanted habit, like overeating, when we begin to see the impact that our thinking is having on us, especially when we’re unaware of where it’s coming from, and we begin to notice the natural movement and rhythm of our thinking that it can get stirred up, but that it is designed to settle down again, automatically.
And that as Dicken Bettinger said on last week’s Thursday episode, we tend to be in in one of two states were either really caught up in our thinking, or we’re not. We’re in a more peaceful place. And of course, that exists on a spectrum. And he was simplifying it for us so we could see what was really going on.
We could say the television screen, in this television metaphor, is either on or it’s off. And when it’s on, it has the power to create all kinds of experiences in us. And this is just like a television or a movie screen as well. We can be sitting on a couch, eating popcorn, very comfortable in our pajamas.
We can be terrified, or we can be crying our eyes out, or laughing. All those are things being generated, not from people who are in the room with us, or ‘real experiences’ that we’re having, but from what’s happening on the screen. And that’s exactly the same as our thinking.
Consciousness makes our experience so vivid. And that’s its job.
It’s designed, we are designed, to experience life this way, of course, otherwise, it would be a lot less fun. And just like that TV screen, it can create all kinds of experiences within us, everything on the emotional spectrum.
So I just thought I would mention that metaphor it, it really caught my interest when I was listening to Bruce Greyson on that on those podcasts. And I thought it was a really good one to help if you are at the beginning, or even the middle of getting your head around this inside out understanding.
I hope that was helpful for you today and that you were doing well and taking care. And I will see you …so I would there won’t be another short episode next Monday. Just a reminder, and we will go to a Thursday only schedule from now on, alternating between interviews, and then episodes like this where I share what I’ve been seeing.
The Surprising Simplicity of Life with Dicken Bettinger
Jan 04, 2024
Coach and author Dicken Bettinger has spent most of his adult life sharing the simple, yet not generally understood, simplicity of human psychology that he first learned from Sydney Banks. Dicken’s message is simple: at any given moment, we are all either caught up in our thinking, or we are connected to the well-being and peace that is within every one of us.
Dicken Bettinger, Ed.D., received his undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University and began his career teaching high school students. He received his Master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and his Doctoral degree in counseling psychology from Boston University.
Thirty-three years ago he met Sydney Banks who had an enlightenment experience where he realized the Three Principles that underlie all human experience. Dicken had finally found universal principles that he could teach anyone.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
On the early quest to help people ease their suffering
How when our thoughts clear we experience the well-being that we are made of
How we feel what we think
How our state of mind affects things like productivity and success
On the quiet that is always available when you’re not listening to the noise
How parenting is positively affected when we see our thinking for what it is
What meaning do our dreams have?
How we all have access to universal wisdom
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Dicken’s book with Natasha Swerdloff is Coming Home: Uncovering the Foundations of Psychological Well-being
Sydney Banks
Dr. Roger Mills
Transcript of Interview with Dicken Bettinger
Alexandra: Dicken Bettinger, welcome to Unbroken.
Dicken: It’s great to be here with you, Alexandra. Thanks for inviting me.
Alexandra: My pleasure.
So why don’t you give us a little bit of your background and tell us how you came to discover the three principles?
Dicken: I’d be glad to. I started my career as a high school English teacher. And I was very young and I looked younger than the high school students I was teaching. Pretty soon I had more kids coming to me to talk about their problems than the guidance counselor’s. The guidance counselors came and talked to me. What are you doing? And so it started my passion and curiosity about what can I learn that I can share with people that would help them have an easier time in life and began many, many year long year quest to explore what people are teaching about well-being.
I taught for six years, and then I left to get my doctorate in counseling psychology and I became a licensed psychologist. And I had been working for 10 years, focusing my whole career on well-being, rather than the medical model which proclaimed people as having illnesses. And in education, that’s my degrees were in education, even my doctorate, counseling psychology and education department.
The philosophy is very kind, any human being is struggling and having difficulty:
Number one, it’s not their fault.
Number two, they just haven’t learned what they need to learn to have an easier time of things.
So it put us all – everybody in the world – in the category of being students. And there’s no end to what we can learn. And there’s no end to what we can learn about being happier and healthier psychologically. I studied people that were interested in that, and I had been a psychologist for 10 years working, very successful, private group practice in Vermont when I came across the book. It was the very first book published that was trying to apply the work of a man named Sydney Banks who had an enlightenment experience, and discovered the foundational principles that could explain all human psychological experience. What creates them, the forces in life that are creative, and he experienced those directly in his enlightenment experience.
Dr. Roger Mills, who was had been an astrophysicist and spoke Chinese and was working in public health began to do a research study on what can help people become healthy. And where did they learn it? If people have become healthy, where did they learn it? Somebody told them all about Syd Banks, and he went to listen to him and meet him, and he was deeply affected and changed as a result of learning what Syd Banks called the three fundamental principles, Mind, Consciousness and Thought.
And so he wrote a book, trying his best to bring it into the field of psychology and I found the book in a bookstore and got halfway through it and I was affected just reading it. I looked at the end of the book, and there was a phone number and I called and found out about their programs. I went from my first training and started hearing about these principles. I had maybe three insights during a week of training that changed my whole way of understanding my own experience. Parenting went from a challenging, complicated issue to being really fun and simple, and more effective. And I was hooked. I was hooked Alexandria. So that’s, that’s how I got into this.
Alexandra: So many things in there that are so interesting to me. One is that you were interested in well-being out of the gate, it sounds like.
Even when you were pursuing psychological degrees without this specific understanding.
Dicken: I was teaching. I was, as a young boy, I came across meditation, and played around with it. And then, as I grew older, I started reading meditation teachers’ writings, and then spiritual teachers. And they’re always talking about well-being. And then I started finding people in the field of psychology, all of my first teachers were friends of Carl Rogers, who spoke about well-being. Abraham Maslow. So there were people in psychology that were getting interested in well-being and studying. They became my teachers.
Alexandra: And if the kids, this is the other thing that struck me, if the kids you were teaching were coming to you for advice, before you even started on your journey of psychological education.
There must have been something back then even when you were a young teacher.
Dicken: I would teach communication skills. I studied them and enjoyed them. And it was very helpful for kids to learn some skills that could help them communicate more effectively with whoever they were having difficulty with, whether it was a parent or girlfriend or a boyfriend or a brother or a sister. And so then I just started reading voraciously. Anybody anywhere that said, I’ve learned some things that can help people have an easier time. And that became my, my ongoing passion.
Alexandra: What was the name of the Roger Mills book, before I forget?
Dicken: It’s out of print. It was the very first attempt to even talk about these principles. And Roger talked about four principles, and only one of them was one of the three principles.
But even still, there was something in there about the way he talked about. We’re thinkers. Very few people know that. We think up our experience of life. Whatever we think, we will feel. Anyone can become aware of since we’re conscious beings, we can become aware of the fact that we think and if we become aware of the fact that it’s our own thoughts, if you think sad, you feel sad, if you think stress, you feel stress, if you think angry, of feeling angry, if your head clears of everything you’re thinking is built into us to feel good.
So Roger, by emphasizing those two things in the book, we’re thinkers and we think our own experience and can wake up out of thinking and drop thinking that’s not helpful. And when our head clears, every human being started to experience well-being and as built into us. No one in psychology was saying those two things, knowing that 100% of our experience comes from our own thinking.
There were 450 different theories in psychology when I met Syd and he said, This is not a theory, this is actual truth. There’s a power that creates our thinking and whatever we think will feel on that scientific, as truthful, it’s always true. It’s always been true. And nobody knows it. Because if you ask people, What are you feeling? You’ll hear all kinds of feelings, that’s normal. And then you say, Well, where do you think that feeling is coming from?
They won’t point toward the creative power of thought. They will point towards something in the world they think is causing them to feel that way. My past, my personality, this person, that person is making me upset. This situation is stressing me out. And the whole field of psychology was buying into the outside in way of looking at life, the world causes us to feel the way we do.
And so Syd said that’s not true. It’s not scientific. And oh my gosh, when I started seeing my anxiety is not caused by my biochemistry, or by my personality, or by my genetics, or from my upbringing. It is created in this moment. I’m caught up in my own anxious thinking. That was my very first insight.
I dropped what I was thinking completely, and the anxiety went away.
And then he says, Any human being, when they completely fall out of their thinking will feel better, because it’s built into us to feel good. I said, I’m not taking your word for it, I’ve got to see if that’s true. And I let go of everything I was thinking just like when I meditate, when my mind quieted down, I just felt more alive, more connected. And I’m going it can’t be this easy. And that’s why I went to my first training because I was a skeptic and I had so many questions. They all got answered in the first day.
If I’m feeling tension, stress or upset, it’s thought so let it go. And when my mind quiets down, I feel good. And we all have all that common sense. I need to deal with whatever’s going on in my life. That’s all I know. That’s all I taught for the first two years after I learned as I had to start all over again and with my clients. But people loved it, because it was helping them immediately. And it was simple. And it was, it was true. It’s not fantasy. It’s not free. It’s not there.
Everybody is walking around feeling whatever they’re thinking and most people don’t know that. And everybody already has innate well-being but people haven’t been taught that. We’re spiritual beings, which means formless energy. And now the scientists are saying 96% of our universe, our universe is formless energy. So 96% of who we really are, is formless, and only 4% is the content of what we’re thinking and feeling.
Syd would say, “Pay no attention to the content of your thinking, feeling or behavior. It’s too late. It’s already been created. Quiet down and look toward or in the direction of what’s doing the creating. Out of that quiet out of which everything arises. That’s where you’ll find your well-being.” This I can tell you it was for me a revolution. I could then share this with any human being, and it would be helpful.
So I worked with homeless people, I worked with people in jails, I spent 16 years working in multibillion dollar companies doing executive trainings, leadership trainings, and I could tell them we now have a science that helps us understand states of mind. And we can show you how the state of mind is the most important determinant on how productive you are. How well you think, how wisely you’re using your mind. How well you get along with other people, how well you communicate, how well you make decisions. It’s all 100% tied into the state of mind, you run at the time.
If you learn things that help you to have less stress and less thought clutter, and you have more clarity, guaranteed, you’re going to enjoy work more, you’re going to be more creative, more productive, better able to solve problems. And we got results working in businesses. I had colleagues all over the country working in jails, and in low-income housing communities and people facing all kinds of life challenges and was helpful, simple and true and helpful.
Alexandra: When you talk about looking toward that, which is creating our experience, or you said it so beautifully, but looking away from the content of our thinking, and looking more toward what’s doing the creating. In other words, dropping our thinking,
Do you have practices that you do to do that? it probably comes pretty naturally to you now.
Dicken: I’ve taught hundreds of kids how to ride bikes. There’s no practice. But they have to learn how to find balance. And they could go to the library and read every book on balance and they wouldn’t understand that better.
An intellectual understanding does not help people do what is so normal and so natural. For example, every night, at some point, with some exceptions, but people fall asleep at some point, and in order to fall asleep, you have to let go of everything you’re thinking. There are no techniques. There are techniques, but you don’t need any techniques to fall asleep. You just let go of it even you don’t even have to be able to explain that. I tried to explain to somebody how I fall asleep. I couldn’t. My doctor didn’t help me and even if I told them scientific facts that wouldn’t help them, necessarily. If they had an insight, it would help them.
Syd would give us hints, he wouldn’t give us techniques. He’d say, you can’t think your way to the present moment. No one can. It’s impossible. It’s only in the present moment that you can find access well-being. You won’t find it while you’re thinking about yourself or about life. Most people spend their day looking at things in their life and thinking about him or looking at people and thinking about them, or looking at ourselves and thinking about ourselves. He says only in the present moment. Now when people are present worth, how far away are we ever from the present moment. It’s all that exists is just waking up to it.
There is no future. That’s imagination. That’s thinking, that’s imagining something that no one can figure out the future. The past is just memory. What’s memory? That’s thought. There is no past. It’s just memory. At times it gets played out. And people’s memories can be different and can change and can evolve can. They’re flexible. That scientific. How far away is the present moment? We’re one thought away from being present.
I’ve worked with people who say, “I can’t be present.” I say Okay, listen to me. And I’ll tell you the secret and they go okay. And they become immediately present. I say you just did it. I thought you said it was really hard. How did you do it? If I follow any person around, any person, I could point out to them hundreds of times during the day when they get present. Because you can’t walk across the room without getting present. You can drive a car without getting present. You can’t say hello to a person without getting present.
If you’re continually thinking you’re not there to live your life, but very few adults that I’ve met and that’s it innocent, very innocent. They just haven’t learned that what we’re feeling in the moment is created by thoughts. We’re caught up in in thinking, and that we’re the thinker. Very few adults know that every bit of their attention, stress and upset comes from one thing and one thing only: believing what you’re thinking, paying attention to it, not being present and caught up in your thinking.
So Syd would say, you’ll only find this in the now. You’re a thought away from the now. So it’s no big deal. It is not something you can do. It’s something that you are when you stop doing. Searching won’t get you there because searching is thinking. Trying won’t get you there because trying is thinking. That creates stress. I’m trying, I’m trying. I used to try to not think, try to be present to all my thought which was just more thinking. And the paradox is, I can’t think my way there.
Then all of a sudden, I had an insight: I don’t have to think to get there.
And being present is just natural, it’s normal. We’re born that way. I can at any moment by being present, no longer pay attention to anything I’m thinking. I could have the thought I don’t know how to do something, or I hate this person. And if I’m present, I’m not paying attention to those thoughts. They’re just flowing through me. So it doesn’t matter if I have 10,000 thoughts, I’m present.
I can have no thoughts: present. I can have one thought and think about it and not be present. So we give hints like this, or he’d say, drop everything you’re thinking that’s creating your tension, stress or upset, just be here. And there’s a quiet that’s always here when you’re not listening to the noise. You’re thinking makes bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, talk to my hand. That was just present. And now I’m looking out the window.
My wife could tell when I was thinking, and when I was present. And you can’t love people when you’re thinking. You can’t be happy while you’re thinking. You can’t have peace of mind while you’re thinking. It’s only when we’re present, can we find peace of mind. Can we find deeper feelings of well-being that we can then extend to other people. That happiness is free. You can’t buy it, you can’t buy it with money, you can’t buy it by buying toys and cars and things. Because it’s already there within us.
In a quiet mind, people feel more alive, more present more connected, our senses come alive, that’s what happiness is. So then the if you have a deeper feeling of well-being and you bring it to another person, that’s what love is. So we have built into us everything we need to live a peaceful, happy, loving life.
I still get stressed, I still get upset. But if it is an invitation to become present, it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have to think about it. It’s just an opportunity. It’s like an alarm clock going off all day long to wake me back up to being present. So then I can think about things if it’s helpful. But as soon as it’s creating any degree of tension, which you get very sensitive to it’s time to let wisdom take over. We get out of balance. If we overthink and try to use our computer mind for everything.
It’s like a teenager who’s constantly on their phone. We know that their mental health is going to go down and any human being that’s constantly thinking, thinking, thinking is going to go down to anxiety, depression, worry, upset. Problems, all kinds of that’s gives birth to all kinds of psychological problems.
There’s really only one problem: by holding thought we block the natural flow of love and wisdom.
And anybody can wake up to the now and begin to be open channel for the flow of life energy flowing through us feels good.
Alexandra: When we were preparing for this call, I sent you a mention of a story I heard you tell years ago about your daughter. Do you know what I’m referring to?
Dicken: I do. I haven’t thought of that for a long time. It was so fun remembering that story. I’m learning the principles. My daughter was a teenager. I think she was, maybe by that time, she was 14, just turning 14 when I started learning these. So she was like a sophomore in high school. And this is maybe the beginning of her senior year.
I was becoming more sensitive to when I lost a good feeling that had had to do with my thinking rather than my kids. And that my feelings of getting annoyed, irritated, frustrated, impatient didn’t have to do with my kids. They were created by my thinking. But sometimes I wouldn’t see it, like anybody. And I get upset. And I think it did have to do with her. I’d get annoyed with her and it would come out in my tone of voice. One day, I was just so feeling so irritated. I thought it was because of how she was acting. When I was feeling good, no matter what I was saying to her, she was coming back. upset and critical. And then I got caught up in my thinking and I became upset and critical.
So I’m doing the same thing she’s done. But I didn’t see it. I didn’t catch it. I didn’t realize in that moment, all my thinking has changed. So I was upset with her. So she goes upstairs in a little bit, I quieted down. And then it came back to me what I knew to be true. I realized I had just gotten caught up in my own thinking, and was blaming her for what I was feeling no matter how she was acting. That’s what I was doing. So I said, Well, I’ll go upstairs. And we’ll say something really helpful. I thought, and I went upstairs and she’s on her bed doing her homework.
I’m in a good feeling. And I’m waiting for something to occur to me to say but nothing occurred to me to say. I couldn’t think of anything that I didn’t think would make it worse. So I just sat down in the chair next to her, and she’s working. Kids can read state of mind very easily in your eyes because your eyes are the windows to your soul. If you’re upset, your eyes look different than when you’re loving. And your tone of voice is completely different. You can’t hide it. You can hide tension in your voice.
So she looks up and she looks in my eyes. She’s checking me out. People don’t even realize they were constantly checking other people’s state of mind. And then she saw me sitting there quietly and I looked pretty safe. She said Dad, are you meditating? And I said, Well, I’m not really sweetie. I’m just sitting here and now she hears. She’s got a sample. No, I’m not really, I’m just sitting here. You can’t fake it. And then she writes and she keeps looking up at me. Keeps look keep checking and I passed the state of mind test I guess.
Kids can tell when a parent is safe to talk to and when they’re going to jump on you because of their state of mind. And she said, Dad, I’m sorry, I’ve been really upset with you lately. It doesn’t really have to do with you, I’ve been struggling and having arguments with my boyfriend. And you and mom just never seem to argue. And I thought I would be that way. I thought when I learned these principles, I would always be calm.
And then we had the absolute best talk about Listen, we’re not always calm. And sometimes we say stuff, but we’re much more forgiving. Now that we know it’s just thought and it’s easier to take responsibility for it. But relationships is where we learn about this. I just lost it with you, Nina. And then it became a learning opportunity. And that’ll be true for you too. And we just had this really nice, really nice sharing.
Most of what I learned in the early years were in the context of my kids. Because that’s where I would become impatient, stressed, upset. Why do we have to be that way? I started just catching myself as a thinker. Remembering that I have well-being. All I have to do is relax into it. There’s no technique. It’s already there. It’s built in. It’s just relaxing or showing up. It’s like, then I fell in love with the metaphor.
We can get caught up in our thoughts, storm clouds. And when we fall back from our thoughts, Storm thinking, there’s blue sky, which is present moment. And then we can feel the warmth and nourishment coming from the sun, our innate well-being. It for a long time was my favorite metaphor. Because then I could go, I’m just having a thought storm. If I leave it alone, I’ll get over it. When I get over it, I’ll have clarity. When I have clarity on what to do. That light will shine through my eyes and voice again, I can bring a nice feeling to people.
Alexandra: What really stands out to me in that story now, as you tell it, is that when you were in that good feeling with your daughter, she and you may have said that she no doubt, began to feel safe enough to be vulnerable then to say what was really going on with her.
Before that, if you weren’t in that good feeling she didn’t feel safe.
Dicken: That’s right. Yeah. Initially, I was doing low mood parenting, and I didn’t know parenting, and my parents. And most parents wait until they’re upset to try. Yes, innocently, innocently. And therefore kids don’t feel safe sharing what they’re really thinking and feeling. Especially if they think it would get them into trouble. Which in other words, you would get really upset with them and dumping on him.
What I found is when I did was more consistent, coming from a nice feeling, my kids would drop their defenses much quicker. And pretty soon they felt safe sharing anything with me. And as my daughter told me at one point, I feel like I can say anything to you and you won’t judge me. And if you get upset you just walk away and come back later when you’re not. We can have a good talk and it works out great.
That’s what I always wanted. I just didn’t know that was even possible. wasn’t a part of my world, growing up and the first 14 years of parenting my daughter and then my son. So this was a belief that that was another one of my very, very first Insights is if I’m if I take responsibility for my feeling and take responsibility for what feeling I bring to my kids. If I just wait until I’m in a better feeling and bring that to my kids, no matter how I was parented and no matter how I was raised and no matter what my background is, no matter what my kids are like, I can be a really good parent. That blew me away.
All I have to do is pay attention to my feelings and to when I’m at my best rather than when I’m at my worst. I’ll be a good parent and I throw away all my books. I didn’t need books on parenting anymore. I parent from a good feeling more consistently, not all the time. I’m human. And then I go to my kids and apologize. See, I lost it. It’s not about you. It’s me. That’s a lesson. And it helped them.
And then even when I lost it, they cut me a lot of slack because they knew I was just caught up at that point. They’d say, Dad, you’re just kind of okay, what’s my son came and said, Dad, I gotta talk to you. But you gotta go take a chill pill, because this is important. That’s great. Isn’t that great?
Alexandra: That’s lovely. My fried who let’s call her, Laura, she introduced me to the three principles. And so when I knew I was going to be talking to you, I asked her if she had any questions for you.
She asked the question about dreams, and what role you think dreams play for us now.
Dicken: Before I met Syd Banks, I was very interested in what people said you need to learn to be healthy. And a lot of people said the dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. So if you work on your dreams and work on your dreams, it’s like working on your thinking to make it more positive or working on your behavior to curb unwanted behaviors and behave better. All of psychology was focusing on working on thought content, feeling content or behavioral content that had already been created.
Dreams was one way of working on yourself, focusing on the 4% that was created, not learning about that 96% and beautiful, healthy life-giving creative energy that’s all surrounding us. So I ran dream groups, and people would record their dreams. I trained myself to wake up at the end of REM sleep. So I would write by flashlight every night, five full length dreams during the night. And then the next day, now I have five very long dreams to work on. I would dialogue with the parts and work on and draw and do art and act out and talk about.
Then I meet Syd Banks, and he said that every moment we’re experiencing the thoughts that are created in our head in them in this moment. That’s true during the day. And it’s true during the night. When I started feeling stressed during the day, I no longer had to analyze the content, it was just an invitation to come back to the present. And then that thinking instead of being held and made true in our experience, would fade away, as it always has noise well.
When you start thinking about something, the feelings that thinking is creating is no longer being created. And I said well, I don’t have to work on my thought content during the day. Why would I think I would need to work on the thoughts I have at night?
I got invited to teach at a class at the University of Vermont and I had been coming for years to talk with the class about dreams. And this time I came in and talked about waking up to the fact of thought and our well-being and at the end of the class the teacher said this has been fascinating. I can see the students are really liking this. But what about dreams? And I said oh yeah dreams. That’s just a thinking you do at night.
All I know is that I can have a nightmare during the day. And when we have a nightmare at night and we wake up we go, Oh, thank God, it was just a dream. It’s not real. Now, when I get upset is just a dream. And when I wake up to the present moment, it’s just thought it’s not truth. It’s not reality. Just bunch of ideas. Yeah, like, they don’t even exist. So they’re an illusion. They’re like a dream.
So now, I’m interested in waking up from bad dreams, whether it’s during the night or during the day. And coming back to the now which is the doorway to our spiritual well-being. A doorway that everything human beings are looking for is the doorway to peace, joy, love. It’s a doorway to insights, doorway to inspiration, doorway to motivation, aspiration, clarity, perspective, common sense, solutions to problems, creativity, new and fresh thinking.
Syd, would say, this quiet space within is full of beautiful feeling. And that’s where we’ll find the answer to any difficulty problem or question that we have. He says, don’t take my word for it. Don’t take anybody’s word for it. You find out next time you have a problem. If you come back home to this quiet, peaceful, loving center, and you bring those feelings into the world, tell me what happens to your problem. Find out this is not intellectual, this is has to be experienced directly.
And then you have to intuit the beauty of pure thought pure consciousness, pure mind as a space within us that’s full of creative, loving, wise potential. Don’t take anybody’s word, find out, write down, drop everything you’re thinking and see if you can find a more peaceful space inside. Instead of looking out thinking about how bad everything is. Drop into this peaceful center that’s always there.
I call it our drop-in center. It’s open 24/7.
There’s no bouncer, there’s no admission fee, and you drop into this quiet center. And you get free nourishment. soulful.
Alexandra: That’s great. I love that.
Dicken: When I feel upset, is an invitation to drop in, drop into this quiet place before the content of my thinking. Don’t worry about the content, it’s too late. Come to what’s before that, that presence. If you let go of everything, find out what’s still here that doesn’t go away. It’s not a personality. It is presence. It’s awareness. It’s a sensing. So always here. No matter what your feeling is there underneath. Drop into that. Be aware of that quiet that feeling.
Those are hints he would give all the time. Look within, which means drop everything you’re thinking, drop within, enter this quiet. Be aware of that presence. Rest in it. Be aware of the feeling of presence when you’re not thinking and then bring that feeling into the world giveaway.
There’s only one problem human beings have psychologically. We hold on to thought and block love and wisdom. One cure one solution. Wake up. Drop in is a nice feeling and bringing into the world. That’s the one solution to everything. And again, don’t take anybody’s word for it. You see, I had to experiment for years before I have the absolute confidence and certainty that no matter what problem a human being has, even being in a war zone thinking you’re going to die.
I would not recommend thinking yourself into an anxious frenzy. You’ll scare yourself to death. That’s how you’re going to survive. I’d say jump in as best as you can. Come back, be present, and be open to where it makes sense to go without thinking about it. Trust your own wisdom, trust your own common sense. I’ve done trainings for people in the Ukraine, calling in from bomb shelters, people in Israel being bombed. And this Sunday, I talked for three hours with Africans escaping the Congo or in refugee camps.
Same message, same message, everything you’re looking for you already have, and you’re not broken and damaged. It’s spiritual. And you drop into that space, it’s always there. It’s energy. It’s pure energy, it’s spirit. And it’s full of energy that uplifts and full of unknowing that’s intuitive knowing that’s not of the intellect. And it’s ordinary. So ordinary bits always available to human beings.
Everyone has access to universal wisdom. No exceptions. No exceptions. You can be smarter than someone but not wiser. We all have access to the sun. Every morning, it’s the same sun for everybody. It’s not a different sun, same sun, same blue sky, same weather, other weather comes and goes. That’s how it’s the same as the variability of our thinking, is our weather.
Alexandra: As we wrap up today, I wanted to point out to people that your book Coming Home with Natasha Swerdloff is now available on audiobook.
Dicken: Yes, I’m very excited and several different kinds of audio. It’s on Amazon, it’s on Audible. It’s on. It’s in the library where you can take out books. It’s not listed in that. Yeah, we’re very excited. And it’s been translated into 10 languages. So it’s, it’s getting out there.
Alexandra: Oh, I didn’t realize that about the translations. That’s amazing.
Dicken: Two more coming. So 12 different translations of it.
Alexandra: That’s great. Well, Dicken this has just been such a delight. Thank you so much for speaking to me today.
Tell us where our listeners can find out more about you.
Dicken: Well, I want everybody to learn these two things. That’s all that’s my life mission. We’re free thinkers. And when we rest in the now we have access to well-being that’s innate, it’s always there waiting to come out like the sun, waiting for the clouds depart. And that’s what I told my daughter when she was 16.
To this day when I travel around that’s what I want people to know. So I talk about that a lot in my talk. I have a YouTube channel. So if people want to learn more, that’s one way I would suggest listening to my teachers, Sydney Banks. He has a YouTube channel where all of the a lot of the talks that he gave are available. And he’s talking about all of this from a very deep, pure place of just saying, you’re a thinker, look within. Find a quiet feeling and in that feeling is all the guidance you will need to live a good life.
He says it so simply and powerfully and we’re spiritual beings, so we can’t be damaged. It’s not religious, It’s spiritual. It’s trying to talk about the dynamic energy which is the foundation of the universe, all life, the source of all life.
I have a Facebook page if you want to follow me there. I have a have a website, 3principlesmentoring.com. But I think the YouTube channel gets right to the heart of the message.
Alexandra: Okay, I will put links to all those things in the show notes at unbroken podcast.com.
Dicken: Thank you, Alexandra.
Alexandra: Thank you so much, Dicken. It’s been a delight.
Q&A 46 – New Year’s Resolutions Are BS
Jan 01, 2024
When we expect change to happen as a result of will-power naturally it looks like a good idea to choose a day on the calendar to begin making that change. But, really, change happens via insight, and that can happen any day of the year.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Welcome to 2024
The admirable motivation behind New Year’s Resolutions
The two things we can do instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions
What actually creates lasting change
Transcript of this episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 46 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
If you’re listening to this on the day it goes out, it’s going out on New Year’s Day 2024. So welcome to a new year. I don’t know about you, but at this point, I’m usually ready for the holidays to be over, I have to say. I just really like getting back to some sort of semblance of normalcy.
I do kind of enjoy the holidays. There’s a bit of baggage there that I won’t talk about now. But you know, it’s different. I travel a little bit and I go and see friends. And it’s nice to be doing some different things and going out for meals and doing whatever it is we do. For some of you that will be getting together with family and that kind of thing. And then I’m kind of glad when the chaos is over.
Today, it’ll be New Year’s Day as you’re listening to this, and I’m probably going to have a pretty quiet day, I like to have a quiet New Year’s Day. So I hope you’re doing whatever makes you happy as well.
Let’s talk about why New Year’s resolutions are BS.
Before I jump into that, I just want to give a quick caveat. And say that there’s nothing wrong with goal setting. There’s nothing wrong with dreams and goals and all that kind of stuff. I personally am someone who loves lists. I always have lists on my desk of things I like to accomplish. And I feel really good when I’m able to highlight them that they’re done. That’s my method of dealing with lists of to dos. And it’s good to have goals and didn’t have things that we want to accomplish in life.
So everything I’m about to say is not to disparage that kind of dreaming and goal setting and all that kind of stuff.
There’s a reason that New Year’s resolutions are BS, according to me. And it’s because of the way that we go about them.
When we make a New Year’s resolution, and let’s be honest, they’re so often around weight loss and exercise, aren’t they? Those are the articles that we see in the media that we see on the television, morning programs and all that kind of thing. It’s about making a newer, better you and that you can start that on New Year’s Day.
I’m going to go back to the iceberg metaphor in order to illustrate this. I shared that metaphor in Episode 44, which was a couple of weeks ago. New Year’s resolutions are like the ice pick on that iceberg.
The way that we go about making new year’s resolutions and trying to change has that real ice pick kind of approach. And it’s that that we’re mistaken about. That the ice pick is what creates change, that we can choose this arbitrary day on a calendar. And really it is quite arbitrary. And decide that on that day, everything is going to change and somehow things will be completely different.
And of course, it doesn’t work. And that’s why the media has the articles every year at the end of December, about making new year’s resolutions and changing our lives for the better. If New Year’s resolutions really worked, then they would work, we wouldn’t have to go through the same sort of repetition about strategies and ways to make your resolution stick if they actually worked.
I want to say that I love what is motivating New Year’s resolutions.
And that is that we’re trying to do better, of course, and we’re trying to feel better about ourselves. And we’re trying to change ourselves in ways that we feel and very often are about our health and our well being. We’re trying to take better care of ourselves. So that of course is really positive. I love what’s behind the New Year’s resolutions. It’s just that the resolutions themselves are what is BS.
So rather than setting ourselves up for failure, this New Year’s Day 2024, what if we approached change in a slightly different way?
So what I’d like us to do is two things. One, is look in a slightly different direction. And that’s what you’re doing by listening to this podcast. You are exploring and exposing yourself to this inside out understanding, and you’re wanting to see the impact that insight can have on change, rather than the ice pick method. You are wanting to understand how you can raise the temperature of the water around the iceberg, rather than getting up there with your ice pick. I love that for you.
The second thing that I want to give us space to do is to trust. This is a little woowoo, which is fine, I’m comfortable with it, I hope you are, is to trust that the universe has our backs. The reason I say this is that when we’re taking this inside out approach to change, we’re not in control of the speed with which that happens.
If you’ve listened to previous Q&A episodes, on Mondays, you’ve heard me talking about being in the back of the spiral.
And remembering and taking this inside out approach at the beginning of a new year, when everyone else around you maybe not everyone, but people around you could be taking the ice pick approach and setting out rules and structure for themselves about joining the gym or starting a new diet or cutting out certain foods as of January 1, or whatever it is. It can take some courage to instead, stick with an approach that is a little less obvious, a little less overt, a little less measurable.
I don’t have control over that. It takes courage for all of us to really commit to this approach – if it feels like the right thing for you to do – and to lean into the fact that the universe is a kind one, and that it wants us to be at peace. It wants us to connect with our innate well being, and resilience and wholeness. And the love and peace that we are made of that is our natural state of being.
If someone has started a new diet or cut out certain foods, it’s so easy to see that it’s so delineated. And what you might be doing instead is trusting the wisdom that’s within you at all times, and knowing that it will lead you forward, even if someone from the outside can’t measure it, or track it, or write it down on a chart and show you that things are changing, and that you’re making progress.
So given all of that, what I wanted to share is that and I hope this is encouraging that in New Year’s days in the past, of course, I’ve taken the ice pick approach and have made up new rules for myself to follow. And, and throughout the year, not just on New Year’s Day, taking the outside-in approach and starting a new diet or whatever. What I can tell you for sure is that they never worked. And the only time in my life when I’ve seen actual change when I’ve become more peaceful within myself. And when things got easier and when I’ve seen habits of mine over eating habits of mine actually fall away. Because that iceberg is melting is when I have been exploring this understanding.
For 30 years, I tried the outside in approach, it didn’t work, I kept going back to it as we do innocently, because we’re doing the very best we can, with what we know at the time. But to encourage you, and to explore and learn to trust that the universe has your back, what I can tell you is that from my own personal experience, this is the understanding that has created change in my life. And it’s less measurable, it’s less standard, I guess you could say, it’s less obvious, it’s less culturally accepted, or understood. But this is what has created change for me.
Exploring this understanding, seeing that insight is what creates real change, understanding my perfect design, and learning that my cravings are actually feedback. They’re not a part of me that’s broken, they’re a part of me that is in perfect working order. That has been the thing that has created change.
So on this New Year’s Day, 2024, I just want to wish you an incredibly happy year, I hope that things go really well for you, and that you have so many moments of peace, and joy, and connection, and all those yummy things.
I will be here throughout the year, twice a week as ever, exploring this understanding with you. And I just want to say thank you, thank you for being here. I started the podcast in February 2023. So I’m very close to moving into the second year of the show. And I’ve enjoyed it so much. I just love it. I couldn’t do it unless you were there with me listening. So I appreciate you very much.
Happy New Year to you. Here’s hoping 2024 is just delightful for you. And I will be here again next week talking to you so I will see you then take care. Bye.
After rapid success in her own coaching business, coach Grace Kelly now helps others wanting to do the same. She has learned the value of trusting our own innate wisdom, and also the importance of taking care of ourselves before we can help others.
Grace Kelly is a transformational coach. She left her job as a school teacher in London and traveled the world coaching clients. Her work has been recognised by Forbes.
Today she writes about lessons in love and loss and hosts clients on retreats in Italy where she currently resides.
You can find Grace Kelly at GracefulCoaching.net and on Instagram @gracefulcoaching.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Recognizing the symptoms of burn out as a signal asking for change
How our wisdom is always speaking to us, even when we can’t hear it
Grace: Thank you, Alexandra. It’s lovely to be here. Love your title.
Alexandra: Thank you so much.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Grace: My background is as a school teacher. I spent six years in the classroom teaching, ruling unruly teenage boys in a London suburb. I loved the kids, I loved the experience of being with the children, but I really was not lit up by my environment, it was very bleak and dreary. It was in a small, just a very small suburb in North London. And it didn’t even have a decent coffee shop.
That might sound like a strange thing for people. But I was moving to the big city. And I wanted city life and it just didn’t yield that, that location. Now the people were fabulous, the children were amazing, the school was fantastic. But over time, I kept getting this tapping, like, there’s something else for me to do.
I had a turning point, Alexandra, when it occurred to me, is this it? Is this where I’m going to stay and is this what I’m going to commit my life to. And at the same time, I had been so burned out at work, because I really didn’t enjoy what I was what I was doing. Many teachers listening will know that you have a passion for teaching, but you end up doing a lot of paperwork and a lot of a lot of heavy lifting around bureaucracy and around paperwork.
But anyway, it was a good grinding for me because I knew I was a teacher’s from a young age I used to pretend to teach classroom when I was when I was very young. I would pretend I had a set of students in front of me. So I knew that that was my, my path.
I didn’t realize there was another way to teach. I didn’t realize there was something beyond a school teacher, as a teacher, until I was fortunate enough to come across my first mentor. His name was Dr. John Demartini. And he really opened my eyes and those years when I was a school teacher of just what was possible. He was just the most incredible teacher, he was an amazing mentor. And he was a coach really traveling the world doing what he loved writing books, teaching, running his breakthrough experience.
I noticed in my career as a teacher, I was equipping myself. The school bell would ring and I’d be out the door and off into the city of London, and equipping myself with personal development and being around the circles that were interested in coaching. I’d never considered myself as a coach. Interestingly, and all that time I was doing that it never really came to me that I could coach. But at some point, I made the leap. I left my day job and my fiancee at the time and myself, we moved to Italy to figure out our lives. He was from here.
In our figuring out of our lives it was really clear to me that I didn’t want to leave Italy. And it was also clear to me that I had a deep interest in helping people, not just teaching people. So I started to get curious about this whole world called coaching that I had been around but hadn’t really been invested in personally as a coach. So my career really shifted.
I started my own coaching business, I hired my own coach. That was the first step. I invested in a coach who supported me around my own ideas for coaching and what I could offer the world. It was transformative for me, our work together, and it led to a pretty rapid success in the space of six months. I was very fortunate to be finding myself traveling the world much like my former mentor and seeing clients and beautiful locations and hosting retreats in all sorts of places and just doing very, very well.
But a nudge came to me a couple of years into that, Alexandra, where I just noticed that I was burnt out, again, similar to my day job. And I kind of started thinking, but hold on I, I got on to my job, so I could do my own thing and feeling well, what’s going on. So the symptoms in the body began to get my attention again, and I really listened.
I really listened and right at the time, when I was about to sign a contract that would support me and moving to a seven figure year, I did the impossible and I retracted my signature, if you’d like, or my agreement to that potential. I took myself back to Italy, out of the rat race, and into just being. Retreating, being quiet, being at home. In that time at home, I heard my wisdom more and more and more clearly and the more settled I was, the clearer my answers were.
It was during that period of time that I started noticing what was calling me and one of the things that caught me was an event that Michael Neill from the Three Principles community was doing in London. And I went to that event expecting something else. But when I got there, I heard what he was saying. It was really challenging everything that I had learned as a as a coach in a coaching business. And it just piqued my curiosity. It just really spoke to me.
He was my introduction to the Three Principles. And he went on to invite me to be his apprentice and 2016. And that’s where I got this full immersion of the Principles. I had no idea that that’s what was going to occur. But it was, it’s the background to my career, and it’s when it was my introduction to the principles to answer your question.
Alexandra: Thank you for that. One of the things you mentioned on your website is that in your initial coaching business, although it was very successful, you felt like you were getting further and further away from your own wisdom. I love that you framed it that way. And then, when you discovered the Three Principles, it seems like you’ve you have connected again with that.
Can you tell us a little bit about what it looked like to be disconnected from your wisdom and then getting reconnected with it again?
Grace: The disconnect was I just felt like I was spinning the whole time. Some of my colleagues even said it to me, Grace, you’re just spinning. So much confusion, so much not knowing what to do. I remember being in Australia, in Sydney at the time, and I was attending these chiropractic appointments, there were all sorts of symptoms going on for me. I just couldn’t think straight.
If I were to know what I know now, I had a very, very busy mind. And even though I had a very busy mind, I do want to point out, because sometimes people think they have to have a quiet mind to hear their wisdom.
I could hear my wisdom at the time, really saying no to any more of this way of working. And again, even though I was primed for the seven figure year, I still said no. Because I literally woke up that morning that I was supposed to sign on the dotted line and, and wisdom said no, go home. So I took myself off of that merry go round, much to the disappointment of the coach and the group because she was right. If I had kept going the way it was going it was going to be very much a seven figure a year but my well being was has just always been the most important thing to me.
I just knew I was disconnected at times because of the own groundedness, the confusion, the inability to make a decision, the lack. Even the way I would eat, compared to now was unconscious. Everything I was doing was rushed and unconscious. Being connected to my wisdom was it’s just a very different feeling. There’s just a sense of balance and harmony.
I recognize the innocence of my journey as a new coach, and feel very blessed to have had such a level of success so quickly. But still very clear that well being, for me, is the ultimate success. And when I wasn’t having that, neither mentally or physically, I knew something’s off. And it’s time to slow down, it’s time to come away from this and really come back inside, which is what I did by going home and then eventually ended up leading into the principals and going on that coaching journey with Michael Neill for a year.
Alexandra: I love that you point out that wisdom was there the whole time. It was always speaking to you. And it’s just that we tend to sometimes ignore those signals. I think that’s a really important point for our listeners to hear is that wisdom is always there. It can be a matter of whether we pay attention or not. I love that. Thank you.
So now that you’ve shifted and work in a slightly different way, what this is kind of going to contradict what I just said, but what keeps you connected to your wisdom?
How do you pay attention to your wisdom?
Grace: That’s a great question. I really notice nowadays when my mind is busy. That version of me didn’t know she was spinning, didn’t know she had a really busy mind. Didn’t know there was another way. And nowadays, I really notice that busyness when it’s arising. And what keeps me grounded, I think, is in the noticing of that I begin to speed up, I begin to get impatient. The enjoyment of life falls away, and I begin to be rushed around everything and like there’s not enough time.
I know now, Grace, this is an invitation to settle down. And the thing that helps me settle down is receiving coaching from my coach in the area of the Principles, listening to Sydney Banks – that’s a daily requirement of mine – and doing meditation, getting a siesta. Most recently, learning to really say no to people’s requests from me. Really noticing where I’m pushing myself, where I feel obligated, rather than honoring the fact that the business we’re in as coaches requires an incredible amount of well-being.
I talk to my clients about being energetically open for business, not just open for business online. Being energetically open for business means that you’re in a state where you are centered and you are grounded, and you have enough capacity with your well-being to be of service to others in the world. I think this is an area that really gets looked over Alexandra, in favor of just pay attention to your marketing. Just pay attention to your what you’re offering or just like just even deepen your understanding further.
I’m not saying those things aren’t helpful but there is an energetic component to drawing clients to you, drawing opportunities to you. Divine mind wants to work through us. And so for me nowadays my work is not getting on a tube and going to a day job and going through that. My work now is a much nicer work. I can tell you is prioritizing listening to truth. Prioritizing taking care of self prioritizing, getting my coaching from my coach, prioritizing taking care of risk of that Capital G.
There’s a level of, quote unquote, work. That just helps me personally. Hear wisdom deeply. Now, again listen, these aren’t things you have to do in order to hear your wisdom, I remember being 11 years old, and I grew up in Northern Ireland. I found myself in a very difficult situation between two adults. And what happened was I heard my wisdom, even though I was in a great deal of fear of what could just unfold in front of me, I heard my wisdom. And I said, the words that came to me, and it diffused the potential for violence.
So, we don’t need to be a certain way to hear our wisdom. And for those of us that are in the business of coaching, it’s helpful to do whatever it takes to quiet down a little bit if you are in a busy state of mind, and to connect deeply with divine mind with that wisdom within. And that’s really fueled me through my own coaching business, and my life in recent years, just following wisdoms guidance.
Alexandra: It’s such a, an easy trap to fall into, isn’t it? Listening to all the busyness that’s going on. And following that. I just noticed personally for myself, it can be a learned skill to remember that there’s another place we can go to for answers and guidance.
Our busy mind is so compelling. And yet, trusting the quiet and the wisdom that comes through is, is for me, anyway, always the better choice.
Grace: Always. That’s why I’m a fan of do what it takes to the – I know you don’t need to do anything, but I have find that when our schedules are over-scheduled, when our when we’re busy, busy, busy in life, or with work or whatever, there’s no room. There’s nothing wrong with engaging in whatever works for you to settle down.
Sydney Banks spoke many a time about the power in meditation and I find even just listening to him meditative just that beautiful state. So whatever it takes and I just, that’s my quote unquote, work nowadays. Alexandra
Alexandra: I love that. That’s a great way to frame it.
Connected to that you mentioned on your website that often when we get lost or confused, we tend to work harder and try more.
What can we learn from doing less?
Grace: A lot. I remember hearing that quote like when an animal in the wild gets lost they stop and center themselves and sense the direction before taking any more action or any more movement.
We on the other hand, when we get lost, we speed up. We start going 1000 miles in the wrong direction. It’s innocent. But I think we want to just notice those feelings of lostness, insecurity, worry, fear and use them as friends that are letting us know, settle down, stop, still get centered. Don’t make any decisions right now. The animal senses the direction before he takes a direction. So we can just begin to learn to do that.
And that is doing less. Honestly, one of the most helpful questions one of my coaches gave to me was, Do I need to do this today? Because I would be convinced I had to do all those things, but they have to happen today. And how often are we in that innocent habit of doing, doing, doing, rushing, rushing, rushing, busy, busy, busy.
My fiance at the time, he would be so generous with his bringing me back home, if you like, inside. So he would say, “My babe’s being a busy bee.” What he meant by that was I was just running left, right and center, I was just a busy bee all over the place. And to me, it was just like the norm.
But again, there’s no room there. There’s no spaciousness. And for those of us, in particular, in this business we energetically shut down when we’re that busy. There’s just no capacity for supporting others or calling in new people to work with so we can do more for our business by doing less than anything else, any marketing plan, anything, just giving to ourselves first, and really questioning, getting suspicious of this thought that that you need to do it now. And it has to be you that does it. And it has to be done today.
Alexandra: I love that. I personally remember years ago, before I understood this idea of listening to the quiet and to our own wisdom, I remember, as an entrepreneur countless times getting 10 miles down the road, working really hard, and then realizing, Oh, actually, I don’t want to be here. I don’t like this. And that wasn’t the right choice. So then I’d have to backtrack.
But I made the same mistake over and over again. Until I didn’t. Until I learned the value of listening to the quiet.
I love that about it doesn’t have to be done today. That’s such a good reminder.
Grace: Because we live in these habits of thought that create urgency. Urgency is a habit of thought, and when you don’t know you’re up against urgency you live in that world of everything needing to be done right now. You are overwhelmed. You feel overwhelmed, and you don’t realize that you’ve just sped up. You’ve just become urgent. That’s what overwhelm really is a super busy mind. That’s just become very urgent.
Alexandra: Yep, absolutely, totally.
On your website, you refer to money as ‘God in action’. That really got my attention. Tell us about that.
Grace: I first heard that when I read Julia Cameron’s book The Artists Way. Over the years, I’ve seen how money shows up for a purpose and what it’s needed for and it’s a form of God in action. It’s a form of Spirit working through us. It’s an energy, it’s a currency. And I’ve come to really respect it as part of Divine Mind’s supply.
It’s just so curious how we all have learned to keep it away from ourselves. This incredible divine channel we’ve been taught is dirty is bad, keep it away. It’s wrong. We’ve got all this thinking about money.
I saw over the years all the times and I’m sure you know yourself being in your own business, all the ups and downs and the roller coasters of you never know where it’s coming from, if it’s coming at all. But over the years, I just saw how it could be flowing to me. Of course, through and about idea to give a service like coaching, of course, through other ideas.
I remember when my fiance died three years ago, I really was like, oh, gosh, I couldn’t work for quite a while and I really needed to take care of myself. And at the same time, I had financial demands and was so interesting to me that my prayer for divine mind to send money, an opportunity to sell a house came to me. I just knew Grace, take it. This is for you. I’m not an estate agent, by the way. But some friends of mine wanted to sell a house. They had a holiday home that they had here. And they were adamant that they wanted me to do it.
I just knew, this is divine mind working. God in action here. Let’s see where this goes. I cannot tell you, it was the easiest, most blissful. I think for 4% of the sale that I like that I’d ever come across. I just walked in there, showed a couple around the house and came out. They accepted the offer. And they contacted the owners, and the owners contacted me and said, Oh, Grace you sold that house. I almost felt like, Oh, God, I can’t take any money because it was too easy. It was great.
But it was an example of God in action. Money is God and action and we never know where the channel is going to come from, we just want to be open to the possibility. And so my thinking about money has really changed over the years. I’ve really come to see now that life wants to help and supply us. And this thing called money is divine mind circulating.
It’s an incredible way for a divine mind to circulate. Because it’s so tangible. And it’s so rewarding. Why do we want to pinch ourselves off from it? But for our silly beliefs about it? I’d first heard that expression through Julia Cameron, but my embodied experience all of it, it just is. It’s just a lot truer for me and I given what I’ve seen over the years about how it flows to us.
We just did a money workshop recently for our Living Miraculously course. And we shared three truths about money.
One of the truths that I shared was money loves a purpose.
Sometimes people are busy trying to get money, a certain amount of money, and there’s just no purpose behind it. It’s just for the sake of feeling more secure or paying some bills or whatever. But see, money loves a purpose really means that when you tap into that true desire of yours, rather than X amount of money, when you tap into that purpose for it, that true desire, and you’re actually lit up by that or you’re motivated by that. That’s where money can just so easily and gracefully flow. Again, spirit divine mind and action.
Alexandra: When you first heard that from Julia Cameron, and began to explore this idea that money loves a purpose and wants to flow toward us.
Did you have any mental blocks about that or anything new that you needed to see about it?
Grace: From Julia Cameron, I heard go money is God in action. Money loves a purpose has been my experience.
I just kept getting to the point where I had hardly anything in my bank account. And it’s almost like I tested the universe. And I had some pretty big demands coming. For example, the year I did my apprenticeship with Michael Neill that was a costly year and my business dropped during that year. He warned me. He told me it might because I was about to go through a shift. But I wanted to show up for the retreats, the events that everything.
On one of the occasions, one of the events was in New York. And I remember, I had spoken to a client a couple of days earlier, and she had agreed she’d like to work with me on her coaching business. And I was happy to do that. And I left it with her that she would make the payment. I knew the payment was going to have to come because there was a purpose, I was off to New York. But as I was waking up that morning, there wasn’t a payment in my account.
Now, what is the normal individual, maybe they don’t get on the plane, maybe they don’t, maybe they call someone and borrow the money first. I just got myself on the plane, knowing it’s going to be there, or it’s not. Let’s see how this works. There was a level of trust, there was a level of keep in mind, it had a purpose. So I was kind of confident it was going to be there.
By the time I got on the other side of the world, the money was in my account. I’ve done a number of those kind of risky things in my coaching career, enough times to trust deeply that divine mind always shows up on time, the right time. I didn’t need money in that moment on the plane, but I did sure as hell needed in New York. I wanted to have a good time, I wanted to have a nice time, I wanted to stay somewhere nice.
I’m always a fan of sharing with people just take the first step, if all you can do is book the flight, just book the flight. If there’s a purpose there for that money, be it a holiday, be it a business investment, be it desire for a beautiful car, be it for food for your family, it doesn’t matter. If there’s a purpose and a desire there, then that money has got to come, it’s got to flow.
Often the way money flows is we get a divine idea, which is why we’re back to the beauty of the principles because the principles support us in a quieter state of mind. And in that quieter state of mind, we get ideas, and they are usually ideas that lead to money when acted upon.
I’m not sure that answers the question, but I’m just giving you a taste of how, why I know this works. I’ve tested it, and tested it, and tested it. And in some cases, just been absolutely flabbergasted at what can happen and the thing I love about it too, and it’s like losing weight that can take days or weeks or months receiving money, just within hours or overnight. There’s no timeline, we’re like, how Divine is that? There is no timeline when it comes to money.
Now we all carry a lot of thinking about it. It’s curious to get like get beyond our silly beliefs about it. But over time, I’ve just seen it more and more as a as divine mind and action. Or as Julia Cameron said, God in action.
Alexandra: I love that and you’re so right. It has such a concrete way of being. It’s either there or it isn’t. So we can see what’s working or what isn’t right away.
As we get just about toward the end of our time together, is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with us today?
Grace: I just probably could share the whole the whole afternoon. It’s one of my favorite things is to be interviewed like this, to be in conversation together. It’s a real joy. For me, it’s back in my teaching role.
I think the only thing that I would encourage or invite the audience to consider is taking care of self. It’s an essential. I think it’s something that we underestimate, especially if we’re running our own business. Or if we’re busy playing wife or mum or caretaker to others, there’s something about really prioritizing that quiet for yourself. Really dropping into that beautiful feeling that arises from that quieter mind. It moves, it awakens all sorts of opportunity and possibility not just deep well being within us that, frankly the world can’t help but notice.
I like to share that when we are up against a lot of thinking about life or business or relationships, or really is a beautiful invite, to come back to self with a capital S. To prioritize that. To quiet the mind and to let your feelings be your guide.
I didn’t know in the early days that my feelings weren’t telling me anything about my circumstances. I was convinced my feelings meant something about my bank account in the future. My feelings meant something about my relationship. My feelings meant something about my health.
I just see more and more, Oh, the feelings of friend. Oh, it’s just letting me know I’ve got a really busy mind. Time to quiet the stress, tension, upset, insecurity. All of it just come back home quiet mind. So that’s what I’d like to share.
Alexandra: Thank you. Beautiful.
Where can we find out more about you and your work? And please do tell us about the two programs that you’ve got coming up in early 2024.
Grace: I have two: one is a collaboration with my friend and colleague, Dominic Scaffidi. And that is an eight week program called Living Miraculously. I think you probably have a link for that Alexandra somewhere. And that’s our fastest selling, biggest, most impactful group program that came from a divine download that I had walking around the streets of London over a year ago, and the program has just continued to grow and grow and grow.
It’s really pointing people back to the miracle of who they really are. And it’s really stirring possibility. We have over 200 participants that have gone through the program, 20 different countries, the testimonials are just miracle after miracle, as you’ll see on the on the page if you visit. And so that’s a way to work with us within a group format, if you’re interested in living a more miraculous life.
The second program I have is a program that I have created for those that are coaches. And it’s a small group mastermind, Create Your Thriving Coaching Business. And that’s really going to be pointing people to a graceful, effortless way of growing your coaching business and enjoying your life and the process. So I think you have a link for that too.
Alexandra: I will put links to both of those in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com.
Alexandra: Perfect. I’ll add a link to that in there as well. Well, thank you so much, Grace. This has been so lovely. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation and it’s been great to meet you too.
Grace: Thank you. I feel the same, lovely to meet you Alexandra.
Take a moment and extend yourself a little kindness today.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Transcript of episode
Hello Explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 45 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
As this goes out, it’s Christmas Day, 2023.
Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, what I wanted to do today is just encourage you to give yourself a bit of a break.
So no matter when you’re listening to this, here’s what I would love. I would love for you to take a moment today and give yourself a tiny bit of kindness. Extend some compassion toward yourself. Even if it’s just for a minute. You could just put your hand on your heart and remember that being a human being is really, really hard. This is a hard thing you’re doing. It is a challenge. And you’re doing a great job.
No matter what’s going on in your life, no matter maybe how caught up you are in your feelings today. And in your thoughts. Especially if you’re doing great, you’re really trying hard to be the best human being you can be. And no matter what’s going on, no matter even when we fail at that. Even when we innocently fall down and get bruised and maybe do some things that upset some people or whatever it is, whatever way it is that we feel like we failed.
Even then, we deserve our own grace, and compassion, and kindness.
I would love for you today, if you just extended that to yourself. If you took a moment – you could pause this podcast right now – and just whatever way it feels good for you to do that give yourself the tiniest bit of kindness that you are able to give.
And remember that the person that you are, is no matter what the circumstances is doing the very best you can.
Even when we feel like we fall down at that, at reaching for that goal, even when we do things we regret, we’re still always trying our very best. And we’re always trying to connect always at every moment to the peace and the love and the kindness that we are. That we’re made of.
The building blocks, the material that we are made of is peace and love, and well-being and resilience. And we’re always trying to connect to that.
So that’s all I really have to say for today. This is a shorter episode. But I just wanted to pop in and encourage you to try to give yourself a little bit of kindness today because you deserve it.
I trust that you are well and taking good care and I hope that whatever is happening for you today, whenever you’re listening to this, that you were able to do this to yourself, extend yourself some grace, even if things are really hard, even if things are going badly.
I’m sending you lots of love as always, and I will talk to you again next week. Take care.
The Wisdom of the Moment with Alex Linares
Dec 21, 2023
Alex Linares describes herself as a lifelong seeker. She has always been curious about how life works and what it means. When she stumbled across the Three Principles she realized that there was no more need for seeking, or even for self-help.
Alex Linares is a scientist and lifelong seeker; curious to understand life, purpose and meaning.
After decades of searching for behavior modification methods to rid herself of unwanted habits, three insights changed the trajectory of her life.
This opened up a vast space of possibility and wonder in Alex’s life and a resolute drive to help others find the space in themselves that is free of those things we have misunderstood as our identity.
You can find Alex Linares at CanaimaCoaching.com and on Instagram @alexcanaimacoaching.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
On the dawning realization that we are not our thoughts
If we are not our thoughts, feelings, or behaviours what are we?
On the sense of loss we can experience as we explore this
Thought as a function of memory
How liberating it is to know we can’t get life ‘right’
What does life need us to be?
Playing with letting go in places where the stakes are low
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Alex’s podcast with Amanda Jones, The Wonder Land, available wherever you get your podcasts
Transcript of Interview with Alex Linares
Alexandra: Alex Linares. Welcome to Unbroken.
Alex: Thank you. So happy to be here.
Alexandra: Thank you, thank you for being here with me.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? And how you heard about the three principles?
Alex: I love reflecting on this question, because it changes every time that I kind of look back there. And see, how did how did I get here.
I am a scientist professionally, been in research for a very long time. And just have always been a really curious person. Since my earliest memories was always around just finding out how things worked, and where things came from, and just really trying to understand. I think that kind of translated into my professional life looking into the scientific world moving in that direction, but also into this seeking side that started really early on for me from the earliest years of being in Sunday school.
That religious learning, it wasn’t a passive thing. For me, it was a very active interaction that I had with that knowledge and the information that was being provided and really questioning what was coming my way and kind of looking around and realizing that not a lot of people that were six, seven years old, were doing that. So yeah, it was just really interesting that it became a really big identity for me really early on that I feel like I need to know more. I feel like others are okay with a certain threshold and of knowing, and they’re happy with that. I never really felt like I reached that. So I think it’s kind of permeated my whole my whole history.
And in that same kind of path I went through the religious and path and looking at different types of religions. Kind of comparing and contrasting that we do a lot when we look at the Western religions, or the Eastern religions, and through that a lot of the philosophies and a lot of the things that kept coming up, the same themes were so interesting to me. It seemed like we were all pointing at the same thing. And we had different life experiences and words and histories.
As the beauty of seeing the similarities across all of that just became something really fascinating and very unifying for me. To the point where I didn’t feel the need to find the one dogma or the one method that would work for me, just because I felt that it was all pointing in the same direction. Which I think fits right into the Three Principles that part of your question, which is, the Three Principles really brought that all together in a very secular way, which was really interesting. But in a very deep spiritual felt sense, which I was very unique.
I think psychology has tried to do that. A lot of the Buddhist meditation psychology has tried to do it. But the Three Ps just had a different spin to it and it really resonated, it came to me at the right time in my life, which was actually through Amy Johnson. I read her book at the end of 2020 all the things were happening, not just a pandemic, I was moving out of state and reestablishing my life in a completely different place. And it really felt like a different planet, late 2020 In terms of what life looked like, and what the world I thought I was moving into versus what it was. It just really resonated for me to see the simplicity of experience as mind and thought and just really being able to have a tangible word for experience in the manifestation of experience. So that’s how I came to find the Three Principles.
It’s mentioned in Dr. Amy Johnson’s book, The Little Book of Big Change in passing. It’s not really a three principles book, but then I of course, I started looking into it and then I started reading a lot of the Sydney Banks work and a lot of the other Three Principles practitioners. So it really opened up a whole world of speaking again, about the same thing, the same kind of unknowable experience. But the language really resonated with me.
Alexandra: Many people who are guests on the show were searching for a specific answer to a question or trying to heal themselves from something when they went on that search.
Was that the same for you?
Alex: Yeah, it definitely was. It’s very specifically to Amy, like how I found Amy Johnson. And the Three Principles was around eating. There was this kind of big, heavy eating thing that seemed like an issue, and I needed to find solutions. And so that was definitely the portal there.
But when I reflect back, and I really look at what preceded a lot of the issues that I was trying to fix, it was always this more generic emptiness, like a missing something. There was this very early on, I just had this sense of like, there’s something more here that I’m missing. And I think that kind of longing, that that emptiness, then turned into, oh, I need to fix my food issues, or I need to be more disciplined, or I need to be a better parent.
I’ve seen how it’s changed, but because I think it’s because it was so early for me as a child, I remember that there was this, like, non-content longing, that that then obviously, the mind filled with plenty of content for me to chase and fix.
Alexandra: Speaking of this, you mention on your website that you had three big insights that changed the trajectory of your life.
Could you share those with us, please?
Alex: I have a big smile on my face when I think about that, because it’s just been such a beautiful experience to have a sense of expansion. And sometimes that expansion feels like progression. Because I want to give it a direction. And I want to feel like I’m getting somewhere. But what it’s been, it’s just this kind of clarifying of orientation, the way I will put it.
So when I first started searching, it really felt like whatever words and images were in my head, that’s where I was. I’m this thinking. I’m these words, I’m these images. And then, for those first kind of years, realizing, Oh, I’m not my thoughts. When we think of someone like Byron Katie, which was The Work was one of those big portals for me. And just realizing like how obvious that I wasn’t my thoughts there’s some activity up here seemingly around my head, and then I’ve identified with it interesting.
And then then moving into like, well, then what is this body that feels without language? What is his body that that goes towards and away and then realizing that I was then identifying with that as his body that was solid and it was moving and reacting to the world.
When I looked at that closer, realizing that that wasn’t that either. I wasn’t the thinking and then almost like, I’m thinking with my body like that’s kind of an extension of food. Which is kind of, of huge opening for a lot of people. And then I was left with who am I in the world. I’m obviously acting and it feels like I’m affecting other people. And then I must be my behaviors. I must be the activity of being out in the world.
And then realizing how arbitrary that is, what I who I am out in the world is through the filter of who I think I am through the thoughts, through the feelings and then just having all that collapse like wow, if I’m not what I’m thinking, and I’m not what I’m feeling and I’m not what I’m doing, what am I?
And there’s not a lot that comes back from that and I think that’s the point. I feel like when we really shed a lot of that, then there’s not a lot of questions left, I guess, when those things are kind of obvious and self evident.
Alexandra: Was there an experience of grief when you realize you weren’t your thoughts? You weren’t your feelings? You weren’t your behavior out in the world? Was there a sense of loss?
Alex: That’s huge. I think we don’t talk about that enough, not as coaches and not in this, because there was a huge, huge wave of grief. And there still are every time that I realized that something that I identified with is not it, whatever it is, there is grief. And it’s a sadness of, there’s a little bit of like, I’ve spent so much time doing that, and thinking that and yeah, like all of that, but it’s almost this vacuum, of like, oh, life on like something, it wants to be filled with something with more information.
If I’m not this, I’m that and Whoa, look at that you should have done this earlier. But then there’s just this vacuum. I think that is what for me is the grief is that open space that sometimes just wants to remain empty. And we have so much momentum into not having that emptiness be that has this going back to that word, that longing, that that sadness that there’s a little bit of a tinge of sadness to it for a bit, sometimes for a long bit.
I love that you bring that up, because I have coached quite a few people that feel like something’s gone wrong with that, because they’re like, Well, I thought this was going to be unicorns and rainbows. I’ve been investing money and time and my entire life, and then all of a sudden, it’s lighter. Life is lighter, things feel clearer, perhaps. And I’m sad, or I miss it.
I think if we point to like, yes, and you’re going to feel that because that’s the full experience of being alive. I think it can really help. I can really help.
Alexandra: Thank you for saying that. I appreciate hearing your take on that very much.
You have a blog post on your site, where you say that all we ever are is memory.
Alex: That’s like a fresh one for me. I was down one of those YouTube rabbit holes that one can get into and I was cleaning or doing something and it was Krishna J. Krishnamurti was just having one of his big talks and he said thought is a function of memory. It slowed me down a little bit and I was like thought is a function of memory, okay, I can follow that.
In order to have a thought that is known there has to be information somewhere. That then is a thought have a coherent thoughts. I was like, I can follow that.
And then he said, everything that we can know is memory.
I had to really slow down with that. And then my mind went to Okay, I’m going to find the exception. What is in memory? You can try it yourself. I actually highly encourage that you try it yourself. You cannot find anything that can be known, that is not memory, because everything has been learned. The shapes, the colors, the just even the sense of knowing that the idea of this is site versus this is touch, all that has been learned and not like actively, like sit down in a classroom learned.
But it has been how we’ve learned to be human and how we’ve learned to be people that move in this material world. It was so tangible like, because when we can say it out loud and say, Oh, everything’s memory. It sounds a bit like I don’t know about that like, but really sit with it.
What you’re holding in your hands right now, this pen that I’m holding, is only memory because I remember what a pen feels like. What it looks like the shape of it, the colors of it, what I do with it, like I can’t hold the pen. In its raw experience. I don’t know how to anymore because I’ve learned how to re experience my memory as thought.
Alexandra: It’s such a profound idea. And it has me thinking about things like when people lose their memory if they have amnesia, or Alzheimer’s or something like that.
What’s left there is there is an essence, of course of the person that still there.
Alex: That essence. When I think of remembering who we are we have to remember who we are. And we know that when we see those cases where someone loses either part of their function of their brain, or there’s some kind of malfunction, they will lose their personality, some essential things and that’s a huge grief process for the families like where did that person go?
And that to me is fascinating. And it points to that who we are this continuous person is based on memory, which is very fragile, as we as we know. Because it seems to be contained in this brain. And then there is this essence. And that essence, tends to be very immediate. It doesn’t reference back a lot. And I think that’s what we’re always kind of searching for, is that, Oh, what am I, when I don’t have to remember who I am? Or who I need to be?
Alexandra: I even think about when we have thoughts about the future. If there are things that are not memories, and I’m specifically thinking about anxiety, it still really is a memory, because we’re getting anxious about something that happened in the past. And we often think we’re worried about something that could happen in the future. But really, we’re worried about something we think could happen again, in the future.
That’s where we go with our thoughts about anxiety.
Alex: That’s huge, like see in the future is memory. It can’t be anything else. That’s why when you look at it, it’s fun, because what else would it be? If it’s not memory, I wouldn’t be able to know it.
I think we’ve all had that experience; you’re going about your day, and someone says something, and it wasn’t in your universe to worry about. And you’re like, Oh, now I get to worry about that. And it’s interesting, because all of a sudden, that becomes part of your memory, but a second before, that was nowhere in your universe to be projected as a worry into the future.
So it’s just kind of interesting to see that our past, our present as in a tangible, this is where I am right now. And the future is all just kind of a function of memory.
Alexandra: I’m going to be playing with that for a little while, for sure, I can tell.
You also have mentioned on your website about how liberating it is to know that we can’t get it right.
Alex: This is one that I’ve been playing around with a lot. And actually, we had a wonderful call today with a small group and this came up. And it’s this little sneaky story that that we learn early on, that there is a kind of rubric or some kind of Master Plan, or some kind of endpoint that makes our life right or worthwhile. It was really interesting to see how subtle it is.
It shows up in really small ways where you make a decision and then there’s doubt: I should have done that. Why? Why would you? Where does that come from?
it comes from this discomfort of not knowing what the right way to do life is because we won’t know. We’ll never know. But having the story that there is a right way to do it somewhere and it’s not active, and it doesn’t play out in every single part of our lives, but I think it does. And most of the things that we do in life, that we do have this really, this outline far off in the distance of what it should look like and how it looks like to move towards it and realizing that that is there.
More than I think what, what the big insight for me was that if I got it I wouldn’t know it. Because I don’t know what right looks like. It’s so far away. It’s so nebulous, it changes so much. It’s so dependent on my mood and who’s around and what stage of my life?
I wouldn’t know a right, good life if it hit me over the head. And just knowing that was really freeing, like, Oh, I’m hustling towards this perfection. But I don’t even know what that perfection looks like. And never will.
Alexandra: We can see that that’s the case, because we move the goalposts all the time. We can even have a moment where we feel like, Oh, I did it, right. And yet, there’s still that chasing feeling there, that yearning to get it right.
So obviously, it’s not actually a thing we can do. Because if it was, and we did something we would feel that.
Alex: For me, what flipped it for me was, I think in the self-help world, we hear a lot of you can’t get it wrong. Do what you got to do, and life doesn’t get it wrong.
For me, there was this connotation, my mind would finish the sentence and say, well, then everything is right. If I can’t get it wrong, then anything that happens is right. And there was movement away from the concepts of right and wrong. Its totality. Because my mind was always going to get the other half of it right.
It was going to try to complete that sentence, and when I was like, Well, I can’t get it wrong. Sure. But I also can’t get it right. Because there’s no such thing. And that just kind of collapsed both concepts for me. And there was just this freedom that I hadn’t found before in that kind of disappearance of that as a concept that I wanted that felt like I was striving towards.
Alexandra: I’m glad you shared that. That’s such a good distinction to make, that the whole thing collapses when we realize there isn’t there is no wrong or right. Neither one exists. And who’s keeping score?
I wish I had discovered this years ago, because in my I guess, 30s, especially I really struggled to accept that I didn’t want to fit into a mold. I felt like there was this mold, especially around work that I was supposed to fit into, and I didn’t and so then I felt like I was doing it wrong all the time.
The permission to just be myself would have been so helpful.
Alex: For me, actually, this insight came to me around parenting and how there was this like, Okay, well, what if I can’t get it right? Most people who have older kids, I have smaller children who still love me and adore me. We haven’t hit the teenage years with a resistance yet. I know some amazing parents who their kids are like, Nope, no, you did it all wrong.
I just remember playing with that. What if I can never get it right? When it comes to parenting, it’s always going to be through the lens of them and their freedom to interpret regardless of my motives, my motivation, my anything, they’re going to conclude whatever they’re going to conclude about these interactions. So if I hustle and try to get it right, then that’s kind of a losing battle.
And I was like, what if I never can? Or how do I show up as a parent, as a mother, day in and day out? Not trying to get it right, but trying to just be with what’s showing up in that moment, and just really tracking true to the experience that’s showing up without that need for continuity. How do I become the kind of parent that does it?
Alexandra: Oh, wow, that’s really great. As you say, liberating was the word you used. Wow, amazing. So now, I would like to quote you back to yourself. This is a quote from one of your blog posts.
“All life needs as me is here now.” Can you talk about that a little bit? And what you mean?
Alex: I think what that means for me listening back to it, is really about the wisdom of the immediate moment, however it’s showing up. And you get a second behind it or a second ahead of it, and you’re judging it, and you’re like, No, this is wrong should have been different.
The moment that’s showing up for us right now is the culmination of everything that’s happened before, what we remember, what we understand, what our bodies have felt, and really leaning into the fact that this mind will never know everything that came together to culminate in this moment. But I have the best proof that it is exactly what life needed it to be. Because it’s what’s showing up.
To me, it can be a mental analysis of like, okay, yeah, things were meant to be. And it can be this kind of unsettling. That’s very humbling. Because it’s really a complete surrender. It’s a complete surrender to what’s showing up The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, what we want to change the next moment what we’re going to regret when we come to, but there’s just this liminal space. Before all that shows up. That I think we know, just that perfection.
Alexandra: Given that a lot of our listeners are dealing with an over eating habit, then could you put what you’ve just said in the context of having a craving and a desire to over eat?
Alex: This is funny, because this actually came up yesterday for me around cravings, and I had a good laugh about it after it came.
I was fighting a craving, I should know that all the noise. And in the immediate moment of giving into the craving, all I said was, this feels so good. And it was the most honest thing I had said to myself in such a long time. That giving into that craving felt good. And of course, I’m going to do it if it feels good.
That was the part where I was like, the right like, I’m trying to make a big deal out of like, Oh, what do I still want this? And it’s it was so simple for me in that moment. Why did I have it? Because I wanted it and I liked it when I had it. And then the next moment, a lot more information came to me. Interesting, why do I like this so much. But it was coming.
I was like driving and all of a sudden; you know when you drive and you just kind of look at the other parts of the map and then you kind of lose where you are and your GPS is still going. But you don’t know where you are, you’re like, where’s the dot? And then you recalibrate, you press that button that centers a whole GPS.
That’s what it did, all of a sudden, being honest in the moment with what was showing up for me, regardless of whether I liked it or not, it reoriented me into, oh, I’m here, I’m here. And then I felt a wave of openness into Okay, now you’re here. Where are we going? Where do we go next? Where do we go next with what you’ve known not mentally, not through my judgment, but fully physically embodied? Knowing in that moment that that craving and giving into it felt good. Does that make sense? It does is really this just happened like 12 hours ago? So I’m processing it as we’re talking through it.
Alexandra: I think it’s such a good point to be reminded about is that we’re always well, this is one thing I got from what you say is that we’re always wanting a good feeling. We’re always wanting to connect with a good feeling. So it’s perfectly natural, that we treat ourselves to some sort of food because it does feel good.
I get so much out of the fact that demonizing that takes us way away from what’s actually happening.
Alex: Demonizing it, interrupts what’s happening. I think a lot of us have this experience, which I find that bizarre, but it’s so common for a lot of us, which is, as you’re eating it, as you’re eating something, you’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m eating this, I shouldn’t be eating this, and still the action is happening. It’s almost like this out of body experience.
I’m not liking it. And there’s this conflict, right. I feel like in the conflict, and when we’re so in our heads about the conflict of worry, they’re in the conflict of doing it, or in the planning of how we’re not going to do it again. We’re in either of those cases, we’re not present with the information that that we’re getting in that moment as to why that action is taking place.
That to me is going back and pointing to the immediacy of the moment where all the wisdom is, it’s not in the plan that comes out of it. It’s not in the regret, it’s in that moment. What is showing up fully, including the judgment and all of that, that may come later.
Alexandra: And given that we just talked about presence and what life needs from us, I’m trying to connect the dots with those with those two things and the awareness that’s within us. We’re not our thoughts, like we talked about at the beginning, we’re not our thoughts, we’re not our feelings, we’re not our behaviors.
I don’t have a question, but I can just feel myself bringing those things together.
Alex: I think it’s about that seamlessness of life, when we can be in the immediacy of the moment without the need for the memory of who we are, we should be a need to be and we can be in the immediacy of the body as it seems to move through this environment. Then all of it kind of comes together: the thinking the feeling.
There aren’t all those separations to me. I think it we are always that seamless movement of life. That is in itself the culmination of life, moment to moment, not toward something, not because it has an agenda, not because it’s moving towards that perfect next but just the aliveness. The arising of aliveness. Exactly as it shows up.
Alexandra: I guess with my brain, I spend so much time trying to control that rather than just letting it happen. I’m sure I’m not alone.
Alex: We all go back and forth, like sometimes we’re like, oh we’re I’m really trying to control this. And then you realize, can I control it? And that’s the question that when I was like, Well, what if I just let go? I was like, No, I wasn’t doing much in the first place. So how about you then you start being more willing to try it? When in small ways, you see, like, oh, I wasn’t driving this bus anyway.
Little by little, you’re like, oh, okay, what else can I let go? What can I be softer around? What else is none of my business here that I could just kind of be easier around? And it’s easier to do in certain parts of our lives, I think when it comes to our big issues it’s hard to do that, but playing around with it, where the stakes feel low. I love starting there. Because then it’s, it becomes a felt sense, then then you don’t need to know it. Or, or kind of point to it or have a method for it is more of a way that that your body, your system, wants to show up around the experiences.
Alexandra: That’s such a good reminder to play with this where the stakes feel low.
For someone who’s struggling with overeating, that might not be the place to begin but there are other places in our life where we can just play with this and see, see what happens.
Alex: There’s something so incredible about eating and food being what brings us to this conversation. Sometimes, for some people, it feels trivial, like, I’ll relate to food for me some people have relationship issues or, and, and then on the other side, it’s in our face day in and day out.
Food is so integral to life itself. And I am just always in awe of the people who come to this conversation through the portal of food and eating and eating disorders, because it takes over our lives in such an amazing way. I think there is a beautiful opportunity. And how all-encompassing coming to this through food can be in a whole lot of compassion. That is where it feels like we’re fighting nature or survival or there’s so many ways that that we come to the table when we’re expanding through this lens of food.
Alexandra: Thank you for saying that. That was really beautifully said. I appreciate that.
As we get closer to the end of our time together, is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t talked about yet today?
Alex: I think what I would share is that really there’s going to be this battleground for this expansion in this conversation. Like we’re talking about food for some people, money for others and that’s going to have its tightness and its resistance and a lot of these qualities.
There could be a playground next to that battleground, where we can explore in a playful way. Some of these things that we are learning right through our experiences and just being able to say hi, let me just play, let me see what I see because it doesn’t matter Let me be curious.
Let me be the child who takes this thing apart because it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to break it. Holding those two things. Like yes, some things are going to feel like a battleground. But then be curious about where is that playground? Where you can expand in in that’s more softer, supported way. Making a conscious effort to bring that compassion and that softness into a lot of things.
Alexandra: Lovely. Thank you for that.
So Alex, where can we find out more about you and your work?
Alex: You can find me on Instagram. You can find me on my website. CanaimaCoaching.com. We’d love to hear from you.
Alexandra: Perfect. And you also have a podcast with Amanda Jones.
Alex: The Wonder Land comes out every Wednesday at 3:14am. Amanda Jones and I have been recorded our 45th episode today for The Wonder Land. Just a lot more of this exploration. Very dreamy, open format. I hope people who join and listen to us get to daydream along with us. So yeah, give it a listen.
Alexandra: Nice. Okay, great. Thank you so much for being here with me. I really appreciate it.
Q&A 44 – How are weight-loss strategies like an ice pick?
Dec 18, 2023
When we’re trying to change something like an overeating habit, it can feel good to take lots of action. But how many times have we failed when approaching it that way? And what if there’s another way?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How the iceberg metaphor of change works
The surprising way change actually works
Why explorers of this understanding are like tuning forks
Continuing our conversation about the back of the spiral
How insight is what raises the temperature of the water around the iceberg
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 44 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
Today I want to do a follow up episode to episode 41. In that episode I talked about the natural shape of change, which is like a spiraling shape. And the way that our growth or change or learning happens in that kind of a spiral motion. And we want it to be a straight line, but it isn’t. Sometimes we can get into the back of the spiral, which can be a little more challenging.
So this is a bit of a follow up to that I wanted to share a metaphor that Dr. Amy Johnson, I heard her share it years ago. It’s the iceberg metaphor. And then I might go into a little bit of a mash up of these two metaphors.
Let me share the iceberg metaphor first. This is a metaphor of change.
If you picture an iceberg sitting in the water, in the North Atlantic near Newfoundland or down in the Antarctic. They’re really big. I was actually reading online today, there’s an iceberg down in the Antarctic, now that is broken away from some place, some ice sheet or something that it was near. And it’s the size of Oahu, the island in Hawaii, if you can imagine. It dwarfs the island of Manhattan by four or five times. It’s absolutely enormous.
Icebergs are really big. And that’s what an overeating habit can feel like, right?
What we’re what I’m talking about on Unbroken, and in my work, is a model of change that’s very different from the traditional model of change. And the traditional model of change looks like if you imagine that that iceberg is your overeating habit, what we tend to do, because we don’t know any better, we’re innocently we’re trying to change something, right? If it’s this big, bulky thing, it feels like a problem, it feels like we need to get rid of it.
We get up there on the iceberg and we chip away with our ice pick, which of course is a ton of work, especially if you’ve got an iceberg that’s the size of a Oahu. So again, we do this because we don’t know any other way. It’s just the way that we’ve been taught that change works.
Imagine how much effort it would take and how long it would take to chip away at an iceberg. Even if it’s not the size of Oahu. It’s almost an impossible task. And of course to because given where icebergs exist, if you made a little bit of progress, and chipped away at some of that iceberg and then moved over to another section it could snow, it could rain, and that place where you were chipping away, could just fill in with ice again. So it’s hard work. And it we really don’t make much progress. I will say now too, though, it looks like the only way.
So this model of using the ice pick on the iceberg is the diet model.
This is the self-help model that we innocently, innocently take in order to create change in our lives and resolve an overeating habit. What that looks like is controlling our food intake, it looks like using willpower, it looks like assigning ourselves certain foods we can eat and certain foods we can’t eat. It looks like holding ourselves to a really strict standard of behavior.
And that feeling of being on a really tight leash when it comes to food, like there are forbidden foods over there. And I can only eat these ones over here. And I can only eat certain amounts of them.
Of course, we all know we can only do that for so long. It’s just exhausting. And given that our design is trying to give us information about what’s going on with our insecure thinking the force of nature that we’re up against, is not movable by us and our little attempts to chip away at that iceberg, if that makes sense. We’re dealing with universal forces here.
No wonder it feels like incredibly hard work to try to control this thing that’s happening within us, this force of nature. And no wonder we fail all the time.
So that’s the first part of the iceberg metaphor. The second part is that in this understanding the three principles understanding that I’m exploring on this podcast and in my work, the inside out understanding:
What we’re doing to create change in this understanding, is we’re raising the temperature of the water.
We’re looking somewhere entirely different. We’re not really tackling the iceberg at all, with our brute strength, we are coming at it from a completely different direction. And like I say, trying to raise the temperature of the water. And when we do that, what happens is that the iceberg itself naturally melts, it has no choice, because that’s how ice and water work. That’s, that’s science. That’s physics.
How do we do that? How do we raise the temperature of the water? What does that look like?
The first thing I want to say is that it is a model that looks like we have so much less control, or even there is so much less for us to control. I think one of the reasons that we have so often reached for the ice pick method, the diet and managing control method is that it’s satisfying, in that it feels like we’re doing something. We’re taking action, we are making a plan and trying to stick with it. And that kind of action, that kind of structure and just that feeling that we’re getting something done, temporarily, that can feel really satisfying.
We feel like we’ve got control over it. And therefore, things are going to be okay.
Now I can speak for myself personally and say I tried that hundreds, hundreds of times over 30 years, probably thousands, and it never worked. But in the beginning, I always felt that feeling of satisfaction, okay, I’ve got a handle on this. I’m really holding on to this tightly. And I can do this, I can do these things.
And of course, they never lasted. But I think it’s that feeling of satisfaction and control that we keep going back to over and over and over again.
Instead, in this understanding, we were searching for insight.
The way that we do that is by listening to podcasts like this and listening to people talk about this understanding and reading books and that kind of thing.
I had Ian Watson on the show a couple of episodes ago, on the Thursday interview show, I can’t remember what episode it was, what number, but he talked about how when we begin to explore this understanding and really get our heads around it we become almost like a tuning fork for others. I loved that metaphor that he used because I can feel that when I’m having an interview when I’m talking to someone on a Thursday episode, and they share what they can see. And I can feel that when I’m listening to someone speak on a podcast like Dicken Bettinger or whoever it is, Dr. Bill Pettit. Any number of people, Michael Neill, Sydney Banks.
There’s that real tuning fork feeling and what happens with a tuning fork here I go into another metaphor, but sorry about that, but it’s just occurring to me now. I think that the way tuning forks work, if you tap a tuning fork on something and get it vibrating, that the thing near it will begin to vibrate at that same frequency.
That’s how this understanding works is that we come close to someone else who’s vibrating at this frequency, not to get all woowoo about it, but metaphorically. And we begin to vibrate at that same frequency. So in that, there’s really nothing for us to do other than listen, and pay attention to our own wisdom and our own experience. And that can be a tricky thing to do.
This is where we circle back around to the conversation we had an episode 41, about the back of the spiral.
Because when we’re in the back of the spiral, like I am right now – I looked it up, I have a little spreadsheet and I’ve been here now as of this recording, for about two months. And that’s tricky. It’s frustrating, and it’s challenging.
I can feel that what my mind wants to do is get the ice pick out.
My mind starts thinking, “There’s got to be something I can do to chip away at this iceberg.” Instead, I’m just floating here, waiting for the temperature of the water to rise. Now, fortunately, I’ve been exploring this understanding for long enough that I trust what’s happening. I’m sure from the outside, it looks like I’m doing nothing to raise the temperature of the water, to create the next bit of change in my life and to have insights.
Insights are what raise the temperature of the water, they are the thing that creates change.
I’m sure from the outside, if someone was watching really closely, it would seem like I’m doing nothing to make that happen. I’m sure that that person, whoever was watching, would tell me to get the ice pick out again, to start weighing and measuring my food. I’ve talked about my affection for rice and potatoes, to cut those foods out of my life and just make them go away and use willpower to make that happen. And that kind of thing.
Thankfully, I know now enough to know that that’s not the answer. But it does take a bit of faith. And I have had some days recently where I’ve felt frustrated. Being in the back of the spiral is frustrating. But as I mentioned last time on episode 41, this is where the learning happens. This is where the insights happen. So I’m not getting the ice pick out.
I’m letting the iceberg be what it is for right now. It can seem like it’s growing, or it’s this big looming thing. And it feels much better. Of course, when we’re on the front of the spiral, when things are going great. When I personally feel like I’m eating in a way that really is aligned with my values and what I’m trying to accomplish. And of course, that always feels so good.
And then when we come into the back of the spiral, it’s it feels less good. It’s can be frustrating.
So I just wanted to do that little metaphor mash up for you. And talk about the back of the spiral, a little bit more. I don’t think I had ever mentioned that iceberg metaphor before. So I thought this would be a good way to, to share something that might help you to see something new, and also to illustrate how change really works.
What we can do to create change is stay in the conversation. Listen to what’s what other people are saying. Bring your tuning fork up close to somebody else’s tuning fork. And know and trust that insight will find you and then it’s just as close as your next thought.
I hope that’s been helpful for you and that you are doing well and taking good care. I will talk to you again next week. Bye for now.
The Fluid Nature of You with Amanda Jones
Dec 14, 2023
Coach and author Amanda Jones explores the simplicity behind our human experience and how understanding this can free us from suffering with things like bulimia, anxiety, depression, binge eating and more.
Amanda Jones is the author of Uncovery: A New Understanding Behind Radical Freedom from Eating Disorders and Depression and explores with clients their true nature and the understanding that what has been believed to be true about the self can be seen as a simple misunderstanding. This exploration uncovers the freedom that we have been seeking for so long.
You can find Amanda Jones at UncoverySpace.com and on Instagram @amandajonesuncovery.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
The discovery that all of life is made of thought
On the dissolving of the identity with a self
How we were feeling beings for millennia before the thinking mind got involved
How our suffering is the thing that wakes us up
How the diet system contributes to our problems with food
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Dr. Amy Johnson’s Little School of Big Change
No Self, No Problem by Chris Niebauer
Transcript of Interview with Amanda Jones
Alexandra: Amanda Jones, welcome to Unbroken.
Amanda: I’m so happy to be here. So exciting. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so looking forward to this conversation.
Alexandra: Me too. It’s been ages since we’ve had a conversation. So I’m really looking forward to it as well.
Why don’t you tell us about your background? How you got involved in this work?
Amanda: I was a professional dancer for 25 years. And then, through that time, developed various eating disorders and depression. And I had to retire because of those struggles. I came across Dr. Amy Johnson and Michael Neill and that catapulted me into the understanding of Three Principles and blew my world upside down.
I had been a spiritual seeker from very, very, very young, I mean, just like, having this sense that something’s off here. People around me adults around me are telling me how the world is and how I am and it just felt off like something’s not right here. As a child very suspicious about how does anybody know what’s going on here? And come to find out nobody does. And that’s the freedom right. That’s the peace that passes understanding is that is that nobody knows what’s going on.
And even more than that, I really think started to change in a big way for me when I woke up to Thought. So just like a fish waking up to water, that I had no idea of course, I didn’t, until I did. Everything is thought. All of it is thought. All of it is thought in a way that is nebulous and pliable and changing and fluid and seamless, that there’s nothing to pin down and hold and grasp. I think, for me, the trying to pin down and grasp and hold my identity in one place for long enough to feel okay, the failure of doing that and being able to do that got so painful that when I started to learn about this and learn about thought, and the deeper experience of us, I really came to see that that nothing is as I think it is.
My failure to pin down an identity or a feeling or a self was a success. This whole time, I was succeeding and doing what is impossible and unnecessary. And the pain that it caused was showing me this is not supposed to. But I of course the conditioned mind interpreted that failure as well. Let me just try again. Let me just find the right thing, the right diet, the right book, the right way of thinking. And then I’ll succeed. But it was all on a false premise.
The false premise was that any ideas about myself and the world are completely made up.
Mostly inherited and questioned. And it was just huge for me.
And so to go forward in time I just really woke up and continued to do so. And then I started coaching myself. I went through some training and I’m now a colleague with Amy in her Little School of Big change, and I have my own clients and I wrote a book, and I have a podcast. And then things just things just unfold in ways that I had no idea about. It’s really beautiful to come to see that everything we think is wrong with ourselves that we can’t seem to change is what’s perfect. The inability to succeed at changing something that is not how you think it is, that does not actually really exist in that way is a success. So I’ll pause there and see if what you’ve that was a lot.
Alexandra: What I’m curious about is you talked about it being a painful time trying to find an identity. So can you say a bit more about that? Were you looking for the bumpers on the side? And to try to sort of stay in your lane?
What did that look like?
Amanda: Yes, well, first of all, as a child, we are given an identity. Oh, she’s like that, oh, she’s always like that, or he’s like that. And so that starts to build and fill in this beautiful emptiness that we really are at core with ideas. And then as that self idea develops, it takes these little pieces and learns what is safe, what is okay, what is not okay, what is acceptable to feel what this means, what that feeling means. And so it’s like a holographic kaleidoscope that melds into this sense of me.
And feel solid feels real and feels worthy of being relevant. Protecting, defending, trying to make better because you’re never all the way there. There’s always a little bit more, you could do better.
So yeah, so the bumper thing came as the unquestioned amount of ideas that we’re building upon each other, started to become invisible. So it would be like, I need to look a certain way or feel a certain way or else everything would come crashing down.
And the irony is, that’s what you want. We’ve got to have it all come crashing down. Because it’s not solid in the first place. It was just invisible. And all of the signs and information was there through all the suffering and the pain and just suffering that believing in an imaginary character in engenders
Alexandra: I love that phrase, an imaginary character. That’s so great.
Amanda: Everything is thought do if thought is written in disappearing ink, so are you. There’s a lot of times during the day that the self isn’t even there. And then it comes back online and says, Oh, I was distracted. Oh, I was in the zone. No, you weren’t, you weren’t there.
It’s really fun to start to poke holes in the narrative that keeps trying to rebuild the sandcastle of the dream character. And that’s natural and nothing wrong with it. It’s beautiful. But to live in that sand castle as if the tide isn’t coming in, as it does is to suffer a lot. And really, to allow the tide to come in and wash it all away, and then watch the phenomenon of being rebuilt and then washed away and rebuilt and washed away. It’s a very beautiful experience that loosens the grip that the mind has on its most prized possession, which is its story about me.
Alexandra: Did you find it scary at the beginning to lean into the washing away and the rebuilding?
Amanda: I don’t think I understood that that’s what was happening. And so the scariness was more in the realm of good grieving an identity that I tried so hard to create and make whole and solid it, but that was very temporary. So I wouldn’t say it was scary for me.
I know for some of my clients it’s very scary but that’s such a temporary place. It’s like the unweaving at the beginning feels very unstable and very what’s going on here. And there’s searching for handholds and purchase and that’s fine. But we come to see that those handholds are falling with us. But they were never giving us what we needed, but they’re fine. They’re there. They’re like a handhold, in terms of something that’s helpful, like a book, or exploration into this whole thing. And so that it makes it really, it makes the fear of really come back into perspective. When you understand that you can’t lose anything you never had.
Alexandra: I’m harkening back to a feeling at the beginning of my exploration of this understanding, which was that feeling of sand slipping through my fingers. And I guess I realized that eventually, I just got used to that, the end that you’re tied metaphor is so great. Because it does build back up again.
Of course, we always have thoughts about ourselves. And then sometimes they break down and wash away.
Amanda: It’s fun to be the perspective of the ocean rather than the sandcastle. Yeah, it was, because I would say that is a little bit more accurate. It’s a metaphor, so we can’t really push too far. But I had for years built a sandcastle and kept adding on a little bit more packed in sand, a little bit more higher turret, some flags over here, like it’s an unending urban development project, only to be washed away, and you have to start over again. And it’s that tension between the washing away and the building. That releases when we see the whole phenomenon.
Alexandra: That’s so well said. Thank you. At some point, we do realize we’re the ocean, not the sand.
One of the questions I wanted to ask you today was what you think gets in between us and our healthy relationship with food, if anything?
Amanda: I think the number one thing is a misunderstanding about feelings. The way I see it is that, well, Chris Niebauer, who wrote No Self No Problem, shared that we were feeling beings 600 million years before conscious thought. So we are feeling organisms.
When the brain evolved, suddenly conceptual thought came in and said, Okay, I’ve got a hold on things. What’s this feeling? And it starts to add meaning and judgment and characteristics on to what was already naturally flowing through for 600 million years.
So in that way, we have been conditioned to relegate certain feelings to being unacceptable, scary, some of them need help. Some of them are completely fine. I think it’s that little confusion that brings us looking for relief, in terms of in the form of anything, food, anything. So I think it’s conceptual thought that has adopted the role of manager over feelings. Does that make sense?
Alexandra: Yes, I totally can understand that and agree. And it’s so easy for our big problem solving brains to get in there and want to, as you say, be the manager, sort everything out.
Put it into categories, rather than just letting it be what it is.
Amanda: It’s weird because the thinking mind is a beautiful machine of logic and reason. But when it comes to the realm of the imaginary meaning who I think I am and who the world is, and my worthiness, my love, all of that, that whole imaginary reason and logic have no place. And that’s confusing for the conceptual mind. And sos confusion is also taken to be something unbearable to feel. And so well, I’m just going to not feel this. Because I have been taught and my mind is telling me that there’s danger here. And it’s perfect that the food stuff is a is a symptom of forgetting, misunderstanding being confused. And taking that seriously.
Alexandra: Right, yeah. Yeah, assigning it a lot of meaning.
Amanda: Whereas confusion can become a curious traveling partner.
Alexandra: True. I don’t know what’s happening here. And that’s okay.
Amanda: Because if I know what’s happening, then I know what should be happening. And it’s not this. That’s where we get a little bit lost, the mind gets a little bit lost, because this desperation to know what can’t be known, is running the show in terms of what I believe is right and wrong for me, and the world, my body, whatever.
And it’s interesting, because trying to figure out reality. The very reality in that way is defined by the inability to know what it is to figure it out. So you’d like the walls were trying to break through or being built by our attempt to break through them? It’s all a fantastically brilliant. I don’t know what magic show.
Alexandra: I love that. Yeah. It’s such a paradox, isn’t it? Someone I was speaking to recently, and I unfortunately, I can’t remember who it was said that. When we get into that feeling of paradox of where our circuits feel like they’re frying and we can’t quite get it that’s a really great place to be.
You’re closer to the truth in that feeling.
Amanda: I call it getting your eggs scrambled. It’s like we come into this conversation in hopes of getting popped out of our orbit for long enough to be completely confused enough. That the mind regroups itself in a more expansive and curious landscape.
People are listening right now going I have no idea what she’s talking about. Good. Exactly.
Alexandra: I was just going to say when your clients get confused, you must get excited.
Amanda: I do. I love it. I love it. And it’s so beautiful to watch those knots untie that the mind has believed are necessary for our existence, and to be alive. It’s really beautiful to watch that release happen. That is our birthright.
We’re designed to wake up just like we wake up from a nighttime dream. We’re designed during the day to wake up from the daytime dream. It’s all the same dream. But the degree of perspective is a little bit different. And we’re designed to wake up. Everybody I know even if they won’t admit it, knows there’s something wonky going on here. You ask anybody can tell you a story of when I was little I would think about weird things and daydream and wander. That gets conditioned out of a lot of us. But it never goes anywhere. I mean, we are the wonder, there’s this beautiful quote that says,
“Many sit and wonder. Few sit in wonder.”
Alexandra: Yeah, that’s so true. I love that.
One of the things I wanted to ask you is if you’re working with someone who’s struggling to change an eating habit or some disordered eating, it’s a difficult question, but where do you begin with them?
Amanda: Generally, I want to see what reality looks like them. Who do they think they are? And what the world is. What are the premises that are being lived from that we can start to question and start to rattle apart? Because I don’t see any other way.
Starting from the food thing just doesn’t work. If that was the key, then there wouldn’t be 5 million gazillion books about diets and food. That’d be one. It’s really about going into starting to allow people to wake up to what this self identity is what it’s made of what it isn’t.
Because really, it’s the self identity that dictates what’s believed about the body. So as that loosens up that grip on the identity and who I think I am loosens up, the beliefs also fall away about the body and what’s good and bad, right and wrong. And all of that stuff.
Alexandra: Is there something specific that you can point to that you see your clients struggling with around eating? Is there a commonality?
Amanda: Yes, I would say the overload of information, and rules, and what other people have shared, gets to be very obscuring in the face of simplicity. I wrote about that in my book, when we’re young, we look to our parents and caregivers to show us how to be, how do you cross the street and not get hit by a car. But the whole system, the whole system is always learning. But with this, again, with this, who I am self identity, the self, the self idea, to look outside is a disaster.
I would say it’s the overload of information regarding food and diet and bodies, the overload of information that has been absorbed, can really make this much more complicated than it is. Rules, even science, even nutrition science, they all have their utility, all of these things have their utility, but they don’t address the underlying beliefs, the underlying illusions that are happening.
So I think that would be the first thing that would come to mind that I hear a lot of rules and regulations. And then those are woven into the identities own rules and regulations.
Alexandra: I know, for me, it was scary, too. I had gotten into the habit of absorbing so much information about how to eat and what to eat and when to eat it. And I just kept searching for that structure. And it was so absurd, because it never worked. And yet, I would keep going back to that place and thinking well, either I’m the problem and I just can’t figure this out.
It didn’t actually ever occur to me that the system was broken. The diet system was only adding to the problem.
Amanda: Right? Again, you were successful that whole time in your failure, right? How to eat, when to eat, what to eat is really absurd in the light of realizing that the conceptual mind is an amalgam of have learned ideas and concepts. Like the conceptual mind isn’t beating your heart. It’s not reviving your cells.
It has nothing to do with that yet it is the thing that is front and center on center stage. But backstage, there’s a whole unknown Wonderland, that that is working with no problem. I really advocate for curiosity and tuning into whatever is being felt right now in real time you get information, and it’s simple.
Alexandra: I’m just recalling the confusion again, that that caused me because our culture is just not set up that way.
Amanda: It’s especially because one of the things the self identity can do is tell you to look point you to look everywhere else but it. So that failed, must be my problem. I’ll try again. Something’s wrong with me. I’m broken. So what we want to do is really turn the spotlight on that self identity? What is it? Bring it in close? What is it?
What is it created from? Is it really there? Can you find it? All of those inquiries really help everything to come back into a more aligned experience. That that calms everything down. I don’t like this phrase, but it brings the power back to something that’s not in the realm of imagination gone off the rails.
Alexandra: Let me back up and just say in your book Uncovery you talk about your personal journey and your times of disordered eating.
Since then, do you find that your relationship with food has changed since you started to see what was really going on?
Amanda: Absolutely. It’s really interesting, because the relationship with food is receding on the horizon. There is no more relationship with food, I would say. There’s a body walking towards the fridge, there’s a body eating, there’s thoughts about food, but there isn’t a captain at the helm barking orders at the ocean anymore.
I wouldn’t even say there’s a relationship with food. I know what you mean. But it’s very much a distant horizon thing. It’s more dream, like, as I recall what it used to feel like.
Alexandra: Right, and I love that you said earlier that the suffering that we experience is pointing toward the different existence or relationship that we can have.
It’s pointing toward the fact that we don’t understand something that’s really going on.
Amanda: It’s big, big flag saying stop. There’s hallucination happening. Complete hallucination. There’s nothing happening, that there’s no failure. There’s no success. There’s no backtracking. There’s no progress. There’s just a hallucination right now, in suffering is the only way the system has to wake itself up. It’s not going to be able to do that with any other feeling.
Alexandra: We’ve been listening to our minds for so long. And that’s not the place to go to for the messages.
The suffering is the thing that wakes us up.
Amanda: It’s so intelligent, but it’s been interpreted backwards. And that takes a while, maybe or not to reorganize and re-orient. And then once that is helped along a little bit through the conversations like these, then people just come back alive to where they’ve never left. Except in thought.
Alexandra: That actually really connects well to I had a question about the wisdom of our bodies, and how that connects to eating.
I’d love for you to say anything more you can think of about that wisdom, because that’s a place that I fall asleep to, and then wake up to again, quite often.
Amanda: So the way I see it is that we don’t fall asleep. We’re not the ones falling asleep and waking up, that’s thought identified. So I’ll just say that first.
Secondly, I no longer see that the body has wisdom. I don’t think wisdom is possessed by a body. It is the mystery about the source of it, and then the manifestation of it, and then the outcome of it. So saying that I think that’s why we sometimes feel that I forgot, and then I wake up to it.
If we think that it’s coming from a source, then that sets up this stage where I could forget. And then remember source. So the wisdom of the body at the same time, yes, there does seem to be something beyond conceptual ideas that’s going on. And that we can call that wisdom. But it’s not ours. There’s nobody that that holds it and obtains it and possesses it. I don’t see that anymore at all. Because the one who would have wisdom I have seen to not be what I thought it was.
Alexandra: So what do you think wisdom is?
Amanda: It’s a concept? It’s a word. It’s a concept. We live in a word world. We have a consensus overlay of words and descriptions and concepts that are mistaken to be reality, actual reflections of something actual. And it’s not the case. I have seen that’s not the case. There’s my experience.
So the words like wisdom and awareness and consciousness are beautiful source, beautiful benchmark symbols for something we have no idea what it is. And again, once we lean into that, and really see how that is the case for us, then we can come back to the concepts and use them playfully. Use them for their utility, being able to have a conversation, for example. I don’t know what wisdom is beyond the fact that it’s a word in a concept.
Alexandra: There’s a great quote. The finger that points at the moon is not the moon.
Is that what you’re alluding to?
Amanda: And to push that further, the moon and the finger are the same thought construct. The moon is an illusionary aspect of the finger, they are inseparable, there’s no moon without the finger in that metaphor, right? There’s no finger without the moon.
So that’s just a little way of saying, I really encourage people to explore this idea that there’s something hidden from you. There’s something out there that you just have to discover or uncover, or there’s a puzzle piece that’s out there for you that’s missing. And I’m going to point you to it.
That keeps us focused away from the magic right here. The wonder of being able to even point to a moon that there is nothing wrong with you, there is nothing you lack, there is nothing you need. And yet we can have this experience of lack and want and need and fulfillment, and let it wash away with the tie that comes in next.
Alexandra: Right, having that the experience of those things?
So as we’re starting to wrap up here, I wanted to mention a couple of things.
One was your book, which we’ve talked about, it’s called Uncovery. Tell us a little bit about that, and where people can find it.
Amanda: It is on Amazon worldwide. I wrote it in 2017. And it goes a lot into the Three Principles. So if people are curious about that, it just tells my story. And then it goes into my journey, it’s not very personal at all, it’s really just laid out in a way that helps one to wake up out of the dream of thought, or wake up into the dream of thoughts to see what it really is and how it how it’s really everything. How it’s really the missing puzzle piece that you didn’t even know was missing.
Contrary to what I just said, right? It’s all paradox. So that it’s due for updated edition. But, I have found that it’s really been helpful for people just really starting to get interested in this conversation.
Alexandra: Definitely. It was one of the first books that I read, and I found it incredibly helpful. And isn’t it funny how those of us who have written about this stuff as we evolve, it does feel like this impulse to go back and revise what we’ve written before?
Amanda: Definitely. I know that that’s just a function of this idea that there’s a right way that will stay the right way. And there is that whatever came through in that book is just as right and wrong now as it will be in 50 years. And it’s for the reader to wake up to what they hear. And it’s got nothing to do with me. Or if I you know, if I need to change anything.
Alexandra: I always remind myself that we can never know what’s going how things are going to land with people. I remember I have a friend who recorded a podcast actually with someone and thought it was terrible. She just didn’t think that she articulated herself well, and she was really concerned about it. She almost asked the host not to release it. And it’s the most popular podcast episode that she’s ever recorded. People are constantly going to her and saying, I love it got so much out of that. I’ve listened to it four times. So we just never know.
Amanda: That’s exactly it. And that’s illustrating what I said before. Nobody knows what’s going on. Literally, nobody knows and to pretend to know what’s going on is painful. It’s just like the podcast that I have with my colleague is we do episodes, and then we’re like, I have no idea what I just said, no idea if it’s good or bad. And let’s just find out.
One of the things that I have found is the seriousness of whatever this is, has really faded away and it can be it can be conjured up when appropriate, I suppose. But it’s no longer a driving force towards front behind behavior or action, or anything like that.
Alexandra: Your podcast is The Wonder Land.
Amanda: the Wonder Land, three words. And it’s with my colleague, Alex Linares. And it’s a dramatic, magical, fun exploration.
Alexandra: Cool. And people can find that wherever they get podcasts.
Amanda: That’s right.
Alexandra: Is there anything you’d like to share before we wrap up that we haven’t touched on yet today?
Amanda: I would just love if one thing they want to take away from this conversation, is to maybe see how it’s true rather than how it isn’t true that there’s nothing wrong with you. And there never has been.
Alexandra: I love that. Thank you.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Amanda: My website is uncoveryspace.com. All my words are on there. All the words of all the things are there. Contact me through that.
Alexandra: Great. Okay, perfect. Well, thank you so much, Amanda. I will put links to the podcast and to your website in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com
Amanda: Thank you, darling. It’s been an honour.
Alexandra: Thank you so much. Lovely to connect with you again. Take care.
Q&A 43 – How can I be at peace with food during the holidays?
Dec 11, 2023
The holiday/end-of-year season can be fraught with so much, including extra temptation for those of us with an unwanted overeating habit. Here then are three tips for navigating this time of year, including remembering your innate peace and how it is always with you.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
On remembering that you are never broken, even when overeating
Remembering that whatever you’re experiencing is temporary
How peace is always available in any moment
On our feelings, including cravings, being a perfect feedback system
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 43 of Unbroken.
The subject today is, how can I be at peace with food during the holidays?
As I record this, it’s early December, and this will be going out on December 11. And of course, we’re moving into holiday season and whatever way you celebrate – and maybe you don’t, and that can sometimes be a challenge as well – what I wanted to talk about, what I wanted to give you today is three tips for being at peace with food during the holidays.
The first tip is to remember that you are not broken.
So even when you’re feeling an urge to reach for that second piece of pie, or second helping of mashed potatoes, or whatever it is, whatever your favorite food is, if you’re feeling tempted by things or challenged by having a lot of food around, the best thing you can do for yourself in those moments, if you can, is to remember that you’re not broken, that there’s nothing wrong with you.
The urge that you’re feeling to overindulge is pointing directly toward your innate well-being and your perfect design, and perfectly kind design.
And the reason for that is, is that the desire to reach for food, or whatever it is, it can be anything to comfort ourselves is, is pointing directly at the fact that we’re always searching for a good feeling. Because that’s what we’re made of. Because that’s our baseline way of being, that’s our innate state. When we’re not feeling that way, the desire to get back there to what Amy Johnson calls home base is, is really strong.
And the way that we do that, and it’s an artificial way but it’s the best way we know in the moment is to reach for things that give us that feeling. So the desire that you might have, at the holiday time to have a second piece of pie, or to have a few too many chocolates or whatever it is, the best thing you can do for yourself is to remember that that’s not pointing toward some sort of brokenness within you.
You’re not flawed. There’s nothing wrong with you at all.
It’s actually pointing out that you are perfectly well and perfectly whole, it’s a sign of your well-being that you’re doing that. So that’s the first thing to remember you are made of a good feeling. And you are made of well being and peace. And any time we reach for some sort of substance, and it feels like we’re over indulging in that that means that we’re trying to have that good feeling. So that’s the first tip to remember that you are not broken. In fact, you are working in perfectly well you are in perfect working order.
The second tip I want to give you is that every storm runs out of rain.
That’s a quote from Maya Angelou and it’s one of my favorites. As we move into this holiday season, and emotions are running high, sometimes there can be a lot of pressure, there can be more activity in your life, more people, maybe more stuff going on. And if you get caught up in indulging your overeating habit, it can feel like it’s never going to end. And so the second tip I have is just to remind yourself, if you can, every once in a while, it is going to end everything is temporary.
That’s true in a macro sense, in the sense that of course the holiday seasons will end we will come into the new year and it will be it will be different. Things will go back to normal, whatever that means for you and this season will come to an end.
It’s also true on a micro sense. Whatever we’re feeling, whatever we’re experiencing, whatever emotion and thinking that sort of combination is moving through us, in any given moment, that too, will end.
So if you’re feeling stressed in any given moment that feeling will rise up within you and it too, will move on.
When we understand that, that’s the nature of our thinking, and our experience of life, that these things rise up within us, and then they move on, that it’s a continually flowing river, of experience of life coming to life within us, then we don’t have to hold on so tightly, to anything that’s happened happening in a given moment. Because that given moment, that experience in that moment, isn’t the whole truth about you, it isn’t the whole truth about life or about the world. It’s a moment, and it will move on.
And like I say, the less we hold tightly onto those things and make them turn them into a big problem, the more easily they can move on, and the river can continue flowing through us. And along with this, too, I want to say that if things are feeling stormy, within you, I just want you to remember, this is kind of a bonus tip, I guess for tip number two is:
Peace is available in any given moment.
We can be feeling really stormy and churned up and having a lot of feelings about whatever’s going on and being grumpy or unhappy, or whatever it is. And peace is always available in any given moment. Knowing that isn’t necessarily enough to make it happen. But knowing that that’s available to us, and is an option, that peace of mind is as close as the next thought, or the next insight that you have, it helps us to relax into the moment whatever’s happening. Because we know that it’s not the entire truth. So that’s tip number two, just if you can to remember that every storm runs out of rain, every feeling will move on through us in the river of life and the river of feelings that we’re experiencing.
Tip number three is that if you can just remember that our feelings are always giving us feedback about our state of thinking.
And this is true, no matter what we’re feeling, and no matter what we’re thinking, and especially at the holidays. They it can be a really charged time. Like I said a little earlier, there can just be so much going on. And there can be a lot of pressure. And I think too, we have a lot of thinking about this holiday season. And it’s in the media all the time. There are articles about people feeling pressure, and all that kind of thing.
And we can also have a lot of associations from the past. It’s just one of those times of yearthat seems to have a lot of connection to it, in terms of our emotional experience of what’s going on. And we tend to give it a lot of meaning when we think about it, really, Christmas Day is just another day.
Whatever way that you celebrate in your spiritual tradition, Hanukkah is just another few days. These days have been marked off in the calendar. I tend to think of when I’m feeling a little fraught about the holidays, I tend to think about animals actually, in the wild. We have where I live there are sea lions in the inlet. And there are deer around town and bears occasionally and cougars and stuff. To them one day is just the same as the other.
It’s really our human thinking or human construct that has given meaning to any given day, during the year.
And now of course there’s an upside to that. There’s the nice parts of the holidays, the celebrations and the getting together with family and seeing people maybe that you haven’t seen in quite a while and doing special things. So there is there is a real positive aspect to the holidays. And also like I’ve said they can have a bit of pressure attached to them, they can have some emotional charge because of things that have happened in the past.
I just want you to remember that, if you’re reaching for food at this time of year, that’s perfectly natural.
That desire is giving you feedback about your thinking in the moment. So if you notice yourself, feeling like you’re reaching for food a lot, rather than beating yourself up about that, or thinking that it’s a problem, one thing you could do is just remember that that’s the natural feedback system that is in place within you. It’s part of your perfect design, like we talked about earlier, it’s letting you know that your thinking is really busy and churned up. And that kind of insecure, busy thinking is taking you away from your natural state of peace and calm.
When you see that, I hope that remembering that just allows you to ease up on yourself a little bit. And maybe not lean into the tendency to beat yourself up about what you’re eating, and what’s going on with you around food, that it is always this perfect system that gives you feedback, and lets you know what’s really going on with you. So that’s tip number three, your feelings are always giving you feedback about your state of mind.
I want to give a little bonus tip about this as well.
Simply understanding these things isn’t necessarily going to shift anything right in that very moment.
But staying in this conversation, and continuing to explore, as I always say, what this Three Principles understanding is pointing toward, that is the thing that is going to create change in your life. And it’s important to know, so the metaphor I want to use is that if you go outside and you start getting wet, and after a second you realize, oh, it’s raining.
Just knowing that it’s raining in that moment doesn’t make the rain stop.
So given that I’ve given you these tips, these three tips for helping you to understand what’s going on with you during the holidays and feel more peace with food. Just knowing them isn’t enough usually, to create a whole bunch of dramatic change in the next 10 days.
I’m not saying this to try to be discouraging. What I’m actually doing is saying it so that you don’t create an expectation.
People come to me and say well, I know it’s my thinking, so why can’t I stop?
Knowing it’s our thinking isn’t enough to create that kind of change. Change always comes via insight. And like I said, you might have a big insight during the holidays, and see something new and fresh in what’s going on and deepen your awareness of how these things work, which is fantastic. And I’m thrilled for you if that’s the case.
And like I said, we can always know that we’re just one moment away from a new insight, from seeing something in a fresh way. And this may not be the time of year to expect yourself to, to encounter a big shift or a big change. You’re doing the very best you can. And just by listening to this podcast, you’re doing something for yourself to expand your understanding. And I think that’s great.
So those are my three tips and a bonus tip about finding peace with food during the holidays. I hope you found that helpful. And of course these tips are helpful at any time of year, so if you’re not listening to this in December 2023, if you’re listening to it some other time, that’s fine too. It always applies.
So that’s it for me here today. I hope you are doing well and taking good care and I will talk to you again next week. Bye.
Calm Self-assurance In Business with Marlene Cameron
Dec 07, 2023
A small business can be a really accurate reflection of that’s business’s owner. So when an entrepreneur is fraught with insecurity that is going to show up in the business. Marlene Cameron helps business owners and entrepreneurs to connect with their innate wisdom and resilience and to see that their moment-to-moment thinking doesn’t need to derail them when they have times of insecurity or doubt.
Marlene Cameron has been training, coaching and mentoring business owners, leaders and mental health professionals since 2002. Former successful careers as a commercial interior designer, business owner/manager, management consultant and financial analyst have garnered her extensive experience and expertise in business leadership and strategy, unlocking human potential and enhancing resiliency and well-being.
One of Marlene’s clients won the 2006 International Coach Federation (ICF) sanctioned Prism Award for “Business Excellence Achieved Through Coaching” and Marlene was part of a team of coaches working with executives at Chevron Resources Canada, winner of the Large Business Prism Award in 2010.
You can find Marlene Cameron at MarleneCameron.com and on Instagram @marlenelcameron.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
On our mistaken impression that going into the past helps heal us
When we’re not grounded in our own capabilities, we’re at the mercy of whatever thought is going through us in a given moment
How we continue to seek validation to solve the insecurity
Learning to not get caught up in the insecure thinking that’s coming up in a moment
What our self-doubt may be an indicator of
How state of mind is so often the culprit when a business fails
Transcript of Interview with Marlene Cameron
Alexandra: Marlene Cameron, welcome to Unbroken.
Marlene: Thanks, Alexandra.
Alexandra: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles?
Marlene: I’ll give you the short version of a long history of career transition. I actually started off as a commercial interior designer, and I think I was 30 years old when I decided that I wanted to work for myself and started a small consulting practice. I did commercial interior design, some mostly office interiors, and some institutional work.
And then I moved to the United States and thought I’d go back to school. And thought, initially, I would do a master’s in architecture, but ended up doing an MBA, and then found the whole world of finance. So then I became a chartered financial analyst and, and thought I’d work in that world. But I realized that they wanted me to work as hard for their businesses as I had worked in my own business, and I didn’t want to do that anymore.
I had the opportunity to take a coaching program. I worked initially with entrepreneurs and executives, and then segued over to the field of energy psychology. I taught a technique for many years to coaches, counselors, mental health professional psychologists, as a way for them to help their clients to regulate their emotional state. I did that for many, many years.
But what I started noticing with observing my students working with their clients was that people were imagining things like worst case scenarios, or, what if this happens and becoming very emotionally distraught about that. My question I kept asking my colleagues, in my supervision classes was that, how do you help the client differentiate between something that’s factual, and something that we call fictional? Like, he made it up or dreamed it up?
I kept asking that question over and over again, until a colleague of mine actually in Vancouver said you might be interested in understanding called the Three Principles because it speaks to this. The idea of the role of thought in our experience. So I started watching YouTube videos every day. I think when people come to this understanding, it’s like even though you don’t know what it is, something draws you in. And maybe that’s that deeper part of us that we speak to in this understanding that said, Oh, here it is, oh, this is what it is. And so that’s how I got drawn into it.
Alexandra: And then, it must have looked to you like it provided an answer to that question that you had about fact versus fiction.
Marlene: Yes, because especially with this technique, we did a lot about going back to the past and trying to resolve somebody’s emotional memory. I remember working with a young client one time, and she said to me, this is really painful. And I’m thinking like, she’s right. It is painful.
But, I was of the understanding, then, well, that’s cathartic, or, you’ve got to go through that to get through to the other side. And maybe without knowing that, I wondered if that was true, because I had my own experience of feeling very anxious.
I felt like an imposter. In spite of all of my academic and business achievement. I still felt inadequate, I still felt very insecure. And the thought I’ve been working with his technique for 15 years, and that really hasn’t shifted for me. So I suspect there was something in that curiosity for me. It’s like, without really knowing, we don’t know these things. We’re just drawn to them.
Alexandra: That brings us around to one of the things I wanted to talk to you about which is self-doubt in entrepreneurs and business owners.
It sounds like you were drawn to that area because of your own experience. Would you say that’s true?
Marlene: Yes, one of the – I call it a symptom or a sign – of what we what we understand to be imposter syndrome, which is the label for something we experience is that in spite of all of somebody’s obvious talent, achievement success, they externalize the reason why they’re successful, like they were lucky, or it was a fluke, or they just work way harder than the other people or even that you’re just nice and likable. And somebody chose you because of that.
If we don’t have that grounding in the understanding of our own capabilities or our own talents, our own value, then we’re at the mercy of whatever thought is going through our minds in the moment, and not understanding where that’s coming from. Because I remember my experience, I found that very confusing, because at one hand, I knew I was accomplished, I’ve got all kinds of degrees and diplomas and grateful clients. It’s like, just what is the matter?
Some days I recognize that and other days, I don’t. What is that all about? And that was the thing no amount of counseling, or coaching or more techniques really, really helped me to understand what was really going on. I could come up with a great idea. And then the next day, it’s like, oh, I don’t know, maybe that’s not so good. Or, maybe I don’t have what it takes to bring that about.
Or thinking that, because they didn’t recognize my own deeper intelligence, I was constantly going to other people taking courses, taking more workshops, taking super extensive programs for from people who I thought had the answer. I would learn their system, their process, and then magically, I could replicate that and have my own successful business. And, you think after how many courses I took, like, I would figure that out, that didn’t really work.
On top of that, I felt like a failure. It’s like, what’s the matter with me? Like, they’ve got this process or the system, and that works brilliantly for them. But I’m worse off to tell you the truth.
Alexandra: In a situation like that, I can see that. I’m relating it to diet, and trying to resolve an overeating habit, because the same thing happens, we chase the answer, and we apply the technique. And, and when it doesn’t work, we think, Oh, I’m the failure. I’m the problem here.
What do you see is the difference now, if you have feelings of self-doubt?
Marlene: I started to be able to see myself in action. My entry level was starting to recognize that I was experiencing my thinking in the moment, even if I didn’t know what those thoughts were. And so I started experimenting.
I might wake up in the morning and feel anxious, it’s like, Ooh, another day got to figure out this, how to do this. And I thought what if I did nothing? What if I trusted that we indeed do have this innate, well-being, this innate mental health? I was surprised how quickly I came around. I said, Oh, okay. That was, that was good.
Because normally I would have had to do my technique. And keep doing it until I saw some sort of shift in how I felt in the moment. And then, when I started to see that I was experiencing my thinking, then I started more and more and more when I started to feel anxious or overwhelmed or less than because I was comparing myself with a colleague or somebody else who I saw successful in business. I could see more and more that that was just instinct to cure thinking coming in in the moment and not get too caught up in it or too embroiled in it.
So I think it’s I think it’s the power to recognize first appreciating where that feeling is coming from me recognizing like, Oh, I’ve just fallen into an old pattern of insecure thinking, doubting myself, dismissing my accomplishments and putting other people on a pedestal. That comparison thing. People say, when you compare you despair, and I’ve certainly found that to be the case.
I think it was just really more self awareness. So they could see where I was innocently, often unknowingly taking myself back to that old habit of old patterns of thinking, old ways of seeing myself. And understanding that that was the thoughts in the moment.
Alexandra: I like hearing that. I had a recent experience that I wanted to ask you about; I recognize that sometimes when I have judgmental thinking or critical thinking about somebody else, I’ve had an insight the other day that it might be that I’m feeling vulnerable. And that judgmental or critical thinking is letting me know what’s happening, that I’m feeling a little bit vulnerable in whatever the situation is.
It’s giving me feedback about my state of mind, those judgments or criticisms, because they feel they feel yucky inside me when I’m thinking them.
I’m wondering about self-doubt, and the information that it carries. Can you address that a little bit?
Marlene: I came to see about this whole self-doubt thing. It’s almost like we’re not more closely connected to a deeper part of ourselves that has that natural confidence, that has that natural knowing. We’ve been led astray, or led down the path away from that. And we know that the ego mind is, some people, some people believe I really don’t understand ego, some people believe that it tends to be more fearful, more wanting to protect its own personal identity, vulnerable to feeling threatened than that type of stuff.
So I think that’s what comes up when, when I know, for me, when I started to compare myself to others, it’s like they’re not good enough or not, I used to go through this whole scenario, not good enough, don’t know enough, not doing the right things at the right time, and don’t have the right connections. I could see that pattern floating up there. And every once in a while I would start to believe it. And so it’s that disconnection from that deeper, wiser part of ourselves that knows that that’s just, I call it fabrication.
Alexandra: You talked about those four or five things that you noticed a pattern in yourself. And that obviously creates a feeling inside you that you you’re able to pick up. And notice, oh, okay, I’m in this old pattern.
Marlene: Yes, I start to feel very anxious, very discouraged, I would say even fearful, it’s like, Oh, my God, like, Am I ever going to figure out life out? Like, how am I going to navigate life from this perspective?
Alexandra: And so now, do those feelings come up in you still and if so what do you do with them then?
Marlene: When this came up, the other day, I saw a colleague of mine had posted something about how successful her business was on LinkedIn or something and I had that little response. And I’m thinking like, okay, Marlene, what’s going on here, right? Just give us some space, check in with yourself, and then I just came to peace about it.
We’re completely different. We’re on different paths, we’re both doing our thing. And say, there’s no better or worse, there’s no more or less successful. I think in our culture, we’re conditioned into this comparison thing, because how many times do we hear about people posting about their the best of something that they got the highest award. I think that even started in school, the grades and the comparison.
I was encouraged to be a high achiever, so I thought that that’s who I was, and that the value I brought to the world, like I could be a high achiever. And so, though it was my actions, and my accomplishment had more value than who I was as a human being.
Alexandra: And in this day and age, too, with social media, this is an entirely new ballgame. And of course, we all do it. We post about the good stuff if that’s happening.
It must be so easy for business owners to fall into comparison-itis and feeling like they’re not measuring up.
Marlene: One of my clients right now is a very successful designer. She has all the business she wants she has happy clients, she’s thriving, and yet she can still fall into the am I doing it right? Am I doing enough else. What do people really think of me? It really is crazy making.
The thing I realized, that really landed with me when I was speaking with her, she said the thing that gets squashed the first is my creativity. That’s the thing that gets like tamped down when I really get into this overthinking about how am I doing?
Alexandra: That’s such a good point. In a business like hers, she needs her creativity, of course.
Marlene: Even if it’s not a creative service like design or something like that, every entrepreneur has to be creative, because you’re the business, you’re always going to be faced with situations you didn’t anticipate or even opportunities. Can I really take on this project?
And that capacity within this gets overridden or we can really struggle. There’s so many statistics now about why small businesses fail, and they’re always sort of in the material world. So you know lack of cashflow, lack of funding, lack of recognized, recognized in their competitive advantage sheet like all the lack lack lack, but when I really see it, it’s a state of mind. That’s the culprit.
Alexandra: That’s what you help entrepreneurs with, I’m assuming.
When we see our natural resilience as entrepreneurs, and our resourcefulness that’s innate, and we don’t have to make it up or fake it till we make it.
Marlene: Because then the low state of mind, your low mood, we know that people see the world differently and respond differently. And so if you’re if you’re feeling stressed, or overwhelmed, or for whatever reason, not being able to fully operate in the present moment, you misread situations, you make decisions that are not beneficial. You avoid things that feel uncomfortable, you just can’t face them right now.
I think it’s the result of of that. I’ll just go back to the result of that, the implications of a lower state or lower understanding, that really is the saboteur.
Alexandra: Yes. And it’s such a good point. Self-employed people, entrepreneurs, they’re everything; they’re the accountant in their own business and the creative person, and the customer service and all of it. When we don’t understand that it’s our state of mind that affects all those things.
That a low mood is temporary, it’s not a comment on our ability to do our job. Powerful stuff.
Marlene: It’s a paradox, too, because in our culture, we really value the over busy stress. We’ve labeled it like, Oh, you must be busy profitable important you’ve got a going concern here, and not seeing how that state of high stress or over commitment or overwhelm is the culprit. It’s really debilitating people’s ability to be effective to be productive, and bring a light hearted state of mind that helps them to be more creative more, as you say, more resilient, more resourceful.
Alexandra: We’re recording this on a Wednesday and I on Monday this week I hit a bit of a wall and needed a nap and a rest and to read my book for the afternoon. I saw how busy my mind got about resisting that. “No, no, it’s Monday, you need to be productive. You need to keep going and do all this stuff.”
But my experience has been that listening to that wisdom that is saying “slow down for a minute, just take a breath and have some have a rest” is the thing that keeps me going in a way if I don’t rest, I burn out. So that wisdom is always there for all of us, but specifically for entrepreneurs.
I love this quote that I pulled off of your website on a blog post, that, “It is our inability to love and accept ourselves, that gives us the opportunity to find fault with others.”
Can you talk about that a little bit and how that affects entrepreneurs.
Marlene: I think it goes back to that level of understanding about who we are. Our spiritual psychological nature, if you will, or how our mind operates. So if we can’t see ourselves in a good light if we struggle to see our own talents, gifts, generally, generosity, kindness. It’s almost like the that that inability to see that in ourselves is mirrored back in the world.
So we start to see issues with other individuals and judge other individuals, but it’s just like that, how we perceive her of herself as being mirrored back through how we see others. And thinking it’s about them and not understanding it’s really our own perception, just circling back and, and becoming our own experience of ourselves and, and others.
Business owners say, Oh, I just can’t find any good people or people don’t want to work, or they just make up all kinds of stuff about above their fellow human beings, and that really can hurt people’s businesses. Because if they don’t create an environment for people to be acknowledged and appreciated for who they are as a human being, you’re not going to provide an opportunity for those people to really show up at their best.
Alexandra: That’s such a good point. Have you ever noticed that shift? If someone’s able to come to a more loving place with themselves?
Have you observed a shift in what they see outside themselves?
Marlene: Well, first of all, I think what they come to appreciate is that everybody’s sort of living in their own personal reality. And so they’re going to have their opinions and their beliefs and their ideas about things.
But they also bring their own wisdom, their own insight, their own creativity, and so it’s being able to see both sides of the equation. We have this innate capacity for all this brilliance. And we’re human beings who have we deal with our stuff. So I think there’s just more compassion. I think people feel more connected.
I really emphasize listening with my clients and students, because if you’re over here and your own mind judging, comparing, whatever you do, you’re not really hearing that person deeply. And because of that, they don’t feel seen. They don’t feel heard. They don’t feel appreciated. And if I think as a human being we like to feel that we’re valued, that we’re appreciated. Even loved.
Alexandra: Yes. Even or maybe especially in the workplace. Well, not especially, I guess, everywhere. But yeah, when we’re doing a job we want, we all want to feel appreciated.
I guess one of the things I also wanted to ask you about was you mentioned this phrase calm self-assurance on your website.
Tell us about that, where that phrase came from and what it means to you.
Marlene: It was really my experience of having these impostor feelings in because I could project that I was confident, self-assured, knowledgeable trustworthy, like I could project all of that. But that’s not how I felt on the inside. So there was that lack of congruence that lack of that connection with that call that deeper, wiser part of myself.
When I talk about that calm self-assurance that’s coming from inside of you, you’re not more confident because you got the right makeup or the right clothes, or you’ve punched the air before you’ve gone into the meeting. It almost comes more from your beingness rather than you did something to feel confident, right. It’s more innate, it’s more integral to you know, just how you how you show up in the world.
It’s not put on, it’s not fake. It’s not contrived. That’s just you in it. I think that’s what people were looking for. I think they have to work for it. Something they have to do. And I probably took a few of those courses myself.
Alexandra: We all have. Yes. I think it’s interesting that you don’t just say self-assurance, you say calm self-assurance.
So that word must have meaning for you as well. A big part of the equation.
Marlene: I think the calm comes from that groundedness or that presence, that deeper understanding. It comes from a knowingness. I think we talk about how our true nature is joy and contentment and calm and happy. It comes from that place of us that’s already there, it’s already present.
Alexandra: When you described earlier about how we can try to make it about the way we look or our clothes or our makeup and our hair and punching the air before we go into a meeting or whatever it is. And to me, there’s an acting element to that, a presentational element.
And then also, I noticed to that person who feels that or when we feel like we’re made up of all these different pieces that we’ve put together, is really scrambling. I’m picturing the little duck with their feet just going like crazy under the water.
Whereas when we really connect with a sense of calm, it doesn’t have that frantic presentational quality. Would you agree?
Marlene: Absolutely. That’s a great way to put it, actually. Because there’s so much doing this in being calm. We’ve been led to believe is like doing this and being calm, right?
Alexandra: Yes, that’s so true.
Tell us a little bit about the types of clients that you work with, and the sorts of things that you help them with.
Marlene: I really like working with entrepreneurs. I would say I have more women on clients than men, but I often have men referred to me by women who said you need to go talk to somebody.
The thing I love about working with entrepreneurs is everything’s at stake. Their career, their reputation, their financial well-being there. It’s like the business is a reflection of them. And so when the business is struggling, of course, that’s an indication that the business owner or leader is struggling.
I find that they’re keen to know. They can be even a little bit more interested, more invested. Like, I gotta figure this out. Everything is on them.
Alexandra: And are your clients mostly in the interior design world?
Marlene: Not necessarily. That was my first career and I circled back to that field to see who would be interested in there’s a few, I’m talking to a few designers now. And people I’m meeting in the world of small business and entrepreneurship.
I’ve always understood that I’m not coaching the business. It’s the business owner. And with however the business owner evolves, the business will naturally evolve. I’m not there to help them run their business. And I know, there’s lots of business coaches out there who have real expertise in helping people with systems and processes. And I could, that’s I have education than that. But that’s not where the really interesting stuff lies. It’s like, what’s in the mind, of the business owner or the leader?
Alexandra: I loved what you said about when their understanding shifts, the business reflects that. That’s really cool.
As we’re just about coming to the end of our time together, is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share today?
Marlene: One of the premises of this understanding is that over time, you just seem to have a better experience of life. And that’s been my experience. I’m finding that I’m just a little bit more settled, don’t get quite so caught up in things. I seem to give people more space, have more compassion for people who were struggling for whatever reason. It gives you a nicer experience of life and lets the joy and the beauty of life show up more often, rather than the concern or stress or whatever.
So, that’s what I would say about this understanding it. And of course, that’s going to impact every aspect of your life. Your work, your relationships, your friendships, and yeah, it just shows up all over.
Alexandra: I think it’s really an interesting doorway that you’ve got in for people you’re talking to them about their business. But really, that is the gateway and then it’s going to affect every area of their life. That’s really cool. It’s like a gateway drug or something.
Marlene, where can we find out more about you and your work?
Marlene: My website is MarleneCameron.com. So that’s a great place to start. And if anybody wants to contact me directly, it’s Marlene @ Marlene cameron.com. I’d be delighted to have this conversation with anybody who’s interested in exploring how this understanding could have a positive impact on their business or in their lives in general.
Alexandra: Oh, lovely. I’ll put a link in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com to your website so people can find you there. Well, this has been lovely. Marlene, thank you so much for chatting with me.
Marlene: Thank you very much. It’s been a real pleasure.
Are diets the right tool when we want to lose weight? They tend to be the only one we use, but what if there’s an alternative? What if diets are actually contributing to the suffering we experience about food? And what if there were an alternative way to approach resolving an overeating habit?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
What is the cause of our suffering when we want to lose weight?
How our thoughts are at the root of so much trouble for us
Why diets are like putting gasoline on a fire when it comes to weight loss
What if food cravings come from a wise place within us?
Transcript of episode
Hello Explorers, and welcome to Unbroken Q&A episode 42. I’m Alexandra Amor. Today I’m here with just a quick introduction to an audio that I’m going to attach to the back of this introduction.
This is an audio track that I recorded recently for Insight Timer.
I’m going to be teaching some classes over on that app. It’s a really great, great app, if you haven’t heard of it, I haven’t had that much exposure to it. I’ve been having a lot of fun creating, just recently creating some material for it some classes and some audio tracks. It’s all audio based. And you can listen anywhere, of course, anywhere as long as you’ve got your phone, and an internet connection.
The audio track is called: Why do diets fail us?
And it’s about why diets don’t work and the psychology behind them and the reason that that is. I hope that if you’re a regular listener to this podcast, or if you’ve read some of my books, that you’ve started to see that diets are trying to answer a problem that doesn’t exist. And they’re the wrong tool for the job, which is something I bring up in this audio track.
If you have been around for a while, and you’ve listened to the podcast for a bit, or you’ve read some of my books, I think this will be a really nice overview or kind of review for you of the things that I talk about all the time. And it’s always good to listen and to stay in the conversation, as we say, as much as we can, as much as it is fun and interesting for us.
Insights can happen at any moment. I often found and I still find as I’m exploring this understanding, I can listen to something more than once and get something different out of it each time and maybe have some new insights no matter what’s going on. So I hope that’s the case for you. And yeah, I hope you enjoy this audio track and that you were doing well and taking good care.
I will talk to you again next week. Please enjoy.
Why do diets fail us?
Hello and welcome, I’m Alexandra Amor, coach, podcaster, and author of several books, including The Secret Language of Cravings.
Let me ask you a question: have you had a diet fail you? In other words, have you had a diet make promises it didn’t keep?
Given that you’re listening to this, you may have answered yes to that question and I’ll say me too! Over and over again.
And it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. Perhaps you can relate to that as well. So…what’s happening when a diet fails us? Is it that we lack will power or stick-to-it-iveness? Our culture seems to tell us that this is the cause, doesn’t it?
What if the reason diets fail us because they’re the wrong tool for the job?
When we are using a diet or wanting to use a diet, what is causing that impulse? The obvious answer you might offer is because we want to lose weight. That’s not rocket science.
Given that this is the case for most of us, what’s happening is that we’re suffering, correct?
What is the cause of our suffering?
Your first impulse might be to say that it is your body that is causing your suffering. It is the “wrong” shape or size and you want to change that. But what if we looked in a slightly different direction? What if it’s the thoughts about your body and the thoughts about food that are the root cause of your suffering, not your body itself?
As surprising as this is going to sound, your body – no matter how it looks or what size it is – cannot actually cause you to suffer. Your body is just doing its job; pumping blood and growing new cells and taking in oxygen and letting out carbon dioxide and, yes, using the food you eat for fuel and/or reserving stores of that fuel.
Our bodies are doing all this and more, but they cannot directly create suffering. Now our thoughts about our bodies – they can create real suffering In order to explain this, I’m going to use a couple of examples.
Here’s the first one: Think about how it’s possible to hear someone make a really judgmental statement about their own body, or a part of it, and to find yourself thinking, “That person’s body is perfect.” Or, “Their weight is absolutely fine.” Yet the person who made the comment is really suffering about how they look. If it was that person’s body that was the direct cause of the negative thoughts then we would have those same thoughts about that body. But we don’t. One person might see that person’s body as beautiful, another might be completely indifferent to it.
So the body itself cannot be the cause of the negative or judgmental thinking. The math just doesn’t add up.
Here’s another example to illustrate my point: Have you ever had the experience of feeling good about your body one day and then not feeling good about it the next.
If our suffering was coming from our bodies themselves, how could this happen? It’s not possible. Objectively, can you see that if the thoughts that cause suffering came directly from a person’s body – the way that orange juice comes from an orange, or the way sunlight comes from the sun – then we would feel the same way about our bodies at every given moment.
And of course, that isn’t true.
So if the thoughts that are causing our suffering are not coming from our bodies, where are they coming from?
What I’m going to propose is that our thinking is like the weather. It is energy flowing through us, rather than something coming into us from the outside, like oxygen. And that when we understand this it brings us closer to our innate state of well-being and calm, and this in turn can melt away our food cravings. No will power required. Innocently it looks to us as though life works like the oxygen coming into our lungs – that is, from the outside in. We see a body – perhaps our own – and we have a thought about it. But if our thinking worked that way, then, as I illustrated in the examples above, how is it possible to have one type of thought about something on one day and a very different type of thought about the same thing on another day? If life worked from the outside in, then we would have the same thoughts about that thing every single time we saw it.
This is the first point that I want to propose – that our thinking comes from the inside-out, not the other way around.
Now, let’s discuss the specifics of what’s going on with our thinking when we have an overeating habit.
When we feel we are not the “right” body size, and we have an overeating habit, it’s easy to observe that we have a LOT of thinking about that situation. I know for me, one of the recurring thoughts I had about my overeating habit was why does it seem like this is not an issue for other people? And yet, it feels like such a huge issue for me. In other words, why have I spent all this time and energy and effort trying to fix this situation, and I’ve completely failed for 10, then 20, then 30 years.
My thoughts also went to things like:
why can’t I even manage something simple like portion control
why am I so hopeless at trying to eat properly.
why am I sabotaging myself if losing weight is something I want?
And of course with all the visually focused social media apps and all the messages that we get from the media, I had lots of thinking about how my body wasn’t “right” and how I didn’t measure up and how I wasn’t perfect. There was lots of suffering going on, because of my thinking. Perhaps you can relate to all of this as well.
Now let’s look at what diets bring to this situation
Of course diets and self-help programs that teach us how to eat, and apply rules and structure that strive to help us to change our eating habits, seem like a solution.
If we’ve got a situation where we’re overeating, and then someone proposes a way to eat less, and we are promised that we would be changing the situation that feels like it’s a problem, then, of course that looks like a solution. And absolutely it did for me as well, all those years ago, and up until just a few years ago.
However what I see now is that diets contribute to the thinking we’ve already got about food and weight and body image. In other words, they add more thinking into that mix.
What I mean by this is that we’ve got all the thinking about our overeating habit that I mentioned earlier. And then when a diet or a new eating plan comes along what we end up doing is layering more thinking onto the thinking that’s already there. The metaphor I use to describe this is that our thinking becomes like a snowball rolling downhill.
The original snowball is all our thinking about ourselves and our bodies and our unwanted overeating habit.
Then we start to diet or we find a new eating plan and we think it’s a solution. And we may even feel some relief for the first few days. But what we’re actually doing is rolling that snowball downhill, and adding more and more thinking to that situation.
The diet adds new thoughts like what can I eat and what can’t I eat? And if I slip up what does that mean about me? If my cravings return, what does that mean? We have fearful thoughts about staying on the diet.
And of course, in my case, and maybe yours too, eventually (or quickly) I would fail with the eating plan. And that just added more and more thinking to what was already there: Why can’t I figure this out? Why is this so hard? What’s wrong with me that I can’t do this? Why don’t I have any will power?
So that snowball of thought is rolling downhill, adding more and more snow to the original ball.
Now, it does need to be said that we do this because it’s all we know. It’s the way that our culture is focused. When we don’t see any other way of doing things, of course we innocently try to find a solution to our overeating habit and diets are the one that are most popular. Naturally, we are trying to ease our suffering. We want to feel better.
Here’s where things get interesting.
Now that we’ve explored what it is that is causing us to suffer when we have an overeating habit we’re going to go back to the original question posed by the title of this track: why do we fail so often at diets?
What if we looked at our thinking about food and our unwanted overeating habits as though they weren’t a problem. I know that can sound like a ridiculous proposal but let’s explore it.
What if we considered that our food cravings are actually coming from a very wise place within us?
Diets tend to demonize cravings. We think of food cravings and an overeating habit as something we need to control, manage, eradicate. Which is where that snowball rolling downhill comes into effect. But what if our cravings are trying to get our attention? What if they are actually pointing us toward or alerting us to the quality of our thinking?
If our thinking is NOT coming from outside ourselves, as I outlined earlier, then we are living in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances. Therefore our internal experience of life isn’t coming from outside of ourselves, it is coming to life within ourselves.
From this what we can see is that the feelings that we have – like food cravings – can be seen as a reflection of our thinking in that moment. If I’m feeling a really deep, urgent craving for some kind of food, what that’s telling me is that my thinking is insecure and stirred up.
You already know the way the feelings in your body reflect what’s going on in your mind; when you’re excited about something you might have a feeling like butterflies in your stomach. When you’re scared you might have a tight chest or throat.
The only way that our innate wisdom has to get our attention about the state of our thinking is by offering us these feelings.
Our natural state is one of peace and calm. We are designed, it seems to me, to return to that state naturally. We return to it without effort or force of will. When we see this, we can also see that our feelings – including our food cravings – are like little mindfulness bells that go off, that let us know about the state of our thinking in any given moment. They let us know when we have stepped away from our natural state of calm.
The desire in us to go on a diet is actually proof of this.
What do we think will happen when we go on a diet and lose weight? Consider that for a moment. You might respond with thoughts like: I will feel better about myself. I will stop worrying about what I’m eating. I will accept myself and others will accept me too.
Imagining those things feels good doesn’t it?
That good feeling is the one we’re always looking for. It is the calm and quiet state that is our innate design.
Unfortunately, diets take us further away from that feeling because they add to the whirl of busy thinking that we’re already living within.
So when it comes to resolving an overeating habit, I’d love you to consider this: what if it wasn’t that you have failed at following a diet in the past. What if you’ve been sold the wrong tool for the job?
We do we fail at diets? It is not because we lack will power. We fail at diets because they compound the busy, insecure thinking within us. Diets are like adding gasoline to a fire. This is why they don’t work for most of us.
The alternative to diets is looking upstream, toward the nature of thought and how it moves through us, from the inside out. And how, when we see our thoughts for what they are, we connect to our innate well-being and return to our the state of peace and calm that already exists within us.
Healthy Relationships With Food And Life with Bill and Connie DeKramer
Nov 30, 2023
Bill and Connie DeKramer have long worked in the field of offering solutions about healthy eating and healthy living. But they found that there was a piece missing when it came to helping their clients find lasting results. Then they discovered the 3 Principles of innate health and everything fell into place, for them and for their clients.
Bill and Connie DeKramer love sharing a program that has helped more than a thousand people restore their health, lose weight naturally and create a healthy relationship with food.
All this happens through a simple understanding of our true nature and our innate intelligence that effortlessly guides us to the food and lifestyle choices that return us to balance and thriving.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
The end of spiritual seeking as we discover it’s all within us
How we can’t use our minds to change our minds
How we are always feeling our thinking
How eating changes when we see our thinking for what it is
On the wisdom in cravings
Transcript of Interview with Bill and Connie DeKramer
Alexandra: Bill and Connie DeKramer Welcome to Unbroken.
Bill: Thanks, Alexandra. We’re delighted to be here.
Connie: And your title, Unbroken. It’s so true. We all are.
Alexandra: Exactly. Thank you. I chose that very consciously, of course. So this is the first interview I’ve done with two people, as opposed to one. So this will be kind of fun. Why don’t you start and tell us each about how you came across the principles.
Connie, why don’t we start with you? Why don’t you tell us about that.
Connie: We’ve been spiritual seekers forever. And all of a sudden, I realized no more of this. I know it’s all within me. And that’s where I’m going to look from here on out. I had an experience thinking Bill and I might separate where I was devastated. In that sadness, I saw that I would be fine no matter what happened. And my mind went quiet.
It has stayed that way since then, actually. Then we moved to Kelowna. And that’s how we found the principles. And for me, everything that Syd was saying, confirmed my experience. So I knew this was something really true and worthwhile.
Alexandra: And Bill, what about you?
Bill: We discovered them at the same time. And then what actually introduced us to the first person that was talking about this understanding of the principles was – Connie had an career in weight loss, she opened salons in Australia big deal. And so she would tap in every now and then to see what was going on in the weight loss industry. And we had been helping people restore their health with whole foods for 30 years, and had great success with that.
But we would find that when people – even if they had great results – sometimes we would see a client six months, 12 months later, and put the weight back on their conditions were back and say, Hey, what happened, it was always the same story, something had happened in their lives, that created a lot of pressure. And they turned back to their old habits of using foods to come through. So we knew there was a mental emotional piece to tied into being healthy.
Just giving the body what it needs, the body will be healthy if we give it what it needs. But we’ve got to give it what it needs and our emotions, how we feel, can have a big bearing on our relationship with food, and we’re reaching for food that’s not serving us to deal with something other than our health.
So, we were listening to this webinar, and Dr. Amy Johnson came on and was talking about weight loss. But she was putting it in their context of it’s about our relationship with life, that we can really find lasting change in establishing weight loss. And it didn’t make any sense. But something resonated. It’s like I’ve learned more about what she’s talking about. So one thing led to another and we studied with Amy and became change coaches through Amy’s Change Coach Program. And that took care of that mental emotional piece that we’ve been looking for, to help our clients be able to make the lasting change in terms of diet and lifestyle without getting thrown off the tracks if something happened in their lives.
Alexandra: Connie, were there other things you had tried, in terms of that emotional piece that hadn’t worked?
Connie: Oh yeah. We tried HeartMath. We tried Byron Katie’s work, we tried meditation. We tried everything that seemed like it might really support people, but nothing worked. Everything made sense that people would do their positive thinking with us for a while. But nothing would stick.
What we see now is that all of these techniques and strategies, people were using them like they wanted the what do I do; they use their mind to change their mind? We can’t use your mind to change your mind. We have that insight about how we work, how life really works about this well being that we all really come from. And then experience.
Alexandra: Did you begin to see changes with your clients when you introduced that idea?
Connie: Yes, we did. And they experienced freedom in a lot of other areas. By seeing more clearly, instead of being lost in thought they began to have major life change. It’s so rewarding and fulfilling for them and for us.
Bill: It helped us deal with the issue of cravings. Because if we’ve established a habit to reach for food, when we’re looking for relief, then whenever a little bit of tension comes up, we have a craving for that food. Now, that’s our wisdom actually helping us navigate resolution.
When we begin to understand that we’re feeling our thinking, it’s not really that our bodies want this food, and understand how the Principles, we’re going to apply that. Now we’re helping people restore health and lose weight naturally. And to deal with those cravings that come up.
They’re no longer trying to use that willpower to resist this craving. I don’t know, I just get through it for five minutes that will go well, that stuff that people try to do. So that’s how helped us deal with the whole craving piece. So that was a big shift for people to find that more effortless transition. Not having to work so hard.
Alexandra: Exactly. And you guys, I think I read on your website, you, Connie was it you that ran a sort of a health food restaurant years ago.
Bill: We both did okay.
Alexandra: My thought was that you had both, or for a very long time been very healthy.
Have you personally dealt with cravings yourself?
Connie: Yes. I would use potato chips. Or whatever. And that would be the thing that would come up for me every so often. And a friend asked me one day, are you giving your well-being to potato chips? I realized, ah, yeah. I decided that I would meet whatever was there. And I got just quiet.
The next time the craving arose, and in that quietness, I saw the source of what was driving me toward potato chips. And it was a feeling as a young kid and feeling safe. One of the few times when I felt really safe there were always potato chips at those events. The minute I saw that, then the I’ve never had another craving. Never and really for nothing. That was kind of the final one.
Alexandra: And what about you, Bill?
Bill: I like sweets, that kind of stuff. We were talking to a client earlier this morning, actually, I was sharing his story how there was a store in the mall called Death by Chocolate. There’s a glass case right out front, everybody’s walking by right. So every time I’d walk by it would start bringing those feelings up because like Connie, I didn’t see this at the time. But we make associations between experience in our lives and food.
When we’re starting to feel tense, and we remember we had potato chips, and everything was so calm. We had a potato chip, and we find that space again, the potato chip and break the space, but the association in our mind, and so I had associations with chocolate.
I began to understand more about how we’re always feeling our thinking and exploring that more and that relationship with food was changing. It was the strangest thing one day, I didn’t even see it coming but I’m walking by Death by Chocolate, I look into case expecting the usual high because isn’t that part of the whole process? You love even that first thought of having a bite, you don’t even have to have the bite.
I’m waiting for this to come. I might as well have been looking at cardboard. Like, wait, wait, what’s happened? So the association just broke. That was such a beautiful demonstration to myself about how our experience really works. Feeling our thinking.
If I’m no longer associating chocolate with this wonderful feeling, then chocolate is just neutral. It might as well be …well, for some reason. I thought cardboard at the time, but it could be spinach or anything else.
Alexandra: That’s such an interesting point about the associations, because when we just naturally don’t have an association with something, like I’m trying to think of a food that some people might crave that, that we personally don’t. It just holds no energy at all. There’s no thinking about it. It’s yeah, so interesting.
Bill: If you’re a nonsmoker, and a smoker saying, God, I’m trying to quit smoking. You say, well just stop. See the inner dynamic, that association that’s driving it? And so it just doesn’t make sense if we’re not experiencing it, but it’s that way for everyone.
Alexandra: Which really points to that we live in the world of our thinking. So clearly, that’s so great.
When you guys are working with someone who’s wanting to change their habits, and eat better and lose weight, where do you begin with them?
Connie: What I keep finding more and more often is the best place to begin is with that thinking piece. They see the association, they have that some true, real. And as they see that, then making changes in the food world is very easy. And we can then just focus on food, and make change and have helped that’s amazing beyond what we even thought we could have, without pushback from old habits, old thinking.
Bill: Around the food piece we’re a hybrid business, we deal with food. Because the body has a say it’s been designed to function best with certain foods in the same way that if our car works well, on gasoline, we don’t put diesel in, right. And so we have guidelines, because both of us resolved health challenges with a whole food plant based diet, science that supports it. And so this is our approach around the food.
That seems to be a good fuel for the body. And we’ve had great results, I can say for 30 years, people are getting out for high blood pressure medicine, diabetes, meds are having energy, their aches and pains are guiding it seems to work. But the key is the lasting change. So that’s the emotional piece. So we’ve got the two things.
It’s easy to tell them, this is what we found worked really well give it a try, see how you like it, and that kind of evolves on its own.
It’s the challenge with emotional pieces were caused, saying, We can show them the associations that they have around, usually unhealthy food habits. Because we’re often drawn to things that make us feel good because it kicks in a very natural process in the body, this pleasure center, we have a treat, the body is designed to give us a hit of dopamine, if we have high calories come into the blood, which is sugar and fat and you know, give me a pizza. How does that feel?
There’s dopamine going on. So it’s good to understand these associations that make us feel good. That’s not the real feel good we’re looking for. There’s a difference between the satisfaction of the dopamine hit and the satisfaction of really being grounded really touching into this innate well-being. So, when I see chocolate looks like cardboard, that’s not the kind of hit I used to get from chocolate. But I’ll tell you, it is it is the satisfaction I was always looking for in chocolate.
Alexandra: Right. And it occurs to me too, that when we when we understand how our thinking works, the mechanics, if that’s the right word, of eating well become a lot easier because there’s a lot less suffering there and worrying about every little mouthful and all that kind of stuff. You guys are both nodding.
Connie: One thing I’ve found recently is I will tell people, there are two ways to go about the food piece. One is slowly put the toe in the water. And the other is jump in with both feet right away and see what happens. And people who really favor animal products often will take a slower route. And they don’t have to totally get off all their animal products to find the health level they want. So we keep learning.
Alexandra: I’d love to find out more about this. This is kind of like asking the same question I’ve asked already. But from a different angle.
What do you notice that your clients struggle with if they come into this understanding without any previous awareness of it? Where do they struggle?
Connie: I think the main struggle is just that false belief that often is unconscious that we carry with us that drives us to use food for something it isn’t designed for, in supporting people to see that very clearly from beginning to end. Often it’s dissolved like my potato chip story.
Bill: I think what creates the struggle for them is because they come into this with the classic societal approach, select that life works outside in. So if there’s a problem with my weight or with my health, with an eating disorder, then it has to do with the food. So they want to deal with the food.
And we’re saying it’s not about the food, and they’re going well, it is about the food, because it’s what I eat. And so there’s just that turnaround for them to begin to understand the Inside Out nature of life versus the outside in. As they keep believing it’s outside in, there’s going to be this wanting to control and restrict. And this is the answer by managing my life outside instead of recognizing it’s all inside.
Alexandra: Such a good point. Go ahead, Connie.
Connie: Many people have the false belief, because that’s all they’ve known that following a diet is the answer where there’s a lot of restriction. And that actually is totally not the answer. That won’t lead you anywhere except where you’ve already been, which lose some weight and then gained it all back plus, usually
They see where is truth really with food. With anything in life? It isn’t in restriction and willpower, right.
Alexandra: One thing that occurs to me too, is, in my experience was that anytime talking about restriction and diets and that kind of thing, anytime I tried something like that, that was new, and failed, I felt that I was the problem. And so 30 years of feeling you’re a failure weighs on you.
I imagine your clients must find some relief from that kind of thinking.
Bill: For sure, some clients they’re 50 years old, and they’re telling us their story. They started dieting when they were 10. They lost 100 pounds, and they’ve gained 120 back. That kind of stuff. What’s that do to your psychology when you think it’s all about your ability to manage life? After control life? That’s way too much work.
Alexandra: What a relief when we realize that there’s another answer. That’s for sure. And so, you guys have given a couple of examples of your personal relationships with food. Is there anything that you’ve noticed because you were running the restaurant and running weight loss clinics for years and years and years?
Since you found the Principles have you noticed other shifts around your feelings about food?
Connie: That’s a good question. Yeah, I have to tell you, we’ve always eat really clean for many years, as we’ve said, but I used to use some homemade ghee and my beans and I use salty vinegars from my macrobiotic days, and all of a sudden I had a very minor stroke. Well, that was a wake up call.
Me the picture of perfect health supposedly having this physical condition. So then I learned about salt, oil and sugar free and change my blood pressure changed everything that in the good direction. And now I just love food more than I ever have in terms of its taste. Once the taste buds change, food, wow, what we have to eat every day, I’m so deeply grateful more than ever for what it offers. So salt, oil and sugar free. I know that at one end of the extreme spectrum, but it makes such a difference, especially as we get older, in terms of our health. So that’s my, my take on it.
Bill: For me, I’m learning the Principles and learning this inside out perspective of life that really, this is how life works. And it’s so obvious once I see it, the awarenesses about how life works keep opening more and more, there’s more and more insight all the time. And so how food has changed with these greater insights, I think, is that I become more and more sensitive to the feedback from my body.
Eating something you know. So this is happening all the time, I believe this is happening all the time, our bodies, they pick up on information, so much more information than we’re conscious of, I think we’re supposed to get maybe between one and 5% of the information that the body’s registering and storing consciously.
And so as I learn more and relax more into my relationship with life, I’m much more sensitive to everything that I experienced. But as I eat, when I used to have the chocolate or whatever I say it’s like I was eating here up this experience. And when I started to really calm down and really get grounded in eating really healthy I was like eating from here down.
I’ll eat something and I can tell, is this just giving me some pleasure? And I enjoy it for that reason? Or is my body really saying, Wow, thank you for that. Your relationship with our body, isn’t it? It’s designed to do what it can do with working men to thrive. W’e have an innate wisdom we that this body is designed to thrive. But we’re responsible to give it what it needs. So it can just like take care of our car.
Now that I’ve become more and more sensitive to and I love this relationship, it’s made a much more of an interesting, more intimate relationship between me and my body and my food and we’re one happy family.
Alexandra: There’s four of you in that relationship. Oh, that’s wonderful. And that, actually, and that was one of my questions on the sheet that I sent you was about the wisdom of our bodies and what we see about that.
Tell us what you see about the wisdom and cravings?
Connie: Oh, I love that question. Because, one thing I love to share with clients is the problem that the cravings have initiated that say, is really where all the gold is. We create these, quote, difficulties to really come back to unlearn and live in who we really are. So it’s only in creating these perceived problems that the time is now we’re ready. To go further in our evolution, it’s beautiful.
Bill: On the idea of the wisdom of the body. There’s more and more research these days about the vagus nerve. And for longevity, we’re talking about having a second brain in the gut and that kind of thing. And so there really is so much feedback that’s always available, if we hear it.
But our conditioning and using food for reward and for celebration or for social events, we are very settled in terms of that. My experience and what we see in others, expanding and exploring in their own lives too, is this ability to listen to our bodies, its ability to, to pick up on the wisdom.
There’s all kinds of little aphorisms always going on in the way of little nudges. And in terms of the thank yous that we get for when we really provide something that our bodies thrive for. I think there’s a lot of wisdom, intelligence, or bodies reflect the intelligence of nature, the intelligence of the universe, we, in our conscious awareness can actually begin to relate and have a relationship with that wisdom. That’s really sweet.
Alexandra: It goes back to that famous Sydney Banks quote, doesn’t it?
If the only thing people learned was to not be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.
You mentioned celebration there, Bill. And it’s such a good point.
What role now does food play in in your celebrations?
Connie: When Thanksgiving comes around, we make the most amazing Thanksgiving meal, whole food plant based, but we love and enjoy even more than the old traditional meal with turkey. We’re discovering new realms of taste and enjoyment. Recreating recipes that were favorite so far. So that’s really fun. And we don’t do a lot of using food to celebrate, like maybe many families do. But when we do it, we love it.
Bill: We both have birthdays, there’s just a couple of days apart. And so Connie loves this black bean brownie recipe we have. So I thought, well, I’ll make these brownies for but in the shape of a cake, and we’ll have a birthday cake. So we’ve had his cake for a few days. And what’s been interesting is that it’s kind of like my Death by Chocolate experience. I still have associated my mind, birthday cakes going to make me feel good. And we’re going to have a fun night. And it goes so far beyond the food because of the association.
So I have this piece of chocolate cake. And it’s like, where’s the fun? Where’s the fun? So synergy has kind of been on Wow. So like I said we’re the food we eat. And if it’s around what we would call a celebration, a birthday or a holiday or whatever. It’s really great.
But it’s no wonder the afterglow of my association of it’s the food that makes me feel so good. Being with all these people being at a holiday having a birthday. What makes me feel good about birthdays and holidays and everything? Is the birthday, the holidays, the people. It’s no longer has that association, the food playing such an important role in what I think is they can be filled with it.
Alexandra: While you were speaking, I was see it like we’re food used to play the central role in a circle. Now, it’s somewhere on the periphery. And there’s other things.
I don’t know how to phrase this question. You guys seem to be a retirement age. And yet, I can tell from our conversation you’re so passionate about this and about what you do. And you’ve clearly been doing it for such a long time.
Talk to me about that and about the joy that you find in in sharing your work. Connie, why don’t you start?
Connie: I’m’ just reflecting.
Bill: She just turned 80.
Connie: Yeah, I just turned 80. I don’t know why but I think it’s a great anyway.
Say your question again.
Alexandra: What I’m searching for is you both just seem so passionate about what you’re doing. And so it seems to me like you haven’t felt a need to set that down. And retire, quote unquote.
I would just love you to talk about that a little bit.
Connie: Where I’m at right now, I just want to reach people who want to feel better, and be healthier. So we’re looking at maybe bringing one of the whole food plant based in these to Kelowna to really reach out to a wider audience of people here, and I’m exploring, is it possible? How can we do it?
But the drive behind it is, I would just love to introduce this way of living meeting more people who have an interest. Because I think there’s so much value in it, so much value in it. And then when we add the piece of the mental emotional work.
We just did a conference in Dallas and shared this work in relationship to food. It’s so rewarding when you have an audience of people who really want to learn more and get healthy and be free of the old of the old problems, perceived problems.
Bill: I love the question too, because it, it sets up the contrast to the conditional thinking that really aren’t we just here to work hard, so we can retire, and just do whatever we want. We’ll do whatever they want us to do. So I can get this money together retirement, I can do what I want. And it’s like, No.
Fortunately, we’ve always followed our hearts in terms of what do we do. So like you say, you see the passions, we’ve always loved what we do. But as we’ve understood more about the Inside Out nature of life, and that, in reality, life is living us. It’s not for me to decide where my happiness will be found. I will find happiness, by listening to my heart to this current of life that’s moving through me, to direct me.
As opposed to, let’s see, when I’m 65 will have this much money in the bank, and I can play golf Monday, Wednesday, that kind of an idea, which there’s nothing wrong with those kinds of ideas about retirement, being the golden years, and all the rest of it. It is all based on that outside in thinking, that is my secret that are going to provide guarantees I’m looking for.
As we’ve understood more and more about the principles and open more and more to listening, and allowing the wisdom of life to move through us and responding to that we engage in life, from these nudges, as opposed to try to figure out where’s my happiness next? Retirement, just as a concept doesn’t live in that world.
Alexandra: I saw somebody the other day who said the only reason one would retire would be if you didn’t like what you were doing. I can just see how much joy you guys get from what you’re doing.
And that’s such a good point, Bill about it being an outside-in construct. I think this is way off topic, but I’ll just say it anyway. When I see people struggle when they retire, and It’s because I bet they’ve put all the somehow this magic date occurs, and then I’ll be happy, right? I’ll leave my job. And of course it doesn’t work that way. Interesting.
As we start to wrap up, is there anything you guys would like to share that we haven’t touched on yet today?
Bill: One thing that comes to me is, and maybe we’ve said this in different ways, but just to kind of summarize it, the healthy relationship with food rests on the same foundation as a healthy relationship with life. So if we’re if we’re having an issue with food, it’s the same answer there as it is to deal with if I have a difficulty in my marriage.
If I have difficulty my marriage is because I’m using the marriage. I’m using that person to try and satisfy something in me that I don’t feel is complete. And so I need to look inside and really see how it is that I’m relating to that person. And if it’s not providing what I think I want, is it that she needs to change? Or is it that I need to change, and it’s the same thing with food.
If I’ve got a health condition, it’s not because something’s broken. When a hurricane blows over Florida, doing all this devastation, it’s not because the weather system broke, is because the meteorological conditions were just such that it created a hurricane. And when there are hurricanes, these things happen.
So if I have high blood pressure, it’s not because my body broke. And so I need medication to fix it. It’s because there’s an environmental condition created, usually by what I’m eating, by my lifestyle, that’s creating an inflammation that the body’s responding to perfectly. It’s laying down fat and cholesterol in the arteries to deal with the inflammation.
Unfortunately, like the high winds of a hurricane, those have negative side effects over time. So it’s looking at that relationship from the standpoint of how am I if things are going right, am I using that for me? Or am I relating to it in the way that it’s really designed to create a thriving relationship?
Alexandra: You’re saying that our bodies are giving us feedback. It’s not that we’re broken. It’s that there’s feedback. There’s information there.
And what about you, Connie, anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on?
Connie: With the principles, and even before, when my mind went quiet, I realized that I could use my love of food and good health to support people to know who they really are more deeply. And I love that so much. My blood just gets very active when I get a chance to talk about it, and sure. And, yeah, aren’t we lucky.
I keep learning and growing. And, oh, I just love live. Seeing more and more beauty wherever you look. And even in the midst of the perceived difficulty now I’m at the place where [I say] come in my darling, whatever you have to show me I want to see it. I am here with full attention. I just respond to life has said arises and it doesn’t have to look any particular way ever. In the past. That was not the case, believe me.
Alexandra: That’s so well said. I love this idea that the challenges that we have are actually doorways and opportunities for us to see ourselves in our full magnificence and well being and our innate resilience and all that stuff.
Where can we find out more about you guys and your work?
Bill: We have a website, amazinghealtheffortlessly.com. And that’s probably the best place to read a little bit more about us and easy to contact us through that.
Connie: And we have lots of wonderful recipes for free on the website. So go on and explore. And, if you want to have any questions or connect with us, we’re always open.
Connie: We always provide a free 30 minute consultation. People want to learn more about how what they’re dealing with might be addressed between us.
Alexandra: Great, I will put links to the website in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com. All right, well, thank you guys so much. It’s been so lovely chatting with you.
Connie: I love the depth of your questions. And now insightful they are.
Alexandra: Thank you. All right. Take care you guys. Bye bye.
Q&A 41 – Why is it good news when we backslide?
Nov 27, 2023
What should we do when an unwanted habit that has been getting better suddenly rears its head again? Contrary to what we might believe, when this occurs it’s good news. It means there’s more for us to see about our innate well-being. It’s also a very natural part of the learning and growing process.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How there’s always forward momentum with our growth and healing, even when it doesn’t feel like it
How the ‘back of the spiral’ is where change and learning occur
What to do when we’re at the back of the spiral
How resisting what we’re feeling can backfire
What we’re looking for when we’re in the back of the spiral
How our unwanted habits like overeating always alert us to busy insecure thinking
Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 41 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
I’m here today with the question, why is it good news when we backslide?
By backslide I mean when we feel like we were making progress, and maybe our unwanted habit was a little bit less pressing than it used to be, or where, in the case of overeating, we’re eating a little bit better than we were and we feel like we’ve been making a little bit of progress. And then what happens when things start to feel like we’re slipping backwards, we’re not where we were a few days or a few weeks ago. Things seem to be getting worse instead of better, or worse than they were anyway, when we had improved. So that’s what I mean by backslide.
Today’s episode might be a little bit longer than these episodes typically are because I want to delve into two separate things in order to explore this. And then it’s also going to be a little more personal than the episodes usually are, because this is something that I’m encountering right at this moment. So let’s get into it.
The first thing I want to talk about is the way that change happens, and the way that we evolve and grow.
When we have a situation like the one I just described, where we feel like we were maybe doing better, a habit was beginning to resolve itself and then it isn’t anymore, it isn’t getting better, it feels like it’s getting worse, or we’ve slid back a little bit – we have that expression, two steps forward one step back – it can feel like that. It can feel like we’re going backwards. Or maybe we’re going in a circle, we’ve circled back around to a place that we were before.
And it can feel like the progress that we made, that maybe we’ve negated that somehow, or that it’s slipped out of our grasp, that it’s gone away. And we can get down on ourselves about that, of course. So the first thing I want to explain is how it seems to me that growth and healing – and this has definitely been my experience – are more like a corkscrew shape.
For those of you on YouTube, I’m holding up a corkscrew. So a corkscrew, of course has this spiraling motion, as you can see, and this is a really great metaphor for learning and growth and change. And resolving something like an overeating habit. Because no matter what’s going on, even if we feel like we made some progress and now we’ve fallen back, we’re still moving forward. And that’s why the corkscrew shape is such a helpful metaphor, because if you lay it on its side, and it’s making that motion, it’s still you’re curling, one way and then the other. But it’s still a forward momentum.
There’s a lesson in the Freedom From Overeating course that I have that goes into this in more detail. But I just I love that metaphor.
The second thing that I want to explore with regard to this metaphor, is that if you think of that shape of the corkscrew, there’s a part of it where you’re coming around the top of the spiraling motion. And if this was a roller coaster, you’d then tip over the top and then be going downhill. Those are the moments when things feel easy. And they’re flowing.
This is what happens after insights occur to us and we have a shift.
It can be small or it can be large. Either way, there’s that forward momentum and it’s downhill. It’s easy, or we’re being pulled by gravity, as it were, and it can feel smooth and easy. And it’s just a good feeling when we’re in that part of the spiral.
But then there’s the back of the spiral that occurs; the spiral goes down, and now it’s curving forward, still moving forward, but you’re in the back of it, and this is an is an uphill slope. So the roller coaster would be curving that way if it was going upwards.
This is what’s happening when we feel like we’re sliding backwards.
We’ve taken some steps forward that we’re now going back. But the thing to remember is that with that spiraling motion, or one of the things to remember, is that it’s, as I say, it’s still moving forward, you haven’t circled back around to where you were, you are still moving forward with that motion of the corkscrew or the spiral.
The second thing to remember about the back of the spiral is that that’s where the really juicy stuff occurs.
This is where we learn, this is where change happens. And this is the place where we start looking for insight, because things have gotten tough. We’re on this uphill slope, it feels like a grind, we feel like maybe we lost the momentum, perhaps of where we were before. And it’s less smooth, less easy. But again, that’s where the learning occurs. This is when you’re in the back of the spiral. That’s where you’re going to have insights. And you’re going to see more about your own well being and your innate resilience, and resourcefulness and all that good stuff.
So the other thing I want to say too, about the back of the spiral is that it’s human nature, and it’s so easy, to have a knee jerk reaction when that’s happening. So we’ve taken two steps forward, we’re feeling great about how we’re eating. And then suddenly, things shift. And it’s not going as smoothly and we suddenly have cravings that we haven’t experienced in a while. Perhaps we noticed that our overeating habit seems to have flared up, it’s gotten a little worse, instead of getting better, that kind of thing.
The knee jerk reaction in that moment is to panic.
It is to resist what’s happening. And that’s perfectly natural, and normal and human. And we all do it. I just want to say here today that instead what we can do is I guess a few different things.
One of those things is to know that we’re simply in the back of the spiral. This isn’t the end of the world, it’s not going to be like this forever. And this spiraling motion that we’re always in, as we’re learning and growing it’s a natural part of our growth and our learning.
Growth and learning is never just straight like an arrow.
There’s that cartoon, that meme that people put up on Facebook or Instagram every once in a while, what they think success looks like and it’s just a 45 degree angle in a in a graph. And then what it really looks like and the line is going in the same direction, but it’s all squiggly and squirrely, and all that kind of stuff. The same principle applies here.
As we’re exploring this understanding and learning more about it, it’s never just going to be a straight arrow shot from here to having all the insights and all the change that we want to see. It’s going to have this spiraling motion. And like I say, the back of the spiral is really where the juicy stuff starts to happen.
This has been happening for me lately, and I’ll talk about that a little more in a minute. That’s the second part that I want wanted to share for this Q&A episode. And like I say that the automatic reaction can be to resist that. And for the chatter in our thinking to be quite negative about ourselves and to worry about what’s happening.
We can sort of bear down and kind of get more restrictive with ourselves which is an old habit. That’s how we knew in the past how to deal with an overeating habit. So applying the strategies that worked in the past and maybe creating more rules in our head, about the foods that we can or can’t eat, and that kind of thing. So all of that resistance, action or activity, especially in our minds, is the place that we might turn to immediately when we feel ourselves go into the back of the spiral.
What I want to share is that that’s counterproductive.
It’s not going to help us smoothly navigate the back of the spiral to, to apply those kinds of solutions that I just mentioned. And it can be quite difficult to do. But what is more helpful is to just relax, which is easier said than done, into what’s happening and let it happen. And trust that insight will come in its own time about whatever learning it is that we’re going through in the back of this spiral.
That can be one of the frustrating things is that insight comes on its own time. We don’t have control really over when that occurs. So sitting in that place of being in the back of the spiral, can be scary and frustrating. I’m not saying that it isn’t, what I am saying is that if we can try as much as possible to not judge ourselves. And to lean into the idea that this is where the learning takes place.
I often find that the biggest learnings take place immediately after a period of frustration.
Very often the greater the frustration, the greater the learning. So when we remember those kinds of things, it does get easier. And also, when we know that we’re in the back of the spiral, we can beat ourselves up less about what’s happening about the lack of progress that we see. And that in itself – not beating ourselves up about what’s going on – helps because it reduces the amount of thinking that we’ve got going on about the situation and that’s what we want.
Our habit, as I talk about over and over again, is alerting us to the state of our thinking.
This is another thing I want to touch on. When we get into the back of the spiral, what I try to remind myself about is that there’s more for me to see about my own innate well-being. And the only way that my wisdom, my being, the greater intelligence that flows through me has to get my attention that there’s more for me to see about those things about my well-being is by speaking to me via my overeating habit. When that happens, when I notice cravings come up that haven’t come up for a while, that gets my attention.
Now I’m noticing and what I tried to do is right away, say to myself, Oh, there’s more for me to see here. There’s more insight available to me, there’s more wisdom available to me about my innate well-being, and my resourcefulness and resilience and my connection to universal intelligence.
I’ll segue now into the personal story of what I’ve been going through lately, which is the second part of what I wanted to share.
For months and months, I’ve been eating differently than I used to. And of course, this has been a gradual process. I learned about the Inside Out understanding, the Three Principles in mid 2017. And there’s been a real gradual shift and change. And I guess that’s that spiraling motion, right? It hasn’t been a straight arrow.
There have been times when things have really shifted and changed and then times when they get harder, when I get into the back of the spiral. I really see that now I didn’t see it at the time. I thought I was just a slow learner.
As I’m recording this now it’s November 27 2023. Sorry. And, for months and months, I’ve been eating really well, and my weight has been dropping, which is what I want. For me that’s one thing that’s important. I know that I’m carrying extra weight. That may not be one of your goals, but it certainly is one of mine.
And then I don’t know exactly when, maybe two weeks ago, I came in to the back of the spiral. And there are some specific feelings that I have around food that come up for me that and I know when I’m in the back of the spiral, like specific cravings, and they tend to be around supper time, they tend to be I’ve talked about this, I think on a previous episode, I have cravings for rice and potatoes, that kind of thing. So I include those with my meals.
Again, not the end of the world. I mean, really, this is not life threatening stuff. But for someone who’s trying to lose weight, rice and potatoes do not help that situation. So I noticed those cravings come up.
I just want to walk you through what’s been happening for me while that’s been going on.
It’s a lot of what I’ve already shared. But this is just a more personal look at how I’ve been dealing with this. So the first thing that happens is the cravings come up. And I do resist them right away. I’ll notice myself going, Oh, no, this is not good. I was doing so well. And now I’m not. And then pretty quickly, the same day, I’ll remember Oh, right. Okay, I’m in the back of the spiral, these cravings are communicating with me, they’re letting me know that there’s more for me to see about my will own innate well-being. Then I really try to relax into them.
The way to make something sticky is to resist it.
So I really try not to do that. If I feel like having rice, potatoes and or potatoes, I have them not both in the same meal. And I let myself have that experience. And I’ve said this already, but I try not to take it really seriously and punish myself about that. Because that’s not definitely not the objective. So I really try to relax into what’s happening, and not be so judgmental. And, I go in and out of that, of course, there are moments when I feel quite judgmental about myself, especially because I’m teaching these things, and we tend to hold ourselves to a different standard, when we’re teaching, which is not really fair, because I’m experiencing exactly what you’re going to experience.
It’s better if I’m able to share from the back of the spiral than to just pretend it doesn’t exist. Because pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t going to help you. Because you’re just going to feel bad about yourself when that’s happening for you. So I lean into what’s happening, I just let it happen. And try not to be too judgmental.
Then another big part of it is I’ve learned over these years that I’ve been exploring the Three Principles that I can really trust insight.
I know it’s coming. I know the universe hasn’t abandoned me. It hasn’t turned its back on me. I can rely on the fact that insight will be coming. And it will be a real shift in consciousness for me. I’ll be able to see something that I haven’t been able to see before.
The reason I’m recording this today is because last night I had an insight about this, about the back of the spiral that I’m in. It hasn’t solved the problem but I definitely feel that forward sense of momentum. And so I’ll explain to you what the Insight was for me, but with the caveat that you’re not looking for this specific insight. The insight that I have is very specific to me.
Insights are interesting in that I feel like I’m getting the sense that they are universal.
Every insight is universal in that insights always point toward our, as I’ve said a bazillion times on this podcast so far, they point to our innate well-being, to our resourcefulness to our resilience to the fact that we are always well, that we always return to a state of calm, and peace. So that’s their universality. Another a real shorthand way of saying what insights are, is that they’re always pointing towards love, always.
We seem to get a greater and greater grasp of how that works, how we are made of love, how we are all connected by love, we are all connected to the universal intelligence that is loving. So to me, that’s the universality of insight.
Then the specificity of it is that the way that each insight speaks to us is going to be very specific to whatever it is we’re wrestling with at the moment. And this is kind of the funny thing about insight; we can share with people what we’ve seen the insights that we have, they’re not going to impact another person in the same way that they impact us in the moment.
I’ve been really been contemplating about how our unwanted habits always, always are pointing to the fact that we have insecure, busy thinking that’s going on in our minds. I’ve been aware of that, of course, for quite some time. And I’ve noticed over the years, since exploring this understanding that just by looking in this direction, the busy thinking in my head has really dropped away.
I’ve shared to on this podcast about how I used to experience a lot of anxiety disguised as urgency. And that’s a great example of something that I didn’t have to do anything to fix that feeling of urgency. I didn’t say positive affirmations to it, or any of those kinds of techniques. I didn’t meditate on it or anything like that. Simply by turning my head in this direction, and learning about the Three Principles and the way that our life works from the inside out, has made that anxiety, that urgency, just drop away.
And, of course, it does come up every once in a while, if I’m under a lot of pressure. But now I notice it, and I know what it is, and I just say to it, well, that’s okay. I know that you will flow through me and eventually all settled down all on my own, there’s nothing that I need to do. So that’s been really, really helpful in that realm of things. So grasping this idea that our busy insecure thinking is what our habits are trying to alert us to their feedback that that is going on.
When I came into this moment of being in the back of the spiral, that’s where my attention went.
Attention is not quite the right word, but I just was how or have been considering that our habits are always alerting us to our busy, insecure thinking. So there must be something more here for me to see about that. And then last night, as I say, this insight came up and it was that my busy insecure mind doesn’t feel safe not being busy.
In other words, if I think of doing something relaxing, like if I’m getting a pedicure or a manicure Well, I hardly ever get manicures, but having a massage. That’s a great example actually, every once in a while I go and have a massage on my shoulders because working at computers my shoulders get really tight. I have a really hard time just relaxing and letting the massage therapist do what she needs to do. I just feel I don’t feel safe, I guess that’s the bottom line, I don’t feel safe. Just lying on the massage table and letting things happen. And not being busy and active and on top of things.
It makes me uncomfortable to even think of being on a vacation where I could lie on a sun lounger for most of the day, and read a book. I just couldn’t do that. I would feel that would feel threatening, that kind of deep relaxation. So all that is to say, that’s what this insight that I had last night was pointing me toward.
Now, the next thing that happens is that my mind goes, Okay, I know what’s happening now, what can I do about it?
How can I be more relaxed? What can I do to be more relaxed and be okay with my mind being quiet? And of course, that’s not the path to take. And so the tricky thing is, in this case, sometimes the insight comes along, and it just shifts everything. And suddenly, you’re in the front of the spiral again.
But this feels like an insight that where I’m kind of partway up the back of the spiral. I’ve seen a little bit more about what’s going on with me. But I can tell it didn’t shift things in a way that’s going to enable me to get on to the front of the spiral for the next little while.
Given that that’s the case, then what I can do is actually nothing. So again, we come back to, I’ve seen something new, there’s been a shift in consciousness, but getting in there and trying to figure out how to make my mind more quiet, and make my mind feel safe in certain circumstances, like lying on a sun chair and reading a book all day, is not what’s going to make that happen at all.
What I need to do now is, again, what I’ve done up until now, just trust that insight will be there for me.
And I trust too, that sometimes change is really incremental. We may not even notice it. But I may notice in a few days or a few weeks that my that craving for potatoes and rice has just fallen away and I don’t care about them anymore. That’s happened to me many, many, many times on this journey. So I trust that that can happen as well.
Sometimes it seems to me that insight is conscious. And we feel it land. I felt that insight last night, land with me. It was like a sentence in my head. But it had a resonance that our normal thoughts don’t have. I heard it in my head, but I feel it all over my body at the same time. It just has this real landing kind of feeling sometimes. And not always. It can be extremely subtle. But last night for sure I felt it and I felt myself pause what I was doing. I had that awestruck look on my face, I could tell.
I thought to myself, Oh, that this is big, I can feel that. And that really helped me to understand what was going on with me. Now what I’m doing is I’m just trusting that I will have more insights about this situation. I’m not resisting being in the back of the spiral because like I said, this is the place where learning occurs. And we of course, we want everything to be perfect and smooth, especially when we’re on a weight loss journey. We want we just want that to continue. We want that curve to be going down.
But that’s not what’s happening right now. And being hard on myself or upset about that is not going to help the situation. So I’m grateful that I know enough about the back of the spiral to just ease off the gas and let whatever happens. Whatever needs to happen, let that happen. Things will evolve.
I wanted to say to remember there was a few weeks ago, I mentioned in a Q&A episode that I was wanting to exercise more. And I was feeling a resistance to that, that I think is all part of this. So that resistance that I felt was speaking to me as well. That’s like an unwanted habit in. There’s that tension there that I talked about. And I still feel that and I think that’s part of this insight that I’m having about my busy mind.
The feedback that I’m getting from wisdom about that, or that there is more for me to see now about my well-being and my innately loving and wise self, just like yours.
So that’s it for me today. That’s quite a lot of talking for one person for one moment. So I hope that that’s been helpful for you. And that it maybe has guided you toward seeing something new about your journey.
I really hope that now that you’ve heard this metaphor about the back of the spiral, that the next time you feel like maybe you’ve taken a couple of steps backward, that you realize that that’s not true, that you’re simply at the back of the spiral, you’re going uphill. So it’s a little harder, things get harder.
But as I said, this is where the learning happens.
This is where the insights come, and where we see things in a new way that supports change. And coming home to who we really are.
So that’s it for today. I need a glass of water after all that talking. I hope you are well and I will talk to you again next week. Take care.
Changing Our Relationship To Problems with Ian Watson
Nov 23, 2023
When we have a challenge or problem in our lives it can seem obvious to focus on that problem in order to solve it. But what if finding the solutions to problems – like an overeating habit – didn’t involve this kind of approach at all?
Ian Watson’s work as an educator is to provide education and training that doesn’t just inform, but which empowers, heals and transforms. For it is only through your own insightful realisation that deep and lasting positive change occurs.
He works mainly with groups, and sometimes with individuals. His intention is always the same – to remind you of what you already know to be true deep inside, but may have temporarily forgotten. To help you reconnect with the source of your own wisdom, wellbeing and innate self-healing capacity. To come home to your true Self.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Observing in patients that healing seemed to come from somewhere mysterious
How feeling better can become an ongoing pursuit when we don’t understand the source of peace
How we don’t need to work on our issues
How insight is the only catalyst for change
How we live in a thought created experience
Why working on our issues is counterproductive
How our symptoms are never a nuisance or something to get rid of
Transcript of Interview with Ian Watson
Alexandra: Ian Watson, welcome to Unbroken.
Ian: Very nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Alexandra: Oh, my pleasure. So why don’t you give us a little background?
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to came across the Three Principles.
Ian: I really have followed my own interests, which took me initially into alternative healing. As a teenager, I started with Bach flower remedies. And that led me into herbs and homeopathy. Homeopathy became my career for at least 15 years, I was a practitioner.
Also, I became interested in the training side. So I started running a homeopathy training school, wrote some books became reasonably well known, I suppose, in that field, and assumed that would be my life’s work really. I love homeopathy still do.
To my surprise, working with a lot of clients over time, I started to see that sometimes people come with a physical health problem. But it turns out to be the entry ticket. And there’s other things going on which once you get to know the person, as you will know, they start to reveal more about what their internal struggles are the other things going on with that in their life. I started to feel that there were other ways that I’d like to help people but I didn’t know what they were. I sometimes felt that the purely homeopathic approach that I knew, wasn’t addressing everything that could be addressed.
And just in general terms, to say what I mean by that, sometimes I would work with people it felt like we were both pushing a rock up a hill, and not getting very far. Like they were working really hard. They were doing all the right things, I was doing my best to find the remedies that will help them. And my inner sense was nothing much is really changing on a deep level. We were moving things around.
Contrasting that I would see some people who literally first interview or very in a relatively short period of working together, something would seem to shift for them quite quickly. And they’d be on their way. They might still come to me for occasional support, but it’s very different experience. I got curious about that. You know what, there’s something invisible here. I don’t know what it is, that seems to be like the secret sauce that determines what people’s experiences.
I saw exactly the same thing when I was running homeopathy school for about 10 years.
People would go through the training, we were on a three year program, some people would come out, they’d already be practitioners, they’d already have a plant base, it all seemed to just grow and flow naturally. There’d be other people who’ve done exactly the same training would tell me this is really hard. It’s really complicated. I don’t know enough. Maybe there’s not enough sick people where I live, I don’t know. They’d come up with all kinds of reasons why didn’t seem to be working out.
Again, I was scratching my head thinking it can’t be why they think it is there’s something else. So that became my pursuit for about the next nine or 10 years.
The other thing that I noticed, and I obviously this was also looking at my own experience, as well as the people I was working with, when we’re struggling, essentially, were struggling with how we feeling on the inside. In very simple terms, that’s what it comes down to. We notice that we’re feeling a particular way that’s not comfortable. We know that we could be feeling different, which is interesting. Everybody knows when they when they don’t feel right. Everybody knows they could feel better. And then we do whatever occurs to us, whatever makes sense to us to try to make that happen. And sometimes with success, but often not often, it just becomes an ongoing pursuit for people as it did for me, trying one thing trying another.
But I knew that it was something around that, that there was something important about helping people to reconnect to how they really knew that they could feel on the inside. And that became my pursuit for about another nine years or so. I re-trained in a number of things. I trained with Brandon Bays in Journey process work. I started to learn Jungian psychology, I was looking at dream analysis, I was doing belief change work. The essence of it, I call it emotional release work, because I saw that that was a big part of what people were struggling with.
I had my own hybrid way of working with people. The homeopathy side just gradually fell away. And I became more focused on that. And then in beginning of 2011, someone who I knew who I hadn’t been in touch with for a while said that his work had been transformed by this understanding called Three Principles.
I was like, what’s that? If that’s any good, I would have heard about it by now.
But I haven’t, and it was something that was still under the radar of most people. I think at that time, it wasn’t widely known at all. There were very few resources and materials available. I went and listened to a talk. Something spoke to me and I knew that that was the missing piece.
So I immersed myself in that. I found myself on a training with two wonderful trainers. And that’s been the foundation of my work ever since. And what it did really It helped me to make sense of everything else that I’d done. That had been helpful. And it also helped me to understand that puzzle; why do some people shift very quickly and have a profound and lasting change? Why do other people to continue to struggle no matter what they do, no matter what you do, all of that suddenly made sense, it became really clear, so I knew I was onto it.
Alexandra: What led you as a teenager to look into homeopathy?
Ian: That was very strange. There was no one in my family that was doing anything like that. So it was my secret hobby. I spent a lot of time in nature, I did grow up in a small town on the edge of a wild area where as young kids, we just used to spend a lot of time in nature. Certainly I did. So I felt very easy the natural world.
I think at some point, I just discovered or heard or read that these trees and plants that were everywhere, were also medicines. I was just fascinated by that idea. It was something just catches you. That was just like an eye opener to me that and I wanted to know what they were and what they could do basically. So wherever I go out in the woods that was getting to know, not just the trees and the plants and the funghi, and so on, but what kind of herbal uses they had.
And then I learned that some of them were Bach flower remedies, which was really amazing. And then I stumbled into homeopathy after I bought a book, which this was when I was about 15 or 16. I found this book, which was an A to Zed of alternative therapies. So it began with acupuncture. I don’t know what was at the end, but somewhere in the middle was homeopathy. I read this book cover to cover I was completely fascinated by and when I reached the homeopathy section, that was it. I was done. I was like, Oh, this is what I’ve got to do.
It just spoke to me in such a deep way. I started finding whatever materials I could find, because there was no internet in those days. So I was literally going down the library. I was finding secondhand books in antique book shops. Most of them were antiques. Books from 100 years ago, or stuff like those, but they were just amazing.
I had that feeling that I’d found my thing. It just felt so familiar to me. I felt like I already knew this material somehow. And then some years later, I discovered you could actually train in this damn thing. I mean, I had no idea. But by a series of amazing synchronicities, I bumped into someone who was wearing a college of homeopathy sweatshirt, I was like, there’s a college? You’ve probably no idea. So where is it? It’s in London. And okay, I’m moving to London. I grew up in the north of England. But that was it. There was no question in my mind that I was going to do anything else. So
Alexandra: That clarity is always so interesting to me that at such a young age, we can have that kind of experience. It speaks to something.
Ian: I know, it’s not like that for everyone. But I think often people do have hints or clues. But we’re not always encouraged to pay attention to them or to listen to them. And certainly not to turn them into a career that they will have a particular leaning towards. Something and then the parents or careers advice personal. Yeah, well, that’s nice, but you’ll never make a living out of it. And I’m sure my parents had those kinds of thoughts. But I think where I got lucky was not stumbling upon my interest. I think it was giving myself the freedom to follow it.
Alexandra: And then what year was it that you connected with the three principals?
Ian: It’s been quite a long journey, the whole thing.
Alexandra: One of the things that you mentioned on your website is that there’s no reason to work on our issues. Can you talk about that a little bit? And what you see in that?
Ian: Yeah, and that’s a bit of a head twist, isn’t it? For most of us, we’ve at least looked into some kinds of self-help or psychology, because it’s all about working on your issues. And most of the things that I had learned post homeopathy, which were in in that realm, it was all about different ways and tools and techniques and processes for doing just that, working on your issues.
But what I really enjoy and what I came to see for myself was what I already explained to you: I was seeing as a homeopath you could read some people, you could work really hard, and they were working really hard and they still the fundamental shift is still not happening. While with someone else you did almost nothing, we just have a preliminary chat, and the person who got oh my god, I don’t know what you just said. But thank you very much. I’m good to go.
I’m scratching my head thinking what’s going on here. So one of the things that I heard at Sydney Banks was the originator of the three principles, understanding who lived in Canada, as you probably know, but he actually grew up in Scotland, early part of his life, still had a Scottish accent. Although he lived all his adult life in West Coast, Canada, I started to listen to some of the recordings that he made before he died, he died in 2009. And read his published books. And one of the things the first thing that jumped out at me from what he was saying was:
“The only thing that will really make a difference in a person’s life like a true deep lasting change is when they have their own insight.”
So it has nothing to do with what I say or anybody else says. It’s not to do with what they read or what they practice. Insight, he said, is a shift in the level of consciousness, shifting the level of understanding. When that happens, your world changes. Until that happens, nothing changes. Really.
When I heard that, I was like, Oh, my God, that’s it, that and I suddenly I look back at all these thousands of clients that I’d worked with and I could see that that was true in every single case. So that was the first thing that puts paid to the idea that it’s all about working on your issue. You can work on issues till the cows come home. But if you don’t have an insight shift won’t happen. You won’t feel that fundamentally different.
And vice versa, you could actually do no work on your issues. If someone creates a space for you, or you just get fortunate as Sydney Banks did, it just happened for him spontaneously. He just had a spontaneous realization, which completely transformed his life in a way that was visible to other people. They’re like, what the hell’s happened to Syd? It was amazing that people were absolutely gobsmacked by what happened.
He said that’s why he came to that conclusion. He said, It can’t be anything that I training, because I didn’t train anything. It can’t be any practices I was doing because I wasn’t doing any good. It can’t be any teacher, because I wasn’t studying with a teacher. The only thing he could account for it was this internal insight shift that he had experienced. So that was the first piece that was very helpful to me to understand.
Then, through the Principles understanding what I’ve come to appreciate is that we’re living in a thought created experience.
What that really means is that our experience is being created on the inside 100%, even though it looks like a lot of it’s coming at us from the outside. Most people if you ask them, do you get upset or you feel stressed? Yes. What do you think is causing that? Oh, my husband, my wife, my kids, my work, the commute to work, my finances.
If you’re a homeopath, my patients will all point the fingers typically to something or combination of factors. And so we know when this isn’t going well or isn’t going the way I think it should, it causes me to feel stressed in some way overwhelmed or frustrated or whatever. It looks like there’s a direct cause and effect relationship between circumstances and other people. And how are we feeling? What Syd Banks realized that’s just an illusion, it’s not actually true. In fact, it can’t be true.
Because if you put six people in the same situation, are they going to feel the same way? No, there has to be a hidden factor. And even the same person on different occasions in the same environment will not feel the same way? Why not?
What’s the hidden variable? Thought.
So that’s what’s really creating what the person’s felt experiences. It’s just that it’s invisible. It’s happening behind the scenes. So we attribute our feeling state to things that are visible, and it’s so very understandable that we will do that. The reason I’m explaining this this way to one is in order to answer your question properly why does it why is it not helpful to work on issues?
Once Syd Banks realized we were living in a thought created experience. And essentially, whatever we give our thoughts attention to increases in our experience, we get to experience more of it, whatever we think more most about, that’s what dominates our experience. So what happens supposing I have a little problem in my life, and if I just leave it alone, chances are it’ll go away, if it’s no big deal.
But if I start thinking about it, day and night, and then I enroll a therapist to help me think about it, and they start delving into my past and try to discover all the reasons why it’s happening. And then I join a support club or group. So I’m now in a community where we all talk and think about it all the time, guess what happens? It becomes bigger, in my experience, which is innocent, it’s not deliberate. Obviously, it’s just a misunderstanding of how the mind works. But that’s the main reason why it’s not helpful. It’s actually counterproductive.
What we end up with is a is a bigger seeming problem than what we started out with and is endless, we can just keep adding more and more story to it. It never goes away. And that, to me, that is exactly what happened in my own experience. And I saw that happen over and over again with clients. Once I understood that didn’t make sense to me to do that kind of work anymore. All those wonderful techniques that I spent 1000s of pounds learning. Yeah, I fell away pretty quickly once I realized that.
Alexandra: If someone comes to you with an issue that they want to work on, what do you recommend doing instead?
Ian: There isn’t anything I recommend them doing. So the first thing to say about this, the Three Principles is an understanding. It’s not a doing. It’s not another technique. It’s not another process. But a lot of people come in and ask exactly that question. You have tried all these other things I hear you’re doing so what do I do? What do you think I should do?
It’s natural that people would start at that point. But your sense is we’re starting from a false premise, the false premise being that there’s something I need to do to solve this problem, I’ve got this problem, how do I solve it?
A better starting place would be, how can I change my relationship to what looks like a problem so that it’s no longer a problem?
That’s really what we’re up to in this work. Because actually truly that’s how problems get solved. I don’t know if you know, you probably have heard the famous quote that’s attributed to Einstein, we cannot solve the problem at the same level of consciousness that created it. I heard that I didn’t know 30 odd years ago. And I was like, Whoa, that’s true. And I thought I knew what he meant.
I assumed that what he meant by that was, if I’ve got a problem, and I try and solve it with the same kind of thinking that created it, I’m just gonna get lost, I’m gonna get bogged down, I’m probably not going to find the answer. But if I can have a shift in my consciousness, so I got like an elevated perspective, then I can find solutions, which are not visible to me at that lower level of understanding. So that’s how I understood it. I thought, yeah, that makes sense.
Fast forward. 20 years or so I came into the three principles, understanding what I realized, from my own experience, that that’s not actually what happens, that’s not actually how problems get solved. What happens is, I’m at this level of, I’ve got a problem. And I’m going around in circles, I’m not getting anywhere. If I look away from the problem, rather than focusing on it, right, and we all know, this, we all know this is this is actually what works, right?
You lose your keys, where’s my keys, where’s my keys, they could be in front of your nose, you’ll never see them. If you just go and do something else, and forget about peace for a while, that certain moment, it’ll come to you. That’s usually what happens when you find yourself putting your hand in a jacket pocket or there.
So we’ve all had experiences like that many, many, many times, what actually happens is, when you have a shift in consciousness, at this new level of consciousness, the problem doesn’t exist. It’s not that you find the solution. They only existed at this level. You actually move to a new level where it’s a non problem. So there’s nothing to be done.
Alexandra: That’s such a good explanation. I totally had the same experience with that Einstein quote, like the initial understanding of it, yeah, that you would just go up on a level and see it differently. But what you’ve described is so true. Makes sense, right? I love that.
You do mention on your website that you combine your Three Principles work with homeopathy. So tell us how you circled back around.
Ian: I don’t want to give the impression that I combined the two as a practitioner, because that’s not true. I don’t practice as a homeopathic practitioner anymore. If people want that I refer them to colleagues who are still doing that work. So my work as a practitioner moved on out of that field. But my homeopathic understanding stays with me.
Now, as you will know, once you start to look at look at health and disease through the lens of homeopathy, there’s something about that to me is fundamentally true. Homeopathy has principles behind it, which is why it’s been around 200 plus years is never going away. No matter what anybody throws at it. Or everybody tries to dismiss it as just placebo. It won’t go away. Why? Because it’s based on something that’s fundamentally true principle of nature behind. So we don’t need to worry about that.
I’ve never been concerned about homeopathy being shut down. Or that nonsense. It’s never been a worry of mine at all because I understood that the principle of homeopathy is a principle of nature, which is why it pops up all over the place. Hippocrates talked about it. Paracelsus talked about it, when a principle is a principle is true, people will get glimpses of it throughout time and space all over the place.
And then it just took for Hanuman to actually have a deeper insight into it and assemble a system of healing around it. But he didn’t invent the principle of cure by homeopathy, he just uncovered it, and created a healing system around it. That’s the way I think about it.
Sydney Banks did the same thing. But not within the homeopathic field. You could say, within the psychological and spiritual field, what Syd Banks did was really brought a unity to the field of psychology and spirituality that we didn’t have before. And what he uncovered was that there’s actually principles behind how that works, too. Which is so cool.
So for me, there’s wonderful parallels between the two. And, for example, one of Sydney Banks’s three principles is what he calls universal mind. Where he basically talks about how our experience gets created. He said, the first ingredient you need is universal mind intelligence, which is, he says, it’s the intelligence of all things, and it’s in all things. So it’s that which is doing the creating, but everything is also infused with that intelligence.
What does that sound like to homeopathy? Vital force, right? It’s just using a different language, talking about the same thing. So in homeopathy, we talk about this invisible dynamic playing the vital force. And that’s what actually does the healing. And all we’re doing with remedies is to catalyze that. And then the healing happens, because it the intelligence is built into the system all healing is self healing.
The remedies don’t do it, people don’t do it. It’s a self regulating system, physiologically speaking. Well, guess what? So is the mind. That’s the bit that Syd Banks uncovered.
The human mind is also self-regulating.
Why? Because it has the same down intelligence behind it, how could it not? It’s so funny to me that even homeopaths will often think that that exists in the body but they won’t necessarily think it exists to the same extent with the human mind. That we have the idea that maybe there’s some exceptions, some mental health problems, needs some different kinds of intervention, or something like that.
What Syd Banks came to see was that everyone actually has mental health on the inside. And he said as much. He said, every human being is sitting in the middle of mental health, they just don’t know it. They’re innocently using the gift of the mind against themselves to create suffering. That’s essentially what the three principles reveals.
So I just started to see parallels like this all over the place. And then, of course, we had the COVID, situation, lock downs, and all of that I was unable to do the work that I’ve normally been doing, which is working with groups, trainings, programs, and so on. So I’d stay home for a while. And it occurred to me it was interesting, because I saw that some of the people that I knew in the three principles world who were doing amazing work in the mental health field and so on. They were getting freaked out about COVID, because they don’t have the holistic understanding that I had as a homeopath. I thought, well, that’s interesting. I wasn’t getting freaked out.
And then we’ve got homeopathy, what are you guys worried about? But of course, they didn’t know about that medically speaking, they were still quite calm thinking in conventional terms. And then I looked at the other side of the coin, I started to speak with homeopathic colleagues who were doing amazing work, of course, during COVID, time and after. And what I realized was that, oh, they don’t have the principal’s understanding, it will be so helpful. If they knew this piece, it would take all the stress out of the equation of their work all the overwhelm all the burnout.
I mean, honestly, you can deal with that so quickly, once you have the three principles understanding, and it gives you something you can share with your clients, which will enhance the self healing work that you’re already doing for them.
Because I came to see that, I would say that one of the main obstacles to cure in 21st century is what I would call chronic mental stress. And we know physiologically, now, if someone’s living in a state of chronic mental stress, doesn’t matter what they do, they can eat the right foods, they can take the supplements, they can even take remedies, they can do yoga every morning, if that chronic mental stress continues, it actually inhibits all the self healing mechanisms of the body. So it’s not a little thing. It’s a really crucial factor.
And not only that, it makes the homeopathic picture very complicated. Because you’ve got the original symptom picture, and then you’ve got a whole fog of what the person thinks is causing it and all the reasons why they think they are the way they are. And this is when all of that’s in the way that makes for a complicated case.
This is why homeopaths often go to places like India or Africa and they take cases that wow, homeopathy is easy here. It seems a lot easier. Why? Because people have not got as much on their mind, they’re not adding so much story to it, because we live in much more psychologize kind of atmosphere in the West. That’s really not helping us that’s working against us, not just as practitioners, but as individuals. So there’s so many ways in which I see these things dovetailing and helping each other out and working well together.
Alexandra: During COVID, you began to share the principles with homeopaths.
Ian: Yes, when I could get the chance. One of the reasons that happened was I did a couple of homeopathy programs, which I hadn’t taught for years. But I thought I’ll just do it for fun. So if anyone’s interested, I got hundreds of people. So that was first I did a couple of online programs, which were actually homeopathy programs, but and some of the people from the three principles world got interested in that. So I thought, well, that’s great. That worked.
Then it started going the other way around, I started getting invited again, because people saw I was doing something homeopathic, which I hadn’t done for years, I got invited to go and speak at some of the homeopathy colleges and give talks and so on. So the kind of cross fertilization started to happen, which I was really happy with. And it continues.
Alexandra: That’s great to hear. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about was burnout, which you mentioned and stress, and this mental activity that’s going on. Overwhelm is another word we often use.
On your website, you have a blog post that talks about how these things are signals. About how we are imposing our agenda on life.
Ian: Again, that’s one of the gifts of the principles understanding just like when have you learned homeopathy, Alexandra? Is that part of your background? No, I was making the false assumption, I just realized that you would understand the homeopathic references I was making. And I saw actually, I don’t think that’s true. So sorry about that.
In homeopathy, when people go through a journey, like I did, learning something like homeopathy in a deep way, and it could be acupuncture, or it could be one of many holistic things, it doesn’t just give you a new tool to treat illness, what it gives you is a new way of thinking about health and disease. It changes your perspective. So you actually have a different homeopaths have a different relationship to symptoms than the average Joe.
We don’t see symptoms in anything like the same way. We see as the language of the vital force, of the intelligence that’s at work behind the scenes. It’s like the symbol language of that intelligence, showing us what’s going on and what’s needed in order to help and support that healing process. So it’s like a signal system to homeopathy it’s really valuable information.
Because most people see symptoms as a nuisance to be gotten rid of. They think that that is the disease. I’ve got a headache, give me a pill, make it go away. And end of story. So just as that happens for if you’re training in something like homeopathy, when you learn the principles, what that does, it changes your relationship to feelings, to emotions, particularly what we would call the negative ones or stressful ones, feelings or anything that a person would call stress, anxiety or depression overwhelm, something of that kind.
How does it do that what you start to learn is that, again, the body mind is just giving feedback. When we have a feeling that’s a feeling of constriction or tightness or discomfort, which is why we would call it stressful. What is it signaling? Well, if you understand that thought creates feeling, not circumstances, then what it’s signaling is that feeling is giving you feedback about the state of mind, essentially, it’s not giving you a detail thought by thought breakdown of because thoughts moving really quick, but it’s giving you a flavor, these giving you the flavor of it.
If you’re in an anxious state of mind, you’re going to feel anxious in your body.
If you’ve got thoughts about this should be happening and it isn’t, you’re going to feel frustrated in your body. And it’s a watertight system. For all of us. You can’t think one kind of thoughts and feel something different. So once you know that, what we would normally think of as negative emotions or stressful feelings, now they become really useful indicators. Because they’re making visible the thinking patterns that would otherwise be invisible to so it’s bringing it’s like the warning.
It’s like the dashboard warning. It’s alerting you to something that’s good to know. And that doesn’t mean that there’s anything that you have to do about that. This is a piece that people find challenging. It’s like okay, I know. I know it’s my thinking and I know it’s the wrong kind of thinking. How do I get rid of it and change it?
It’s actually enough to understand that it’s thought. Once you see that, it’s thought and you understand something about the nature of thought. What’s the nature of thought? It’s temporary. And it’s pure energy. It’s not made of anything solid. It’s just energy taking form momentarily, creating an experience, which then cascades through our physiology. And then it moves back into the formless from where it came. It’s followed by another thought.
It’s like a continuous stream that we’re living in. So once you understand that, the only thing that we need to do is to notice when we if we’re feeling something that’s not pleasant. Okay. So I must be in some kind of a state of mind. Without realizing it, I’m creating this feeling of worry, and anxiety. Oh, well, that’s good to know that. So I may as well ignore that thinking.
That’s actually all we need to do is just pay no attention to it. Because it’s a self-correcting system, it’s self-regulating, if we don’t give it any attention, it just leaves us. And then fresh thought comes in. And we feel different.
That’s how if you look at young children and babies, that’s how they process emotion. Something comes to them, they feel it. It’s very intense, but it’s momentary. And they get over themselves very quickly. And we think that’s amazing. What are they doing to recover so quickly? Well, they give us the wrong question is actually what are they not doing?
What they’re not doing is adding a story to what they’re experiencing.
So it’s because we’ve learned to do that as we’ve gotten a bit older. So we’re actually interfering with the self regulating process that we were born with. We feel something it’s momentarily unpleasant. It’s just about to leave us and we go, Wait a minute, I’m not done with you. Come back here, I need to analyze you and fix you. I need to find out where you come from, and how long you’ve been, and how long are you going to bother me fall under.
All of that extra attention just amplifies it in our experience. And then we have the experience of being stuck in a certain feeling stuck. But again, that’s self created. And it’s instantly done.
Alexandra: I love that explanation. That was great. Thank you so much. So just before we hit record, we talked about how you were just at the Viva event in Spain. So as we’re wrapping up here, I wondered if as you’ve been involved in this understanding for a few years now.
Do you continue to have insights to see things in a fresh way?
Ian: It’s the gift that keeps on giving, which is just amazing. Once you have an orientation, and you know what direction is helpful to look in? It just keeps opening up more and more. And that to me is one of the amazing things about it.
My colleagues who are people that I trained with, they’ve been in this field for two years, some of them and they still say the same thing. They’re like beginners in that sense that they still having insights, it’s still getting deeper and but also simpler, the deeper he gets, the simpler he gets. Yeah, that’s quite interesting.
As people move further along that journey, what they report pretty much universally is that they realize there’s even less to do than they thought. So it’s more like an unlearning, though, it’s like a shedding and unlearning, rather than an acquisition type learning. And that’s an important thing for people to realize, If anyone looks into it. And if you start coming at it with your intellect, trying to learn it, like you might learn another a book oriented subject, you’ll miss it, because you really learn it that way. It’s learned through insight, through your own realization.
It’s not memory based. Because once you have a shift in understanding through insight, you don’t have to remember it, you’ve already had the shift. I would call it embodied learning. When you really embody what you know, you don’t have to go through life thinking about it, or remembering it or looking it up. Because you’re living out of your understanding now.
And actually, we’re always living out of our understanding. It just makes that conscious and visible a bit more than it was before. But I would say that the main thing for me that I suppose I’ve paid most attention to, and it’s partly reflecting my own background interest is an aspect of the principles that we call innate well being. So this is one of the things that Sydney Banks uncovered is that everyone’s actually Okay, on the inside. No one’s broken. Psychologically speaking, no one is broken.
Now a lot of people have the experience that they’re broken, or they have the belief that they’re broken, but that’s been created in thought. And then it gets reinforced by health professionals usually, and whatever they read, and they look up on Google and so on, and then they put a label on it, it starts to appear as if it’s more real than it than it did before. Have more solid, more tangible, but actually, it’s still being created in thought.
Underneath all of that person’s still 100% okay. Everybody has innate well being. So that’s a piece of the understanding that to me just keeps opening up, I keep seeing it deeper and deeper. And it’s so profound, and it’s so powerful. No matter what modality you’re working from, if you’re working with other people in helping role, if you if you sit with the person that you’re helping with the certainty with absolute certainty that they’re okay, on the inside.
They might not know that, but if you know that on their behalf, so to speak, they acts as a kind of tuning fork, they start to pick it up from you, they start to remember, because it’s true. You’re reflecting back to them a deeper truth than what they currently believe about themselves. And at a certain point, it hits somebody, oh, my God. And they once they realize it for themselves, they’re good to go.
Alexandra: It’s so remarkable how that happens. And I love your tuning fork analogy. That’s awesome.
Ian: It looks like a resonance, like a resonance phenomenon.
Alexandra: As we’re winding up here today, is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share?
Ian: I think the only the other piece that I would perhaps just mentioned, because again, to me, it’s a significant piece of the understanding is really think what we’re doing as we come to understand ourselves better, is learning to listen in to our own wisdom, more and more.
This is, again, something that Sydney Banks talked about a lot was he had a lovely definition of wisdom, which really struck me when I heard it. For him wisdom was he said, That’s the intelligence of life, the universal mind intelligence. He said, Whenever it comes through us, and it’s not contaminated by our personal thinking, by what we’ve picked up habits of thought, and so on, if it’s not contaminated, he says, it comes through as wisdom, we experience it as wisdom.
Now, it might come out of your mouth as wisdom, I said, often, you just know what to do. You find yourself doing the right thing, and you don’t really think about it too much. And it’s funny how we often do that in emergency situations, people often do things that would never have occurred to them in daily life. And they get asked afterwards how did you not to do that, though I didn’t have time to think.
That reveals the truth of what Sydney Banks is pointed to is that when our minds not cluttered, we can actually live in a much more wisdom led way more instinctual, which is how animals live. And it’s how we’re designed because we still we are physiologically speaking animals, as well.
We have all of this instinct and energetic knowing within us, most of which is under utilized now, because we’ve been taught to rely on the intellect for everything. So over time, what this what I see this understanding does, it helps to correct that imbalance. So we start to let go of the need to use the intellect to overuse the intellect. And then we could fall back on this other system that we’ve got, which is actually way better.
And it and it doesn’t take effort. I was doing a retreat recently, I call it the path of ease. That’s what starts to unfold. If you if you just learned to listen into your own wisdom, your life will be relatively straightforward. There’ll be twists and turns and lots of things that you can’t predict, but your experience of it will be relatively stress free. And that’s available to anyone.
Alexandra: Oh, beautifully sad. I love that. Thank you so much.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Ian: I have a website, which is called The Insight Space as written as if it’s one word. So it’s TheInsightSpace.com. There’s quite a good body of resources there, most of which are freely available. And also there’ll be pages for any events and so on that come up. But there’s plenty of recordings and things that I’ve already made that people can enjoy. So yeah, that’s the main place people can also find me on Facebook from time to time.
Alexandra: I will put links to the to your website in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com Thank you so much in this has been lovely, lovely to connect with you.
Q&A 40 – Book excerpt: The Call Toward Home
Nov 20, 2023
Today’s episode is an excerpt from my book, The Secret Language of Cravings.
We suffer with an overeating habit when we misunderstand the message our cravings are trying to give us. In this book, author Alexandra Amor explores how to understand what cravings and the drive to overeat are telling us and therefore how to resolve an overeating habit.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How it’s possible to misunderstand what our food cravings are saying to us
What is it that helps resolve an overeating habit?
What is the ‘home’ within us and how do we get there?
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 40 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with a second book excerpt from my new book called The Secret Language of Cravings.
The book is available now, as I record this, and it will be available when you listen, obviously, in ebook, paperback, large print, hardback and audiobook. And I just want to show you the cover here, if you’re watching on YouTube, oops, there it is there. I still don’t have my print copies. So I can’t show you a copy of the paperback or the hardback. But it is available.
If you’re listening to this exactly when it goes out, which is in the middle of November 2023 it’s slowly making its way to the stores in all those different formats. So if you can’t find it in the store that you prefer, in the format that you prefer, just wait maybe a few days, and it’ll eventually show up there.
Audible is notoriously slow at getting the audiobooks into their store. It’s actually kind of frustrating. But right now, as you’re listening to this, the audiobook is available in the Kobo store, for example, it’s also available on Kobo plus, which is their subscription service.
You’ll be able to ask for all of those formats at your local public library. Remember, I’m always on about how valuable libraries are and how we can access books there. And the other formats are available in all the usual places.
Today, the excerpt is going to be chapter 16, which is called The Call Toward Home, which is about our innate well-being that I talk about so often on this podcast.
If you’re watching on YouTube, once again, you won’t see me reading the excerpt, there’s just going to be a placeholder image there. So I hope you enjoy the book if you happen to pick it up.
If you have any questions about it, I’m always wanting to hear from readers and listeners like you. So please let me know, you can email me at support (at) AlexandraAmor.com. I’d love to hear your questions or your thoughts.
If you happen to read the book, and you enjoyed it, I’d love it if you could leave a review wherever you happen to buy it or get it from, including the library.
Libraries take reviews as well. Reviews are super important for authors, for us to get the word out to other readers like you who want to understand and resolve their unwanted overeating habit.
And I’ll say this too, about reviews, the length of the review doesn’t really matter. Like you don’t have to leave five paragraphs like a PhD thesis. Literally one sentence is enough, because what’s happening is that the algorithm is weighing the number of reviews that a book gets more than it’s weighing the length and depth of each individual review.
So if you just leave a five star review and say, I really liked this book, it’s one sentence, that’s totally fine. And every author, not just myself, but every author always appreciates our efforts to do that to leave our feedback, and let other readers know what we thought of a book. And always be honest, of course, I always am in my reviews, and I try to leave as many as I can. So thank you if you’ve left a review in the past or if you leave one in the future, I really appreciate it.
That’s it for today. And we’re going to go in now to chapter 16 from my new book, The Secret Language of Cravings. I hope you enjoy it.
I hope you are well. And I will talk to you next week. Take care. Bye.
Chapter 16: The Call Toward Home
For decades I believed that what my food cravings were pointing toward or alerting me to was brokenness within me. I innocently thought that cravings were pointing toward things like unresolved childhood traumas or emotional injuries from the past. I thought they were pointing toward ‘issues’ I needed to resolve.
We believe this because that’s what our most well-understood psychological paradigm tells us.
Perhaps, like me, you’ve spent years or decades trying to resolve those issues so that your cravings would go away. We innocently believe a) that we can be wounded, b) that those wounds will continue to torment us for as long as we’re alive, and c) that we can then use substances like food to comfort ourselves from that torment.
But what if we misunderstand the way that events from the past affect us? What if that old psychological paradigm is pointing us in the wrong direction? What if that’s why none of the strategies and tactics we’ve tried in order to stop overeating have worked? It’s not that we were doing it wrong or were beyond repair, it’s that we misunderstood the assignment, as the kids these days say.
We sometimes think that food cravings are alerting us to wounds from the past and problems within our psychological or emotional being that need to be healed. In fact, cravings are trying to point out to us that we were never wounded in the first place. They are calling us home to our true nature, to the fact that we are infinitely resourceful, resilient, and whole. They are letting us know that we are in a temporary misunderstanding about how our thinking works.
Our experience of life comes not from life itself, but from how we think about it.
Now, please understand, I’m not saying that your traumas and wounds and experiences in the past don’t exist or that they don’t matter. Not at all. These things have contributed toward making us who we are, just as our happy, fulfilling experiences have. What I am saying is that looking in the direction of our innate resilience and the well-being that exists within us is what resolves unwanted habits. Seeing the true nature of thought is what brings peace.
Dr. Bill Pettit, who was board-certified in adult, adolescent, and geriatric psychiatry, and in psycho-somatic (mind-body) medicine, learned about the ideas that I’m sharing in this book from the man who first articulated them, Sydney Banks. The logo on Dr. Pettit’s website is a cork floating in water, which symbolizes that our human design is one that, without effort and without interference from our minds, will always return to its natural state of rested well-being. We don’t need help getting to a calm, quiet state; we naturally go there, even when we’re stressed out or unhappy.
We’ve all experienced moments of this: a hearty laugh in the midst of a deep depression; a few moments during a very stressful period where our mind falls quiet, and we lose track of time; a peaceful feeling amid chaos; a loving or compassionate feeling toward someone who is ‘difficult.’
These experiences, momentary though they might be, point us toward the true nature of our design.
But what about illness, you might ask. What about disease and physical and mental challenges? How can I say that we are well and whole when we experience things like cancer and epilepsy?
Let’s use an example to illustrate what I’m pointing toward. Have you ever been in a bad mood? If so, did that mood encompass all of who you are? Would you define yourself by that mood?
Or was it temporary? Did it exist in the context of your larger personality? Was it something that you experienced but not all of who you are?
Without trying to be too reductive, that bad mood is an illustration of what all of our life experiences are like, whether they are insignificant or enormous. They exist in the greater context of who we are, which is spiritual beings having a human experience. Even when we are gravely ill, we are part of something greater than just the momentary human experience we are having. There is something more to us than our skin and bones and arthritic knees. There is a part of us that is always well and whole.
Your food cravings are calling you home to that ‘something more.’ They are a part of the same universal intelligence that brings the blossoming trees to life in the spring and guides the gray whales from Alaska to Hawaii and back again. They are asking you to stop and reflect about who you really are. Are you an amalgamation of all your thoughts and experiences? Or do those things exist within the context of something greater?
Remember, this is not dogma. I promise I’m not trying to sell you a religion. What is resonating with you about what I’m saying (if anything)? That’s the place to explore.
The Wisdom of Anxiety with Sarie Taylor
Nov 16, 2023
The wisdom of the feelings in our bodies is so misunderstood. Today coach Sarie Taylor and I discuss how we can see the signals we feel for what they are and how they can help us navigate life. We don’t need to be afraid of being afraid.
Many years ago Sarie Taylor found herself very unexpectedly going from studying at university and travelling the world, to being unable to leave the house, ultimately ending up being hospitalised with generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder as well as depression.
However, once she stumbled across the three principles her relationship with anxiety was transformed.
From travelling the world to not being able to leave the house
How we fight the experience of being human
How aiming to be average is more than enough
How we are always feeling our thoughts
Being in our heads or in our lives
On anxiety being the fear of being anxious
On future thinking and how it can be worse than the anxiety we expeirence
How intrusive thoughts can be a signal that we need more sleep or we’re just in a low mood
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Dr. Bill Pettit
Transcript of Interview with Sarie Taylor
Alexandra: Sarie Taylor, welcome to Unbroken.
Sarie: Thank you for having me.
Alexandra: It’s lovely to have you here.
Give us a little bit about your background and how you found the Three Principles.
Sarie: Okay, so have to dig deep for this because it feels like all of the lifetime ago. When I was in my early 20s, I didn’t realize I was anxious, but I was very anxious. And I’d kind of been ignoring it. If people would have met me in my 20s, I would have said, Oh, you’re super confident, like more confident than most. But actually, deep down, I really wasn’t. But I pretended to be a lot.
It eventually caught up with me in my early 20s, and I ended up going from having been to university, traveled the world with my now husband and ending up within a space of two weeks not being able to actually physically leave the house with such severe anxiety. That then escalated from me not being able to leave the house to me not allowing my mom to leave the house, because I needed her there.
It regressed massively, to the point where she’d go to the local shops for a loaf of bread, and I’d have to go with her in the car. And I’d just cry the whole time in a panic when she was in the local store. And this is like I say, I had traveled the world at this point was a big shock out and I had no idea what was happening. Eventually, I pretty much begged the doctor to send me somewhere. I think my main driver for wanting to go into a mental hospital, or whatever you want to call it is because I wanted my mom to get some respite because I was very aware that she was a prisoner in her own home too. And I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it or change it.
So I spent a month in hospital, I was very heavily medicated. There was not really a medication that I wasn’t on. I was on a concoction of many, many different things. I came out of there after a month feeling, to be fair, quite chilled, but I would defy anybody who’s on not on beta blockers, diazepam and antidepressants all at once on the highest possible doses not to feel quite cheerful. But I was still frightened underneath and thinking what on earth do I do now? How do I get off these?
I was younger and wanting to have children, I knew that at some point, I’d have to try and come off them so. So I then went into exploring how to fix myself, which I know a lot of people who end up finding the Three Principles start off trying to fix themselves. And part of that was training to be a psychotherapist.
Because to be honest with you, I was quite embarrassed about where I’d ended up at the time, there was a lot of shame attached to it for me. So I didn’t still didn’t want to admit when I left there that was there was anything wrong with me. So in the UK, you actually have to be in therapy every week in order to train as a therapist. So that was much more palatable for me to say, I’m training as a therapist, so I’m in weekly therapy, but that’s because I feel like I’m broken and not because I want to a therapist. So that took me on to all sorts of things.
As you can imagine it helped a bit but it didn’t get rid of my anxiety. So then I tried NLP, DBT, CBT hypnotherapy, I’m trained in most of them as well. Got a lot of certificates, but I was still burning out every 18 months to the point where I would, again, not want to leave the house.
Then, nearly 10 years ago now, I came across a podcast, which talked about three principles. And first, I don’t know what it was, to be honest, that made me want to explore more. I know a lot of the time I would explore things out of desperation because it’s like, maybe this will be the answer. But I think the first podcast I heard it was like I really resonated with what the person was saying around them feeling anxious and trying to fix themselves. So I thought I’m going to look into this a little bit more. And it was then eventually when it really sort of hit me.
I was listening to a podcast by the wonderful Dr. Bill Pettit. And he just said something and I don’t know what he said, but something in that moment, I just realized, oh, wow, this is way simpler than I’d ever realized. And I burst into tears actually. Then I was hooked from that on it.
I went from not wanting to leave the house with panic attacks every day, every hour on the hour to in this conversation, my first panic attack was when I found out at age 45 that I was pregnant. Which I think that was quite understandable. But interestingly, even that panic attack after 10 years was very different, like, well, of course, I’m feeling panicked. Of course, my body’s responding in this way, because I’ve just been in my head for three days thinking, How on earth am I going to manage this?
So it was still a very different experience, but I have never ever looked back. And yeah, so it’s a way of life for me now. I’m also fortunate enough that I get to share it with other people as well.
Alexandra: You mentioned there that when you heard Dr. Pettit speak that it occurred to you how simple it things were.
Can you talk a little bit more about that, and what you began to see about the simplicity of it?
Sarie: Ironically, at the time I was listening to the podcast, I was going through one of my episodes of severe anxiety, and I’ll never forget, and I laugh about it now. But at the time, I was on an exercise bike in the house, whilst listening to a podcast, whilst eating an apple, because I was trying to eat better exercise and do some self-development, because that’s what I needed to do to fix myself. So it was like, I’m doing it all, and all at once, and I’m giving it full throttle. I will fix myself at all costs.
There was something in what he said, and again, to this day, I don’t know what he said, but it’s something that he said, I realized, I’m trying too hard to be something other than human. Right now, I am fighting and resisting this experience that I’m having that actually, I’m now starting to see very quickly is a really innocent misunderstanding of the human system.
When I look back now, at my periods of anxiety, I now see actually, that they were very simply my body and defense mechanisms weighing in, it was almost like it was a story that I had. And it was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where I do too much, I put too much pressure on myself, I’d have really high expectations. And then at some point, my body in my mind would just stop me completely in my tracks, because it was the only way I was going to stop. And it was that sort of the simplicity of it. Well, yeah, that makes sense.
That’s the only way I get any respite is when I am confined to the house, because I can’t physically get myself out because I am frightened of what’s behind that front door. I started to see it for what it really truly was. And to be honest, what that led to, which was a big, big change for me, was starting to see myself with a bit more compassion of how much I was on myself and what a full-time job trying to fix myself and how inadequate and broken I saw myself for many, many years.
Then that cycle then became, well, if I’m inadequate and broken every 18 months, then I need to make sure those months in between that I am overcompensating and making sure that I am the best version of myself I can ever be as opposed to … one thing I always teach, particularly to young people, and I love is to say, let’s just aim to be average, because average is great. And the irony is the more average, I was okay with becoming it was like things in my life, were just getting better and better. I’m like, Oh, hang on a minute. This is a little secret that I’ve missed. We aim to be average, often we saw because we’re taking so much pressure away rather than having to be something that sometimes we can’t and don’t need to be.
Alexandra: Were you are really high achieving student when you were in your teens?
Sarie: I didn’t do bad. In fact, no, I did. That was the sort of the dialogue I would have had is that my friends, some of my friends did better. And I could have done better but I was, you know, A’s and B’s. I did well, but where a lot of the stress and the overthinking for me came from was taking responsibility for everybody else.
I can remember it for years and years and years. I’m one of five siblings. I’m the eldest. And I would literally and now I just think how did this even make sense to me to do this, but I used to lie in bed at night before I go to sleep, before I had a child of my own. And I’d go through every sibling, are they okay? Do they need anything? What can I do to help them do but and I would literally see it as my responsibility to worry systematically about every sibling.
I still get the knocks on the door or the message can I borrow 20 quid or can I do this. I was more like a high achiever in a sense of making sure everyone was okay and being seeing myself as the more responsible one. And again, funnily enough, now I see how disempowering that was to my siblings, and that I wasn’t any better than them, I wasn’t in a better place to make sure they’re okay, and that it is quite disempowering. It’s very freeing to realize I don’t have to do that anymore.
Alexandra: For our listeners, if they’re experiencing anxiety at the moment, where would you say that comes from?
Sarie: We are only ever feeling our thoughts. There is there is no exception to that we are we are only ever in the feeling of our thinking. And so if you are feeling anxious, then you have a lot of anxious thoughts going around. It might not even be that you notice. It might be so habitual and so second nature, but if you’re feeling anxious, that is a surefire way to say that you are anxious. You’re having anxious thinking about the future, what’s coming next. All the what ifs, what if this happens, what if that happens?
And so even though you might not even know what those thoughts are, if you’re feeling anxious that for me now, that is just an invite from your mind and your body to just get present. And get back in your life.
I was just doing a little reel earlier, just sharing that for me there’s two places I am in my life. And that’s either in my head or in my life. I can’t do both very well at the same time. And so if I’m feeling anxious, or on edge, or overwhelmed, or tired or anything, when I used to feel like that, I’d go into my head: I need to get rid of this anxiety and I need to make sure it doesn’t get worse and why is it there? And I’d overanalyze. Whereas now, again, the simplicity is it’s like, Oh, I feel anxious. I’m being invited to get in my life and out of my head.
Alexandra: How does one do that, get in your life?
Sarie: It’s an interesting one, because it’s our default to be in the moment. It’s like gravity. It’s like, I know, if I dropped something, it’s going to fall because of gravity. And so I know, if I get out of my head and stop holding on to thoughts, and analyzing and pre-empting and predicting, just like gravity, I’m going to fall into that present space. So rather than thinking how do I get more present, I always encourage people just to reflect and notice when you’re not and what’s happening there.
You’ll see that if you’re not present, chances are you are in your head to deal with something that isn’t here yet. That hasn’t happened yet. I love the saying of anything that follows the words ‘what if’ is an illusion. We spend time creating illusions. The thing about stories and illusions so you can get so elaborate and there’s no limitations and therefore we can get really frightened and scared and anxious.
Alexandra: We’re such imaginative creative creatures, we can make anything up.
Sarie: And we do, all of the time. But what we can’t make up what’s right now. We’re in something we’re in and actually we’re always being guided.
When I look back to what my panic was about, it eventually ended up and was quite common for a lot of people who experienced severe anxiety is my anxiety was actually only ever really about getting anxious in the end. So I feared that uncomfortable feeling that anxiety brought and spent so much of my waking day avoiding that feeling but therefore, indirectly, taking myself to it.
I think it’s that getting comfortable with the discomfort that sometimes that brings, but seeing it for what it is. Out of every single panic attack I ever experienced not one of them was I ever faced with imminent danger. Not one. I have 1000s. Not one of them where I was faced with imminent danger. And so we’re practicing and preparing for perceived or made up danger. That’s what’s creating the anxiety and the panic because our bodies then over producing adrenaline that we don’t need.
We do feel it physically because the body’s getting you ready now to fight this scary thing that you’re telling yourself about. And so it gets the body ready. And the body’s like, what do I do with this? Because we’re not going anywhere. We’re just watching TV.
Alexandra: And that’s where the discomfort comes from in our bodies.
Sarie: Absolutely. And then that can lead to then more overthinking. I think one of the things that was helpful for me, and I think it was Dr. Bill Pettit that I heard talk about this originally, and I won’t do it as good just as him. But when adrenaline is pumped into the body, because we are sending a message to our lizard brain that we are in some sort of danger, that part of the brain is not sophisticated enough to go “Oh, Sarie’s catastrophizing, let’s not bother with the adrenaline, she’s just worrying in advance.”
It just assumes that what you’re telling it is true. Now that adrenaline actually only lasts in the body for around, don’t quote me on this, but around eight minutes. And in actual fact, after about four minutes, it halves. And so the discomfort that comes with that adrenaline surge doesn’t last that long.
But then people will say it lasts all day for me, and I get that because it would for me, but the reason for that is as soon as we then get physical symptoms of palpitations or pins and needles or feeling a bit dizzy. It’s then re injecting ourselves with more and more adrenaline, adding layers and layers to the worry of why do I now feel like this? What’s happening? Will it get worse?
When in actual fact, the more we can sit with the discomfort through understanding and being a bit more able to see it for what it really is, it doesn’t stay around for very long.
Alexandra: If someone’s experiencing that all day, or for hours and hours, what they’re doing is continually firing up that adrenaline in their body.
It’s a new dump of adrenaline.
Sarie: Yeah. And then if we do that for a certain amount of time, then the body starts to produce cortisol stress hormone, because it’s like, oh, this adrenaline isn’t quite working. So we need something bigger and better. And then we get stress hormone. And that lasts for longer. So that’s then can make it more difficult, if you like, in that moment for us to settle that down quicker.
One of the things that I’m really passionate about, and we’ll say this now, whilst we’re talking about this, I was told by a therapist many years ago, that because I lived a lot of my life in fight or flight, which I did from a very young age, I produced a lot of adrenaline for a long time and had this habit of producing it and creating dramas out of everything. I was told that I would just have to learn to manage that.
What I can say is that now I have a very different experience of life. My adrenaline levels are not through the roof all the time anymore, so they can settle and will settle once we start to understand enough that we’re not constantly setting off that internal alarm to keep producing the adrenaline.
And the other thing with cortisol in the body is because it’s the hormone that the body prioritizes over any other it will then mess with your hormonal imbalance, which is why a lot of women who are anxious end up going to the doctor because they believe they have some kind of hormonal imbalance. And they probably would have in that moment if they were tested. But it’s not because there’s a problem with their hormones. It’s because they’re stressed.
Alexandra: And it’s skewing things.
Sarie: Yes. Because the body’s saying, Well, we can’t worry about that hormone and that hormone right now, because we’re just having to keep this person alive. And they’ve got a lot of problems and danger, and it’s stressful. And that’s what we need to focus on.
Alexandra: Once again, the brilliance of the body is amazing.
One of the questions I had prepared for you was what can we do when we feel anxious about being anxious? I love this exploring this.
Sarie: When we feel anxious about getting anxious, what we’re really talking about is that we’re scared of the discomfort or the feeling that we have defined as bad. I think with understanding and exploring the principles and in whichever way people want to do that, like listen to podcasts, like yourself, It’s for you to start to see that you are safe and you’re okay.
I always remember my youngest brother, he was an MMA fighter. So he would go into the ring and he’d have fights. Now I couldn’t sit and watch him because it would just make me so physically sick and scared. I just couldn’t do it. But he said, he used to love that feeling. He said his ears would be ringing, his sight would go [narrow]. The sheer amount of adrenaline that would go into his body going into that room sounds extreme. And yet, that’s why he did it. Because he loved that feeling.
He’s got three children and when his wife went into labor with one of the kids, I remember him bringing me afterwards he said, Yeah, it’s all fine. He said, I had to go out the room. They were had awful. No, didn’t say awful. He said, I had a panic attack, quite a bad panic attack. So here’s me going, Oh, my goodness, that’s all for what happened? Oh, no, it was fine. It was all right. I actually. And then he said, it was like I was in a tunnel in my head. So I just went out of the room. And then I sort of came out of it.
And here’s me feeling terrible for him. And he made me laugh, he said I actually quite like that feeling. And he’d said that to me before the past with that he likes that feeling of, he said something along the lines of it’s just me and the universe and nobody or nothing else. It’s he goes into this in his head. And for some people, that could be a really scary experience. But because he knows what’s happening it and that’s the feeling that he was going for when he was stepping into the ring every time. There’s people who do extreme sports and extreme things for that adrenaline rush. They don’t see it as bad. It just is an adrenaline rush.
Alexandra: That’s such a great explanation of that. It’s a feeling. It’s a thing that’s happening.
When we demonize that kind of thing, and then become afraid of it, that’s what creates problems.
Sarie: Because we’re instantly saying, if that happens, it’s really bad. I always feel a little bit hesitant when I’m talking about this, because I know if somebody had said to me when I was in the throes of panic attacks every single day, oh, it’s just an experience. It’s not, I would have wanted to honestly just punch them in the face. You clearly don’t understand because this is not just an adrenaline rush. But actually, it is.
The more we understand that, okay, so when we’re in that state of mind, when we’re in that, in our heads, and we’re overthinking and the body surge of adrenaline, to be able to understand then that we’re not going to make sense of that, we’re not going to rationalize that in the moment. So that we don’t need to try and do that. And just understanding that if we just sit with it, it’s going to pass.
Something I used to find myself when I was in the beginning of the conversation of the Three Principles asking myself quietly in times of when I was starting to feel panic build up, say, right in this very moment, am I okay? Right now? And it was always yes. Because what was making me not okay or feeling like I wasn’t okay wasn’t even the panic attack I was having in that moment, it was how much worse will this get? Will this ever stop? It was still future thinking.
I could actually deal with the panic. I know it’s different for everybody. But for me would end up with me going to the toilet feeling sick and retching and then I would just cry and then it would go. It was the same every time. And so I managed and dealt with that as and when it showed up.
But the actual feeling of dread and adrenaline and panic was coming from Will it go away? What if it gets worse? What if this and what if that? I hear it so often with people what if I pass out? What if this? What if people see me? What if I throw up?
Alexandra: Do you now ever experience symptoms of anxiety?
Sarie: Not really, very rarely I do. I’d now describe it as being on it. So having a one year old baby I am sleep deprived, there is no doubt about that I am lacking in sleep. Sleep was always a massive trigger for me with anxiety because it was at the end of a two week stint of barely sleeping that I ended up in hospital. So it was always I need my sleep, otherwise I won’t be okay. And so even that now is a different experience.
I know that I’m tired. I know that when I’m tired, I can have intrusive or anxious thoughts. But I also know that they don’t mean anything, and I don’t need to pay attention to them. And again, they’re just a sign for me to need more sleep, or to get the rest if I can, or the support.
It’s interesting, because I’ve got a 16 year old and a one year old. And that’s a whole other podcast episode. When I had my 16 year old, I wasn’t in the conversation of the Three Principles. That’s when I was I had not been out of hospital, probably only about a year or so. No, it would have been a few years actually. And I was really postnatally anxious when I laid awake at night with really intrusive, awful thoughts, I thought I was the worst mom in the world, it was a really difficult time.
And now, this time, I had a couple of intrusive thoughts in the beginning, where I was stood on we’ve got like a mezzanine in our home that we’ve got, and there’s like a glass thing, and a thought just pops in my head and thought, imagine if you tripped and threw her, or imagined if you just threw her. And then the next minute my head’s imagining a pool of blood on the floor. Now I just laugh to myself, because my thoughts don’t scare me. And I laugh to myself because I thought, God, you need sleep.
Whereas when I had my other daughter, thoughts like that escalated into weeks of torture and suffering because I thought there was something wrong with me and that people didn’t have these thoughts unless they were terrible people. I didn’t want to tell anyone in case they thought I was completely mental.
Up until the point where then I had to tell people because I didn’t want to be on my own. I can see how just an innocent intrusive thought that just pops in because you’re tired or in a lower state of mind or a lower mood can be just seen as that as a sign, an alarm to go try and get more sleep if you can, or whatever it was telling me just listen to your body. Or that could escalate, which it did, to not wanting to be on my own again, going to the doctors to get antidepressants and feeling like I was the worst mom in the world for many, many months.
Alexandra: So this snowball effect that tiny little thing comes through, and then it grows and grows and grows and we feed it. Such a good point.
One of the things I wanted to ask you about too, speaking of anxiety, is learned fears and phobias.
You have a post on your website about the spider in the bath. Can you talk to us about that, please?
Sarie: One thing about having a baby and being in this conversation at the same time, it’s been an absolute wonderful gift really, because I am seeing human nature in all its beauty and glory right from day one, again, with fresh eyes. Seeing that my daughter is present by default. And I am seeing that she doesn’t judge herself. She cries one minute, she laughs the net, she gets angry that actually gets she’s not bothered. She’s not judging herself. She’s just loving on herself every day regardless of how she’s showing up. And it’s amazing to see.
I was in the bathroom with her. Probably any parents listen to this with young children. I think I was on the toilet. So then the 16 year old comes in, asking me a question and then the then the baby toddles in. So then we’re all in the bathroom at this point. And my teenager instantly said to me, “There’s a spider in the bath. Oh my god, oh my god, don’t move! A spider! Get the baby. Get the baby.”
And my instant reaction was to go. Oh, yeah, let’s see. And then my wisdom in that second just went no. I looked at her and she was so curious and excited to see this spider in the bath. And it was in that moment I just said to my older daughter. Let’s not do this. We’re just about to instill a belief, a conditioned belief, on her that that spider is scary. Right now she doesn’t see that. And so she was trying to get in the bath.
There was no water in the bath and this spider’s just around the tub. So I lifted her up, put her in the tub and for about five minutes. The joy on her face trying to catch that spider with her hands. She was so happy to the point now if we see a spider, she’s so excited. And it really hit home to me in that moment. It’s like she learned she could very quickly learn in that moment from us spiders are scary.
And you know what was funny? I went into the lounge five minutes after and her children’s TV was on in the background. And there was a program and it had a spider in it. I laugh because even the program they were like, Oh, this scary spider. And it’s like, it’s everywhere. He’s like, Oh, let’s all be scared of spiders where people have tarantulas as pets.
It’s not a given that we’re scared of anything. I always bring any fear down to three things. And I always call it the three Us:
Uncertainty,
Unknown, and;
Unpredictability.
My mom has a fear of a phobia of frogs. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t remember why. But I can remember as kids, when we thought it was a bit of a joke, or mom’s a bit scared of frogs. We didn’t realize how scared she was. And so we’d bring them to the house. Until this one day we brought one to the door and she locked us out. And it was hours before she would let us back in the house. Like literally like, Come on, mom. This is enough. Now she’s like, No, she’s so petrified.
If she saw one now you can see the very instant physical reaction, the color drops out of her face. She shakes, she panics. It’s instant. And when I say to her, what is it that you’re thinking about this frog? She’s says I don’t know, it could jump up at me. I don’t like the idea that it’s slimy or what it feels like. I said, Have you ever touched one? No, but I just think it feels like this. It’s the uncertainty of the unknown and the unpredictability of the frog that she’s afraid of. And it’s the same with anxious about getting anxious. We’re anxious about the uncertainty, the unknown and the unpredictability.
Alexandra: That’s so true. We feel like we can’t control it. It’s out of our control. That’s the unpredictability and that yeah, the uncertainty, how long will it last? Will it get worse? And what’s the third one?
Sarie: The unknown. Not being able to predict or know for sure.
I think they say that we’re born with only two natural, inbuilt fears. One is a fear of falling. And another is fear of loud noises. So when you hear a bang, you see a baby might jump like that. Other than that, everything is learned.
Alexandra: That’s such a good point. I experienced a lot of urgency – anxiety in the form of urgency – for years. And I can see too, that one of the ways that I dealt with the uncertainty about that, like trying to control it was just by going faster and doing more.
Sarie: And then it’s over with.
Alexandra: Yes. And the crazy thing is, it never went away.
I used that coping strategy and it didn’t work, but I kept doing it anyway.
Sarie: That’s a definite way to get more adrenaline into your system as well, by going faster.
Alexandra: That was the thing. I think I was just flooded so much of the time. By trying to go faster.
We touched on hormonal imbalance, which was one of the things we I wanted to talk about, and I think we’ve kind of covered that. And about how that adrenaline flooding can affect the natural balance that’s there.
Anything else you can say about that?
Sarie: I suppose I’ve recently done some a little bit of work with an endocrinologist who and she’s a wonderful hormone specialist. And, ultimately what it comes back to every time we’ve spoken about, any sort of hormones, even people talk about menopause as being hormonal imbalance, perimenopause, it’s not an imbalanced, in a way, our hormones are imbalanced, because they’re imbalanced, if that makes sense. They’ve got to balance each other out and they work together.
There’s so much going on behind the scenes where it’s all working in our favor. And for the greater good of us in our bodies. But when we throw something else into the mix, like something we’ve predicted and particularly menopause and hormones get such a bad reputation in that people dread it 10 years before they hit perimenopause, because they’ve been told a million times how awful it’s going to be. And, and yet, that doesn’t have to be the experience.
I’ve spoken to many people within the Three Principles community who had awful perimenopausal symptoms yet with the understanding they went away. Because, again, if our body’s having to work twice as hard to do what it’s doing. Menopause, is the body getting ready for the next phase of our life. Well, if it’s trying to do that, and yet we’re not respectful of that, and we don’t slow down and we don’t take care of ourselves as best we can. And we don’t stop getting too caught up in the ‘What if?’ then the body’s got to work twice as hard to get where it needs to be. It almost comes down to the less we interfere with nature and what’s intended, the easier everything is.
Alexandra: So well put. That’s exactly that’s how I see it as well.
Sarie: People look to hormonal imbalance for a reason. Because a reason for anxiety because I know, again, having been in that situation, I mean, the amount of times I went to the doctors with my anxiety, assuming there was some kind of hormonal imbalance. Was it my thyroid? Was I low in vitamin D? I was always looking for a reason because I didn’t understand or couldn’t see how something that felt so awful, could just come from my thinking.
It was almost too simple to believe, if you like, and yet my experience of even having throughout my own menstrual cycle, my hormones, really struggling with lots of symptoms. That again, in the last 10 years, I’ve been in this understanding, I don’t have that same experience every month anymore. It’s not a coincidence.
Alexandra: That’s right. We don’t appreciate how powerful our thinking is.
As we come to the end of our time together, is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on today?
Sarie: For anyone that’s new to the Principles, or this might even be the first podcast ever come across, keep exploring is all I can say. I came into this conversation to fix my anxiety and here I am, 10 years later, and it is brought me and given me so much more than just changing my relationship with anxiety. So keep going, I would say.
Stay curious. Even when we start to doubt the Principles, is this really too good to be true? That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. Getting curious is good. So just keep listening. Keep getting curious because all it can do is enrich your experience of life.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s great. Thank you. So where can we find out more about you and your work?
Sarie: I run an organization called Worldwide Wellbeing Limited. So you can find me at worldwidewellbeing.co.uk or SarieTaylorCoaching. You can find me all over social media. Everywhere on social media. I’m one of you people of my age that quite like social media, so you can find me there too.
Alexandra: Great. Oh, that’s awesome. I’ll put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com.
Sarie, it’s been a great pleasure. Thank you so much for being with me today.
Q&A 39 – Why does being a victim feel good?
Nov 13, 2023
Universally, human beings are always searching for a better feeling. We are wired to connect with the peace and love that we are made of. And when we have feelings like victimhood, they are pointing toward exactly this innate drive within us.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Examples of how we might feel like a victim
What the feeling of being a victim is pointing toward
How we can recognize our innate well-being when feelings like this come up in ourselves and others
How understanding the innate drive to feel good can increase our compassion for others
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 39 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
I’m here today with kind of an odd question, it may look like it has nothing to do with resolving an unwanted habit, but it actually does.
The question is why does being a victim feel good?
This came up for me, because there are a couple of situations going on in my life. So the first was that I experienced someone in my life, not in my immediate circles, but kind of someone I know very occasionally and casually, who I could tell really feels like a victim a lot of the time, and almost tends to create situations in her life where she’s victimized. And then that reinforces that she feels like a victim.
I was reflecting on that, and reflecting on the wisdom in that feeling like a victim, and we’ll talk about that in just a second.
Then I had a situation where I had a moment of feeling like a victim. I was planning to get together with a friend, and it wasn’t coming together. And I hadn’t heard from this friend. I noticed some feelings of victimhood, not in a huge way, but just in a tiny way, like, geez, this person isn’t getting back to me, I’m feeling a little ignored. That kind of feeling. And maybe she doesn’t like me, that kind of thing.
I noticed this little frisson of pleasure in that feeling of victimhood. And so I thought to myself, well, now, isn’t that interesting? What’s that about? So because these two things that happened quite close to one another in terms of time, I just started reflecting on this.
What I realized was that that feeling of being a victim, whether it’s in a small way, or a large way, really points to everything that we talked about in the three principles, understanding and our innate health. And it may seem like those examples, don’t point to that toward that at all. But I’m going to explain why they do.
What’s happening when we’re feeling like a victim?
That’s what that was where I started, with that question about myself and about this other person in my life. And what I realized is that there was that little bit of pleasure that I felt was because it felt like a bit of nurturing. So feeling like a victim in that moment, for me felt like a little bit of nurturing. I was taking care of myself.
‘And there’s the element of protecting myself against the big bad world. There’s that part of it. And then there’s just this kind of folding in feeling of protection, of protecting myself from whatever’s going on. And it seems to me that that’s where the little feeling of pleasure came from.
For the woman who’s peripherally in my life, I can only imagine that that that she gets a similar feeling from that, and I can sort of tell that she’s a person who feels unnurtured, who feels victimized, who feels on the outside and other people are on the inside. And so I can only imagine that feeling inside herself and setting up situations where she feels like a victim is one way that she is able to nurture herself.
What that points two is that we, as human beings are always, always searching for a better feeling.
We’re searching for that home base feeling, that is our innate wisdom and well being, and the true source of our experience of life, the light that we are, the love that we are. And so feeling like a victim is a misguided way to connect to that feeling of our true nature, our true essence. But it’s, in a way, it’s not misguided, because it’s serving that purpose. It’s connecting us.
We’re coming at it from a weird, funny angle. But it really is ourselves making an attempt to connect to that to a good feeling to a feeling of safety, and warmth. And all those things are the essence of who we are.
It all comes back to love, doesn’t it?
We are made of love and the source of where we come from is love. And so we’re always trying, it seems to me to connect to that feeling. And as human beings, it’s difficult. Our journey in this life is full of complication. And it’s a real challenge. And there’s no end of challenging circumstances and difficult circumstances that we get ourselves into, and feelings that are challenging as well. And we do whatever we can, it seems to me to, to connect to a good feeling to connect to love at all times.
So though it looks like someone who’s feeling like a victim is troubled or misguided, what I can really see in myself in that moment that I had, and in this other person who’s in my life, what I can see is that that instinct, or that impulse, really points to the source of who we are. And when I reflected on that, and thought about this for a little while, it, it created a greater sense of compassion in me for both myself, and for the other person in my life who I noticed is feeling like a victim.
I noticed too, that she’s caught in a cycle of creating situations where she becomes the victim. So again, that can look kind of irritating and annoying, and it can be frustrating when you’re on the outside looking into that. But me being able to see that what she’s searching for is a good feeling. She’s searching for home base, she’s searching for a connection to the love that she is, that hopefully will enable me to feel much more compassionate toward her.
And that gives me a good feeling. Instead of pushing up against what’s going on for her and feeling judgy about it, or impatient or whatever it is. I can sit in the feeling of oh, she’s searching for love, essentially. And rather than meeting her with judgment and criticism, even just mentally, not that I would say anything out loud, but just mentally being in a place of judgment and criticism, she’s going to feel that.
Instead, I can just see that she’s doing what comes naturally. It may be a little bit unskilled, but still it’s natural what she’s doing. It’s instinctive. She wants to feel a good feeling.
Knowing that about her, I’m just curious what if anything will happen?
If I If at anytime I happen to be with her, if I sit in that good feeling, knowing that that’s what she’s searching for, and knowing that that’s what we all have access to all the time. And knowing how natural it is for us to want to connect with that feeling. I’m just curious. I wonder. I don’t have any expectations about the outcome, but it’ll certainly feel better to me, too, to be in that good feeling rather than judging her.
Same when I’m dealing with myself. It always feels better to understand that there is wisdom in everything that we’re doing. And we’re always trying to connect to home base, which is our natural state of being.
I hope that’s been helpful. And that it helps you to be a little more patient with yourself, no matter what’s going on. I hope you’re doing well and taking good care and I will talk to you again next week. Bye.
The Past Can’t Hurt You with Carol Boroughs
Nov 09, 2023
After riding a roller coaster of a profound spiritual experience followed by post-trauma flashbacks, Carol Boroughs had questions about the root cause of suffering. This practised healer began a search and stumbled across the work of Sydney Banks, which highlights Thought as a central, powerful force that affects our experience of life.
Carol Boroughs brings together the skills and experience she has accumulated over four decades in the field of human development and transformation, in the early years as a human resources consultant and for the last 25 years as a holistic therapist, healer and teacher. She also draws directly on intrinsic knowledge and personal experience of awakenings which began in childhood and led to a transformational realisation in 2011.
She has chosen to use the Three Principles as the basis of her work as she recognises it to be a powerful teaching for our time.
Carol: Thank you very much, Alexandra, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Alexandra: It’s lovely to meet you. And to be having this chat this morning.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Carol: My professional background is a career in two halves really, I started out in human resource management, did that for about 20 years. And then when I had my children in my late 30s, something woke up in me, and I just took a completely different direction. That partly came about because I was seeking to heal myself from some early trauma, and the after effects of that.
I started exploring, I’d already started exploring, but I went much more deeply into lots of different healing modalities. And the ones that I found really helpful, I studied them, and I learned to help other people with them. So I had a practice helping other people through lots of different holistic therapies, primarily homeopathy, but also specialized schools of counseling. And because of my own background, I guess I attracted people who needed help with trauma, but many, many other things as well physical, physical, health, mental and emotional health.
I was very identified with being the wounded healer.
And I also had all always been interested in spirituality. Ever since I was a child. I was the child of a long line of maternal healers in my family. And so an awareness of spirit had always been in my life. But because of things that happen to me, and in the family, it was very much something that I put away for a long time, it never really went away. But it wasn’t something I explored thoroughly. And then when I had my children, and I had this kind of wake up call about my own healing, I got interested in spirituality again. So there was a lot going on.
I explored all sorts of different avenues. And in about 2011, so about 12 years ago, I was on a spiritual retreat. And I had a very, very powerful experience. Ordinary reality just dropped away. I knew myself to be part of the indivisible whole, there was oneness, love, it was just the most powerful experience that shifted my being, at every level, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. And that experience, I won’t go into all the detail of that it lasted for several days.
And then the bliss bubble that I lived in for the following weeks was extraordinary. And I was in that state, when all of a sudden it changed. And I was back into post traumatic flashback, spiraling down, terror arose. But this time, I was looking at it from a different place because of that shifting in consciousness. And I didn’t spiral all the way down, I recovered relatively quickly. And in the reflection after that, this powerful question arose?
The question was, how can a human being know themselves to be one with the energy of all life and still suffer like this?
As I reflected on that question, it was a powerful, luminous question. There is a spiritual answer to this. And what occurred to me was that I needed to find a spiritual teacher, a living breathing teacher, not books or anything else. I had to find a living breathing teacher. I went on an internet search and I thought, well, what’s out there? Who can I find I’d studied lots of different things. I’d had lots of different teachers along the way.
I chanced across Sydney Banks original website, and on their little clips, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, there’s some little video clips you probably I’ve seen them all. And what I saw in those clips resonated so deeply with that experience I’d had, I recognize truth. And I thought, This is my teacher, only to discover that he had died the previous year. So I thought, Okay, well look, the teachers, other people must be teaching this, this is, this is powerful. This is truth, this is what I need to explore.
So I started looking around for teachers who were sharing the principles. And but there was nobody near me, I think Aaron Turner had just recently moved back from the states to the UK. And he was doing a professional training, actually not very far away from me. But that didn’t seem appropriate. I just chanced upon this understanding. So it’s kind of a bit deflated, and thought, oh, what next?
And then into my inbox dropped an email from the teacher who I’ve been on the retreat with, when I’d had this experience. And that person was Ian Watson. He’d been my teacher, or many different things. He’d done all of those disciplines that I was exploring and teaching myself and working with people with. And in this email, he said, I’m not doing any of my old stuff anymore, I found this thing called the Three Principles. And I really want to explore that. So I’m going to set up a group in London. It’s going be called Truth at the moment, if you’re interested. So it was a no brainer.
For me, it was just one of those synchronicities, that was just perfect. So I spent six weekends with this beautiful group of people, and even exploring the principles. And the insights just came with her come fast. And for me, it was this missing link between the spiritual and the psychological. And he answered that question for me. That question that had arisen of how a human being can feel bliss and despair in the same day.
What happened was that the insight that I got was, or the beginning of the insights was something I’d heard in words over and over again: The past doesn’t exist. You can’t change the past, it can’t do anything to you. It’s just memory carried through time. Now, I had heard that over and over again. But now I saw it insightfully. And I saw how I had innocently been re-traumatizing myself over and over again with my own thoughts. When I saw that, at that deep, insightful level, this reflex action away from all of that thought happened. And it was just like the past, literally falling away.
I didn’t have another flashback for another three years. And it was like night and day. For me, it was just profound. And as I saw the way that I had innocently been re traumatizing myself with my thinking. I saw the universality of that. I saw that that’s what everybody is doing all the time. A whole experience has been created from that we can’t respond to anything that isn’t thought passing through our mind.
In the moment, I saw the universality of that, and the innocence of it, this great forgiveness, and compassion arose. And that was this this second level of radical transformation. It was beyond anything I could have imagined was possible. So that’s how I came to the principles. And just a little piece of what it’s done for me personally.
And of course, very rapidly, it was a question of, oh, I have to share this. I can see it so clearly, it makes sense of everything that I had learned, spiritually, and everything that I’d seen in my own psychology and that of the clients that I’ve been helping So that’s how I came to be doing what I do now.
Alexandra: That’s beautiful. Thank you so much. I have some follow up questions if that’s okay.
I love that you said that the past can’t hurt us. And I would love for our listeners, if you could compare a little bit about your strategy for dealing with the past before you saw this.
And what you see now about how we can deal with traumas from the past.
Carol: That’s a brilliant question, Alexandra. Because what happened in my work was it shifted completely because I saw something that was so much more helpful than what I had been doing before, both in terms of my own healing, and how I was working with clients.
Many of the techniques that we use to try to deal with trauma, depend on us, or encourage us, to go back and understand the trauma and see it from a different place. And while it can be helpful sometimes to go back and understand why certain things trigger you in this moment, and why certain behaviors keep repeating themselves, it doesn’t really get to the root of the truth of why you’re suffering.
The actual event of going back and thinking about what happened in the past and exploring that, in itself can be incredibly difficult and painful and re traumatizing. So what I came to see through learning about the principles is that we do not need to go back, we just have to change our relationship to it by understanding that it no longer exists, except in our own thinking, in this moment, only this moment is real. Everything else is a trick of our mind and our thinking.
All healing happens in this moment. That was one of the types of approaches to dealing with trauma that changed for me. The other things that can be incredibly helpful when we’re traumatized, particularly when we’re in the midst of a flashback, or in the midst of extreme terror, or anxiety or panic are techniques that bring us into the present moment. So things like mindfulness meditation, anchoring techniques, visualization techniques, where we visualize perhaps a safe space or something like that. So those were the types of things that I would reach for either myself or with my clients teach my clients about to help them in an acute episode.
From time to time, I will still do that, if it’s helpful in the moment. Because until someone is in a quieter, calmer space, it’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely that they’re going to hear something helpful in what I’m sharing in those moments, because they’re in a thought storm. But the difficulty with those techniques as they only last as long as you’re doing them. And you can very quickly if you do experience, things like post traumatic flashbacks, or panic attacks, you can very quickly get hijacked, and things very quickly snowball. So sometimes a technique like that will work, and sometimes it won’t.
And again, it still doesn’t get to the root cause of the issue. And really, the root cause of the issue is a simple misunderstanding about where that experience is coming from. And when we know that it’s coming from thought in this moment, just from memory, giving us this full on sensory painful experience. When we truly know that we don’t need to learn a technique for it to stop. There’s this reflex action away from that thinking when we really see the truth of what Sydney Banks was pointing to about where our experience is coming from.
It’s like pulling your hand away from the hot stove because it hurts. I love Dicken Bettinger’s metaphor for this. He says when you see that the headache you have is being caused by the hammer that you’re hitting yourself with, you don’t need to learn a technique to drop the hammer. There’s this reflex away from it.
Now, it has to be said that I had a very big insight, and so much fell away all in one go. For other people, it’s no less powerful, but it’s more incremental. They get smaller insights or shifts in consciousness. And gradually what they find is there’s a gradual move away from that thinking. And, it’s almost imperceptible, and then they look back and they think, oh, oh, something’s changed.
When I was reading your book, I think you describe a beautiful example, where you’re in the supermarket, and you find that you haven’t reached for the soda. It wasn’t something you did in your mind or with your thinking. It was just a natural shift, wasn’t it? That’s, that’s the same kind of experience that people can have. With this type of insight.
Alexandra: Oh, wow. So many things strike me and what you said, and one was, how powerful thought can be. That it can bring on not just thinking, but physical sensations and responses from our body and all that kind of stuff.
It strikes me how real that can look, and how, if someone is having – I’ve never had a flashback like that – but if someone is experiencing that, it’s so easy to see how we can get caught up in that kind of a physical experience, and want to try to control it or make it go away somehow.
And then I loved what you said about this incremental shifting. And it’s something I haven’t actually been able to find the right words for but it’s so true, what you said that we, as we explore this understanding, we can then look back and just see Oh, things have really shifted, but it has been so subtle. I didn’t notice in the moment, but I notice now, looking back, and I love that.
In your work now, you have this great quote on your website, which I’m going to quote back at you. Which is that “presence is surrendering to each moment, without seeking to avoid any event, thought or emotion. And by remaining present, we can deepen into the inner peace that is the core of our true self.”
So I wondered if you could expand on that a little bit for us?
Carol: What I’m pointing to there is about being in the now, about being present with whatever’s going on now. And as you just beautifully articulated, if we have something scary going on, whether that’s an actual event, whether it’s a thought storm, or very, very strong emotion, painful emotion, we don’t want to be present. We don’t want to stay in that we want to get away from it. But that’s natural, of course. That’s what we do.
And then we there’s so many things that we do to get away from that. And we take ourselves out of the present. We are no longer present in our life. We’re in our life and we’re trying to manage it. We’re reaching for food, we’re reaching for a drink. We’re reaching for the next technique. We’re seeking a therapy. Whatever it is we’re doing to get to a back to a better feeling.
What that does is it puts more thought in the system. It takes us further away from peace. It might be helpful temporarily, it might bring us temporarily some relief, because we stop struggling to get away from it. Then we stop the activity of our mind. If we can learn as Sydney Banks said to not be afraid of our present moment experience, because we know it’s an illusion.
It’s the play of mind, thought and consciousness in that our relationship with that shifts, we’re not scared. And so we don’t struggle away from it. We don’t struggle away from it, and we stay still. And we stay present. That difficulty, that strong emotion, those thoughts will pass through.
What’s left is space of no thought. We settled down into the quiet mind, and we reconnect with the truth of who we are. And when we touch that space, and is just in a peace, stillness, love, a sense of okayness it’s the better feeling that we were seeking all along. Only we looked in the wrong place.
Alexandra: Could you explain for the listener how that’s different from mindfulness, or what the difference might be?
Carol: There are many beautiful mindfulness practices. And in some ways, the principles describe why mindfulness is helpful. It’s because it takes us into the present moment. But there’s a way in which, remember, we were just talking about how we organically learn.
If our experience isn’t scary, we don’t need to get rid of it. We don’t need a technique to bring us back into the present moment. We just naturally go there. That, to me, is the main difference. There’s a natural learning that takes place where we don’t have to do any sort of technique. Unless we want to, or unless we can’t find our way back there. And sometimes the technique just helps us short, temporarily, until we get a deeper understanding.
Alexandra: That was beautifully put. Thank you.
Shifting gears slightly, one of the other things that I loved you mentioned on your website that you’re quite passionate about the subject of spiritual bypassing. Some of our listeners may know that I was in a cult in the 1990s for 10 years. And it was all about spiritual bypassing. And really negating our experience and using spiritual terms and techniques to do that.
You have this great quote about trying to rise above our humaneness before we have fully understand or understood and made peace with it. That sentence resonated with me so much, because that just put a pin right on what I had experienced.
What do you see about why we may be trying to transcend our humaneness?
Carol: I think it really relates to what we were just talking about, around us. Wanting to get away from difficult feelings and emotions and experiences, to a better feeling. That drives all human beings. We just have different ways of going about that. And, as I said, some of us will reach for a drink, or food or whatever that is. And spirituality can be one of those, exploring spirituality and using spirituality to make sense of our world and take us to a better feeling.
In many respects, that seeking to transcend our humaneness, the messier painful part of our humaneness is very, a very natural part of our experience in our physical form. I’m smiling a little bit because that blog that you read about spiritual bypassing has is literally the blog that has been most read and most discussed, and the one most people ask me about. I think at the time I wrote it, it just touched, touched something for people because they could recognize in themselves or others, that we have this tendency to use spiritual terms and language and techniques and teachings to make ourselves feel better.
But of course, while a true spiritual understanding can be profoundly helpful, we can use it without understanding it. And we can apply it to cover up the cracks and to try to transcend that pain. And of course, it’s a false spirituality in a way. And ultimately, eventually the wheels will fall off. I think I use the example that if you don’t address your interpersonal issues in your life, you’re not going to maintain a relationship, however spiritual.
The other thing that made me so interested in it is it’s something that I see in my work a lot. I think I was trying to sort of raise a flag to say that even the Three Principles community isn’t immune from that, because many people find their way to me having been around the Principles for a really long time, heard something of truth in it. So they know that their thinking has something to do with their experience, and therefore they’re uncomfortable experience. So they feel like they’ve got to manage their thinking.
And of course, that proves incredibly difficult. That’s not what we’re talking about, or pointing to at all. And they hear those terms of it’s just your thinking. And then they either get about trying to manage their thinking, or they tell themselves Oh, it’s just my thinking. It’s not real. It’s okay, really. And then they bypass what’s really going on for them, and then they get stuck. So it’s my job to unpack a little bit of that and have people take an honest look at where they might be bypassing.
Alexandra: It struck me as you were speaking, I could just suddenly see for the first time, the innocence of doing something like that, and you connected it with food and alcohol and the other things we use, and I hadn’t made that connection before. It’s the same thing.
Carol: Yeah, it’s the same thing. It’s that search for a better feeling. Or we can use spirituality in a way that we use anything else.
But you know, there’s that original question you asked me about what I see about why we try to transcend there’s a deeper understanding that I’ve come to around that which is the West seeking better feeling, because we know it exists. We all have within us. That spiritual essence, that’s perfect. It gets shrouded with thought. And we forget. But we still know, we still know it’s there. We still know it’s possible.
And the very movement towards wanting to feel better. That is that spiritual essence that wisdom, as Sydney Banks would call it, speaking to us. So yes, that desire to move into spirituality, that desire to eat something to make ourselves feel better, or to drink or whatever it is. That very desire is the clue that that is possible. And that’s beautiful, isn’t it?
What we take to be our wrongness or our brokenness, this is not that at all. It’s wisdom, speaking to us in every moment, moving us in the direction of thriving, moving us in the direction of truth of uncovering the fact that we’re really unbroken and perfect.
Alexandra: I’m so glad you brought that up. It’s something that I’ve been exploring a little bit lately. I’m writing a new book about this understanding. I just love that it’s slightly paradoxical but I love coming back to that.
The very the search proves that we are unbroken. We know it instinctively. And we’re looking for it.
Carol: That’s beautiful. And you kind of know that you’re getting closer and closer to truth when you really see the paradox. I love what Michael Neill says, about pointing to fire with ice. The closer you get to it, the less you’ve got to point with. And when we get into something that appears paradoxical, that’s because we’re getting much closer.
Alexandra: I hadn’t thought about it that way. Yeah, that feeling of paradox. You’re right. It is a big clue that we’re getting closer.
Carol: It’s harder and harder to explain. So it must have been quite a tricky for them to write. I look forward to reading it.
Alexandra: It’s always hard to put this stuff into words in a peaceful way without getting all tangled up in my own confusion.
What would you say to someone about trusting our own wisdom and our own guidance, while at the same time learning from others? Because there is a delicate balance there.
Carol: Yes, there is. And I think there’s some, I think Sydney Banks is quite helpful on this, isn’t he, when he talks about selecting a teacher in several places, including in The Missing Link, he talks about selecting a teacher who shows the qualities that you’re looking for, not somebody who tells you how to think or what to do. You have to use your discernment. You have to trust your own wisdom in teaching in selecting a teacher.
But really, what he pointed to is that the teacher is within. We have what he calls spiritual wisdom, we’re all connected to it. Sometimes it feels like we’re disconnected. But that wisdom is always speaking to us. And the best that a teacher can really do is point you back to that and help you to tune into that or to discern wisdom from your personal thinking.
I think if the teacher doesn’t do that, then that’s perhaps the time to find another teacher. Really, teachers can be incredibly helpful, but they can only signpost, the way they can only point us towards wisdom.
The most powerful insights come from within my own experience, I’d listen to dozens of teachers saying past doesn’t exist, your thoughts can’t help you. Let them go. But it wasn’t until I saw that from deep within myself through insight that it had any impact. So I’d love to know what your take is on that because your experience in the cult must have been very instructional now you’re on this side of it as to following your own guidance.
Alexandra: I think you hit the nail right on the head that that our own wisdom is the is the greatest teacher and that those who point at keep pointing us toward that is where my best learning has come from. And to me learning to rely on my own experience to teach me has been such a good lesson.
Whatever I hear now, and whatever I hear somebody else say, I always try to take it away and just fold it in and see if my experience reflects what the person has said.
Carol: That’s beautiful. And sometimes we have the experience of listening to a teacher. And we take it away. And we think, no, that’s not my experience. And having the confidence to say no, that’s for me now is really powerful. And maybe some, at some point, will come back to the same teaching. And we will resonate with it. Because our wisdom is not only unique to us, but it can change over time. So something that’s right for us one day won’t necessarily be right. The following day.
Alexandra: Yeah, that’s so true. There are elements in there, I can see of, of being ready. Sometimes, we’re just not at a place where we can understand something and I really think that’s okay. Waiting until, for me, this process has been a lot about learning not to force things, not to force myself to swallow things whole.
And just like you were saying a minute ago, there have been times when I’ve walked away and said, well, that hasn’t really been my experience. And then down the road, I do find that, that it is, something has shifted. It’s required a little bit of patience on my behalf sometimes.
I always go back to nature metaphors, because you can’t force a flower to come up out of the ground. It’s going to come up at its own pace. And when it’s ready. And for me, my learning has felt like that. I can’t talk it up. It will come as I let it.
Carol: That’s wonderful. There’s patience required. It’s easy to get insight and be honestly, that. So I love what you’re saying there about everything has its own time. Everything unfolds perfectly, even when we don’t feel like it is.
Alexandra: Absolutely. So we’re getting close to the end of our time together.
Is there anything you would like to share that we haven’t touched on yet today?
Carol: I don’t think so. That there’s so much we could continue to share. I think we’ve touched on some really beautiful things. I hope your listeners have found it helpful.
Alexandra: I’m sure they have.
Where can we find out more about you and your work, Carol?
Carol: Okay, well, the the best place to go is my website, which is ThreePrinciples.co.uk. And you can find out about me and what I’m up to in the world on there.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com so people can find you. And thank you so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Carol: It was an absolute pleasure. I enjoyed our conversation. It’s really lovely to meet you.
Q&A 38 – What if we weren’t afraid of our cravings?
Nov 06, 2023
Cravings can be scary. And when they happen we can automatically brace ourselves against them. But what if there was another way to deal with cravings that encouraged them to dissolve on their own?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 38 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
Today our question is, what if we weren’t afraid of our cravings?
I’ve been mulling this over for a few days. And this question in this q&a episode is inspired by the famous Sydney Banks quote:
If the only thing people learned was to not be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.
Now, of course, this is a really deep quote, and we could explore it for days and weeks. And of course, Sydney Banks isn’t here to expand on what he meant by that, and all the different areas or threads that might come from that quote. It is really, really deep. I think one of the nice things about it is that it probably has different meaning for all of us, and our own interpretation, and some universality about it, which is what, all great quotes, that’s what they speak to in us, I think.
So what I’m going to explore today is one example, or possible interpretation of that quote, and I’m going to use a personal story from my personal life. And then we’re going to go into talking about cravings.
When I was a little kid, my dad got me started riding horses when I was pretty young, I think four years old or something like that. And along the way, we were mostly learning to ride in a riding arena. So an enclosed arena, quite big. And so a very pretty controlled environment. It’s not like we were out in the wilderness or anything.
Every once in a while, one of the horses would get spooked by something that happened.
And it could be the horse that I was on, it could be somebody else’s horse, and there tended to be a chain reaction to with horses. When one of them get spooked, they all tend to get a bit spooked, because they’re herd animals, and they communicate so clearly with one another. And being part of the herd is what keeps them safe.
When a horse spooks, it can do a number of things; bucking with its back end, their legs can get kind of stiff, and they can do that sort of sideways bounce. Like you’ll often see kittens do when they’re feeling kind of frisky horses can do that, too. They’ll throw their head up and down. I’m sure you’ve seen bucking bronco videos from rodeos. And it wouldn’t necessarily be that dramatic, but it could be sometimes it would just be a little bit of jumping up and down.
Initially, when I was learning to ride, the reflexive action that I would take, the automatic response that I would take to if my horse was spooking, and jumping up and down, would be to stiffen up. So it’s frightening, you’re scared. And there you are five feet off the ground. I could be six years old or whatever.
This horse is spazzing out and you don’t have any control over it.
The automatic response to that, when that happens, is to is to get really stiff, to brace yourself against what is happening. And I learned pretty quickly that that doesn’t work. So what happens is, when I get really stiff in the saddle, and my back gets really stiff and my arms get stiff on the reins and my legs are kind of braced against what’s happening, it’s like then that two hard forces meet each other. And what automatically would happen was that I would just get bounced out of the saddle and land on my back or my head on the floor of the writing arena. So I learned that that didn’t work.
I don’t remember if someone instructed me to do this, or if I just figured it out, that the better response when a horse is having a little spooky moment, is to actually get really soft. So the horse could be bouncing up and down, throwing its head around kicking its back legs out, whatever it’s doing, and it’s counterintuitive but the thing that worked better than bracing myself was to, like I say, get really soft.
What I mean by that is I would sit even deeper in the saddle, and get really kind of marshmallowy – I don’t know what word to use to describe it – in my pelvic area, in my bum, in my thighs, and in my back, and almost melt into the saddle. Riders tend to call that sitting really deep in your seat. And what that would mean was that as the horses jumping around and spazzing out, I would be melted into the horse’s back and would just ride the waves. Like you would ride a wave on the ocean, if you were on a surfboard, or on a river, or whatever it is.
And, like I say, that response, it was a learned response. It’s something that took time and practice. And of course, I don’t remember how long it took me to figure this out. Or, like I say, if somebody explained it to me, and then it took some practice, once that happened, because when, especially when you’re a kid, when a horse is having a little spooky moment, it’s scary. That horse is really big, and I wasn’t very big. And it takes a leap of faith. Or it took a leap of faith in me, a willingness to try something different, to really do that to sit really deep in my saddle, to not brace myself against what was happening.
I bring that up today, because the question is, what if we weren’t afraid of our cravings?
When it comes to an overeating habit, and dealing with some cravings, the same is actually true. And here’s what that looks like.
What we’re usually taught, when we experience a craving for anything, doesn’t have to be food. But in our case, it probably is. The natural response, the automatic, innocent response to that craving, is to brace yourself against it, to try to get away from it, to try to manage it, control it, tamp it down, and really push back against it, I guess, is a good way to say that. What my experience has been, since coming into this understanding has been that if instead, I do the counterintuitive thing, if instead, I don’t brace myself against cravings, that has been what has started the process of clearing them up of them falling away.
What that looks like is that when we tend to brace ourselves against a craving, innocently, what’s happening is we’re adding a whole bunch of thinking to what’s already there.
The craving is trying to communicate something to us, it’s trying to let us know that we have a lot of insecure and sped up thinking not just about food, but in general. And then we brace ourselves against that craving. And now we add a whole bunch more thought to what’s already there in our heads. So thinking like, why is this happening? Why do I have so little willpower? Why can’t I control myself more? This is going to make me really fat. I’ve already gained 10 pounds and I don’t want to gain anymore so This craving is only going to make that situation worse. I mean, you know, all that kind of thinking now gets layered on top of what was already there in the first place, what the craving was trying to alert us to in the first place.
So resisting a craving, just like with the example from the horse riding stuff actually makes the situation worse. And like I say, when I did that, when I was on the horse, I would automatically just get bounced out of the saddle, and land on the dirt floor of the arena.
When it comes to cravings, it becomes this vicious cycle, because we’re experiencing a lot of insecure, sped up thinking the craving is trying to alert us to that, then we add a whole bunch more thinking to it.
Now the craving gets louder and stronger, because again, it’s trying to alert us to all this thinking that’s going on. And we add more thinking to that and get more upset about what’s happening and down on ourselves. And being really critical. And whatever it is, the thoughts that you have about when you experience a craving. So that cycle is what we ended up getting caught in. I know I was caught in it for decades, and it and trying to suppress those cravings, manage them, control them, make them go away, wasn’t the thing that that worked. It didn’t work it, it just kept me caught in that cycle.
I will say to that, just like with the horse riding example, doing the counterintuitive thing of not bracing yourself against a craving takes a bit of a leap of faith. It’s scary. And we talked about courage last week on the q&a episode. And it definitely takes some courage to not have that kind of knee jerk reaction to our cravings, especially given that culturally, there are so many messages about how cravings are bad and wrong, and how overeating is a problem. And that it’s something that we need to fix and change and all that stuff. So it does take courage to try to remember to relax and to notice the craving and to not add any more thinking to the situation than what is already there.
Now, I don’t know what it’s going to look like, if you try this approach.
And I don’t have any recommendations really about what specifically to do in order to…I don’t want to say lean into the craving, but to not brace yourself against it. That experience, of course is yours alone. And your wisdom will guide you about what that might look like how it might feel within your body. But I will give you a quick example of something that’s going on with me right now. And some cravings that I’m experiencing.
About a week ago or something, I felt some cravings rise up in me that had been gone for a very long time. And again, automatically, my initial reaction was going to be to panic, to push them away and do all those regular things. And instead, I remembered that I don’t have to do that, that I can sit deep in my saddle and really lean into what’s going on.
For me the craving has to do specifically with potatoes, which are something that I tend to avoid lately because I think I’ve mentioned this before, I have arthritis in my knees and in in my in one of my index fingers. And when I avoid potatoes and rice that inflammation goes away and it’s great and I don’t have the same kind of pain and discomfort that I have when I eat them. But lately my craving has been for potatoes and rice. So what I’ve been doing is noticing that, and having those foods anyway, even though my finger is quite sore, my knees aren’t quite as simple as they have been.
I’m really making a practice of not beating myself about what’s going on. Not being hard on myself about eating those foods, not judging my you know, quote, unquote, progress or lack of progress, just letting the situation be what it is.
What I know for sure, is that those cravings are wisdom, and they are information.
And therefore there will be an insight at some point about my true nature, our true nature, and it will then reduce the amount of insecure thinking that I tend to walk around with. There will be a shift in my consciousness, and that craving will drop away. And the thing not to do is to fight what’s happening right now when I’m feeling those cravings, to brace myself against them. Because that just makes the whole situation so much messier.
If I get in there with my thinking, and start beating myself up about potatoes and rice, and giving myself a really hard time and worrying about my weight, and freaking out about my progress, quote, unquote, that really, really muddies the waters of what the craving is trying to move me toward. And so yeah, so that’s what’s been going on with me lately, in terms of cravings.
I thought that this was a really good couple of things I wanted to share, and that story about relaxing into the saddle, because I think it’s just the perfect analogy when it comes to dealing with our cravings, particularly because it is counterintuitive. It’s not the thing that we automatically want to do. And that doing that does take some courage.
I hope that’s been helpful for you. If you have any follow up questions about that or if anything I’ve said hasn’t made sense, please let me know.
You can go to Alexandraamor.com/question and fill out the little form there and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future show.
So that’s it for today. I hope you are well and taking care and I will talk to you soon. Bye.
Connection With The Love We Are with Rohini Ross
Nov 02, 2023
In intimate partner relationships, we can often believe that change needs to happen in the other person in order for us to be happy. Rohini Ross, and her husband Angus, work with couples and individuals to help them see that our experience of everyone in our lives is coming not from them, but from within us.
Rohini Ross loves supporting others with deep healing as they wake up to their true nature. She is sought out for her specialization in Spiritual Psychology. You can listen to her podcast Rewilding Love where she and her husband Angus help a couple on the brink of divorce.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Discovering spiritual psychology after several career starts
Burning out as a therapist while still becoming licensed
On stress coming from our patterns of throught
Resolving the internal pressure to be worthy of love and acceptance
How the Principles are ‘time release learning’
Whatever we are looking for is within us
On not taking a partner’s anger personally
Dealing with an autism spectrum diagnosis in a child
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
George Pransky’s book The Relationship Handbook
Transcript of Interview with Rohini Ross
Alexandra: Rohini Ross, welcome to Unbroken.
Rohini: Thank you so much for having me lovely to speak with you.
Alexandra: Lovely to see you again too.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came across the Three Principles.
Rohini: Oh, my goodness, where would you like me to start?
I originally got a master’s in cultural geography. And that was a switch in my major, I was going to school to be a doctor. And when I got to the pre med classes, second year of them, the science classes, I had a bit of a meltdown. I wasn’t able to do them. And so the dean at that time, because my first year, I got straight A’s. And so it was kind of shocking for me, I’d never struggled academically before. And there was a lot of other things going on as well that were challenging.
When I went to the dean, he says, Well, it seems like you’re capable, but maybe you just need to switch to something you enjoy more. That sounds like a good idea. And so I switched to cultural geography, which I’m really grateful for, because it’s very closely aligned with anthropology. And it gave me more global context for understanding things. And it was very inter disciplinary. And so it gave me a lot of freedom.
Then, when I was finishing my master’s, I realized that I missed the intention of being in a healing profession. So as much as I enjoyed the academics going on and doing a PhD was appealing. But there was something deeper within me that wanted to continue to look at healing, even if I wasn’t a medical doctor. And so I stopped my studies at that point.
I had just decided to move back to England. I was born in England, but raised in Canada. And my father left when I was two and a half. And we hadn’t been reconnected. I knew that he was or I thought he was in England. And so when I was doing my research in Guatemala, for my master’s, I met a woman who lived in London, she ran a Guatemalan Textile Museum in London. And she said, you can come and work in the museum, and I’ll trade. I have a flat that you can stay in. And I thought, well, that sounds like a great idea. And so that was all set up.
Then I met Angus. He was flying in and out literally, from Toronto, where I was living at the time. And we met, and it was one of those recognitions in that time. And so there was some real motivation for me. So when I went to England, I just decided to focus on finding my dad, and then just giving myself some space to really explore what is it that I want to do.
I was looking at Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy, and I didn’t really think about psychology. But as I was, as things unfolded, the museum didn’t work out. Well, the textiles had a lot of chemicals in them. I’m very sensitive to chemicals. And so I’m like, I can’t work in this environment, because I’m getting headaches, and I’m feeling well, and the trade with living in the basement flat with a woman wasn’t feeling so great, either. And so I said to Angus, I don’t know what to do, I don’t think I can do this job anymore. But I don’t have another job.
He was a photographer at the time, let me just introduce you to modeling agency and see if they have any work they can help you out with in the meantime. And I was 24, turning 25 at the time, which is very old to start a modeling career. Most people start when they’re 15. And but for whatever reason, I was fortunate in that they had work and I ended up doing that for about 10 years, till we had our first child. And that allowed me to really have the space to just explore what I wanted to explore.
And then part of the reason we came to the US was through that work. When I got here to Los Angeles, there was a school, it’s no longer in place, but at the University of Santa Monica, they no longer offer master’s programs. The university is still there, but they don’t offer degree programs anymore. But they had a counseling psychology program, but the foundation was in spiritual psychology.
As soon as I saw it, I’m like, that’s it. That’s what I want to do.
I went to the open evening. And I just knew, it’s one of those things where like, Okay, I’m signing up for this program. And then I’m like, Oh, my goodness, what’s happened. Sure, check this out with somebody So I talked to Angus about and he’s like, Well, if you think it’s right, like he was absolutely fine with it. But it was just one of those moments where the inner directive was so clear. I was shocked by that level of clarity. And so I did that program. I did end up finishing the Counseling Psychology program, I did it over a long period of time, because we had our two children within that period of time. And so it was an extended study program.
Then I ended up becoming faculty at the University, which is really fun. I became a licensed psychotherapist through that program. And then, probably, shortly after I get licensed, because what happens is you start working as a therapist a long time before you actually get your license, because you have to get 3000 hours before you can actually write your licensing exam. And so by the time I got licensed, I was starting to feel burnt out.
And I’m like, oh, no, because that was the one thing he said, if we’re going to invest in this, you better do it. I said, I would, but maybe I can’t. I started to look at what else can I do at the time I was working with a fabulous company, it was it was I just loved the company. And we worked with families that had adolescents or young adults that were really struggling. What was beautiful about the work that we did is we worked with the entire family system.
There would be a clinician that would work with parents, there’d be a clinician that would work with the young person. And they would work in a way where they would go out, they would do activities, they really focused on rapport relationship building, there was a strong Buddhist spiritual orientation within the company. It felt quite aligned on many levels.
But I think as a new therapist, and also some of the policies of how we had things set up at the time, there was a lot of emergency situations, a lot of on call, like, we were pretty much available 24/7 to the families to support them, because there was some really high risk situations going on. And, and I think that I was also as a fairly new clinician, it was difficult for me to understand how to navigate all of that.
Often with new clinicians, you get thrown in the deep end, and have to sink or swim. I started to think, well, I can’t do this job.
And then what happened is that the company leadership, invested money in a way that was not wise. And they basically lost it in a project. And so they decided to leave the company. And they thought that we would just go bankrupt when they left the company. We had about 100 families that were working with the time several teams working with them. And there were three of us. Clinicians, one of them, one was one of the original founders and two other clinicians. We were like, what do we do with these people? Like we can’t just say sorry, she’s closing our doors.
We decided to take over the leadership of this company. And so for me, I thought, well, maybe that is going to be a change. But then taking on the leadership of a company, this was not very easy either. So then I’m doing more of supervision. But also I took on the operations and also the public speaking, which was like the PR for the company to try and really build business because I was the one that was kind of like, Tag you’re it. It brought up so much anxiety inside of me because I was very insecure and very self conscious. My inner critic would just go crazy. I would be nervous.
Before doing a talk I would be nervous. During the talk I would be dissociated, and then afterwards where you would hope there would be some reprieve from that. It was just self judgment, self criticism, shame. It was awful. So I got into this really negative spiral with that. I’m like, can I even do this?
So I started looking at what else can I do? And that’s where I came across Michael Neill’s Super Coach Academy at the time in 2011, which was not a Three Principles training. But I met George and Linda one of the weekends there.
I should mention, I had read The Relationship Handbook, George’s book, back in probably 2004, recommended to me by Steve Chandler, my coach at the time. Angus and I were on the outs at that point; we were briefly separated, we didn’t think we were going to be able to make it in our relationship. And it’s not like oh, I read the book and then it worked out but we both read the book at that time and we were both able to come back together and work things out. So I would say it was very instrumental in supporting in that in that process.
But I didn’t understand that there was a deeper spiritual understanding behind it. I’m sure I was impacted by that. It didn’t, I think, really say anything about it in the early edition of the book. Now it does. And so I didn’t know to look like Oh, there’s more. There’s a Sydney Banks.
I grew up, I’d spent my teenage years on Vancouver Island, and I never knew there was a Sydney Banks on Saltspring when I was 30 minutes away.
Meeting George and Linda, at Michael’s training, I understood that oh, there’s something much deeper. And in that first weekend with them, I was I was deeply impacted.
As I was saying, I was dealing with a lot of anxiety at that time. I think also, at that weekend, specifically, we had Angus and I had put an offer on our home, like we’ve never owned a home before we put in an offer. And innocently, I thought, Oh, you put an offer in on a home, it gets accepted, you get the home. But what we didn’t know is that there’s all these little things that can go along the way where this doesn’t meet the criteria for the mortgage. And so because where we live, it’s a very kind of unique setup, there were all kinds of quirky things that the bank was really not happy with. It was unusual for them. It wasn’t just cookie cutter.
Every week there was something new, like, can we get this approved by the bank can we get and so I was just in this massive state of overwhelm, because I was taking it so personally, I couldn’t help it. I knew on an intellectual level that my worth is not dependent on buying a home, that if the bank says no, you can’t have this home, or where you can have the money, that it would be fine. It’s not like we weren’t okay.
But it was really, on some level touching this, this place inside of me a feeling completely unworthy, and not good enough. I talked to George on one of the breaks about this situation, and he was talking to me, and I could really get from him that it wasn’t a big deal, not out of a lack of compassion. But for him, it really was not a big deal when I was going through. And he said something like, oh, just you know, you’re stuck on one channel of the TV. I’m paraphrasing, I’m sure he said it much more eloquently. But something along the lines of you’re stuck on one channel of the TV. Don’t worry, the channel is going to shift, it will shift naturally, you don’t need to worry about it.
And I’m like, but I’m not sleeping. I’ve never not slept and I’m waking up with anxiety, which channels by itself. So it was a real interesting paradox, because I wasn’t understanding what was being said to me. But after that weekend, I felt so much better. Like on a physiological level on an emotional level, I was impacted in a really beautiful way. And in spiritual circles, they would talk about that as transmission, there’s a transmission that comes from the teacher. And so I mean, that’s how I can explain it. Because in a sense, there’s no intellectual understanding. But there was a transmission that I received, that deeply impacted me.
Again, it was one of the moments just like with the University of Santa Monica, this is the direction I’m going. We had other teachers, different weekends coming but I want to know more about this. And so that’s what had me look into their apprenticeship program. And I ended up doing that program with the Pranskys. And it changed my life. It changed my life in so many ways.
One of the most beautiful ways is that the job that I thought I could no longer do, all of a sudden, I realized that the stress wasn’t coming from my job.
And all of a sudden, I realized, oh, I have this pattern of thinking, these patterns of thought that I identify with, and that’s where the stress comes from.
It wasn’t like that was a new concept to me, I understood that my feelings were related to my thoughts. That was something that I had learned for quite some time, but I had interpreted as that means I then need to change my thoughts. And there’s something wrong with me for having these thoughts. So it was very antithetical to what the Three Principles understanding points to and so it was a real misunderstanding on my part, and what the biggest shift happened to me when I saw that there was nothing wrong with me for having the thinking that I had, or for even identifying with the thinking that I was having. So it wasn’t really not identifying with the thought.
So of course that shifted once I realized But it was not a problem with the thoughts, it was not a problem with identifying with the thoughts. The problem was me making it mean something about me that that was what was going on. And that changed everything because it took the pressure off of me.
I had lived my life under such internal pressure to live up to standards that I made up to improve myself to be better. I’m not saying there’s none of that there. But it has significantly, significantly decreased. And without that same level of internal pressure. Another way you could talk about that there’s just naturally a self-acceptance and a self… It’s not even a self love. It’s the connection with the love. That is who we are, with the depth of feeling of oh, oh, that’s what I’ve been looking for.
I’ve been looking for it through perfectionism. I’ve been looking for it through workaholism, I’ve been working at trying to get there and all of these ways because I was suffering based on that misunderstanding, of feeling unworthy and shameful, not good enough. And yet, as soon as that illusion falls away, this is what I met with an experience of being filled up. There was a very big experience of that, in terms of the shift was quite dramatic. And then I think what unfolded is just an integration of that into day to day life. And then it continued deepening.
I think I’ve heard Bill Pettit talk about the principles as a time release learning. I’ve got that time release capsule that continues to release over time. And so that changed my whole practice.
I went from thinking I couldn’t do my job and needed to change and become a coach to actually falling back in love with being a therapist.
I was quite busy at the time. When I look back at what I was doing at the time, no wonder I was a little anxious. I was on faculty at the University of Santa Monica, I was on a leadership team for the company that was working with families. And I asked to go to three quarters times, so that I could also have my own practice outside of that. So I was seeing people in my practice, and also the lead clinician of the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center in Malibu. But it was, again, I didn’t need to change those things, those things did change. I didn’t keep that pace up.
They didn’t change first, I changed first.
And then my life started to shift in the organic way that it did, but I had it set up that oh, I need to fix something out there so that I have less stress and anxiety in my life. And then all of a sudden, I have this greater sense of spaciousness, because I’m not putting that same pressure on myself and I have exactly the same lineup of things to do. And yet, I’m feeling okay. And I’m actually enjoying what I’m doing. I’m not feeling burnt out as a therapist anymore. I’m actually feeling inspired.
At that point, when I was doing the apprenticeship, I was learning about working with corporations, and like, wow, I can even work with companies doing this, this is amazing. And so over that period of time, it became clear to me that I was going to leave many of these jobs and go out on my own and create my own practice. And the thing that was a little tricky was that I was so certain about that. And because I was so certain about that, I thought it should happen right away, like, Okay, I know, this is what needs to happen. I guess I need to leave. I even gave in my notice to the company that I was working with. And it just they just didn’t accept it. I accepted, except it was like, Okay, I guess that’s not happening now.
And then about 18 months later, we did a great job of getting it back on its feet, we got the company ready to be sold, it was being sold. And my eldest daughter went to high school, and she started struggling. I realized with her needing more of me, I needed to let some things go and it was literally again one of those decisions where I just knew Okay, I need to get my notice and let that go. And this time I did it and not only did they accept it, it was so much better for the company because that meant my salary was not needed to be included in the sale. So it just made everything work so much more smoothly and everybody was happy.
It was a big lesson in the organic unfolding and that my time, my ideas of timing are not always what’s meant to be. But it’s again, that inner peace, recognizing for myself that what I was looking for was always inside. And that as I respected that more connected with it more deeply, things naturally started to evolve in my life. So my work life changed.
My relationship with Angus, at that point, we weren’t on the brink of divorce as we were in 2004. But I had resigned myself to okay, this is good enough, right? This is good enough, I don’t want to leave him I don’t want to be with someone else. But I guess this is what our relationship is going to be.
And then all of a sudden, there’s this reignition in our relationship of love, desire of connection.
Of course, he saw the shift in me. And as he will say, I dragged him to many a workshop and many a therapy session saying you need to do this, or else you know, it’s not going to work. But just seeing that shift in me got him curious about what is it that you’re actually doing because I hadn’t talked about it. I knew that I turned him off of so many things. I’m like, I don’t need to bring him into this. This can be just for me. And he can do whatever he wants.
He saw how I was living life and said what is this? He got curious and wanted to learn more. So then he ended up doing the apprenticeship with the Pranskys and so forth. And as you know, we now work together.
My practice evolved from then going into more of my own private practice doing some more corporate work. And then really getting inspired and offering the soul centered series. I can’t remember exactly when that was, but a few years back before the pandemic, and letting go of a lot of my private practice to look at more training programs. And then the Rewilders community, and training program came out of that. And then the couple’s intensives Angus, and I focus a lot on couples intensives, and I’m doing more and more, one on one intensives, too. So it’s just been this natural evolution that’s happened with my business.
Alexandra: I love that. So much juicy stuff in there. You anticipated my question about how Angus got folded into the whole thing.
That’s really cool that he saw something happening with you, without you having to bring it to him.
Rohini: His internal curiosity. It was not me, saying I don’t even think I talk because it’s so hard to talk about as well with someone. I just didn’t really need to talk about it.
Alexandra: Maybe talk about that a little, a little bit more your relationship with Angus. And maybe your children too, and how things have changed with this understanding?
Rohini: With Angus, because of my sensitivity, through my conditioning to anger, I had a lot of judgment. Because Angus is somebody who wears his heart on his sleeve, you know where he’s at. And if he’s mad, he might say something. Whereas I’m much more internal. And it’s not like either one really is right or wrong, but we’re just very different.
I had a lot of judgment on him over the years, about his expression of anger, because I took it very personally. What would happen is, there would be times where he’d get overwhelmed, and then the overwhelm would come out with an expression of anger. I really believe that he needed to change in order for me to be happier. It was a very arrogant position. I was it was very blind to my arrogance. I just thought it was so crazy to say now and it’s like it was I was right.
I didn’t see my own judgment criticism as a problem. Really, you’re the one with a gigantic change. It wasn’t even it’s not like he had tons of anger. There were times especially when there was a low mood or extra stress, it might not be great. So anyway, when I came back from one of the intensives with the Pranskys and had a really profound, dropping into a deeper space of well being within myself, really, probably the most profound of my life up to that that point where I just knew, without a question of a doubt that I was okay. I just felt the expansion of that.
So I come home, and I’d been gone for a week. Can’t remember exactly how old the kids were at that point. But 10 or 12, maybe 14. Anyway, in that age, so he’s got the kids for a week by himself. I come home, all blissed out. He’s not a happy camper. And it’s not like he was intentionally mad, I don’t even know, I can’t remember what the situation was. But my mood was up here, his mood was not fabulous. And when couples get together, when moods are like that, there can be a clash that happens.
He was angry about something, maybe completely legitimate, I can’t even remember what it was. But he expressed his anger. And for the first time, I think, ever, in our relationship, he acted in that way. And it didn’t hurt. I didn’t even realize that the hurt was coming from inside of me until that point, really, because it just really felt true that he behaves this way and I hurt, therefore the hurt is coming from that behavior must be.
I have this experience where it’s like nothing fazed me. I still felt love for him, I felt compassion for him. And so whatever he said, I’m still looking through the eyes of compassion, I’m still in a really beautiful feeling within myself. And so I don’t respond in the way that I would normally respond, which might be to return with anger, or to cry or get out. I don’t respond in that way. And then he says something else, which is we talk about it now. He’s like, it was definitely way across the line. Again, we don’t remember what it was. But it was something that was probably meant to really bait me. And I still didn’t respond. Because again, it wasn’t like I was doing anything, I genuinely was not feeling hurt.
I wasn’t responding from hurt. I was responding with compassion and empathy. And then he looked at me and it wasn’t computing to him. And then he said, Are you not going to respond, or you’re not going to say anything? I could see his suffering.
Again, it’s not the words, because that could be seen as kind of an arrogant, condescending expression. And that wasn’t coming from that place. I genuinely could see, oh, it’s not personal. I didn’t say all this, but looking back I see, I wasn’t taking it personally, I could really see that he wasn’t himself in that moment. It was a temporary outburst of frustration that what he was happening was nothing to do with me, it wasn’t my fault. And the storm would pass. I knew it would it was not who he is.
I didn’t need to get worked up about it. But when I said that, I can see your suffering. He said, You know, for him, maybe the first time in our relationship, when he’s in that state of suffering, he felt compassion for me. I don’t think I’d ever been compassionate with him. And he was angry. Because I would always take it personally. And so I wasn’t able to feel compassion, because I was taking it personally. And so when I said that, and again, it’s not the words, it was where I was really coming from inside of myself, he felt that compassion.
He said that it was like a mirror was being held up to him. I wasn’t intending to do that, but his own conscience kicked it. So normally, what would happen is I would react to his reaction, he would react to my reaction, and then it would go wherever I go. But in this situation, I wasn’t impacted in a negative way. I’m feeling compassionate towards him, he starts to feel his own conscience and realize what a jerk he’s been. He started to reel it back in himself. Like, whoa, whoa, wait a second here.
That was a real defining moment in our relationship where we could never go back from that. I could never make him responsible for how I felt after that experience. It doesn’t mean that I don’t take things personally here and there. Still, occasionally I will. But I know that I’m doing it. I know that maybe I can’t help doing it, but it’s not really what’s going on. And so that that really shifted our relationship where there was room for both of our humanity, and I hadn’t had room for Angus’s humanity.
I hadn’t had an open heart for when he was suffering in that way. Again, it wasn’t intentional, but my own conditioning would just come in, you could call it a trauma, I just would come in so quickly. And then I would react from that rather than being present. That has grown and deepened over time.
I would say that it’s a similar response with the kids, although I was always much more able to be compassionate with the kids. And he could see that. So that was the other thing that would annoy him is, I was capable. For him, what I will say for a couple of things regarding the kids is, when my, especially my elder daughter, who’s more fiery, when she hit her teen years, and things would spark one of the other things that happened during this time is it with the kids, I would tend to mask. I would put on what I thought the good mother would do, and not be as transparent as honest in certain ways.
And then after [discovering] the Principles and getting deeply impacted, one day, my daughter is not happy with me. I don’t remember the content, but there was a lot coming at me. And again, I’m not advocating for this, I’m not saying this is the right thing, this is part of my growth. But I, I lashed out, and it was painful, because I felt shame. And that’s not how I want to be as a mom.
But I realized that the other way of being frozen, and not really being honest, was not healthy, either. And we were able to repair it afterwards. And it was then a learning journey of how do we be truthful with each other? And how do we show up human to human with each other. And that was not a one time thing. But it helped her realize I am human. And I do have my limits.
But also, where I erred because I didn’t ever want to do that again. I would walk away so that I didn’t do that again. And she said to me at one point, you leave me when I need you the most. I’m like, but I’m leaving you because I don’t want to lose my cool with you. But she says, but I need you. So I thought, Oh, I have to dig deeper, I have to dig deeper so that I don’t take her lashing out when she’s really again, losing her when her nervous system would get dysregulated. And to really again, see that it’s not personal, and how do I not take that personally so that I can show up for her when she needs me.
That was really good learning. And it was really powerful to be asked to do that. And realize the value in that. She wasn’t saying that she was behaving well at the time. But that would be the best that she could do. And knowing what I know about teenage brains, it’s like, yeah, of course, it’s hard to regulate yourself as a teenager. And the fact that she wanted me as her mom to help her even though she was very prickly and speaking at the time, so Okay, well, that’s, that’s a good thing.
So that was a big learning curve. And each child is different. Our younger daughter, it’s a whole other experience with her. She was diagnosed and I think, is the 19 as a young adult with being on the spectrum, that we didn’t really know that, and again, like, wow, how did I notice that? It’s very subtle. But then when you put all of the dots together, you realize that oh, yeah, I can see that now.
There were different sensitivities and different learning curve as to how to connect and support her with navigating that and for someone who was not into labels, I can get dogmatic about my approaches to things and for her to tell me having the diagnosis is really helpful for me, it helps me to understand myself better. And it’s really useful and like, oh, yeah, there it can be helpful. I understand that. So, and as long as it’s not pathologizing the person which she wasn’t experiencing that which was good. And so we just last week, dropped her off at college. So fingers crossed so far, so good.
Alexandra: Could you say a little bit more about that.
Given that this is a paradigm of wellness and health how do you integrate a diagnosis like that with someone?
Rohini: The DSM really is about helping people understand and communicate about things. So it it’s a language that allows you to speak in a shorthand, basically. So it’s descriptive. It’s not prescriptive. For her to realize that she wasn’t the only person feeling some of the things that she was feeling was actually Oh, this is my brain processes things in this way. Oh, this is why I’m overstimulated by certain situations, or like, my nervous system doesn’t like that.
Or, she would stuff a lot with the ruminating thoughts, OCD thinking, and just see oh, this fits into this experience that many other people have, and I’m not alone in it. And yes, it does mean that I might want to do things differently and make some accommodations, but it doesn’t mean anything about my value, who I am.
It’s much more of a support to help her advocate from herself. In a sense, it’s funny to say, because it’s all about neurodiversity, but normalize herself within that continuum. So and helpful, even for me to read some of the literature to understand more of her internal experience better than I did previously.
Alexandra: Oh, fascinating.
So the diagnosis doesn’t mean that that she’s broken in any given way. It’s a descriptor.
Rohini: Yeah. And what was beautiful about the testing is the psychologist was really clear that these are gifts. There’s incredible gifts that come with this. There’s areas that are challenging, that it’s helpful to understand so that you can look to how to better take care of yourself rather than judging yourself because they’re challenging, or try to fix it in a way where it’s not helpful, but just to accept, and work around areas and then really lean into your strengths and gifts. Because there’s so many.
Alexandra: I love that. That’s so great.
You touched on dealing with Angus’s anger, and how that affected you. Before the principles and after I have a similar reaction, when I’m in relationships, anger really freaks me out. And I’m very internal as well. I don’t I don’t express my anger, I tend to walk away and process it and that kind of thing.
So I’m really curious about this idea of the two separate realities that we live in. And it just struck me the other day that we’re all walking around, I almost pictured it like we all have a goldfish bowl on our head. And that’s the world we live in. It’s astounding that any of us can get along at any given time given that what we’re experiencing is all here in the goldfish bowl.
I wondered if we could explore a little bit when we’re in these separate realities, what it’s like to relate to somebody else in a healthy way. In a spousal relationship, let’s say.
Rohini: There’s something emerging, we’ll see if it will make sense. But it’s like there’s a continuum. This is what’s kind of occurring to me around this is that there’s our individual, separate reality with all of the details of that. And then the more we drop into what is universal, the more that kind of falls away.
The more our separate reality becomes more rigid, the more fearful we are, the more contracted we are, the more stressed we are. And so I would say that the more we’re able to be in that softening, of the perception of separate realities, because there’s really only one reality, but we have these perceptions of different realities. So the more that we recognize that they look real, but they’re not, and that there is the capacity to drop into a deeper, more universal feeling within ourselves and live day to day in a more flexible reality than a rigid one.
And, you know, thinking about Angus and myself, I didn’t realize I was living in a rigid reality. Like I said, I didn’t realize that my anger came out in the form of arrogance and judgment. It didn’t come out as a firework. But from Angus’s perspective, it was actually worse because it was it was almost like a gas that you couldn’t smell but it was pervading.
It’s not that one is better or worse than the other, both were challenging. When he got rigid, it looked a certain way, when I got rigid, it looked a certain way. And our relationship did not work. When that was happening, or it looked like it would didn’t work.
Now what we can see is – and it doesn’t really get that way that much now – but if it even were, we would understand that’s temporary, that’s when we’re polarized, that’s when we’re really caught up. And this is what we behave like when we’re really freaked out. But thank goodness, we don’t live really freaked out every day. So we have room for that to happen.
We live much more now in a more flexible, open hearted space, where there’s less feeling of separate realities and more of a felt sense of universality, oneness. Like for me, the way that I experience it is through the feeling of an open heart, through the feeling of love, through the feeling of compassion, through the feeling of empathy. That’s what my felt experience is of what I’m pointing to in terms of that universality. And that’s how it shows up.
So if I’m feeling that way, and I’m intentional about feeling I’m not manipulative and feeling that way. But I respect feeling that way. It’s something that is important to me. And it’s something that if there was an issue that was getting in the way of that I would want to address that, whether it’s within myself, whether it’s talking things through with Angus. So it’s like my preference is to live in that state more rather than less. And then this issue is separate realities doesn’t really come up.
Alexandra: Interesting. I really learned a lot from, from what you just said, amazing. Thank you so much. So we’re coming close to the end of our time here.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Rohini: Our website probably is the best place: TheRewilders.org. And right now, we’re not spending time on social media, because we’re taking time to focus on writing a book. I’m always very hesitant to say that, but it feels supportive, but it’s like, is it ever going to appear? Is it going to happen? I don’t know. But we’re going to do our best to see what we can do on that level. So we realized that we needed to focus our energies in that direction.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes to TheRewilders.org so people can go and find you there. And you do you have you have some training and coaching that goes on, you have a membership as well.
Rohini: Well, there’s been some changes. Angus and I are really focusing on writing and our one on one practices. So for him, he does the one on one coaching and the couples intensives. And I do individual coaching packages and the couples work with him.
The membership community is no longer in place, because we decided to put that on pause for now while we’re doing the writing and the training program as well. So those are not happening at this point in time.
Alexandra: I love that you’re navigating this in a way that that feels right for you at the time. That’s great.
Rohini: We realized that to focus on the training, the community and our private practices like that was full and to really carve out extra time, we weren’t able to do that. So we made some choices that are feeling good.
Alexandra: Good. Oh, that’s great. Well, thank you so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Q&A 37 – The courage to look for different answers
Oct 30, 2023
When we explore the inside-out nature of life, especially as it relates to resolving an overeating habit, it can take some courage to be looking in this direction for answers. In this episode, we explore three instances where that courage may be required.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
What I mean by looking for ‘different’ answers
Three instances where courage may be required in this exploration
Personal examples of courage
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 37 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
Today I wanted to talk about something that’s not so much a question, but it is an observation about the courage it takes to look in a different direction for answers. And in our case, of course, it’s specifically about an unwanted habit.
I’ve been mulling this over for a few days, and thought it would be a good thing to explore, It might help us to be a little bit more gentle with ourselves as we’re going on this exploration. So that’s definitely the intention.
So, why do I say courage?
I’m going to be the nerd that talks about the root or the origin of the word courage, and it has to do with heart actually. So the word cor I think, is the Latin spelling of heart. And cour I think is the French word for heart.
Courage really has to do with, it seems to me, pursuing a heartfelt desire or following our hearts.
And, for me, that’s definitely what this exploration of the Inside-Out understanding has been, especially as it relates to overcoming an over eating habit. So that’s why I chose that word courage.
And then when I talk about looking in a different direction, what do I mean by different?
This is why it takes some courage. And that’s because I feel like our culture is not oriented in a way that supports this kind of exploration. Through no one’s fault, that’s the way that we live our lives, and the way our lives appear, is as though they work from the outside in, as though our experiences have an effect on, like chip away at our well-being or our resilience and that kind of thing. And that we have to be in order to be resilient, or well, we have to do that in spite of what’s going on.
When, instead, we look at things from an inside out perspective, we’re always coming from the foundational understanding that we are whole and well and resilient.
Not in spite of life, but innately that those qualities are always there. With no exceptions, every single person has this foundation, this core, the center of themselves, the essence of themselves, which is always well and whole. That spark of light, we could say in each person never goes away, no matter what has gone on in their lives.
But because in a mainstream way, we don’t look at life that way, when we are exploring this understanding and beginning to see how life works from the inside out it can be. So I guess there were three ways that I saw that it can require courage.
The first way is that that approach really flies in the face of how most people believe that life works.
I’ll give you a quick example. I’ve talked before on this show about the condo that I live in being for sale. And I had a neighbor who when this first came up and I told her the news and she kind of almost had a little panic and started to ask me, “Well, what are you going to do and what’s going to happen? And are you going to look for somewhere else to live?”
This conversation happened more than once, it happened two or three times and I kept saying no, I’m just going to let things unfold. I trust that if there’s some action for me to take that that will occur to me, I really trust my inner compass to let me know if there’s something I need to do.
Until I feel a nudge, a guidance, a little idea popped into my head about that, I’m not going to do anything. In the present moment, there’s nothing to be done. Because nothing has happened yet. Yes, the condo is on the open market. But there’s nothing else that’s going on.
I could see that this answer perplexed her a little bit.
And, I tried not to go all woowoo on her and bang her over the head with what I felt was the right direction for me, or the right choice at that moment. But I could see that what I said confused her a little bit. And each time we spoke about it, that confusion was still there.
At the time I realized that made me a little bit uncomfortable, I felt a little bit exposed for sharing the approach that I was taking. I guess that’s what I mean when I say things fly in the face and that’s a very simple example.
I felt a tiny bit of pushback from her not in anything she said, but just in the confusion that I saw in her face. And, of course, when we take on more serious examples, if we had something that had higher stakes, for, let’s say, we were in partnership with somebody, and that person wanted to take action in that specific situation. And I wasn’t feeling like we needed to do that, the stakes would be a little higher. And, we might have to, I don’t know, stand by what felt right at the time, a little more than I did in the example of talking to my neighbor.
But yeah, I thought that that’s one way that we need to show a little bit of courage in exploring life this way.
And then if it came to explaining to somebody else about the approach that we were taking about an unwanted habit, the things we were doing, like not adding more thinking to the mix, allowing our moods and feelings to flow through us without attaching to them, trying to look upstream at the nature of thought rather than downstream, and controlling our behavior or trying to change our behavior that way. That too, could feel a little bit like we’re flying in the face of the general knowledge and consensus about how one would go about changing and overeating habit or losing weight.
Other than with you guys, and with my work and with the podcast, I haven’t had to do too much of that. People just out in the general public haven’t really asked me, it just doesn’t come up. And it’s something that I’m interested to see how I would approach having that conversation with somebody who is completely unaware of the three principles. And again, I wouldn’t bash them over the head with it. But beginning at a very kind of gentle and beginning at a place that’s very simple, I think, and not filled with a lot of three principles lingo, but just maybe describing my experience in a very simple way. That seems like that would be the best approach in that moment.
The second way that it feels like we might need to display some courage when it comes to exploring this inside-out understanding has to do with patience.
This has to do with the way that insight works, and how insight doesn’t happen on demand.
There can be times and I’m going through one right now where we can be looking for insight about something. And insight shows up on its own time. It shows up when it’s ready, it seems to me. And, I’ve maybe talked before about how there might be conditions that we can create that might encourage insight. And I’m not even sure that that’s true.
I’ve had lots of insights when I’ve when my mind has been relatively quiet. But I’ve had lots of insights when it’s been relatively stirred up as well.
So perhaps, looking in this direction is the thing that enables insight that’s not 100% true, either. Because people have insights when they know nothing about the principles and in facts, I think that’s how change always occurs. People may not label it that way. But I genuinely believe that it is always insight that enables us to change.
When we’re wanting to change and looking to make a change in our lives, to how we’re eating, they can require some patience to wait for insight to allow insight to come through, because it doesn’t come through on demand. So that’s the second reason why I think we sometimes have to show courage in this exploration.
And then the third thing that I’ll talk about today is that we show courage when we really accept what’s going on in the moment.
And I mean that in really big ways, and really tiny, small ways as well. So it takes courage to accept our feelings in the moment to accept our thinking when it’s super stirred up and we’re having a real thought storm, accepting that and seeing it for what it is and not fighting it, or trying to change it by adding a whole bunch more thinking on top of what’s already there, allowing whatever’s there to happen to just be the way it is whether that’s something we’re feeling something we’re thinking, something that’s going on with somebody else.
There’s a lot of patience that goes on there too. But it’s courageous to just accept who we are, what’s happening in the moment and to accept and embrace other people for the same reasons for who they are. And see the light in them, the resilience in them, the resourcefulness, the brilliance in their design as well, even when there’s stuff going on, that we don’t necessarily like in within ourselves or within somebody else.
So those are the three reasons why I think it can take courage to look in this slightly different direction when it comes to resolving an unwanted habit or resolving anything in our lives just exploring the Inside Out nature of life. I’m sure there are others, but those were the ones that occurred to me this morning as I was preparing to record the podcast.
So that’s it for me today. I hope all is well with you and I will see you again next week.
The Practical Power of Love with Rachel Singleton
Oct 26, 2023
Sometimes the most powerful lessons we learn come from the darkest places. It was when Rachel Singleton’s physical health took a dark turn that she was able to see the love and kindness in her body’s design and how it had been trying to speak to her for years.
For over 20 years, Rachel Singleton has worked in the field of wellbeing. She trained initially in homeopathy, energy healing and flower essences – profound but gentle therapies that work with the innate wellbeing of the body and our ‘vital force’ to help restore flow in the body-being.
Now, Rachel is a Three Principles coach and teacher. It is her joy to work with individuals and groups, to explore and deepen into the innate wisdom that sits in the centre of our being, and live a life more luminous from here.
You can find Rachel Singleton at RachelSingleton.com and on Instagram @rachel.a.singleton.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Reaching rock bottom with physical health
Exploring what health actually is
Giving ourselves permission to look in a beautiful direction
Seeing the wisdom in physical symptoms
The body as the feedback system when we step out of love
On the courage it takes to listen to our wise selves
How the messages from our bodies and lives get louder if we don’t listen
How unreliable, insecure thinking never comes with a good feeling
Alexandra: It’s lovely to have you here and to meet you, Rachel. So why don’t we start at the beginning?
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found the Three Principles.
Rachel: I’m a transformative wellbeing coach, and an artist. And I’ve been working in the field of wellbeing for about 25 years now.
My journey has taken a few wiggles. I started out as a homeopath. Well, I started as an English teacher got very unwell very quickly, found homeopathy amazing, started to learn about it, and then dived into this whole world of natural ways of helping and supporting the body. And in the midst of that, I stumbled across something called flower remedies.
Most people know the flower Rescue Remedy as one of those flower remedies. And I was really amazed that flowers could be medicine, but it made sense. And so I spent the next 20 years learning about exploring, listening to the flowers, and had some amazing and mystical experiences that seemed to guide my path. I was learning with people from all over the world and branching out into plant spirit medicine and shamanism and all sorts of interesting things. And at the same time, seeing clients, so I kind of feel like I was listening to the people who were coming to me, and being trained by them in terms of what they needed. And listening to plants and nature and hearing what was on offer in our natural world.
There was also another journey going on, which was that for 20 years, I was very unwell for that whole 20 years, I was unwell and was in chronic pain. And that was every day. I was desperately searching, really desperately searching. I know a little of your journey from listening to your podcast. And many of the people you’ve interviewed so many of us have had such a similar experience of like trying everything.
Nevertheless 20 years in to that journey, I ended up in hospital, my body was rejecting any food that was coming in. I’d had severe IBS for years, but then that started to get kind of I guess, eating to the tissues more there was just so much inflammation going on, that it started to become much more serious. And suddenly my body couldn’t hold food in, I was losing weight rapidly. And I had this surreal kind of I think it was about 36 hours in hospital, I couldn’t take him on that and discharge myself afterwards. I was put in a ward where most of the people there were probably 50 or 60 years older than me. And I was nothing that they were giving me to eat, could I eat and none of the tests they were doing were relevant to what was going on. They were testing my lungs when it was my digestive tract.
The whole place well was very shouty and noisy and clinical and cold. That’s nothing against hospitals, hospitals are amazing places. But that at that time, in my experience in my world at that time, it wasn’t where I needed to be. And it felt the antithesis of healing.
And I’d had this question for most of my life up until that point, what is healthy?
What is happening and what did that look like? And it just really struck me they don’t look like this. And so I started to just quietly reflect on or what does it look like? What does it feel like? And I thought that too what the plants had been whispering to me for 20 years and what my own connection to spirit had been whispering to me for 20 years and it just felt softer and kinder and more gentle.
I saw that I’d been looking outside, endlessly, endlessly looking outside thinking that someone else had the answer or some therapy had the answer. Beautiful, gorgeous therapies, wise, intelligent systems of medicine, but for some reason they weren’t breaking through, and they weren’t touching what was going on in me.
I think I paused in that hospital bed in that night there to think well, why I just really wondered why. And, and I started to get an inkling that I needed to listen to something inside me that had been trying to speak to me for a very, very long time. I kind of came out of there and began to turn in that direction.
Within three weeks, my symptoms when and that, to go from that pain to was just, how is this possible? How did I not know that all I needed to do was to listen to my own wisdom, listen to my own inner innate kindness. And it was not long after that, that I I’d heard of the Three Principles. I knew a little bit about it. But it had not registered with me and not kind of landed with me at that point.
Not long after that, I circled back to it again, or it circled back to me. However, these things work. And, and it was like, everything lined up, everything suddenly made sense. It’s the way that it shows us how things work, they just cleared up. So much of the confusion, so much of the gray areas, I could see how I had had so many pieces of the puzzle. But it was like something about the Three Principles understanding brought those pieces together in a really comprehensive way.
And that’s about it’s probably about five years ago, now that I properly started to take notice of the Three Principles, but that that journey of healing has been going on for maybe eight years now. And each year I get to experience more well-being. It’s like this being symptom free happened quite quickly. But then I’d had a body that had been mal-absorbing food for 20 years, that was very weak, that needed building and strengthening and regrow.
Just two weeks ago, I was in Scotland, and cycled 300 kilometers in that week. I’ve never done anything like that from cycled every day, I was just getting up in the morning feeling ready to go again and thinking who is this woman? And how did this happen?
I think the Three Principles has been this deep confirmation that what was happening in my body was actually the natural way of things. It wasn’t a fluke, it wasn’t just a lucky thing that I broke through my symptoms, there was actually something very real and understandable going on here. And I wasn’t going to lose that health, that health can continue to grow and flourish.
But it’s not just been about health. It’s been about feeling that I have permission to look in a beautiful direction. I have permission to notice and reach into and lean into beautiful feelings and wise thoughts and good sense and that I’ve actually been dismissing so much of that before that I’ve been so focused on what’s wrong and I wasn’t looking at what’s right. And the three P’s keeps inviting me to look at what’s right. And that journey. Oh goodness, that journey is just so delicious.
Alexandra: To follow up on that, do you see any wisdom in the physical symptoms that you were experiencing?
Rachel: Yeah. At the time, I was banging my head against the wall trying to understand that I got that they meant something. I remember reading these books about if you have this symptom, it means that and if you have this going on, it means this and that wasn’t really helpful for me.
I think now, largely, I would say that the symptom is my body through the means that it can communicate, communicating with me and showing that there’s some distress or some unease going on in the system. And what that means to me, every single time I haven’t found an exception is that I have stepped out of love.
The distress of that, of moving away from what is our essential nature, the body is the feedback system. It’s this beautiful, loyal feedback system, which immediately, lets us know that, hey, this doesn’t feel good. This isn’t how you want to be, this isn’t how you want to see things. This isn’t real, this isn’t true to you, in your essence.
We’re just letting you know that by creating a bit of friction here, by showing up in whatever way the body has available, whether it’s through symptoms, whether it’s through emotion, whether it’s through the mental state that we go into, there’s all these kinds of ways that the body flags up, there’s a distress going on, there’s a discord going on here.
And really I mean, we, I think we all in the Three Ps, community quote Bill Pettit when he talks about love letters from the body, but they are love letters. And I think to me, more recently, I’ve come to see that they’re not, maybe so much just love letters from the body, but from spirit. That it’s a really deep invitation to come back into accord with our spiritual essence, which is love.
Alexandra: And you had, you said, lots of really good experiences when you were exploring nature and the flower remedies and that kind of thing.
What place do flower remedies play in your life now?
Rachel: The reason I stepped away from working with any remedy based modality was because my understanding of them was that the flowers were telling me this, I guess, as I was in communication with them and making essences from them over the years, I always felt like there was a conversation.
So when I talk about the plant speaking to me, I’m not do.ally it’s just my sense from them was that when we’re not seeing our own capacity to flower and blossom, they act as a reminder. So where we see ourselves as weak or faulty or not capable in some way, we can take an essence to strengthen that part of us we’re not seeing to kind of whisper to it, give it a bouquet of flowers, bring it back into our awareness.
That feels like not a corrective medicine but an enhancement, an amplifying of our essence. And what I found time and time again, which is just human nature, and was just because of, again, how therapy is often set up people were coming saying, I’ve got this going on and feeling this can you give me a remedy to take it away? I felt like it was very hard to not treat it that way, because of the whole way that it’s all set up.
I started to experience how much that was bringing my energy down, trying to work in a way that didn’t feel authentic anymore when I was seeing something else. And so I stopped. And by that time, I was already starting to coach in the Three Principles.
At this point, I don’t offer essences and I don’t use them for treatment. But what I do is, I am also an artist, a painter, I put essences in my water when I’m painting and I paint the essences into the picture so that those pictures can go on people’s walls, and that lovely energy is just sitting there in their room, invoking their beauty. That’s my dream.
They feel like a really precious part of my life and my development, and they feel like they’ve been my teachers, and they’re not going anywhere in terms of my life. They’re staying there. But in terms of what they’re doing in the world, it feels like through me, and through the way that I’m teaching, they’re kind of coming out in a different way.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s fascinating about the way that you paint. Now. That’s really, really cool. I love hearing that.
Shifting gears slightly; on your website, I was reviewing the other day, and I noticed that you often mention this innate knowing and you use the word sovereignty, about our relationship with ourselves.
Could you talk about sovereignty a little bit? And why that’s important to you.
Rachel: Yes. Just recapping on that journey that I was just talking about, I guess the thing that started to lead me back into the experience of wellbeing was realizing that I’d been outsourcing the authority for that in the world, and really, deeply had been denying that I had anything to do with that, or could in any way, know anything about myself that might be helpful or useful.
It astonishes me now how utterly I disregarded my own knowing and began to see that as I was moving out of it, particularly in that three week period, where my symptoms were falling away, I was starting to really clearly see when just the gentleness of our own innate well-being is telling us. Are you a bit tired now? Or are you a bit cold now this doesn’t feel comfortable.
I was watching myself just carry on regardless. And then it would be like something out of a cartoon and screeched to a halt, turn around and look back and go, Wow, I just totally ignored that. I am in the process of completely walking away from, ignoring, pushing away my well-being. And why would I? Why would I do that? And what happens if I don’t? What happens if I’m not dismissing me? What happens if that and I didn’t put it in these terms at that time, but now I see that as my well of being.
One of the things that I find myself working with in people over and over is that dismissal of the self’s wisdom, or they’re just not quite recognizing what it is, or maybe thinking it’s something else, maybe thinking it’s like this bolt of lightning that comes through in a god voice. And that’s what it’s going to be like some amazing insight.
What I was finding was it’s really intimate, really, every day. It’s in our own voice, and it’s in our own head. And that that is extraordinary. It’s extraordinary how ordinary that is. And we have got that automatically happening in us all the time. Should we choose the rest.
So, sovereignty, I guess, to me means listening to that. And letting that be our guide and seeing what happens. And let’s be clear, that’s not just listening to every voice that’s going on inside because that would be mayhem. We all try and do that. And we’ve been there before work.
What are we listening for? We’re listening for that which is kind, which is loving, which is good sense, which is inclusive of us in our world, which puts us first which we may not be comfortable with. But we have to get used to it.
Alexandra: You said there that the wisdom puts us first that was, I felt a shift in myself when you said that. And the example I can think of is every once in a while, in the middle of a weekday, I’ll be a little bit tired. And it feels like wisdom often says to me, have a nap. Just lie down for 45 minutes.
Right away, my brain doesn’t like that idea at all. And often it goes on for five or 10 minutes, I’ll have this little battle. And then finally, I’ll realize that that wisdom is so important, and I will eventually lie down.
It’s ridiculous how often that battle has to go on. And how I have to convince myself to listen to that wise part of me that is putting me first.
Rachel: That’s the perfect example. Really correlates for me with so many of those kind of everyday examples that I think we all experience. And I know I was really consistently trained by the zeitgeist that we’re in that you don’t put yourself first, you just don’t. It’s like religion tells us not to, school that does not to our parents tell us not to our culture tells us not to. And to start to peer under the hood of that and say is that true? That takes courage.
I often see with clients, they’ll come at a time when they’re at this make or break point, which is like, am I going to start to really choose myself am I going to really start to understand that I cannot be a loving force in this world if I’m not in the field of that love myself. If I myself am not actually listening to that, then I have no foundation.
To start to turn oneself over to love is such a radical, radical choice. I know that when I started to do that, and started to listen to the voice that wasn’t criticizing me, that wasn’t judging me, that wasn’t tearing me to shreds, highly effectively, and with plenty of evidence to back it up when I started to just begin to see through that and begin to consider the possibility that that was not real and was not true. And that there was something else that were seeking to be heard in me. I felt so irresponsible. I felt so like I was just luxuriating in this. You know lala land I was.
I just thought oh my god, this is nice. I mustn’t tell anyone about this. I was ashamed to listen to love. And that’s something I hear in people over and over. And that saddens me. That’s a rare old state for us all to be. And when we really look at it, it doesn’t make sense. It does not make sense. How did we get here? And this is why I constantly feel it takes courage to turn back towards and give oneself back to
Alexandra: So true. How did we get here? That’s such a such a good question.
If someone that’s listening doesn’t feel like they have a sense of that voice of love within them, what could you share that might help point them in that direction?
Rachel: I think it’s the little examples. I think your example of the tussle inside when do I take a nap or not? That’s a great one. For me, the big breakthrough was when I was standing at my desk, I’d been working for a couple of hours, and a little voice inside me said you’re cold, you’re hungry, it’s time to go and take a break. And I just carried on through, and then went, oh, oh, what am I just doing here?
And then I suddenly saw, I do that 100 times a day. I’m constantly doing that. How did I ever think I could be well, if I’m constantly ignoring that gentle, good advice that I know is real and true in myself that says, look after yourself? So I would say just listen for that.
Listen for your good sense, coming in and looking out for you. And watch what you do with it, without judgment, just watch what you do with it. And notice, if you tend to brush that under the carpet and think I can’t, I’m too busy. There’s other things that are more important. And all the reasons that we put in the way and bit by bit, softly, a little bit here, a little bit there, you can just take a gamble and start listening and start heating it. You don’t have to turn your whole world over all at once just start to become aware of the possibility that there is something in you that’s got your back.
Alexandra: Yes, being aware that there’s even that possibility feels so important and like such a big first step.
Rachel: It’s 100%. There’s nobody for whom that isn’t there. There’s nobody who is broken. Who doesn’t have that. So you may have forgotten how to listen for it, and recognize it. But that will quickly come back the moment you start looking in that direction, because it’s waiting to be seen.
Alexandra: I loved what you said about courage. That it takes a little bit of courage to, to listen to that. We’re so used to, it seems to me, having our intellectual minds override that impulse.
Going back to my nap example it’s a tiny bit of courage, but it that willingness to step outside what my intellectual mind is trying to instruct me to do. “This is for the best.” I’m glad you pointed that out. Yes, it’s so compelling and right.
Rachel: Yes, it sounds like that’s the responsible thing to listen to, that noise. It’s backed up by everybody else, and what they would say. We really should be doing that. And yet, something inside you is saying, “Go and take a nap.” That is deeply responsive to inclusive of and caring of you.
That is an amazing thing to start to explore. Because the human intellect can only take us so far. But that knowing, that kind regenerative giving wisdom, oh my god, where can that take us?
Alexandra: Exactly. On this subject, you have a program available via your website called The Journey to Love and I’m sure it’s connected to everything we’ve touched on so far.
Could you maybe tell us a little bit more about that?
Rachel: This is a coaching package. I offer more normal coaching packages where people can just come in with whatever’s going on. But what I found over time is that there are certain people who are coming in and because invariably every conversation seems to end up being about kindness and love and the mystical power of that and the practical power of that. There are those who were wanting to naturally wanting to explore that further.
Some of my longer term clients knew that I’d been, I call it kind of apprenticing myself to love just really wanting to listen, and let love be in the driving seat. And I was wanting to share that at a deeper level. So there’s this marrying of need in people who’ve been working with me for a while, and my own wish to really work with others in that realm of Okay, so what if we say that it’s all love?
What if it’s all love, that there is nothing coming our way that isn’t there, that there’s nothing happening within our being that isn’t there. And that we come from that premise. And we look through those eyes, and we see what happens. And we go on that journey together. So it’s not a program, it’s just a six months of one to one coaching. And the program, if there is one is that we are aligning to love and we’re listening for love. And we’re deepening that person’s ability to recognize it and see the love at play in themselves and in their life. And to wrest back into the arms of that.
So it feels as it would very close to my heart, and a very, very joyful, but powerful thing to go on. And, and it’s like it isn’t. It isn’t all just roses and, and beauty, it’s like there is something uncompromising about it as well. But if we’re saying that it’s all love, then we’re saying that we can’t be a victim, we’re saying that we can’t be blaming other people or blaming ourselves or being critical. We’re saying that actually that those things don’t make sense.
We’re really exploring the possibility of moving out to very old habits of ways of seeing and be and letting go of the security / insecurity of the familiar.
Alexandra: I love that you pointed that out that it’s not all roses and butterflies. That there’s this slightly, almost, I want to say confrontational, but I don’t know if that’s quite the right word. But it is it’s such a different way to look at the world and look at ourselves.
Speaking from my own personal experience, exploring this understanding, once we open that door it can raise a lot of questions and requires some reflection and exploration.
Rachel: Definitely. And some celebrating and witnessing and sharing and all of that as well just that wonderment of what happens when we if there’s, I don’t know if this stages to, from, say, health to the well of being, like ill health to the well-being, then if we’re saying that the symptoms arise as expressions of a disconnect between us and love. And then, if we don’t hear them, they intensify and solidify and become more vocal in our being and more dramatic in their expression, and more able to claim our attention.
And then, if there’s a transition that comes where we start to go, Okay, I really need to pay attention here, there’s something not right and, and maybe we have a little bit of a detail where we just try and get rid of all that and stop the expression of that and suppress that. But then it pops up in some other ways. So we still have to listen, ultimately.
And then we start to see, okay, these are signs of distress, and how can I care for myself and how can I listen and how can I understand when I’m in distress, and really begin to be more see that as a call to the gentle and loving in that. I kind of feel like over the last few years, I was really learning to recognize in myself and others, okay, this is just distress, this is you being vulnerable at this moment. So let’s do as you would with a small child or an animal that’s in distress, we come in, we make the place safe.
We tend when we listen, we help, how about we do that with ourselves? I think that what I started to see just recently is that then there’s another development on from that, that if I’m training myself to recognize distress, I don’t want to train myself too well in that so that I only listen to from distress. I want to start to transition into listening to well, what if it never had to come through as a symptom? What if we complete the circle? What if I heard it before it was underneath? What if I heard it, as it came to was just clear knowing?
Maybe that comes through in lovely ways, like dreams and visions and insights, and knowing and nudges and synchronicities? And all of that juicy stuff? And is it possible to hang out there? More and more? And what would that be like? So that when my knowing, comes up with something, and I hear that I’m not then immediately going into questioning and fretting and worrying and debating that. I’m just saying, okay, got it. And I go, I take the knowing and I move, I take the knowing and I move, and I am responsive.
I think that’s what the journey of love is ultimately about is that how do we get really tuned into the loving message that’s coming through when it’s in a loving form, and lighter form a more palatable form than symptoms and distress?
Alexandra: Such a good question.
I want to ask what people see, as they begin to explore that, that’s probably a hard thing for you to pinpoint, it’s probably different for everyone.
Rachel: I think people begin to see themselves in our eyes, they start to really get into relationship with their own beautiful essence. And I think what I see is them putting themselves down less, judging things in the wild less, being less conflicted, being less in conflict with others, being lighter, being freer, having a sense of permission.
With one of my clients, we joke about insane permissiveness in the sense of the more you’re listening to love, the more the permission to just be who on what you are. The freedom to trust what you are. And let yourself be let yourself express not have to be constantly guarding worrying about controlling, limiting that out of fear, but just to trust and be and watch yourself, unfold the situation unfold. Let it let it come let it do its thing. So a sense of lightness and playfulness and exploration. Joy.
Alexandra: I really got a sense there as you were speaking about returning to who we really are, that’s what it felt like as you were speaking, that there’s a truth there about our true nature. And it’s kind of slipping away now. The more I talk about it, but yeah, that it’s always there.
It’s not something we have to create or make up. It’s coming through as if you’re washing a dirty window.
Rachel: Sydney Banks talked about that so much. The Missing Link is all about that he was constantly saying it’s not in me, it’s not in my words, it’s in you or within. Feel for the beauty, the beautiful feeling and just it’ll guide you just this lovely. Directing us back to something that’s right here in the very core of who we are and what we
Alexandra: Yes, that just gets covered up innocently. I was going to touch on your podcast. So let’s just quickly mention that before we wrap up. You have a podcast called The Beautiful Feeling. And you had 12 guests.
Is there anything you can point to that you learned while hosting that?
Rachel: In a nutshell, and the truth that’s like really anchored in my essence or another person’s essence, always come through with a beautiful feeling with a good feeling. And that unreliable, habitual, insecure thinking, never does, never, ever does. At the very simplest level, that is hugely practical information.
For me in my daily life that guides me all the time. So if I hear my voice in my head coming up with all manner of crazy stuff, that’s making me feel uneasy, distressed, anxious, then at some point, and it’s getting quicker and quicker now, I just suddenly realize, Oh, this isn’t, this isn’t a good feeling. So I don’t need to indulge that thinking, I’m going to let that clear out. Wait and see what else comes through. Because this isn’t what truth feels like. And this isn’t what Love feels like. I’m not really that interested and in any more in not listening to. So I think over those 12 conversations with those 12 amazing people that really clarified for me.
Alexandra: I love that. That’s beautiful. Thank you.
As we wrap up, is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on today?
Rachel: I think we’ve about covered it.
Alexandra: I think so too.
Tell us where we can find out more about you and your work.
Rachel: So probably the best place is my website. And that’s RachelSingleton.com. That’s my coaching website. So that gives people the chance to kind of hear some of the podcast episodes or look at articles, my blogs and just kind of go in there and find out more. There’s a lot that I’ve written and shared on there about some of the things that we’ve touched on today.
I’m also on Instagram as Rachel dot A dot Singleton. And then if you’re interested in the art side of things, then it’s Rachel singleton.com. And again, I’m on Instagram as Rachel Singleton. So any of those and please feel free to reach out, get in touch if there’s any questions from today.
Alexandra: Great, lovely. Thank you so much for being here with me, Rachel. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.
Q&A 36 – The Secret Language of Cravings book excerpt
Oct 23, 2023
Today’s episode is an excerpt from my book, The Secret Language of Cravings.
We suffer with an overeating habit when we misunderstand the message our cravings are trying to give us. In this book, author Alexandra Amor explores how to understand what cravings and the drive to overeat are telling us and therefore how to resolve an overeating habit.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How our thinking can be awfully bossy
When we’re unaware that thinking is not the boss of us it can run the show
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 36 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor
I’m here today with something slightly different. I’ve been working on recording the audiobook today for the book that I have coming out. So I wanted to give you a little bit more information about that. And what you’re going to hear today is also an excerpt from the book.
For those of you watching on YouTube, you can probably see there behind me, I’ve got my little recording booth set up. It’s a Friday afternoon in October 2023 and my shoulders are sore from standing and then bending over my computer and recording the audiobook chapters. But it’s been fun.
I always love recording audiobooks, because it adds, I don’t know, there’s something about me narrating my own books in my own voice, that I feel like I can bring the words alive, they come to life in the same way that I hear them when I’m writing the book. I hope that for audiobook listeners that comes through as well. The words aren’t just black and white on the page, you can hear the emotion in my voice or the excitement or the emphasis or whatever it is. So I’m enjoying that. And that will continue for the next few days.
So I’m going to attach an excerpt from the book, it’s going to be chapter nine. And oh, and I guess I should tell you the title of the book.
The book is called The Secret Language of Cravings.
And the subtitle is really long. Hang on, let me go and get that for you. Uncover the intelligence behind food cravings and end your battle with overeating forever.
That title, The Secret Language of Cravings, came to me as I was working on this a few months ago, thinking about what it is that we really struggle with when it comes to any kind of overeating habit or any kind of unwanted habit? And what do we misunderstand?
What is the key issue that we misunderstand about what’s going on when we have an unwanted habit?
And what I narrowed it down to for me at that moment, was that we experience these feelings, these cravings – I call it the drive to overeat – and we think that that’s a problem, as I talk about so often on this podcast. We try to manage that feeling and control it and get rid of it and make it go away.
When really what it’s trying to do is help us. It’s trying to give us information about the state of our thinking. About the way that our thinking can get really stirred up and insecure. So again, as I talk about so often on this podcast, that feeling of craving isn’t a problem. It’s not something that’s broken about us. It’s something that’s trying to deliver a message.
So that’s where the title came from. I’ll give you an address if you want to go and see the cover of the book, which I’m really excited about and happy about. So if you go to AlexandraAmor.com/secretlanguage, all one word, you’ll be able to see the cover there and a description of the book as well. If that interests you.
It will be available in ebook, paperback, hardback, large print and audiobook coming up pretty quickly. I don’t have an exact date yet, but probably early November 2023. And so yeah, as I say, now I’m working on the audiobook. And then there’s a bunch of other stuff that has to happen before it gets published. But I’m thinking before the middle of November 2023, the book will be released.
I’ll also put an image of the cover in the show notes for this episode. So you can always find those at unbrokenpodcast.com and then click on Q&A number 36 and you’ll be able to see the cover there as well.
So that’s it for me. For those of you watching on YouTube, normally you would continue to see my face as I talked about the podcast, but today that’s not going to be the case. I’m just going to put a still image there and attach the recording of chapter number nine.
I hope you are doing well and that you enjoy this excerpt from my upcoming book, The Secret Language of Cravings.
Have a great week and I’ll talk to you next Monday. Bye.
Excerpt from The Secret Language of Cravings: Chapter 9
When you were a child, did you use the expression ‘You’re not the boss of me’? I did. It was mostly aimed at other kids in the playground or schoolyard, letting them know I wanted to think and act independently.
There is a force, a weather system, within you that can seem as though it’s the boss of you, but it isn’t.
That force is your thinking. Your thoughts.
We tend to move through life obeying our thinking, without even realizing we are doing so. We all have an incessantly chattering, opinionated, sometimes pushy voice within us that tries to run the show—and often succeeds. The voice in our head that sounds like us can be helpful: “I think I’ll turn left at this corner,” or “Don’t bang your face on that open cupboard door.” It can be neutral: “I think I’ll make some tea,” or “My flowers need to be watered.” And it can also be critical and judgmental, either about you or others: “Gee, that guy has weird hair,” or “Why did I turn left at that corner? That was dumb.”
As adults, we live with this running dialogue nearly all the time. It can vary in volume and intensity, but it’s nearly always there, like the slightly annoying but also oddly comforting narrator of a nature documentary. Let’s call that narrator Nancy. Very often, the comments Narrator Nancy makes are about the circumstances in our lives and whether she approves of them or not. She says things along the lines of, “I should have got that promotion. If I had, my life would be so much better.” Or, “The toe fungus I had when I was eight years old is the reason I can’t wear running shoes.”
Narrator Nancy is very persuasive. We tend to believe what she says, even when she contradicts herself ten minutes later.
What we innocently fail to see is that Nancy is just a part of the documentary that she’s narrating. She’s not the whole story. She’s not the boss, although we sometimes forget this.
Additionally, Nancy can be entirely out of sync with what’s going on in front of our faces. You (or I) could be at a lovely event on a beautiful day consisting of the perfect circumstances. (Picture whatever that is for you: a garden, an outdoor musical event, a Civil War battle re-enactment.) The temperature is perfect. You’re either surrounded by friends or alone (whichever your preference is). Yet Nancy can be narrating an entirely different experience than this.
“That potato salad that Aunt Jenny served yesterday was atrocious. Why doesn’t she ever listen to me about salting the potatoes while they’re cooking? It’s because my sister Mary has always been her favorite. Jenny has never liked me. It started the moment she saw me with that terrible haircut I got when I was six. That hairdresser was clueless, and Mum wasn’t paying attention. Man, I hated those bangs so much. It took me a year to grow them out. Which reminds me, I need to make an appointment for a pedicure soon. Where’s my phone?”
Sure, Nancy is often narrating about what’s going on in front of us, but just as often she’s not. She can go on wild tangents about things that happened years ago. She can also jump to conclusions that aren’t based on anything logical, have fierce imaginary arguments with people (the root causes of which are entirely made up), change her point of view on a subject in the blink of an eye, and create fears that turn out to be entirely unfounded. Oh, that Nancy! What a loon. She has moments when she acts like a barrel full of monkeys doing tequila shots.
And yet, we tend to believe she’s the boss of us, don’t we? We take her at her word about almost anything. Somehow, years ago, without realizing what we were doing, we gave her the keys to the corner office, made her the chairperson of the board, and gave her the unilateral power to make all decisions on our behalf. No wonder she’s drunk with power.
However, there is good news. There’s a reason Nancy can seem so crazed and yet is also so powerful at times: She is not the boss sitting at the head of the table; she is more like the weather outside your window. Weather that is at times calm, at times violent, and everything in between. A powerful force that is constantly shifting and changing.
Take a look outside right now and make a note of what’s happening. For me, it is an extremely pleasant September day as I write this. The sun is shining and it’s about 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) outside. There’s a slight breeze causing the leaves on the trees across the street from me to wave gently. Like I said, extremely pleasant. Fast forward eight hours—or even one hour—from now, though, and we could be in the midst of one of the wild storms that blows in off the Pacific Ocean, bringing with it horizontal rain and wind that buffets and batters everything in its path.
Narrator Nancy, the voice in your head, a.k.a. your thinking, is just like the weather. She is utterly changeable.
In fact, change is the main part of her nature.
“So what?” you might be thinking. “My moods and thoughts change. Big whoop. What does that have to do with cravings and overeating?”
The answer lies in two surprising, yet woefully neglected, aspects of the human condition:
1. Where the weather moves.
2. Where your experience of that weather comes from.
So, let’s talk about these things and why they can help you to peacefully resolve an unwanted overeating habit.
The Secret Language of Cravings: Uncover the Intelligence Behind Cravings And End Your Battle With Overeating Forever
Learn more about The Secret Language of Cravingshere.
Hope and Resilience in Prison with Jacqueline Hollows
Oct 19, 2023
In 2015 Jacqueline Hollows founded Beyond Recovery which brings the understanding of innate health and well-being to incarcerated people. Now, she’s launching a book about her experiences, called Wing of an Angel, so that this understanding can be shared in prisons all over the UK.
A social and digital entrepreneur, author, mentor and professional speaker, Jacqueline Hollows has lived experience of trauma and addiction. She founded Beyond Recovery in 2015 and has impacted hundreds of lives. Jacqueline also trains and mentors facilitators and those who wish to have more peace and success in their lives.
Alexandra: Jacqueline Hollows, welcome to Unbroken.
Jacqueline: Thank you. So nice to be here.
Alexandra: Nice to see you. Great to have you here.
Give us a little bit about your background and how you came across the three principles.
Jacqueline: Okay, so I was in IT customer services for many, many years. And a number of things collided as they do. I realized that I didn’t like it. And, but I did like people. So I retrained, I did live coaching, counseling NLP, EFT, anything with a three-letter acronym.
I came across a paradigm called the three principles or also known as innate health. And I became very interested in that. I actually didn’t like it personally, actually. I hope it’s okay to say this, but I actually thought it was a cult. I was very, very suspicious of it.
But I’d met someone just accidentally, who was in recovery from a heroin addiction for the for the whole of his life. And he’d got three years recovery under his belt when I met him. And he’s one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met. I just hung out with him, I volunteered on his social enterprise. And I met a lot of other people from that background. And I thought they were amazing.
I started to talk to them about this Inside Out nature of life and stuff. And it was having an impact. And it was in the kitchen, I was making a cup of coffee in the kitchen with them. And he used to do home detoxes where a nurse comes in and does the meds. And he would look after people while they’re going through the detox. I would talk to them and then they would get jobs, and they would make up new relationships.
And they decided to write books and, and I’d be thinking, wow, this really works on them. And then, over time, I thought that was so amazing, and so inspiring and determined, I really felt like I came home to my people. And over time, I eventually thought, well, if they’re all amazing, I must be amazing, too.
So that started me really then going, I’ll give this another look and looking in this direction. Actually, that led me to meeting someone who worked in a prison and a substance misuse team, and then delivering our programs in prison and evidence in them and so on. So that’s where I what I’ve been doing for the last eight years.
Alexandra: Wow.
What was it about working in prisons that attracted you?
Jacqueline: You know what, it didn’t? It didn’t, it didn’t it was just that. On one day, I’d been an associate coach for somebody who was running a program in a hotel, a very plush hotel, sort of where I imagined myself to be once I built my coaching practice up and I was like the assistant and I helped her and went around the tables, and I really had a good time. And then the following day, I got this meeting with this guy, this substance misuse manager in the prison, and I was just doing anything at that point I’ll go along and I’ll speak to anybody.
I was in the gatehouse as they call it, of this prison. I felt absolutely petrified my stomach was turning over. It was grubby, and pre COVID. Things have improved a little since COVID. But pre COVID It was stinking grubby, and wasn’t a very nice even at the reception gate. And I thought, I want to work here. I had no idea why.
Then the guy came through and he collected us. And we went through all these gates. And it was scary. And I mean, it’s about a five minute walk from the gatehouse to where we were meeting. And I remember feeling like, what about if I meet a prisoner? What about if someone asked me something, am I allowed to speak, I’m allowed to talk to the guy had had no idea.
I know we’re going to talk about my book later. But one of the reasons why I’ve written my book is because I want other people to know people in prison, they’re just people, or who have happened to done something naughty, sometimes something really bad, and they’re in prison, but they’re still people. All I knew about prison was what I’d seen on the TV, and whatever I’d seen in the media, and so it felt like a very scary place.
But for whatever reason, I just felt like that’s where I was meant to do. And so sometimes people say, oh, I want to work in prison, but I never actually wanted to work, but it just happened.
And that’s another thing is like, things occur to you. Whether you like it or not, and you should just follow those threads. I had this meeting with this guy didn’t go very well. He’s married to a forensic psychologist. So he kept saying, You ever heard of people change? Yeah. And I kept saying, I don’t know, I just, I don’t really know how it works. And he was the lead of the NHS, which is our national health system. So she was there, like these two really important people with all this knowledge and background, and I was I don’t know, I just talked to them.
But something about what I said, I eventually said, it’s not going very well, can we have a break? And we went and made a drink. And then I just started chatting to him about what I’d been seeing with these amazing people in the community. And that I really didn’t understand the gubbins. And he said, “You know what, I think we should give him a go.”
Actually, he said, “This sounds very similar to something I’ve got on my wall.” He had read, Stop Thinking, Start Living by Richard Carlson. Got a sign on his wall, stop thinking start living. And I said, yeah, yeah, absolutely is the same thing. And he said, Oh, he said, Sydney Banks must have got it from him. It was the other way around.
Anyway, so yeah, he got really interested. And he said, Do you know what, we’ll give it a go? And so put together a proposal. And then he said, How much would it be? Well, I hadn’t even thought about price. So I said, Oh, I don’t know, 50 quid. And he snapped my hand up, and he said, Write me a proposal. And afterwards, when I left, I realized I lived 40 Odd miles away. So it’s an 80 miles round trip. I was so keen, and then I had to write a proposal. I wrote a proposal that went to the committee. And then they said, actually, the mental health team like it, the psychologists not so much can you put together a proper business case, including what evidence there is, etc. We have to look after our population, and could you do it for 12 months instead of 12 weeks?
So I ended up writing a business case for a 12 month project didn’t know what a business case was either. And I ended up writing a business case for a 12 month project. I I was friends or I’m friends with Jack Pransky who wrote Somebody Should Have Told Us and I told him about it and he said Jacqueline, do you want to put yourself on the map? And I said, I don’t know what you mean. But yeah, that sounds great. And he said, make it a research project. So I was one of the first people to do research in the innate health arena.
Alexandra: Amazing.
Tell us about the work now. It’s quite a few years later, you started in 2015?
Jacqueline: That’s right. Yeah. I started in 2015. And did several years at that prison, worked in the prison next door, which was for high risk offenders, sex offenders, and so on. And then we went to Nottingham, and the violence reduction unit got hold of us. And so we started working with people with knife crime, and so on. And we were spreading.
Then we were meant to do a presentation to the southwest, and roll out the program to 11 Southwest prisons by now. I had nearly three research papers under my belt. So people were starting to take notice. That was in February 2020. I was meant to have this new presentation, and COVID happened, and so that it literally wiped the business. The prisons closed, people were locked up for 23 hours a day, they’re still in some places locked up for 20 hours a day. It’s not good. And, and they just stopped everybody going in.
I went in for a little while to see the vulnerable clients. But we couldn’t run groups anymore. And when we did, eventually, were able to get in, you could only have three people and you get a lot of drop out in groups in prison. And so well, we were allowed five and out of the five, three would turn up. So it wasn’t really good. And so we pivoted the business.
During COVID, we wrote a curriculum with some partners. And we deliver that curriculum to professionals. We also created a distance learning program. I still write for the Inside Times, which is the prison newspaper here. And then they write and say, Can we have a pack and we have a wonderful team of buddies, who write to the guys and girls and talk to them about a night how often insights and so on in a very light touch.
Actually, we might need some more buddies. So if any of the listeners feel like doing this, then they could should just get in touch. Yeah, so we’re always sort of on the lookout for people who want to communicate, and they get a pack, they write back. And it’s quite amazing what you see in those packs that people having realizations and so on.
We work with an addiction, charity, and deal with gambling related problems and harms. I started a mentoring business. So obviously, I trained a lot of people during my time working in prison, because I always felt like I wanted other people to come on that journey with me. And then everyone kept saying, why don’t you run a mentoring practice? Ah, I don’t really do that. The amount of times I’ve said, I don’t really do that. And then I end up doing it.
I run a mentoring business. So I work with clients, I’m particularly attracted to clients who want to change the world who, who want to do social good, and working hard to reach areas. So I do supervision and I do some training. And I write, and yeah, I just have fun.
Alexandra: Very quickly, before we jump into talking about the book, which is the focus of our conversation today;
I want to ask what sort of changes you see in the prisoners that you work with when you introduce the principles to them?
Jacqueline: One of the visitors that I had sitting group with us when we were working in prison, said to him it seemed like he was in a room of philosophers. He forgot that he was in prison. And when you talk to people about the deeper nature of life, and whether that’s the three principles or other spiritual practices or other philosophical practices, when you look at people, and you see their health, and not their crime or their behavior, something magical happens.
There have been transformations, i.e., people who have left prison and completely changed their lives, and so on. And they’re amazing stories, but I just wanted to touch on these, these just very gentle, beautiful things that happen to people that maybe didn’t transform their lives, but they just changed enough to come out and get a job, go straight come out and be with their families.
We talked to people who are from all ends of the spectrum, and people who have done white collar crime and just got caught. Or, people at the other end of the spectrum who have been in a violence, trauma filled life for forever, and everybody get something. And just thinking about that guy, for instance, the trauma, one, John will call him, he was in in that prison, the whole of his time, he had a lot of trauma, and he was attacked one time, and he’d wake up every night and imagine this person with the knife attacking him. He had scars and all sorts.
He used to get himself into trouble in prison, so that he could be put into the segregation unit. And then he could kick off, and he wouldn’t be able to have all the officers calm, and then he would fight all the officers. And they would fight him and that’s how he felt alive when he was in a fracas like that. And that would help him to feel like awake and alive and the rest of time, he just didn’t want to be alive. And you’re in a group with him, and 15 other hairy, scary man, as I like to say. And he’s there saying, I never imagined I could find love in prison.
The men would talk about love. And they would talk and they would cry. And they would talk about, and you’re not allowed to do that in prison. That’s not a good, it’s not a good look, right. But they were talking about their feelings, and they would talk about that they would have been looking at the sunset. It was just amazing to see regardless to what went on afterwards, what they did afterwards, with their lives.
It’s so important for the listeners to know that that’s in everyone. I’ve sat across from really hardcore sex offenders, pedophiles and seeing that light in there and been amazed myself had judgments myself and been amazed at seeing that light come on, and having a person say, I’m never going to get out of prison, but I can make my life worthwhile in prison by helping other people.
And and then of course, there are lovely people who have come out and there’s many of them, Derrick Mason and Omar and Chris and all of those people that I’ve spent spoken at conferences and so and, and I love them to bits. But I feel like sometimes the normal people get forgotten that. The ones that actually, at the heart of the day, they showed their spiritual essence and it was beautiful.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s so lovely. Thank you for sharing that.
I think that’s such an important point that success can look so different. There’s so many ways that that can look.
Jacqueline: I remember walking around the prison and meeting someone on his forklift and most of the guys used to want to do it again. Going to come back again this and they wanted to do the program’s a lot. And parts of why they were so transformed and so enjoying it is because they felt the unconditional love. And they felt you listening to them?
That’s what they would say they would say, I’ve never been looked at the way that you guys the whole team, not just me, everybody was involved, the way that we all looked at them they’ve never been seen. And just that enough is enough to give people hope, and a glimpse of their own true essence.
I was walking through the grounds and there was someone on a forklift, and I invited him back to group. I said, we’re running another group and he said, You know what, I’m good. I’m good. I’m getting my forklift license. I realize it’s me. I realize I’ve been doing this to myself my whole life. So I don’t need anything else. So there were those people they got it. Got it. And they went on with their lives. And, and they’re just as important.
Alexandra: That’s so great. I’m so pleased to hear that.
Okay. So let’s do a little pivot. Same subject, though. You’ve just launched a Kickstarter about to support the release of your new book, which is called Wing of an Angel.
Tell us about writing the book and what motivated you.
Jacqueline: It is a book of my heart. I never considered myself a writer, there’s another thing on my list of things I thought I’d never do. So I never considered myself a writer. In fact, I thought I was rubbish at writing. I never planned to write a book. Never even wanted to; it wasn’t on my bucket list.
But in prison, the technology’s non-existant basically. And so when I came home, I used to write my notes. I ended up with boxes and boxes of notes, because first of all, I was doing a research project. So I wanted to capture all the essence of what the people have been saying. And second of all, it just relived it for me, so I would write notes. I would draw the pictures of what we put on the board and just for my own pleasure, really, and potentially, to use in the research.
I’ve been very lucky, pre COVID I’ve spoken at many conferences around the world, on this subject, and, and people kept saying, when are you going to write your book? I was like, never. But I have a friend who’s an author, and she said, You really should write your book.
Eventually, there is a great serendipity. I don’t know if you know about the Jewish faith, but in the Jewish faith, there’s a word called Hashkafa. And it means divine intervention. So we tell our hashkafa story, it’s about divine intervention. So this author friend kept saying you should write a book, write a book. Ah, yeah. And yeah, maybe one day and she came to visit us in December 18. And said I am going on a retreat, a writer’s retreat on a barge close by to you. Would you like to come?
It sounded like the worst thing in the world. I was like, There’s no way I am going to be on a barge. We have loads of strangers writing and then you have to read writing that. But of course, what kept happening was writing retreats kept occurring, coming up on Facebook, or in a newsletter. I was saying what on earth is going on? A friend wrote to me and said, This person called Jules Swales, she’s starting writing classes. And I think you’d like her. I don’t know. I’m not I’m not a writer.
So then someone else said to me, oh, have you heard of Jules Swales? And then, I discovered that Jules Swales had done Dicken Bettinger’s Heal the World program. So she was in the 3 principles. And she also had been at a conference where I had spoken and I’d read a letter from one of the men in prison, who is Angel from the book. And she had been at that conference.
So I thought, well, that’s interesting, because she’ll get me. And then also turned out that her ex-partner had been incarcerated. So she knew about being so I was like, Okay universe, I hear you. I’m good. I’m on it. I jumped on her writing class, and we’ve become good friends. And she came along to my home. She was on a visit over from the States, she lives in states, and she came back, and now she lives here. But anyway, she came, and I said, people kept telling me to write a book, and I have these boxes of notes like, is that a book?
She was very kind, and said, turn that into a book. She didn’t tell me what it would be like. This was in January, December 2020. And that’s how long it’s taken me to write the book. Because it was just a box of notes. So then there’s a whole load of stuff to be done, create the story, the arc of the story, learn how to write properly, etc.
Wing of an Angel was written over four years, sometimes not at all, sometimes just, I can’t do it anymore. It’s going in the drawer. It’s had many revisions, it’s had many titles. And eventually, in 2020, the end of 2020. So that’s a couple of years of having a little go at it. I thought it was for a day. And then one of the protagonists said I don’t want to be in it. And I just thought, Okay, well, I have to publish it when I’m dead. Because I can’t take him out. So it went back in the drawer for a few months.
And then I was in a supermarket. And Angel, who is the protagonist in the book, spoke to me and said, You have to tell my story. And it was so loud. I just put my shopping down and went home and wrote a story from when he was five years old. It gives me shivers. I wrote Angel’s story, and then it just kept coming. And then angel would just tell me, oh, I need a chapter there. I need a chapter there. And so on. So I rewrote the thing. I took out everybody. I mentioned other people, but very vaguely. And that was the last revision.
But that just took me a little while. And I do sometimes say when I write on my blog that I’m the 10 Minute author, because I wrote for 10 minutes every day sometimes, and sometimes half an hour. And I mean right. Sometimes you just haven’t got the time to write but you got to keep the practice.
Alexandra: Exactly.
Can you tell us a little bit about the story?
Jacqueline: Yes. So one of the things that Jules Swales persuaded me when she read maybe the second revision, she said, it’s great. It’s a story of the people that you’ve worked with, and working in the prison system. So one of the readers has said, I never knew that went on in prison. So there’s lots of juicy stuff. And being part of a grassroots organization, and the challenges and the ups and downs and the highs and lows.
She said, but the problem is, you’re not in it. And you need to write yourself into this story. So then I wrote my own story, which is a trauma filled background, I’ve lots of trauma I had complex, PTSD, etc. I didn’t really want to do that. But I realized it was important. So it was important for me to tell my story. Because one of the messages of this book is that anybody can do anything. It doesn’t matter what we’ve been through, and I’ve been through it. And it doesn’t matter, I’m a normal person, I’ve been through a lot of stuff.
I’ve had a lot of struggles, I’m a bit crazy, but I can still do anything. And so can anybody else. And those fears that hold us back, they’re not real. They’re just thought, and they’re just things that we keep. We keep their barriers, but they’re not real barriers. I couldn’t spell. I had lots of difficulties with writing, and you just find ways around it all.
I know men who’ve taught themselves to read in prison with a dictionary so like, we can all do anything. And, and so, so I revised it, I put myself into it. So the story is, it follows the arc of the hero’s journey. So, there’s the story of me and how I got to come to this place, this portal of working in prison, the story of Beyond Recovery, which is the social enterprise that I started, and then the story of the boys and girls that I met and, and the transformations that I saw, and then what happened during COVID. And then what’s happening now.
The hero’s journey never ends. Because as we as we finish one arc we get invited into another, another initiation, don’t we? So it is my story, and Angel’s story, but I feel like there’s an angel in everybody. It’s everybody’s story. And I invite the reader to come with me and be part of the movement that we can do anything.
Alexandra: Yes, I love that. And that ties back into what you said earlier about working with the prisoners that in every single one of us there is that spiritual light, that innate health that never ever, ever goes away. That’s tied so beautifully together.
So you’re launching this on Kickstarter. Tell us about that, if people aren’t familiar. When a project is launched on Kickstarter, there are different rewards. That’s what they call them.
You can support the project at different levels. So tell us about those levels for the listeners.
Jacqueline: A lot of people don’t know about Kickstarter, which I didn’t realize, but one of the reasons I’m doing it this way is to try and cover publishing costs, because they’re rather big. The book is going to be launched anyway. But it would be it would be good if we could cover the publishing costs.
I also have a vision of getting the book into every prison library in the UK, because I think the boys would really enjoy it and the girls and so I love to do that and see if that’s possible.
So when you launch a book on Kickstarter, you have different levels of rewards. The paperback for instance, which is available on Kickstarter now isn’t available to the public. So the only way you can get the book right now is through the Kickstarter project. The paperback is 20 pounds so you pay the 20 pounds and if you pay a little bit more to support the Creator, which is me. And the rewards are there’s and you can just pledge just for fun because you think I’m amazing and so that that’d be great.
There’s also an ebook and then the next level is a paperback then the next level is a hardback now, the hardback isn’t going to be for sale anywhere else in the future. The Kickstarter people; that’s what the hardback is for.
I’m going to a place down the road they’re going to print the hardback. This is a special one. And I’m going to number every one and sign every one. They get a signed version of the hardback. I’m really excited about the hardback. And so there’s that one.
And then there’s a couple of other things like there’s a consultancy with me, where you get hardback, and the consultancy. And I’ll do a consultancy, on anything; on starting working in prison and starting a social enterprise writing whatever running it running a YouTube channel, whatever it is that they want to talk about. The three principles, anything they like. And then there’s a lush reward, which is, this is a this is a retreat, this cottage, here is our retreat. We can’t see that when you’re on podcast, but
Alexandra: On YouTube, yeah, your background.
Jacqueline: Yeah. We’re in the middle of the countryside. And it’s a one floor retreat that is self-contained with a kitchen and a bedroom and everything. And that’s one of the Kickstarter rewards. So people could have two nights here. And if they tied that in with a consultancy, then we would have a walk and talk and so on. So that’s quite an exciting one.
We haven’t quite got there, but I’ll be releasing the stretch goals. And the stretch goals too, when you get to a certain level is to get the book in every prison library. And I would like to create the audio version, as well. So one stretch goal is the to create the audio version. But again there’s a lot of finances to go with that.
It’s been very, a lot of learning. Yeah, I could probably consult on how to do a Kickstarter now as well.
Alexandra: I was just going to say, goodness, me. Wow. Okay. And so if people want to support the project, I love this idea of getting the book into every prison library in the country. That is so great. And I mean, imagine the difference that would make because of course, you and even Beyond Recovery, your enterprise, your reach can only go so far. It’s limited by the number of hours in the day and the number of people who are working with you, but with a book, it could go everywhere. Yeah, that’s so great.
So folks can go to kickstarter.com.
Jacqueline: Yes, yes. And I guess they look for my name. JB hollows,
Alexandra: Or the name of the book: Wing of an Angel. If you search for that, it comes up.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Brilliant. And then if they didn’t want to do that, and they just want to buy the book, and they want to wait, then the book will be released later this year. And it will be on Amazon, on the different countries. And so that’s also a possibility. But I love you to support me on Kickstarter.
Alexandra: And if people aren’t aware, it is really expensive to publish a book. I mean, you’ve got editing costs, and then the production costs and marketing and all that kind of stuff. Cover design.
Jacqueline: Developmental review. It’s a lot.
Alexandra: And then when you bring the audiobook into it, that’s really expensive because of course, narrators are so talented, and they do such good work, but it costs to hire a narrator and that kind of stuff.
For the listeners again, it’s kickstarter.com and then they can just search for Wing of an Angel and they will they will be able to find the project. It’s live right now as this goes out. So this is going out October 18, 2023. And for anyone listening and they can go and have a look.
Jacqueline, it’s been so lovely talking to you. As we come towards the end of our time together anything that we haven’t touched on yet that you’d like to share? It could be about your work or about the book.
Jacqueline: I just want to leave people with a message really, if people want to find out about my work, they can just google me and all my all my stuff comes up. But I’d love to leave people with a message which is it always seems like Well, that’s okay for you. It always seems like people do those things, that’s okay for them people, right? People do this, people do that. And it’s different for me, because I’ve got all these things and reasons why.
One of those problems is manifesting, I couldn’t go and volunteer in a homeless shelter, or I couldn’t go in to my local refugee hostel, and help the women there. But who am I?
I want the listeners to know, we all think that. It, we all think and a lady said to me recently, she wanted to go and have a drumming circle for women in the refugee hostel down the road. They’re kept in terrible conditions. And she just wanted to go and be nice and be helpful. And she actually, and she’s an amazing person. And she actually thought, well who am I to do that.
Obviously, I encouraged her to do that. And she is going to do that. But she thought to herself, and the reason why she came to me is, if Mama J had thought that, then she wouldn’t have gone into prison. And it’s true. I did think it but I did it anyway.
I just want everyone to know that. You don’t have to do something. But if you if it occurs to you, and if you keep getting your heart tugged, then please go do it. Because everybody else is thinking someone else will do it. And they need your life. They need your life. And that’s what you’re being called to do. And it doesn’t have to take over your life, like it took over my life. It can be voluntary, it can be a few hours it can be it can be just being nice to someone who’s on the streets, right? And if you feel called to do it, and you get that to just go do it, and you figure out the rest.
Alexandra: Lovely. Oh, I love that. Thank you for saying that. That’s beautiful. So we’ve mentioned the Kickstarter address. And then Beyond Recovery is the social enterprise that you have. What’s the what’s the web address? There’s beyondrecovery.co.uk.
Jacqueline: Yes. And the mentoring website is JBHollows.co.uk. Like I say, if you Google my name, I’m usually like on the first lesson things I’m famous.
Alexandra: Oh, good. All right. Well, thank you again, so much, Jacqueline. It’s been a real pleasure.
Q&A 35 – What should I do with intrusive thoughts about food?
Oct 16, 2023
Intrusive thoughts can seem like a problem. Just by their nature, they can seem scary and as though they are a sign of something that is wrong with us. But what if this isn’t true? And what if dealing with them is simply a matter of understanding their nature?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
What intrusive thoughts can look like
The feelings that can come with intrusive thoughts
How our thoughts are NOT a reflection of our mental health
How we don’t need to do anything about any kind of thought
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Stay informed about receiving an advanced copy of my next book by signing up for my newsletter at AlexandraAmor.com/insight
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 35 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
Today our question is how do I deal with intrusive thoughts about food?
I’ll get to answering that question in just a moment. But first, a little public service announcement. If you’re listening to this around the time it goes out, which will be the middle of October, I can’t remember the date exactly, always on a Monday. If you’re listening to that around that time, and you would like to receive an advanced copy before anybody else gets it of the new book that I’ve got coming out about food and resolving our relationship with an unwanted overeating habit, make sure that you’re subscribed to my newsletter.
You can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/insight. You’ll receive a notice from me when I’m going to send out requests and offers for anyone who would like an advanced copy of the book.
If you’re already subscribed, then there’s nothing you need to do, you will receive that notice as well. But if you’re not subscribed, yet, I thought I’d mention it. And so you can sign up and you’ll receive as a bonus, perhaps, the little video course that I’ve put together called how to hack your thinking and resolve unwanted habits. That’s five videos that you receive. And it’s all self-paced, you can watch it at your own speed. And hopefully that will help you well, as you’re exploring this understanding as it relates to resolving and overeating habit. So there we go. That’s the public service announcement.
Now, let’s get back to the question. So how should I deal with intrusive thoughts about food?
This popped into my head the other day, because I used to have this recurring intrusive thought, and it went like this. I’ll give you this personal example.
Very often if I was dishing out some food, and especially if it was something that I really liked anything to do with potatoes, particularly, or anything to do with sugar, the thought would come to me, “There’s never enough.”
It would be a thought and a feeling at the same time. A very visceral sense, and almost like a little bit of panic. So whatever was there in front of me on my plate, or that I was dishing out, there was just this feeling that there was never enough that there could never be enough.
And I think that feeling had two edges. There were two edges to that sword.
One was about the amount of food, that it just it felt like it wasn’t going to satisfy me or make me feel better, whatever it was.
And then the other edge to that feeling that I felt was a bit of panic about the feeling itself. Like if I’m feeling that, then there must be something really wrong with me.
It frightened me that I could feel such a powerful feeling about food. When it was the one thing that I was trying to resolve. It was the problem that I was trying to fix. And that no matter what I did, I would have that intrusive thought and it was unbidden. It was a thought I didn’t want to be having and it came about so often. I had it, I would say nearly every day and, and there were those two elements, like I said, to the fear around it.
What can we do when we have a thought like that? How can we make it go away, or resolve it or manage it, so that it doesn’t bother us anymore?
And here, this really points to the paradoxical nature of this understanding, in that what we need to do about that thought is absolutely nothing. So even though it felt to me like I urgently needed to get rid of that thought, like if I didn’t have that thought, then my relationship with food would be so much better. And I would be fixed, and my overeating habit would go away.
There was pressure within me to get rid of that thought, and to do something about it.
And to notice, if it had gone away, that would be something that I could feel like I had achieved, that I had made a step forward toward resolving that unwanted habit.
What I see now about thoughts like this is, well, I guess it’s a few different things. But paradoxically, there’s nothing we need to do about thoughts like that, and even about the yucky feelings that they come with. So that feeling that I had of fear about not having enough food, and then fear about the thought itself. And the, yeah, just the visceral feelings that I had within me about that.
First of all, none of that means anything about you, or about your unwanted habit or about your mental health at all.
Having a thought like that is not a problem. And it can be a little bit difficult to get our heads around something like that, because it feels like a problem in the moment. It feels that that’s something we shouldn’t be thinking about. And if we didn’t, that things would be better.
But when we examine and explore the nature of thought itself, what we see is that it’s fluid. And it’s moving all the time. And there are a number of metaphors that we use to look at this; thought is like the weather in the sky, always changing, always moving. And we don’t need to manage it at all, the same way we don’t manage the weather.
Or we could look at it like thought is a river. always moving, always changing, sometimes turbulent, sometimes quiet. And when we see that, that it is in thought and thinking is very nature to just keep moving, keep flowing through us. When we look in that direction of understanding what thought is that’s the thing that, surprisingly, resolves any intrusive thoughts that we’re having about anything but also about food.
Because when we see the nature of what is really happening within us, when we see that insightfully when we try to understand it with our logical minds, which is fine, that’s the first step. And then we’ll often see things more deeply more insightfully as we continue to explore. Then when the thought occurs to us, it doesn’t have any real impact. And somehow, and I can’t describe why, but that is what dissolves those kinds of thoughts. Is looking upstream, as I’ve talked about in the past, understanding the nature of thought as a whole is the thing that will resolve what we would label as intrusive thoughts.
When they do happen to come up again, in the future maybe months or years after they’ve seemed to have resolved themselves, that’s okay too. When we understand the nature of thought and if these thoughts come back to us, we have so much less attachment to them and worry about them and concern about why they’re showing up. We understand that, like a stick floating down the river, they’re just there momentarily, and they will move on. And there’s nothing that we need to do about it.
And as I said a little bit earlier, the fact that this thought is showing up is not a reflection of our mental health or anything that’s broken about us. It’s simply a reflection of the way that thought works. So just like if there’s a thunderstorm that moves through, you wouldn’t consider that to be a reflection of your brokenness or your fault in any way. It’s just a thunderstorm, it’s moving through, it’s happening in this moment, and then it will move on, and the next bit of weather will show up.
So the short answer to the question, “What can we do about intrusive thoughts?” is absolutely nothing.
The longer answer is that exploring the nature of how thought moves, is what helps us to understand what’s happening when we have that kind of an intrusive thought.
And that insight and understanding is what helps those kinds of thoughts to resolve. I’ve used a specific example from my life, but of course, that’s not the only thought that’s going to occur to us about food. And you may have your own specific ones, perhaps you do, and they could have to do with the cravings that you experience or anything like that.
In your life, and in your experience of food, those thoughts are going to be different, but their nature is exactly the same.
That’s the thing that’s common. That’s identical, really, between you and me, is the nature of the energy of thought that is moving through us.
I hope that’s been helpful for you, and that you were doing well. And I will leave you there for now and talk to you again next week. Take care. Bye.
Surviving a Narcissist with Del Adey-Jones
Oct 12, 2023
Coach, speaker, and author Del Adey-Jones grew up in Wales in very difficult and unusual circumstances. We discuss how that upbringing affected her adult life, including the realization that she was married to a narcissist, and how she recovered from this.
Del Adey-Jones is a coach, guide, instructor, and podcaster. She is dedicated to helping people attract strong, healthy, respectful, and loving relationships, both in their personal and professional lives – starting with the one you have with yourself!
Her happy ending is the result of years of searching, introspection, honesty, and courage. She’s had years of conventional therapy and has studied everything from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Kabbalah to Kundalini Yoga. She also has a masters in spiritual psychology.
You can find Del Adey-Jones at DelAdeyJones.com and on Instagram @deladeyjones.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
The impact of being raised without acknowledgement from one parent
How knowing what we don’t want can help us find what we do want
How knowing ourselves can help create healthy boundaries
Learning to listen and trust our wisdom again
Healing the wound of taking on too much responsibility
How our perception of reality is always based on our thinking
Tell us a little bit about yourself your background and how you found the three principles.
Del: I grew up in Wales, I now live in California. I had a very unusual childhood, in many ways, what we would classically call dysfunctional, which I basically carried into my adulthood, all the way up until I think I was about almost 50, if I’m honest.
I was the product of a relationship between my mother and my father. He was a married man who lived down the road with his wife and two children. And I was his daughter, but I never met him, even though their relationship lasted for about eight years, I never met my father, and I would pass him in the street, and then that really his avoiding my leave, looking my direction, never mind exchanging words with me was really soul destroying. For me, I have to say, I really took that as I wasn’t good enough to be loved. I thought if I was just pretty enough, clever enough, skinny enough anything a five year old normally thinks about when they want their parents love.
But I just blamed myself, I thought there must be something fundamentally wrong with me that he didn’t. I had this illusion that all fathers must love their daughters or children anyway, and that it was my fault that he didn’t love me. And also growing up in my household was very hard as well. My mother, having to make money for us, converted a rambling old mansion into a residential home for people with mental disabilities and disorders. So that was also challenging. So I grew up with a lot of issues, let’s put it that way.
I think in an attempt to escape the shame, I had debilitating shame, we were ashamed in the community. My mother sent us to a Catholic school because even though she was an atheist, she wanted us to have a good education and between the nuns and the community, and the shaming, I just wanted to get the hell out of Wales as fast as I could.
So I spent about a year in Spain. And then I came to the US when I was about 21. And I really felt like I could have a new beginning. I could escape my shame. Unfortunately, it found a way to sneak in the suitcase with me and find me all the way here. That’s when I first discovered spirituality. And I was on a spiritual path for many, many years: self help, workshops. The first workshop I ever went to was called Healing the Shame That Binds by John Bradshaw. And that was amazing. I did a lot of the inner child work and tons of stuff.
I also did a master’s in spiritual psychology, which I loved because I really love the combination of spirituality and psychology; that is my sweet spot. But I still managed to get myself in dysfunctional relationship after a dysfunctional relationship. And it was really the last dysfunctional relationship I got out of which was my marriage. That was in 2008, that I came across the principles. And there was something in the simplicity of what Syd Banks said that just hit at a deeper level, even though it’s it was nothing new. I’d heard about it for years, as I say, Kundalini Yoga, Buddhism, Kabbalah, I mean, everything I was just studying I, I’d heard of it before I knew the essence of what he was saying, but it just was in my head and it wasn’t really dropping in. As hard as I tried, I realized you can’t fry it that it’s just it lands when it lands. And as I said, it was principles that literally knocked me on the head.
I was in a book store and this book came sliding out of the bookcase that was called Stop Thinking, Start Living by Richard Carlson. And it was at a time when I was really probably one of the lowest points of my life, actually, besides when I was a teenager. With all the abuse that went on then but it was the end of my marriage and if it wasn’t for my two beautiful sons, I was really probably at my lowest point. And I think that’s when the opening was there that crack open. And I heard something and I, I just delved into it.
That was in 2009. Ever since then just keep deepening and deepening my understanding. But as again, as I say, I don’t throw all the other stuff out either. It all has served me and I love seeing the commonality in different traditions, rather than the differences.
Alexandra: In your practice, then leaping to the present day, and on your podcast, you tend to focus on relationships.
What draws you to that focus on relationships?
Del: I think sometimes when people say, I don’t know what I want, I always say to them, what don’t you want? Let’s start there. And when they start there, it’s really easy as well. And then you just want the opposite. We tend to really know what we don’t want. And growing up in the environment in which I grew up, it was so painful.
I love my mother dearly. She did the best she could. I absolutely know that. But she also made some really, as a mother myself, I’m like, How could you? What were you thinking, but I realized that I’ve had the benefit of a lot of therapy and being on my spiritual path. I could see how I can do things differently.
It was knowing what I didn’t want to continue and knowing what I didn’t want to put my children through. And again, as I say even with all of this, knowing what I wanted, I still was acting out from some habitual behavior that I didn’t understand. I still was attracted to the narcissistic rejecting abandoning type man that my father had been.
My mother actually also was also a narcissist; that’s how they came together, so I knew how to please the person like that, how to keep a person like that. And I think as I always say, children want to redo, if they’ve had a bad experience, the first time round, we keep drawing in that same type of scenario, to redo it to have a different outcome. I think even though there was that little girl in me that still kept totally not in my consciousness, but in my subconsciousness I attracted men like my father to have a different outcome.
I was attracted to men that were, as I say, narcissistic, and rejecting and cruel and punishing. And I wanted to win them over. I wanted them to see me and to love me this time. And fortunately, as I say, took me a long time. But I got to the point where I really realized that everything I was looking at for validation from the outside in was all within me, and I was just looking in the wrong direction. Once I saw that, I stopped doing what I was doing.
Alexandra: As someone who was familiar with narcissism, as well, myself and being raised by people with that kind of personality disorder, I noticed too, that there’s a familiarity in the feeling of rejection.
Without really knowing it, I think we can repeat that pattern, simply because it’s what we know. Would you agree with that?
Del: Yes, I do. There’s a there’s a familiarity to it. But I really think above and beyond that, there’s that need, as I say to right the wrong. To get what we didn’t get as a child. And to also, I think a lot of people think that only the broken wounded – women get together with narcissistic men or broken wounded men get together with narcissistic woman. It’s not just men on women, it tends to be more men, unfortunately. In this culture, where we are actually seeing more and more women displaying narcissistic behaviors used to be more men.
Often too, it’s the striving to prove yourself if you’ve had a parent that that expected perfection, you to never give up. I know for myself, I wanted to prove myself. Now if you loved me, I have no time for you. It’s like, well number one, you’ve got bad taste if you love me. It was like that’s Groucho Marx saying, if anybody want me in their club, I wouldn’t want to belong to that club.
The other thing was to win over a somebody that was difficult or challenging or had tons of women. And I’m embarrassed to admit it, there was that thing in me that thought, Well, God, if I can win over somebody like that, then I’ve really proved my worth. Other than just the average Joe. I’ve won over somebody that nobody else can win over. That must mean I’m special.
Alexandra: Were you conscious of that thought or that belief?
Del: No. That’s why I can laugh when I look back on it. But no, absolutely not. I mean, that it was just this drive and I think many women have it. I mean, they say, Why are women attracted to the bad boy, it’s the challenge. And you only seek a challenge when you actually don’t really appreciate your worth, when you’re having to validate yourself by an outside challenge.
That’s really sad so I say it with compassion and love myself, and I laughed at because I can look back on it now and go, Oh, my God, you poor thing, but at the time now, it was just a drive. I see now what I was doing. The types of people I was attracted to, now I see them from a mile off, and I’d be like, Oh, no, no, why on earth? Would I be attracted to that? On any level? So it’s almost repulsive to me. But when I was younger, it was attractive to me.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s interesting. One of the things I’m really intrigued about in the exploration of the three principles is of course, the idea that our experience is coming from the inside out. We live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances. And there are people out there who can do us harm who can behave in a way that is not healthy.
I’d love to explore with you what I would call a dividing line, that place of being where we take responsibility for the thinking that’s going on within us and we have clear boundaries. So could you talk to us about that a little bit?
Del: This is a fascinating one for me. I probably half my clients come through me through the three principles, the world of the three principles, and the other half don’t. And I actually find that the people that have an understanding of the principles are often more challenging to work with, than with the people that don’t.
The reason I say that is because they keep going. And it’s ironic, because they keep saying, they keep going into their intellect. Sydney Banks said, “Follow the feeling,” but they keep popping into their intellect and trying to intellectualize their situation and say, well, it’s just my thinking. And I’m just making more of this.
I see the psychological innocence and, and it’s fine. And just to try and have somebody appreciate that. We are both spiritual and human rolled into one, we’re not separate. We are a spiritual being having a human experience. And there’s a reason we came onto this earth, to experience our humanity. And I am not into the spiritual bypass at all.
What I always say is, know yourself, really know yourself. Because I can look at my behavior now, rather than my feelings, and I can separate out from my wisdom and my feelings. What’s an old habitual pattern that I have from childhood that developed out of a need to protect myself? I can recognize that when that’s happening separate from I know myself, like I say, I understand what’s going on within me and I got all this is just some old stuff happening.
This is not the other person. This is just me, creating a story because maybe I’m fearful or I’m feeling vulnerable right now so I’m seeing this person as a threat. And I know it inside me.
But there’s times when I really do know, oh, this person, as much as I can see their psychological innocence and we’re all connected and all that stuff, their behavior in the world of form is not healthy, and it’s having a negative impact on me. And I can lovingly separate from them.
I don’t have to hate them. I don’t have to judge them. I don’t have to belittle them or beat them up, I can just remove myself and say this is not a healthy environment to be in. It’s very different. And I will say to people truly trust your wisdom, your wisdom will guide you, it’ll let you know when you, as I say, are in that habitual pattern. I can see in some of my previous relationships, where I really did blame the other person for things that were going on in my head. And I apologize to you out there that I did that too.
In the world of psychology, we call it a disorganized attachment style. So I can be a little push me pull me: I want to be close, and then I panic, and I pull away, what’s the easiest way to pull away is to find fault with the other person. But what I’m doing is actually just giving myself some breathing space. I know that about myself.
So instead of being hypercritical, and finding a reason why I need to pull back, I go this is just who I am. And every now and again, I just need a bit of distance. I can articulate that to my partner of the last 13 and a half years and in a wonderfully mature way. As opposed to you did this, and this is why I’m rejecting you right now. But if there were behaviors, thank goodness, he doesn’t he’s incredible, beautiful human being. But if there was some behaviors that were unhealthy, I would be able to say that’s not a behavior that that works in my relationship and address it. I don’t know if that answered your question or not?
Alexandra: Yeah, it did. And it’s brought up a couple more follow up questions. So this is great.
One of the things you said was that you’ve learned to discern between old patterns of thinking and behavior and, and wisdom, your internal wisdom.
Could you tell us how you learned to do that?
Del: Trusting, that’s the other thing I want to talk about when we grow up in a dysfunctional environment. I don’t know about you, but for me my wisdom would tell me something which I would then share with my mother. And she would say, don’t be ridiculous. That’s not true.
Why isn’t my father coming and visiting me? Well, your father loves you. Well, why isn’t he come visit me? Why didn’t he come earlier? When I’m awake? Or why didn’t he look at me when I passed him in the street. He loves you, he just can’t be with you.
I was getting mixed messages, because my wisdom was telling me, that’s not love. That’s not love. But then if an adult behaved inappropriately with me, which they did, I would say to my mother, this doesn’t feel right, this has happened. And she’d say, Don’t be silly, he doesn’t mean it that way. Let him touch you, or stroke you or whatever it was. And, again, it’s that shoving down of your wisdom, your intuition, that voice inside that says this is not okay, so you can never get disconnected from it. You end up not listening to anymore.
Because as a small child who are you’re going to believe more? I’m going to believe my wisdom over my mother, who I depend on for my life? You’re going to believe the parent. So you start listening to your wisdom. And that is one of the hardest things I find with my clients is helping them to hear their wisdom again. It never went anywhere. It’s always there. But we’ve just been ignored.
We were listening to the thoughts which were often the repeating of what I parents said is that dialogue, still, we often listening to that overall wisdom. So things as a small child: if we know something’s icky, it’s icky. Well, as an adult, if you’ve been abused as a child, and you’ve learned to squish that down. Your head will come in and say, Oh, that’s not abusive behavior. That’s fine. We are like this head making decisions for us. And we’re not connected to our body. We’re not connected to it our wisdom not connected to our feelings that are telling us this is not right.
One thing is to really start to and again, as I said, if we’re listening to the thinking, and I had the personal thinking it’s often overrides or tries to override what our intuition is telling us. And if we can recognize how in a minute that’s my mother’s voice in my head or my whoever’s voice in my head doesn’t that’s not the truth. That wasn’t the truth. I felt. What did I feel when that happened?
Learn to differentiate between that chatter, that noise in the head that’s always trying to rationalize and make sense of things and make things you know, all right. Our head wants to keep things as they are, we don’t rock the boat. So we’re, we minimize and rationalize things. Whereas our wisdom is guiding us to say this isn’t right, trust us be brave, walk away, life will be better.
Alexandra: You bring up such an important point that wisdom is always there and will always be there, it’ll never leave us. That’s so important to remember.
For me, that looked like a bit of slowing down. I have experienced a lot of urgency or anxiety in the form of urgency. And so that would make me hear the chatter in my head, and then just kind of obey it automatically.
For me, one of the elements of learning to trust wisdom was slowing down a little bit, and saying, wait a second, I can take a minute, and feel things and see where I’m at.
Del: Absolutely. There is no urgency. Wisdom is not in a hurry. It’s not on the clock. Yeah, take the time.
I don’t necessarily practice meditation as much as I used to, but it is taking that time that dropping in that really, the letting things get quiet, and sometimes it’s really loud. Sometimes it’s as I shared recently, on this talk I just gave my wisdom to get out of my marriage it was on Valentine’s Day. Last thing I thought I wanted to do was get a divorce on Valentine’s Day. I mean, my heart was broken, I discovered some really painful truths about my marriage. But I was sitting meditating, and I had this voice inside me that said, Get out now before he kills you.
I was like, where did that voice come from? Because my head was codependent, I was looking at all the reasons why I should stay, how I didn’t want to break up my family. I felt that I had given my children what I hadn’t had, as a child, I didn’t want to repeat my childhood and have a broken home. But it was not a healthy relationship. And I needed to get out. It wasn’t physically abusive, I will definitely say that. But the emotional abuse can be equally damaging.
I work with people who have sworn off ever being in a relationship again after being in a narcissistic relationship. And that, to me is such a such a shame. We are these beautiful, loving creatures that are meant to love and have open hearts and be with other humans and to be shaken to the core that you would never take that risk again, is sad to me.
Fortunately, people I work with, they are armed with enough information that they’re not afraid to do that, again. They will not make that same mistake again. That wisdom, they’ll know how to recognize those red flags. And they will go into the overdrive of the personal mind rationalizing and minimizing because they want what they want.
Alexandra: One of the things that occurred to me when I was thinking about what I wanted to talk to you about was that when we’re raised in dysfunctional households, like you and I both were, I noticed a sense in myself of taking a lot of responsibility for stuff that isn’t mine.
I want to explore that a little bit with you and see what you had to say about that aspect of relationships.
Del: I totally recognize that one. Sometimes it’s again, it’s like training. It’s like, if I just say sorry, everything will calm down and be nice. So I’ll just say sorry to make everything nice. Again, sometimes it’s that people pleaser coming out of us. And sometimes it really is unhealthy boundaries that we grew up in a dysfunctional environment, healthy boundaries were not modeled for us. And there’s all that in measurement and you made me do it. And all of that stuff that goes on.
One of the things I learned about the principles was that separate realities. I always use my little my snowglobe by just saying that we are all it’s my little border, that’s my center, my spiritual center, but just know that we all live in these little globes of our thinking. And there isn’t that, as you mentioned earlier, there’s not that reality out there that we’re all looking at are all. Our perceptions of reality are different depending upon our thinking.
When somebody is say upset, and angry, and hostile, or whatever, because I couldn’t deal with their upset, I would try and calm them down and control it and everything. And the only reason I was doing that it looked like I was doing it for their sake. And I wasn’t, I was doing it for my own sake, because I was uncomfortable with that aggression, that whatever it was, and instead of having the sense to remove myself and say, Hey, I don’t have to put up with this, I thought I could control it, and behave in a certain way to manipulate it.
Recognizing that we’re not God. And they’re going through their experience, because that’s what they need to go through, for whatever reason. And we can just stand back. And again, if it’s not an abusive relationship, it’s simply that some of these other sorts, the more that we can stay centered and grounded, and let them have their experience, not react to it, not control it, the quicker they calm down, and they’re back to their beautiful loving normal self.
But when we are in a dysfunctional relationship, again, instead of just standing here and being contained, and saying, Oh, this is too much for me, I’m removing myself, we again, as I say, try and control it, and that’s not healthy. We have to respect that that person has everything inside of themselves to bring themselves back down to that, that well-being that’s within all of us. And if they don’t, then again, remove yourself.
We don’t need to fix anybody.
Our job is to be the best guardian of our own lives. I always say when we give our heart to another person and make them responsible for our heart, and then we’re like, What do you mean, you shouldn’t, that hurt me, you shouldn’t have done that. We’re setting the other people up.
We are the best guardians of our lives and our hearts.
That doesn’t mean we don’t share our hearts openly and willingly with another person, but we don’t make the other person responsible for us. And vice versa. We’re not responsible for the other person. I know that sounds harsh, does not mean it’s just I mean, we obviously I’m a mother, I mean, I care dearly for my children. If I’m really honest, they always come first.
I have to remind myself I’m responsible for me. Nobody will take care of take as good care of me as I will. I know my needs and my wounds. It’s not up to somebody else to guess what I want need, and then the wrong bad for if they don’t get it right so we have to take care of ourselves communicate clearly and honestly, and as you said, take care of our side of the street.
Water finds its own level. And the healthier that you are, the more that you will attract healthy partners. I always say that if you’re attracting a narcissist into your life, it’s because narcissists have all that entitlement and self and everything. And then when we’re codependent, we’re all the way down here. And we’ve got no sense of self and no entitlement. So we’re obviously the absolute perfect fit for them because they want everything their way.
Raise our level of entitlement and are healthy, the narcissist is going to go through and we’re going to, I can have a fight with this person, I can bypass them and go for somebody that’s got low self esteem will always put me first and I can manipulate and control. So the best way is to just raise your healthy level of I call it entitlement entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. So just raise that and then you will get a partner that will match you on that level.
Alexandra: That’s really nice.
One of the things we mentioned briefly was your podcast, which is called Relationship Mastery. Tell us a little bit about that about your host co-host and what you talk about on that show.
Del: My co-host is Barry Selby, and he is a dating coach, primarily relationship dating coach.
I did all my insightful conversations and interviewed fabulous 3P people such as yourself. And all the other amazing three P people and I started to find that I was running out of people to interview and it had run its course. I think I’d got about 120 episodes. And it was great and I really loved it.
But I wanted to focus more on what I do, which is work with people around relationships, especially overcoming dysfunctional childhood trauma, codependency and narcissistic abuse and shame. Those are my categories. I wanted to focus more on that. I also really honestly, didn’t want to have to go through all the gathering guests again and organizing that. And I felt that it’s more interesting to have two different perspectives about things.
Barry and I both went to the University of Santa Monica, we both got our masters in spiritual psychology, but he is a single man, never been married, doesn’t have children, and isn’t in a relationship right now. So we were really different. I thought this could be interesting. We bring two different perspectives. There’s moments on the show where I can just feel myself go, No, Barry, I do not agree with you.
He can sometimes talk about the male role and the feminine. And I’m very much into that we both have feminine masculine within us. And there’s depending on who I’m interacting with, and I can be incredibly feminine. And I can also be incredibly masculine, I see both in me very, very clearly.
We cover all different topics. Anything to do with any type of relationship, not just not just I mean parenting, how to deal with your co-workers, your boss, boundaries, apologies, taking responsibility, and life in general. I really like to come from the spiritual perspective and share my spiritual understanding as it is, which as I say, is an amalgamation of many different disciplines that I’ve studied over the years.
Alexandra: That show is available on all the usual podcast apps and people can find it.
Del: Yeah. Apple, everything, all the platforms. We have YouTube and a private Facebook group as well that people can join and see all the episodes on there on YouTube, as well, because it does, it’s either visual, or I like to watch rather than just listen personally. Yes, people like to do their podcasts in the car on their walks. But I actually like to watch YouTube and see see the interaction between people.
Alexandra: Surprising. Yeah, this show goes out on YouTube as well. And I’m always surprised how many views it gets. But that’s clearly our preference for some people.
As we’re getting close to the end of our time together, is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share today?
Del: I think we touched on it, but I would like to go back over it because I think it’s so important. And again, as I said, I firmly believe that there is no real healing unless we look at both our spiritual essence and humanity. I think they dovetail beautifully together. I think that, as I said we’ve got plenty of time to be spiritual. We are we’re human. And we have very predictable ways of behaving. Our psychology is quite predictable. And I find it fascinating.
I think that when we some people say, Oh, I I don’t want to go and look at my childhood, but to me, it’s like being a surgeon. Sometimes we just have to see where the old habitual thinking or the dysfunction is. So we can pluck it out and start to heal and the healing is when we don’t just identify with our humanity, when we see who we are as this incredible spiritual beings, that our infinite potential, we’re not the stories that our psychology has told us about ourselves that we really have the power to be anything that we set our minds to.
I do think it’s very important to understand where the thinking originated, because it’s easier than to say, Oh, I’m on to you. Whereas, as a small child, I thought you were going to help me. And you did maybe helped me back then. But you’re not serving me any longer. But thank you, thank you for popping up again and thinking that you’re doing a good job. But now I’m an adult, and I don’t need to protect myself with this way of thinking or behaving, serve me back then, but not no longer.
We can let it go with a sense of humor and, and with an ease. I still I catch myself throughout the day slipping into that old thinking, and that doesn’t serve me. But I hear it and I got you back again. It’s like, a familiar friend, you just keep showing up. But it’s the getting it and the seeing, I’m never frustrated. I never think Why are you still here, you should have gone by now I have none of that thinking. I’m just like, I just recognize you sooner, I got you. And then I get back to being who I really am. At my essence, which is, as I say anything I really want to put my mind to.
That’s probably the most important thing. And again, it’s just one without the other. I think psychology without spirituality can only take you so far. And it took me so far. And I loved my time in therapy. It helped me to make sense of my chaotic childhood and some of the patterns I was in and my studying of psychology. But without that spiritual component, to know that we are these so much more than just a psychology. I just don’t think we can really heal me. It’s both.
Alexandra: Lovely.
Where can we find out more about you and your work, Del?
Del: You can find me everywhere. You can find me on that podcast, Relationship Mastery. You can find me at deladeyjones.com, which is my website. And you can find me on YouTube. I’m starting to do a lot more speaking engagements, though. Yeah, everything is on the website.
If you go to the website, it directs you to me and everything. I do some old blogs of mine, and the old shows the old, anybody still interested in really listening to some of the most incredible teachers we have in the three principals from you know, Dicken Bettinger, the Pranskys, just amazing people. I’ve interviewed them more so that all the all the old episodes of insightful conversations are available on my website, too.
Alexandra: That’s good to know. I’ll put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com so people can find that.
Thank you again, so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Del: Oh, it’s been such a pleasure. And it’s great to be on the other side, because that’s right. So anybody listening that wants to listen to my amazing interview with Alexandra, then please go and listen to it. It was fascinating. I think we definitely had some interesting commonalities between those in our in our life.
Alexandra: For sure. I think we mostly talked about my cult memoir on that show.
Del: Yeah. I remember saying, oh my goodness, this being in a cult is like being in a relationship with a narcissist. Most cult leaders are narcissistic, not psychopaths. But it has very similar you know, it’s that over time, nobody puts their hand up and says, Hey, I want to be in an abusive relationship or I want to be in a cult. It’s that over time that seduction and pulling you in gradually. The love bombing.
Alexandra: Exactly. Such a good point. All right. Well, thanks so much, Del. Take care.
Q&A 34 – How does stepping away from thinking solve problems?
Oct 09, 2023
An innocent trap we can fall into when we have a problem like an overeating habit or anxiety is layering lots of thinking onto that situation. Counterintuitively, the solution to problems like this is less thinking, not more.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Want an advanced copy of my upcoming book? Sign up here
When we experience tension what is it really about?
What happens when we set a problem down?
How do we pay less attention to our thinking
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Sign up to receive news about my upcoming book here
Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 34 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with the question: How does stepping away from our thinking, solve problems?
Before we jump into that, I want to just give you a little bit of teaser update on a project that I’ve been working on. For the last few months, I’ve been working on writing a new book. And if you’re listening to this, as it goes out, which is going to be on October 9 2023, it’ll be going to my editor this week, and then it’ll come back to me and there’s a bunch of other stuff that has to be done.
What I’m going to do is send a notice out to my newsletter list of subscribers. As things are progressing with the book, I’m going to reveal the title and the cover. And then most importantly, I’m going to be looking to send out a few advanced reader copies, or ARCs, as they’re called in the book biz.
If you would like to receive a copy of the book for free, you can sign up to have that or to, to receive that newsletter about what’s happening and what I’m doing and when I’m going to send things out at my website, so if you go to AlexandraAmor.com/insight. That’s the page where you can sign up for the free video series that I give away. It’s called How To Hack Your Thinking and Let Go of Unwanted Habits. So if you sign up there for that video course, you’ll get the course. And then you’ll be signed up to receive my newsletter.
That’s where I communicate with people about things like this, about special offers and new projects that are coming down the pipe. And you’ll be notified about the new book. As I say, I’ll be looking for advanced readers. So you’ll get notification about that as well.
So that’s a little bit of a teaser. I’ll release more information here on the podcast as the book is getting closer to publication.
Back to our question: how does stepping away from our thinking solve problems?
This is something that I’ve talked about in a number of different ways here on the show, and in my work. And I had an example of this that’s been coming up for me recently, personally. So I thought I would talk about that as a way to is to shed some more light onto this idea that adding more thinking to a problem or a situation that we’re in isn’t where the answer lives. The answer lives in actually leaving the problem alone. And definitely letting our see our thinking settle down. That’s when we’re more open to insight and wisdom and those sorts of things that can help us.
It can be quite counterintuitive to do this. I know it took me quite a while to get my head around what that looked like. So the example that I’m going to use today is unrelated to food. And I thought that might be a little bit helpful because for you it won’t be as charged a topic. So here we go.
I have a little bit of tennis elbow in both elbows actually, just from constantly being on the computer and that kind of thing. And I’m also in my mid 50s now, not getting any younger, and had been wanting to do some more exercises and stretching and building up a little bit of strength in my upper body. And my upper body has never been a place where I’ve had a lot of strength. I do a lot of walking. So my legs are pretty strong, but my arms and upper body just have no I’ve never focused on that.
As we age, we start to notice these creaks and groans and that kind of thing, and definitely the tennis elbow was bothering me. So I was working with a physio for a while a few months ago and she had me doing some stretching and some exercises, some weight bearing exercises and that kind of thing. And it was really helping and I was really enjoying it actually. I did the little sequence that she put me through probably three times a week and I was noticing differences, like that the tennis elbow was bothering me a little bit less and noticed a few other things and definitely felt like I was making a difference and things were improved.
And then I noticed my motivation for doing the weight exercises in the stretches just bottomed out. It fell away completely. I could not see and cannot seem to motivate myself to go back and do that, even though I was enjoying it. And even though I was seeing improvements from it, and even though I had a good feeling when I was doing the exercises and the weight stuff, I still can’t seem to motivate myself about that situation. So, as I’ve been exploring this in my own head by myself, or in my journal, what occurred to me is that the tension between behavior that we want to do, and then the opposite behavior that’s actually coming up becomes the thing that we’re doing.
The obvious example is when we don’t want to be overeating.
And yet we find ourselves overeating, snacking, and go into the fridge at night, or whatever it is. And, in this case, it’s the absence of a behavior. I’m wanting to do my little series of exercises and stretches, and I’m not doing them. But the common denominator is this tension, right? We notice the tension within ourselves, the uncomfortable feeling of either I’m doing something or I’m not doing something that I that I don’t want to be doing, or I do want to be doing sorry to be confusing, but hopefully, you get the idea.
So there’s this thing, there’s a behavior that I would like to be doing differently, let’s put it that way. And, and yet, I don’t do it. And I can’t seem to force myself to, and it’s not something that’s coming together for me. And this is what I battled with, of course, for years, as maybe you have as well, when it came to overeating.
I was never able to think my way out of that problem.
So what happens when we have a situation like that, that tension that comes up that we’re, there’s a behavior about ourselves that we don’t like, our kind of knee jerk reaction, and the way culturally, that we tend to approach those sorts of things, is to apply a lot more thinking to the situation. So in the example of the exercise thing, I could, and it has occurred to me, I could make a little spreadsheet for myself that I fill out on the days that I do the exercise and track it that way I could find an accountability buddy. I could sign up for an app that somehow tracked my progress; I could I could write it down every time I do the certain exercises, and then a lot of the apps sort of gamify that kind of situation. So that it’s, you know, it’s fun, or whatever to track the thing.
That’s certainly a possibility. Yes, I could do that. But what I’m more interested in, is noticing that tension within me and practicing, seeing how effective it is to actually do less thinking about the problem.
In our very left brained way, it can be really scary to think of something like that, and all sorts of thinking can come up within us about, well, I really should be doing this for my health. And this elbow thing is bothering me. So if I would do the exercises, that would be less of a problem. So that a chatter can really come in and start to berate us in a way or even just try to find solutions. Think of ways that we could modify our behavior so that that tension within us disappears. But given that our uncomfortable feelings are always telling us what’s going on with our thinking. That’s where I want to look.
So it looks like from the outside, we could say, that this situation that I’m in is about exercise and about stretching and about the behavior that I’m not engaging in.
But really what it’s about is the busy thinking in my head.
Speaking very personally, I haven’t had an insight or anything about this yet. But I suspect that the thinking that I have, or I should say, I suspect that I have a lot of thinking about being perfect and being doing everything the right way. Because that’s been coming up a lot for me. I’ve been noticing it in other areas of my life. And noticing how tightly I’m often holding on to the idea of doing something perfectly, and how bothered I get when things in life aren’t exactly perfect. And that could be things about me, but it could be things about the outer world as well.
If there’s a fence panel that’s knocked down at this condo building that I live in, and the strata aren’t dealing with it, that kind of thing. It’s more than just an irritation, or a noticing, I really can observe in myself fear. Fear about things that aren’t perfectly perfect all the time. So, I suspect that that the tension that I’m feeling around not doing these weightlifting exercises and stretches that are good for me, not participating in that behavior, that would be good for my health, good for my body. And the concern that I have about that.
Where those two things meet, that’s where the tension exists.
I’m interested in what happens when I, instead of diving into that problem and finding solutions for it, like I talked about earlier, the little apps and tricks that I could do, what happens when I set that problem down?
Anytime that I notice some thinking going on about the situation, what if I consciously try to relax about that?
The thinking may continue to be stirred up. But what if I try to remember as often as possible that that uncomfortable feeling in my body about those two things that are in opposition, working in opposition, creating that tension within me. Adding more thinking to that situation is not going to solve that problem.
This comes back to the old snow globe metaphor, right? So the situation that’s happening, the tension that I’m noticing, is letting me know that there’s a snowstorm of thought going on within me. And my two options are to stir up that thinking even more. So to find a solution using my brain, like a spreadsheet or an app on my phone. And in the short term that would probably look like it actually provided a solution. But long term, it doesn’t.
Instead, what I want to do is just set that snow globe down, just let it be.
If my thinking gets worked up at some point about like I said, the things that gets concerned about you know, my health, oh my goodness, my arms are stiff, my elbows are sore, whatever it is just noticing that is what I plan to do and have been trying the last few days and not getting tangled up in in in that way of thinking because again, that thinking is a gift. It’s a mindfulness bell. It’s letting me know that there’s some really stirred up thinking going on within me.
I want to notice that and appreciate the perfection in my design.
I want tolean into the gifts and the insights and the wisdom that that that message that tension might have for me. And the only way to do that is to not get really super caught up in more and more thinking about what’s going on. So in the past, this has worked for me. And it’s why I continue to talk about this understanding and share about it here every week. So the two examples that I have, of course:
One is my overeating habit, which has gone away because of doing this exact thing.
And the second is, then, once my overeating habit dropped away, I noticed I still had a habit of drinking wine every night, which I’ve probably mentioned on this show, I can’t remember. So in the online course that I offer called Freedom From Overeating, I walk through the process of exploring what would happen if I instead of getting caught up in my thinking about that wine habit, what if I left it alone? What if I just didn’t add any more thinking to that mix, didn’t shake up that snow globe and get really concerned about what was going on.
That’s what I did. And that habit dropped away as well.
So that’s a long way around of saying this stuff works. And now I feel like there’s this new learning edge for me to put my money where my mouth is once again. And observe what’s going on with me and my thinking around this issue of stretching and exercise and see what happens, just see what unfolds. So far things have worked out really well. It’s changed my life.
Stepping away from my thinking is the thing that I do now most often to solve any problem that I have.
Occasionally I do get wrapped up in my thinking of course, and go running off after it. But as often as I can I try to remember not to do that. So this is the next Alexandra project that will be going on. And I’m just really curious and interested to see what happens as we move down the road.
What I’m going to do is put actually put a sticky note on my desk here to remind myself to update you here on the podcast, when I notice changes, or what I noticed as I moved forward with this. So you can tune in at some future date that we don’t know what it is yet and I’ll keep you updated about all of that.
I hope that you found that helpful. I hope that this idea of stepping away from our thinking, and how powerful and supportive it is when we do that is clear to you. It is counterintuitive. Our brains want to create solutions, and they want to jump in and offer answers and have quick fixes and all that stuff. And that’s great, that’s what they’re designed to do. And there’s also another way.
If you have a question about overeating, or anything else that you’d like to explore, please let me know you can fill in the form at AlexandraAmor.com/question.
And again, if you’d like to be on the notification list about the new book that’ll be coming out probably sometime in November, I would imagine November 2023, maybe late October 2023. Then go to AlexandraAmor.com/insight, sign up for the video course there and then you’ll be notified about all the books stuff that is coming up.
That’s it for me today. Take care and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye.
Mavis Karn is one of the OG Three Principles teachers. It was such a joy to talk to her about how she came across this understanding, how it resonated with her even though she couldn’t explain it at first, her work with incarcerated youth and their impact on her, and her latest venture – being a published author and audiobook narrator.
Mavis Karn is a counselor/educator/consultant in private practice in St Paul, Minnesota. She is also a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
Over the past 45+ years, she has spent her time working with individuals, families, schools, businesses, hospitals, agencies, prisons, athletes, and athletic teams, as well as mentoring and training other professionals.
Find Mavis’ book, It’s That Simple, in ebook and paperback wherever you buys books. Or ask for it at your public library. Coming soon in audiobook.
Transcript of Interview with Mavis Karn
Alexandra: Mavis Karn, welcome to Unbroken.
Mavis: Thank you very much. Good to be here.
Alexandra: It’s lovely to see you.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to find the three principles.
Mavis: Okay. Well, this is horrible to say, but about 45 or 50 years ago, I was working at a place called The Bridge for runaway youth in Minneapolis. I was a family counselor. And one day my boss said he had been invited to the graduate school at the University of Minnesota to hear three PhD psychologists from Florida talk about what he said was something or other. He couldn’t go and did what I go in his place, and then come back and tell him whatever it was.
I said, sure, because I got two days off work, and I don’t care what he wanted me to do, I would have done it. I didn’t know what I was going to get to. But sure enough, it there were three PhD psychologists from Florida, who had been spending some time with a man named Syd Banks. And they wanted to talk about that. So I thought, Oh, great.
I got to the part where they said something about all human experience originates with individual thought. I thought the top of my head was going to come off. I don’t remember much else what they said for the next two days. I do remember that. And I, I really felt like I had, it’s kind of like having brain freeze only there’s one thought left. And it was that.
I came home that day and I told my daughter I had heard the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And she lit up. She said, What? And I said well, it was about thought. And it was just great. And she looked at me and like I had been smoking something funny. So that was my first experience that I know of actually, of having understood something completely, without having a clue how to explain it to myself or anybody else.
And to say that all the lights went on in the next year or it was just peaches and cream. No, that wasn’t I threw everything I could at it. I wasn’t in the habit of just taking everybody’s word for something. So I was going to prove either that it was right or it was wrong. But it was all about our thinking.
I would say well, okay, how about when you’re a single mom and you have three kids and you’re rarely have enough money for anything? That’s not just my thinking there. Except then I would say to myself, if there’s every single mom with three kids that hardly ever has any money, does she feel exactly the same way about it all the time. I’ll tell you that’s not true.
Okay, all right. So well how about when somebody dies? That’s not my thinking. There you go… except does everybody always feel the same way all the time? About a death. That just doesn’t make any sense.
So I kept having this wrestling match with myself. But at the same time, I just started feeling a lot better I started feeling more relaxed. I started seeing people differently. They started looking I don’t know, lovelier, or more innocent. It was kind of like I was cleaning the lenses of my glasses, and I was seeing more clearly things.
There weren’t any books then about this. There were just people talking about it. So whenever there was an a workshop on it, I went down to Florida a few times. And, and then finally, I can’t remember the first time I heard Syd Banks, whether he came in, he came to Minnesota a lot. But also he talked to other places, and I don’t remember the first time.
To tell you the truth, it took me a long time to figure out what he was talking about. He was really a nice guy. And I enjoyed all the people that were there. But to tell you the truth, I thought, well, one of these days, I guess I’m probably going to get it, but I don’t understand what he’s talking about. So but I just kept seeing more on my own. And I kept talking to the kids, particularly in the runaway children, about what I knew, and they would always kind of go half asleep.
At first, I thought I was just boring them. But then I realized that when I was listening to what I was talking about, it was very simple, and probably calming and true, because I did I did talk to him about how there’s nothing wrong with just think there is my simple version of everything. So I gradually started thinking, Syd probably was talking about something important too. He got it got clear to me that what he was saying, but I thought he was just learning to be clear. Turns out, I was listening better. I just thought less and felt better. Thinkgs weren’t as complicated as I used to think they were.
And here I am. I’m 83 years old, and I’m still kind of, in my own way, passing on the best information I got in my life. And anybody that’s interested. I keep seeing more and more and more simple. Or more simple. It’s not rocket science. It’s just divine engineering. We are just whoever invented us knew what they’re doing.
Alexandra: With the kids that you were working with at that time, as you were learning, did you observe any shifts or changes in them?
Mavis: Oh, it was amazing. It was just amazing. And at the time, I developed this belief which turned out not to be true, but that it was a lot easier to teach the kids because they just didn’t have such a grip on their habits of thinking. And it probably had a lot to do with I saw it so simply. At the time I didn’t think I was seeing it simply. I thought it was just the best I knew to do and I knew that there was a whole lot better way to teach it but I wasn’t there yet. That’s what I saw that turned out the seeing it simply worked for kids.
So it probably helped that I love them that I have such an affinity for kids. They don’t, I don’t know. But when I was in charge of the groups, they would always call calm down pretty quickly. It turned out to be they would calm down, just kind of knowing it was me. Because they got ready to calm down. And it really wasn’t I was just calm.
And turns out, any feeling you bring to something is catching. I was just beginning to see the power behind calm. And not in order to affect other people. But for me, the power in just calming down and trusting that what I need will show up instead of spending hours and hours and hours trying to figure everything out. So the kids responded really well.
Alexandra: That calmness that you began to see and the value in being a single mom, I imagine there was a lot of weight on your shoulders. Did that begin to lift?
Mavis: I could still get myself all wound up about something, I’m just not particularly interested in it anymore. But I just relaxed more than I didn’t. I just kept getting more so that the relaxation was the bigger part of the equation and the worry and the anxiety and the “am I ruining my kids?”, all of that stuff was less than less.
But, I’m not any different than anybody else, I can still drive myself bananas with my own thinking. I just catch it quicker. And when it happens, I know it’s just it’s nothing, just temporary. It’s just a break from sanity. I don’t care. I’m going in a bad mood, and I’m thinking stupid things. I pretty much keep my mouth shut because I don’t want to clean up the mess I make if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. So I just don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s temporary. I’ll be smarter again in a minute.
Alexandra: One of the things that we’re going to talk about today is your book.
You famously wrote a letter: was it to these kids that the first letter that you wrote?
Mavis: The letter was to kids in a project I did. With actually a couple of pro football players, they had started a little agency in the north side of Minneapolis, where lots of kids get in lots of trouble. And we got the county to give us some money to go and teach what they teach to kids in a prison about an hour from of my house.
For two years, I went down there every Sunday and taught three or four different classes. And it was a blast. It wasn’t at first when they first went there you know, it’s not like they were the kids were going oh Mavis is here. No, it was like that. They pretty much thought I was the wrong profession, the wrong gender. In some cases, I had the wrong pigment. But they got over it.
It was just an honor to go in and just it was just an honor to just be with them. And watch what happens when kids wake up to who they are.
They are magnificent. And they, the kids that were in the class in the beginning, kind of kept order as new kids came in and wanted to show everybody what’s what. And I hadn’t noticed that for a long time that the original kids were taking care of order. I just like got this great thing. But it turned out that that they would from time to time take a new kid aside and say don’t mess with G they called me. OG. I thought it meant old grandmother for the longest time I and it turns out it means original gangster
They found their kindness. They found their beauty and they didn’t want me to get hurt. And that was lonely. I didn’t even know it was possible to get hurt. Now I think about it, that’s not particularly safe place to go. But I’m not a street smart person. I don’t pretend to be.
I just know some things and I was pretty sure if they gave me a chance, they’d want to know it too. And I was right about that. I am not sure who taught who more. They taught me so much about what’s possible. For kids that in many cases came from home lives that would just curl your teeth. And to have them find who they really are, after years of just having some beliefs about their own limitations, and so many of them had no expectation of living beyond 20.
That was so startling to me to find that out. I knew it intellectually just reading stuff, but to be with kids who didn’t think it mattered too much what they did or didn’t do, because they weren’t going to live much longer anyway. And that was there. That was there. It was logical that they all lost so many friends and relatives to violence that it was logical to think well probably not going to be around long.
To see them start to have aspirations that in most cases involved helping people and we didn’t have the kind of money or resources to follow up on these kids. So it was always informed what we’d see them here and we’d see them there and they wouldn’t from time to time stop in my office and we go have lunch and stuff.
But there are so many of I have no idea what happened except every once in a while somebody will tell me hey, you know I saw so-and-so. I wish we would have known how to incorporate some follow up stuff in it. But we were just babies in this thing. And we were operating on a shoestring. And we did as much as we could with what we knew at the time, but I would have loved to have kept track of them.
That’s more of an answer than you actually asked, wasn’t it?
Alexandra: It was great. I love hearing the background. And actually, you answered one of my follow up questions, which was going to be about whether you ran into them later on.
And the letter that you wrote to them that came about, was it because of a graduation?
Mavis: Well, yeah, it was the end of my part of that program. The money ran out. I kept going for a while anyway. But other people in the agency took over. And so on my last day with them, they were going to have a party. where me and this is what, because we’d see the one they got out to was part of the program, we think there was a group, and sometimes individuals. So they’re going to have a party and they made this cake. I wish I would have taken a picture; they looked like they had a fight over it.
Before I went, I just I want to give them something. And I actually get them on socks. One of the Christmases I was with them at the prison, I bought them all socks because they were always running on a socks. I took a garbage bag full of socks. And I thought, socks? We don’t want to give them socks.
I suddenly thought, Okay, I’m going to write him a letter. So I just sat down. And I let the letter write itself. I don’t know how else to explain. It wasn’t a personal intellect letter. It was just a love letter by itself. Made a bunch of copies. Give them all a copy. That was it.
And somehow or other that letter got into Stillwater, which is the big boys prison. And I got a call one day from somebody. One of the inmates wanted to make a poster. So I thought, well, that’s a good idea. So he made a poster out of it. I had a bunch of printed. He used to give it to kids when I see him and lots of times, adults. It just got wings and it started floating around him to turn up in places. I didn’t send it there. I don’t know how it got there. So that’s the letter.
Alexandra: I’ll put a link in the show notes because it’s at your website, which is MavisKarn.net. And so if listeners are interested, they can go and read the letter there, which is so beautiful. And then it’s the first letter in Mavis’ new book called, It’s That Simple.
So let’s talk about that a little bit. You’ve touched on it actually already a little.
Why did you choose that title?
Mavis: I don’t know anything about writing a book. Michael Neill had tried to get me to write a book for ever since I met him he tried to get and we’ve known each other a long time. We should write a book. Like, I don’t know how to write a book, you write books. You’re great at writing books. I don’t have that much to say I can’t write a book.
He was about ready to give up on me as far as the book goes, and he went and he said, Well, how about if you just write some more letters? And I thought, Well, okay, yeah, I know how to write letters. I’ll write letters. And he said, it’s that simple. It’s that simple. Yeah. And because I say that a lot, I guess, because things are simpler than we think. So that’s how that came about. That book would not have happened without Michael.
Alexandra: What was that experience like for you writing more letters?
Mavis: I loved it. I have a little porch on the back of my house. And I have a backyard that backs up to a forest. And it’s just a lovely little place back here.
I took my legal pad and my pen, and I’d sit out there and I would write letters. And Michael would say, have you read a letter about this case? Write a letter about that. And I would think of a letter and sometime my project manager Azul would think of a letter and I would just write letters. I had the best time. It took two weeks. I still don’t know how to write a book.
Alexandra: Well, it’s beautiful. And yeah, just lovely. All different kinds of subjects that you talk about, like our moods and self-esteem and all different kinds of stuff. I was in Portland in March with Michael, he was doing a weekend with Barbara Patterson.
I think it was there that it was mentioned you were going to record the audiobook as well. How was that?
Mavis: It was fun. I didn’t want to do that either. He said, Okay, either I’ll come to Minneapolis, or you can come to California. I’m coming to California. So we he set aside three days with this recording studio. I know nothing about recording things, either. There’s so much I know nothing about.
We did it in one morning. I just read the book. That’s it. Yeah, we had three days. He said, Well, we know how long it would take. So but that was it. I just read the book. That apparently that’s coming out pretty soon.
Alexandra: I’ve taken a few classes with you and Christian McNeil. And they are such great classes. I just enjoyed them so much every time.
One of the things that I really appreciated about one of the messages that you kept returning to, is how our feelings are always feedback about how we’re thinking. I tend to talk to people about food cravings, specifically. And as I was going on my journey, trying to understand why I had those cravings and why I would overeat that message was so profound for me and made such a big difference in my life.
Could you please talk about that a little bit more about how our feelings work and what our feelings are?
Mavis: Well, they’re just astonishingly useful. For every emotion, which is a physical sensation, every emotion is on our side, all the way from hatred, to terror, to love and kindness, generosity, they’re all on our side. Because they are letting us know, in this moment, the quality of the experience we’re creating with our thinking.
That is the love of the universe. There’s so many pieces of truth in the core of every religion, one of them in Christianity is Christ saying, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.” And when I when I think about how well we’re made, I think of oceans as the love of the universe with us, always just guiding us way from misusing the gift of thought. And back to coming from our natural inborn common sense and wisdom. kindness, compassion, love.
It’s like we don’t have to figure out anything out. Those sensations are there to see when we’re a little off course here, relax, come on back home smarter any minute now. That is at least as use useful as touching a hot stove feel so bad, you can’t leave your hand there isn’t that useful? It’s like that’s on our side.
It’s how we know whether to buy shoes or not. They may look good. But if they feel bad, they, it’s not going to work. So there’s a sensation that lets us know if these are the right size shoes.
There’s a sensation that lets us know whether you’d put a coat on or take it off. We are being guided all the time by sensation. And the sensation of emotion is guiding us in the use of this thing.
Alexandra: It’s so simple.
Mavis: I read little essay not too long ago by a woman that was reading a book about the Buddha. And she said, the Buddha says, Everyone is enlightened. All of our struggles happen because we don’t know that. It’s that simple.
All of our struggles are because we don’t know we are divinely created. And divine design is science. It’s not bubbles and petunias. It’s science. It’s like, right now you and I are looking at a screen. Right? If we want to look that way. When we change the aperture in the lens of our eye, just with intention.
Who invented the app? Or that’s amazing. That’s just one tiny little piece of our engineering. We get so impressed with technology. But we have more apps than any phone Apple is going to invent ever. Because the phone was invented by somebody that has more apps on the phone.
Alexandra: You mentioned at the beginning that you’ve been exploring this understanding for quite a while.
Do you find that what you see about these things deepens all the time?
Mavis: Yeah, but I hesitate to use the word deepen because people associate so much with complexity. In my world, it just gets more obvious. That’s what I loved about the kids.
There’s a story in that book that I think that’s a book. I’m pretty sure this is one of the one of the times we were meeting with a with a group of them after they got out of prison in Arizona. 15 or 20 of them in my conference room and I was going to start the group and the kid next to me said, “G, can I talk?” I said, “Sure.”
So he started around the room and he started naming each kid and their gang affiliation, if they had one. I knew their names but I didn’t care what gang they belonged to. That wasn’t important to me. And he went around the room and they would they would nod at that. I thought where’s he going with this? And then he said, In the past, most of you have been my enemy. But now I have love for all of you.
And I was like, whoa. And the kids started talking about what would happen if the whole world knew what they knew. And they got rowdy about it. There wouldn’t be any war. People wouldn’t even think about it. And all babies would be loved. And they went on like this for the rest of the time.
They thought of all the things that wouldn’t happen because people wouldn’t trust their thinking when they thought about doing those things. The other two guys who were with me that day, and we were just we were looking at each other like I mean, we all thought it would work. But we didn’t know it would work that well.
Now, I know that these kids are still kids. And maybe some of them went and got into a little more trouble before they go it maybe some of them got a lot of trouble. I don’t know. But I know that I will never forget that day. And I don’t think they will either.
Alexandra: Beautiful. Oh, that’s so lovely. I guess we’re coming close to the end of our time together. So I just wanted to ask if there’s anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with our listeners?
Mavis: I have no idea. What do you think?
Alexandra: I’ve loved everything you’ve shared thus far, and I really enjoy hearing about your work with the kids. I don’t know what it is, but it always gives me a good feeling.
Mavis: Me too. I have a favor to ask people.
Alexandra: Sure. Go ahead.
Mavis: I’m not any good at promoting my book. Someone else has got to do that. But if people can afford it, I would like people to give one of the books to a kid.
Alexandra: Oh, lovely.
Mavis: I would love people to do that.
Alexandra: I’ll put links in the show notes so people can find it. And that would be beautiful. That’s a beautiful request. Thank you, Mavis.
Mavis: Oh, thank you. I told Michael one day, you run into anybody that’s got kazillion dollars, could we give them a really good deal. And they could give a book to every kid on the planet?
Alexandra: Well, you never know.
Where can our listeners find out more about you and your work?
Mavis: You mean, besides the what do you call it?
Alexandra: Website. Let’s give that address again.
Mavis: What is it?
Alexandra: MavisKarn.net
Mavis: I don’t visit it much. I’m not good at this stuff.
Alexandra: That’s okay. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m doing what I do.
Mavis: So thank you very much. I need all the help I can get.
Alexandra: You’re welcome. This has been amazing it’s been so great to connect with you again and I thank you for being with me here today
Mavis: You are most welcome. Thanks for having me.
Q&A 33 – How does relaxation aid weight loss?
Oct 02, 2023
When it comes to weight loss we tend to think of it as a problem that needs to be solved, and one that is serious and potentially fraught. What if this was not the case? What if relaxing and relying on the innate wisdom that is within each of us was part of the solution?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Why we say that in this understanding there is very little ‘doing’ that is necessary
How being relaxed and loose can aid the reception of insight and wisdom
How finding a solution to an overeating habit is not all on our shoulders
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 33 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today the question I’m going to explore is, how does relaxation help with weight loss?
This question came about because recently I gave a friend a copy of Michael Neill’s book, The Inside Out Revolution and I was reflecting on my experience reading that book, when I first was introduced to this understanding by a friend. I tell this story in It’s Not About the Food. I got two thirds of the way through the book, and my friends checked in with me and said, “How are you enjoying it? What do you think about the book?”
I said, “I really like it. It’s really great. He’s got a very engaging writing style. And I feel like I’m learning some things, but he hasn’t told me what to do yet.” And she said, “No, that’s right. And he’s not going to.”
At the beginning of exploring this understanding, I couldn’t really grasp or get my head around why it was that people said that there’s not a lot, if any, doing in this understanding. Why is it that, that they’re not giving me things to do? Like, rules to follow, or checklists to go through, or that kind of structure that we’re so used to, from, or at least I was, from the self-help world, and from the diet books, and the managing your eating books that I read for years and years and the classes that I took.
It was really puzzling to me that the teachers kept referring to this idea of doing less.
And so that’s where our question is pointing us today. I want to explore what that means and why it’s important.
A couple of different analogies occurred to me about this. So one is, is one that I heard from someone else somewhere else, and I can’t remember what it was, but the analogy is this: imagine that you’re having to have surgery, any kind of surgery. And the surgeon approaches you and is maybe taking you into the operating room. And imagine that there’s one scenario where the surgeon approaches you, and is really kind of tense and rigid, and just sort of uptight. And you can tell that this is a person who really follows the rules, and wants to get things done in a timely manner. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there’s just this rigidity about the person who is taking the situation very seriously. Almost to the point of making you nervous about what’s going on.
Versus having a surgeon who, while still equally competent, at the actual job of surgery is holding the situation much more lightly. So there’s an ease there and a comfort with themselves and with perhaps even relying on your body’s natural resilience and resourcefulness. And there’s a looseness about that person and a receptivity to creativity and new ideas. Inspiration, I guess would be the best word for that.
Which surgeon would you pick?
I definitely would pick the surgeon in the second scenario, because that’s a person who is going to be open to creativity and inspiration. And even if the situation is quite serious, even if the surgery is really important and maybe life saving there’s still something about the about holding that situation lightly and trusting all the elements in play. Trusting, like I said, the health and the resilience in the in your body, the person who’s being operated on, and trusting the wisdom and the creativity and the intelligence of the other people in the operating room.
The surgeon in the second scenario is not feeling like the outcome of this situation is 1,000% resting on her shoulders.
That surgeon understands that there’s more at play, and that she can rely on those things to guide her as she’s doing her job. And again, doing her job very competently, of course, she’s trained, and she’s skilled. And all of that is taking place, but there’s just this looseness, relaxation around the job that she’s doing. And so given that scenario, I would definitely choose that surgeon, the surgeon in the second scenario.
When I was preparing to press record here on this minisode, the other example I thought of, to illustrate this example that I’m sharing is that of sports. Now, I’m not a very sporty person. But my stepfather was really sporty. And he played all kinds of sports, and he watched all kinds of sports on TV. I would often overhear him talking maybe to my uncle or my brother about when a certain athlete was doing really well in their career. My stepfather watched a lot of baseball, my mom did, too, they really enjoyed it, and my brother, and often if one of the players was doing really well, hitting a lot of home runs, or making a lot of spectacular catches that kind of thing, John, my stepfather would talk about that person being in the zone. That’s a common sports descriptor.
He would often comment as well about how loose and relaxed to the person was.
When an athlete is performing really well, it seems to me from my very limited number of observations, given that I’m not very sporty, but when an athlete is doing really well at what they do, there’s a looseness to it, there’s a relaxed element to what’s going on.
I think all of what I’ve just shared is illustrative of the understanding that we’re exploring here, as it relates to ending an unwanted over eating habit.
So it might seem absurd that I’m using those two examples, but I think they point really well. And really clearly to I mean, we would almost call it performance. So a surgeon and an athlete are performing. And that’s definitely not what we’re doing when we’re trying to resolve an unwanted overeating habit. But navigating our way through life is certainly more pleasurable, and definitely more, we learn more, achieve more, accomplish more, in my experience, when we have that relaxed, loose approach to things rather than approaching something with a really kind of rigid, anxious approach or methodology, or whatever it is.
When it comes to this conversation about overeating and trying to resolve that habit, I knew I was guilty at the beginning of really, and I’m saying that without blame, it was just something that was happening of wanting to be told the rules, and of feeling like there was a certain amount of urgency or pressure on myself to resolve that problem that I had that overeating problem.
That makes total sense, because it was something that I had been dealing with for 30 plus years.
And it was something that was on on my mind, it felt like my full time job, it felt like I couldn’t get my life started until it was resolved. All of that created a lot of pressure within me to fix this and find the solution and manage my cravings and my overeating habit. And what I see now is that the in any given situation, including this one, resolving an overeating habit:
The more I can relax, and be loose with it and hold the situation really lightly, the more I can tap into Universal Wisdom.
The universal wisdom that’s always there for us, and is available in any moment. And at every any given time. And the more I see that, there’s really nothing I can do wrong, that everything is an exploration and that there is insight that’s just right there waiting for me.
People in this understanding, often use the expression that we’re one thought away from having a big shift in our understanding.
Going back to the surgeon and the athlete example, when we’re quite rigid and tense and feeling like the weight of the whole thing is on our shoulders. That is actually the circumstance that makes wisdom and insight. It could occur, but it’s, it’s a little more difficult for it to occur to us or to happen within us. And when we’re relaxed, that creates an environment that encourages wisdom and insight to make itself available to us.
How does relaxation aid weight loss?
Well, when we take a more relaxed approach to learning about this understanding, when we hold the situation that we’re in lightly, even though that can be difficult to do, and we just do it to the best of our ability, that creates the environment that makes wisdom and insight available to us. And we can begin to see that there is it’s not all on our shoulders, and there is so much universal wisdom available to us at all times.
There is wisdom within our cravings within the unwanted habit of overeating.
We can see that when we relax our ideas about how things should work and relax around the all the information that we have from the old paradigm of psychology, which is pathology based and is telling us that we’re broken, and that there’s something about us that we need to fix.
Instead, we can begin to see and begin to learn and grow and deepen our understanding about how well we actually are always that there’s never anything wrong with us. And that looking in that direction toward our wholeness. And our innate well being is what creates positive change. So that’s how relaxation can aid weight loss.
As ever, I hope this has been helpful for you, and hopefully for you. And if you have a question that you’d like me to explore on a future episode, please let me know you can go to AlexandraAmor.com/question, and fill out the form there and I’ll be happy to answer your question.
Until next time, take care. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Strength in Vulnerability with Sharon Crabbe
Sep 28, 2023
One of Sharon Crabbe’s most profound insights was that we don’t ever need fixing because we can never be broken. She now applies this understanding in her work with children, adults, and horses and recognizes that our strength often lies in our willingness to be vulnerable.
Sharon Crabbe is a coach, mentor and educator.
She is a Certified iheart Facilitator delivering the iheart curriculum in schools and 1-2-1 or small group tutoring, and is also a Natural Horsemanship trainer of horses and humans.
You can find Sharon Crabbe at SharonJCrabbe.com and on Instagram @sharonjcrabbe.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Learning about the inside-out understanding and bringing that into equine therapy
How we can’t be fixed because we’re not broken
How ‘acting out’ behaviour is a sign of our resilience
How urgency and anxiety can turn us into human doings rather than human beings
How so much of life comes down to the quality of our relationships, even when it comes to working with horses
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Get Sharon’s free ebook Lessen Your Stresshere and uncover an entirely new perspective on stress: what causes it and what to do about it.
The Jack Prasky book Sharon mentions is Somebody Should Have Told Us
Sharon: Hello. It’s really lovely to be here. I’m very happy to be here.
Alexandra: I’m so pleased to have you. Thank you so much for coming.
Tell us about your background and how you came to find the 3 Principles.
Sharon: The common thread running throughout my whole life has been horses. I’ve done lots of other things, always as a last resort because I needed to earn some more money. But the horses have been the main thread really.
About 20 years ago, more than that, I got into natural horsemanship, because before that I’d been very traditionally trained with the British Horse Society. I ended up going to the States and spending about two years out there studying with the cowboys, actually. Which was wonderful.
That was a big change, because I went out there one person and came back somebody else completely. It was a huge transformation, quite late in life, because I was already in my 40s. But it was the beginning of me becoming more self-aware, I think. I saw a whole new way of what being with horses and working with horses.
The big thing that happened was I realized that in order to be a good horsewoman, I had to change myself and it was nothing to do with changing the horses really. So that was really huge. And it’s a long story. So I’ll cut it short. I got interested in kind of in people. That took me into equine therapy. So assisted therapy, and that was pretty amazing. I started working with vulnerable, young, mostly young people.
Throughout all this things were pretty good. But I always had a bit of a dark side, I had a problem with depression and anxiety. And I used to have these episodes which were really quite extreme.
I put a brave face on it. So nobody really knew. But I did have some pretty bad times. And then out of the blue one day, one of my horsemanship clients posted something on Facebook about a program that she’d done to help with anxiety and depression. And I was curious, I guess so I asked her what it was. And it was a program by Nicola Bird. And that was back in 2017.
That was my introduction to the 3P’s really. I did a 12 week program. And I kind of got fixed I thought.
Alexandra: Okay, cliffhanger.
Sharon: Yes. Yeah, but that was that was how I came across the three principles.
Alexandra: Okay, so tell us about that cliffhanger.
Sharon: I’ve been ill, physically ill, quite seriously in and out of hospital and life threatening it all so and, and when I came across Nicola, it was a time where I was really, I was better physically, but mentally, not. Anyway, as I say, it fixed me.
I got back into my crazy life. And I’ve had a great time. I’ve had lots of adventures, and I started some new ones. We went off and cycled across Costa Rica in aid of charity. And I felt great. That was kind of 2018 2019. And then after that, it started creeping back, the low mood, the depression. And I’d forgotten all about the three principles.
I’d come across Michael Neill a little bit. I’d read some of his books, but I kind of put it down. So I suddenly had this thought I know I must do, I must look up that program again, because that fixed me last time, so I probably need to do it again. I engaged again when Nicola did another little program, but this time, something was different, I saw something different. And I just got hooked if you like. Things look different. And I wanted to continue.
So I carried on exploring. I started reading everybody; the Jack Pransky book is my favorite book. And then I started to see things that I was doing with the equine therapy and realizing that this was the missing bit, if you like, I still hadn’t quite had the major kind of insight, but it just felt like there was something it was like putting together bits of a jigsaw.
I got more involved in reading more. And I did some more courses, I can’t remember which ones but my style of teaching and everything started changing; my relationship with my family and my husband improved. I couldn’t really tell you how, but it was different.
And then I got involved with iHeart. I heard about iHeart, which is a charity that works, particularly with a program aimed at helping young people. And this just felt like the next bit of the puzzle if you like, so I decided to do that training. I’m coming back to the cliffhanger now.
During that training, there was an exercise we did to do with it was partly I think it was during the week talking about bullying. And there was this exercise that we did that I was being trained to deliver. But we were actually taking part in it. I suddenly had this massive moment when I realized that I hadn’t been fixed at all, because I wasn’t broken.
That was that was the big difference. And then I started to see that the work I was doing with the with the youngsters with the horse with everything had always been through. I’d always come at everything as a fixer.
Alexandra: And then you weren’t.
Sharon: Yeah. And then suddenly. And it just, it was huge. I remember sobbing actually, not just because it was like taking glasses off and putting and then seeing. It was like new eyes actually. It was so huge. I can still remember the moment it kind of goosebumps a little bit. I was just like, Oh my goodness. I didn’t need to be I wasn’t broken.
Alexandra: A couple of follow up questions then.
Equine guided therapy. Can you explain what that is? Maybe for the listeners who might not be aware.
Sharon: I was trained in a very particular type of Equine Assisted Therapy. And basically, what we would do is work with young people will anybody really, and horses working on the ground, and the particular charity that I trained with it’s not really a therapy, to be honest. It’s more like an intervention. It’s called the horse. And it’s very action based.
It’s not just kind of hanging out with horses, you actually work with horses and the horses are specially trained. And the participants get to these the actual courses about four or five days to two hours, consecutive days, two hours each day, and they play with the horses online. So online means on a rope and play again.
And the horses can do all sorts of cool stuff. So they’ll pop over jumps and go backwards and sideways and stand on pedestals and kick a football and it’s not about making the horse do something it is about playing. In order to be with the horse and play with the horse, you’re basically helping people develop lifestyle skills.
The difference between, let’s say, being assertive and being aggressive. Finding relaxation, being able to really lower your energy and switch off and the horse acts as a mirror. So, and it’s amazing, because we hit sometimes you have the little tiny tots with these great big horses, and the horses, they don’t have an agenda. The horses we work with are all rescued. So it’s kind of fulfilling. It’s doing something in that side of things as well.
Alexandra: Lovely. And so then, when you had that big insight about not being broken, and that it wasn’t your job to fix anybody.
How did that change this work that you were doing with the horses and the kids?
Sharon: Well, yeah, because first of all, it was very personal. It was me, I’m not broken. But then I realized that it was anybody else. I just have me on my mind first, as we do.
So what did it mean? It meant that when I interacted with anybody really, but particularly with the young people I was working with that I was not trying to fix them. I could see the health in their behavior in their actions, as opposed to seeing various coping mechanisms, perhaps as being a problem. Which meant that I was just more relaxed. And that takes the pressure off.
That showed up with the horses, and it showed up with the people and it also showed up with the parents, or the carers, or the rest of the family, because very often and this again, with iHeart even when I’m not doing anything with horses, it’s you see that you can you can work with a young person, but you really need to engage the whole family. Because otherwise the worry, and the stress is coming from the parents really,
But just the fact that I was not worried about whatever was showing up, just took that edge off it, I think.
Alexandra: You said something that really piqued my interest there, too: you didn’t say these words, but if a teenager is acting out, or behaving badly, that’s a sign of their health.
It’s not just a coping mechanism, it’s actually a sign of their resilience. Can you say more about that?
Sharon: It’s how life looks to them in that moment. So it makes perfect sense. And it’s quite hard. I have to be honest, I do find it hard sometimes to put things to articulate that and to try and explain it sometimes. But, it just makes more sense when you know that they’re not broken, and whatever is showing up makes complete sense given the way they see the world in that moment.
The other thing is when you in the some of the young people I’ve worked with are really worried about their condition or their label. Yeah. You know, because they think that there is something wrong with them. And it just perpetuates that stress and that suffering.
Alexandra: Wow. I hadn’t really thought about it that way. How much a label would do to the person who’s receiving it.
This might seem like a weird question.
After you had that insight about not being there to fix anybody, and as you learn more about your own innate well-being, did you notice any change in the way the horses behaved around you?
Sharon: Yeah, the horses have been my greatest teacher, without a doubt. And even before I came across the three principles my horses taught me about being and not doing. If you’re a horse person, and you meet another horse person traditionally the first thing they’ll say to you, is, what do you do with your horse? I used to say that and there’s kind of, there’s an emphasis and a pressure to do something, you know.
I see my life is before the three P’s and after, as lots of people probably see. I was brought up to be busy, to be doing. If anyone ever had suggested that I might be lazy, that would have been a big problem for me. Not doing meant you were being lazy.
I think that brings with it a sense of urgency in your life. I used to run around with a to do list in my head through the day mentally ticking off and I was really into time management. And multitasking, all those efficient practices. And it turns out, they’re not so efficient after all.
Alexandra: I’m curious about iHeart because I actually don’t know much about it. I wonder if you could tell us about that.
Sharon: So iHeart is a charity based in London. It’s run by Terry and Brian Rubinstein and they have trained, I’ll probably get this wrong, but it’s several hundred, I think it’s five, maybe even 600 facilitators to deliver a Resilience Program.
When I first started with them, we were actually going into schools and teaching in the classroom. It’s an 11 week program, each session is about an hour. And it’s, it’s called iHeart because it’s innate health resilience training.
The way I think of it is we’re looking to try and facilitate insight. So, throughout the program, it’s a mix of discussion, looking at video clips, activities, we play with dough, and Jenga bricks and bits of paper, and all sorts of things, and using lots of metaphors to describe the human condition and that we have innate well-being and resilience that can’t be damaged, broken, taken away. But it can be covered up.
It’s aimed at eight years upwards. They have now produced an online program that you can buy, which is six sessions of about an hour, no less than an hour, half an hour, I can’t remember, which is purely online. It’s a digital program, which is available for people to buy. And it’s brilliant. It talks about the hero’s journey. And it uses very, sort of modern concepts computer games and superheroes and this sort of thing to get this message across of innate health and resilience.
I’m not unfortunately working in schools anymore. Mainly because of cost, I think and because they’ve developed the digital program, but we are now working more in small groups and working with individuals. It’s also aimed at the whole family. Accompanying program that the parents or the guardians or whatever can follow along, and they have that as well. So they, because we need to speak a common language.
Alexandra: Thank you for sharing that. I just have never learned much about that program.
One of the things I looked up on your website was that you also did some rewilding training with Angus and Rohini Ross.
Tell us a bit about that and what rewilding means to you.
Sharon: When I first got involved with that, I had no idea what it meant to me or them to be honest. And how did it start? Oh, yes, Rohini offered a free six week program. It must have been last summer, which was called rewilding your practice and I’d listened to their podcast quite a lot and followed on and I just thought that sounds fun. So I joined and I did the six week program.
It was brilliant because for me anyway, it was about being me and it was about stepping outside my – I don’t like the term comfort zone but I can’t think of another way of describing it – but just kind of putting myself out there a little bit you know, going live on Facebook and doing zoom calls and kind of talking and sharing things with other people. It was a wonderful six weeks.
After that they had their guide training which was six months and I just decided I wanted more really. It was I think for me it goes back rewarding for me quite simply is getting in touch with your essential nature and getting back to the young innocent me that’s still in there somewhere you know.
There was something came in my mind and it’s gone up the other side, but it’s to do it’s to do with that just sort of being and I think that actually if I’m going to be really honest, I was also a little bit scared of feelings. When I was depressed, but also kind of all that lovey dovey stuff, as I used to call it, I used to say to Rohini I don’t do all that stuff. I find it quite hard to do that. To be not just a bit physically to but even to be able to talk about it.
I realized that I even found it quite hard to say the word love. So it was a real exploration into all of that. If I could put it into one word, I think it would be being seeing the strength in vulnerability. That wasn’t one word, was it? But you know what I mean?
That was, that was for me. That was what that was all about, I think. Such a gorgeous group of people. I mean, there’s still a community. We sort of kept it going. And I’m actually can’t wait for I think it’s November, isn’t it? I’m going to actually meet Rohini in person because there’s an event in Spain. Speaking at VIVA.
Alexandra: I’m just really fascinated by the intersection between the rewilding work and your understanding of the principles and the horses. And bringing that to the work you do with them.
It occurs to me that rewilding could that could apply to the horses as well, right?
Sharon: Yeah. But it’s actually quite simple, because the common thread running through all of this is relationships. And funnily enough, the work I do now, gradually, I seem to be working more with people, not even with horses, and it’s all about relationship, kind of coaching that sort of thing. That’s that seems to be what I’m doing at the moment.
If I go back to when, I mean, there’s a whole story about how I went from traditional horsemanship into natural horsemanship, and I’d love to tell you about it. But what happened was that the natural horsemanship changed everything because it became about the relationship with the horse. So it was all about building relationship based on trust, communication, understanding, not, as I had been taught previously through a very traditional British horsemanship: be the boss, military traditions, dominance.
I went to one of the best schools when I was 17, to become an instructor. It was run by an army colonel. So I’ve never really asked the right questions about I had this talk pushed into me about how to be dominant and the boss and all the rest of it. And then suddenly, I started to see that you could have a relationship with a horse.
That’s the common thread, I think that runs through all of it. And of course, with the rewilding the especially – Rohini has the podcast and everything – it was very much about relationship coaching and that sort of thing.
Alexandra: When you said that you now have drifted into more work around relationships. So that’s like spousal relationships?
Sharon: Yeah. And that’s come about gradually. Because of the work I’ve been doing also the COVID pandemic, we ended up more on computers and digital working with people over zoom or whatever. So I’ve been amazed at how you can actually really connect with people who aren’t you through like we aren’t. And I really enjoy that.
Some of the people I’ve worked with, some of my one-to-one clients actually ended up coming to visit and spending a day with me with the horses as well, even if it’s just a kind of extra. Yes. And we do some coaching, going for walks and this sort of thing so, yeah.
Alexandra: We’re coming toward the end of our time together.
Is there’s anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share?
Sharon: I don’t think so. I’m just I did make some notes. But I think we’ve covered quite a lot, actually.
Alexandra: Well, then, tell us where we can find out more about you and your work.
Sharon: I have a website. It’s my name, SharonJCrabbe.com. I’m not very good at keeping it all up to date. I could spend some time in. I’m also on Facebook, and emails and contact numbers all over there. I’m always happy to have a chat with anyone about anything.
I do work in all sorts of different areas, it seems. But that’s great. I enjoy the variety.
Alexandra: Oh, that must be nice. Well, that’s great. Sharon, thank you so much for chatting with me today. It’s been such a pleasure connecting with you.
Sharon: It’s been a lovely, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it too.
Q&A 32 – Overeating: The loving nature of cravings
Sep 25, 2023
Traditionally we look at food cravings and the drive to overeat as a problem, something to be fixed and overcome. What if we’ve misunderstood the message cravings are trying to send us? And what if they’re actually trying to help us?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
What our cravings are really pointing toward
How we can begin to recognize the wisdom in cravings
What happens as we see what food cravings have on offer for us
Transcript of this episode
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 32 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
Today our question has to do with the nature of symptoms and what they mean for us.
By symptoms, in this case, specifically, I want to talk about the drive to overeat or cravings for food. I just finished a recording a podcast with Rachel Singleton, which will be available on October 19, 2023. And as so often happens, when I have a guest that I’m talking to, I have insights throughout while I’m speaking to that person and see things slightly differently, from a slightly different angle. Or perhaps we could say a little deeper than I had seen them before.
Rachel is someone who struggled with physical symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome for years, and did a lot to try to resolve that and fix what she felt was wrong with her body. And in that interview, she talks about how she began to see things in a completely different way and that was ended up that ended up being what resolved her health issues.
As we were speaking, and we were talking about the loving nature of symptoms, and in this specific example, I’m going to talk about the loving nature of cravings.
This metaphor occurred to me, so I want to highlight it, and then talk about what it’s pointing toward.
If you were cooking in your kitchen, and things started to go a little awry, you might notice a bit of a smell coming. Let’s say you spilled something onto the burner that you were using in the kitchen. And that would be the first, very minor signal that something was going awry with your cooking. And then if you didn’t take care of that whatever was happening, if you didn’t notice it, innocently, the burner might start to smoke. And then after a while that smoke might cause you to cough. But you still might be, let’s say distracted or just not paying attention.
Then what might happen, if there’s enough smoke created, the smoke alarm in your home or your apartment would start to go off. In my apartment, it’s kind of a beeping noise. That just alerts me that there’s smoke in the house. And then, metaphorically speaking, if we didn’t pay attention to that, flames might start to erupt, based on whatever’s going on on the stove and with your cooking.
As that situation grows worse than maybe the larger alarm in your, I live in a condo building, so there, there are those little red boxes that you can pull, or like a little red handle. And so someone might pull one of those. And then it’s a much more alarming sound. Pun intended. And we’ve all heard that when we’ve been in… I’m hearkening back to a school, or an office building; it’s really loud, really loud bell kind of sounds. Then the fire department shows up, and they might start spraying water around your kitchen, to try to fix the situation that’s going on in there.
So that’s the metaphor that came to me. And it points to a couple of different things when it comes to an unwanted overeating habit. And here’s what occurred to me.
The first is that when we come into this conversation with the three principles and the also known as the Inside Out understanding, and we’re exploring this paradigm of health, rather than the old paradigm that we’re used to, which was one of ill health, it can be a bit confusing. I think very often, at least looking back for me what I see is that it can be that when we’re exploring this understanding, we’re in that place where the people from the fire department are rushing around, there’s lots of noise, there’s lots of chaos, there’s water going everywhere, there’s flames that are trying to be extinguished in your kitchen.
What I mean by that is that you may have been struggling with your overeating habit for so long, and tried so many things as I did, that we’re kind of in crisis mode, essentially. It feels like a five alarm fire our overeating habit, and not least because perhaps we’ve gained a whole bunch of weight. And our physical health might be suffering, because of that, at that time. And our self-esteem has been perhaps, as mine was in the toilet for decades, and we’re feeling a lot of shame, and we’re feeling like we are broken, which of course we aren’t.
There’s a lot going on in that moment, or at that time, that we discover this understanding. What gradually begins to happen, as we turn our selves toward understanding of our innate well being, and our innate health, and that that can never be damaged. And that there, there is actually not a problem with us that this problem that we’ve been trying to fix has been simply a misunderstanding about where the signals from our bodies or cravings are pointing.
As we begin to explore that, and learn and understand, and really importantly, have our own insights about that, what begins to happen is that those signals from our body, so going back to the cooking metaphor, those signals from the stove, and from the kitchen, and from the alarms that are going off, don’t need to be as loud and as noisy, and as attention getting, as they have been in the past. Because what they’ve been trying to do, just as that smoke alarm in our home is trying to protect us, and help us and serve us. That’s exactly what our cravings and our drive to overeat are doing.
Cravings are not a problem. They are a signal.
When we begin to see that when we’re exploring this understanding, and we’re having our own insights, and we gradually, it starts to occur to us, we start to have those light bulb moments of oh, it’s not that. It’s not a problem. It’s this thing over here, it’s a solution. It’s a part of our innate, brilliant, divine design that is trying to signal to us that there’s something going on. And we’ve simply misunderstood that message.
That message, of course, is that we are always well, we are always whole. And when we feel an alarm going off, when we have a really deep craving or chronic cravings what that’s trying to alert us to and remind us of is our well-being. The smoke alarm is trying to let us know about the smoke that’s dangerous that’s in our homes. The craving is trying to remind us that we’ve forgotten who we are, or that we’ve never been aware of it that we’ve.
This is temporary and it’s always rectifiable But that we are unaware of our internal innate brilliance and well being.So then when we begin to grasp that, what can start to happen is that our cravings, the alarms going off within us, don’t need to be as loud or as attention getting as they have been in the past. We don’t need the fire brigade to show up and start spraying water around for us to recognize that we’re caught up in our thinking, in our busy, insecure, fearful thinking.
The signals that we get – those alarms – can start to back off.
Gradually, we’ll start to notice before the smoke alarm goes off, and then we’ll start to notice before the smoke starts to billow out from the burner on the stove. And eventually, we begin to notice when we’ve stepped, Rachel said it so beautifully today, when we were recording our interview, when we’ve stepped away from love, is essentially what it is. We noticed that more quickly, we feel ourselves that we’ve gone out of alignment much more quickly than we did in the past. So the need for those alarm signals those cravings, that drive to overeat on its own, it just drops away.
This, I think, is a really important distinction to make. I loved it when this metaphor came to me. Because so often in the old paradigm of ill health, the paradigm of pathology, as we say, what we’re trying to do is, is deal with those alarms. It’s like trying to smother the smoke alarm that’s in your house that’s going off, trying to cover it with a tea towel, or bash it with a hammer so that it stops squeaking and beeping. As though the smoke alarm itself is a problem, when really what it’s trying to do is convey a message to us.
I thought I’d share that metaphor with you here today, as always, in the hope that it would be a little bit helpful for you on your journey with the drive to overeat. And it felt like another way for me to point to the wisdom and the intelligence in our cravings and in our feelings about food, and also how natural and normal it is that they begin to fall away when we see what they are made of.
We don’t need to manage them, or control them, or try to get rid of them in any way, eradicate them from our being.
Cravings stop being necessary the more we see about their true nature.
I hope that’s been helpful. And if you remember that if you have any questions for me about the exploration of this understanding, please let me know you can go to Alexandra more.com forward slash question and submit the form there and I’ll be happy to answer. So take care and I will see you again next time. Bye.
Peaceful People, Peaceful Dogs with Julie Cluley
Sep 21, 2023
Our state of mind can affect those around us, including our pets. Julie Cluley teaches dog owners to listen to what their dogs are saying, and she also coaches those who are dealing with anxiety and its ripple affects. I was fascinated by the potential cross-over of these two subjects, and couldn’t wait to talk to Julie. Our conversation did not disappoint.
In September 2018 Julie Cluley bumped into Nicola Bird’s website and the Three Principles. Her experience of life changed almost overnight. She now lives life from a much calmer, more relaxed and joyful place. The best thing is that nothing actually changed. She still has the same lovely husband, same gorgeous kids and the same amazing job.
Julie coaches dog owners to have more harmonious, peaceful dogs, and also coaches humans to connect with their innate sense of peace and well-being.
Let’s begin with you telling us about a little bit about your background and how you came to find the principles.
Julie: Okay, so my knowledge of the principles has been since about 2018. I came across the principles, one of these Facebook ads that pops up. It was Nicola Bird, who you’ve maybe heard of. was on that video. And just one of those moments, where you’re like, Whoa, what? I was like, Oh, interesting.
At that time, I was struggling with, I guess you could say anxiety, burnout overwhelm, that thing. I was being told it was all my hormones, and all of that stuff and offered various things, from HRT to antidepressants to all kinds of things that just didn’t sit that well with me. So I was resisting that. But getting a bit desperate.
I just came across that video and downloaded, I think, originally, like a six week course, online course. And then something else. And quite quickly, I just knew I was like, Oh, my God, this is like this changes everything. And very quickly, actually started to feel a lot better. Within a year, think a year or two, maybe a year, I signed up for her coaching program to become practitioner. So I did that. And qualified in that it was April 2020.
I was a dog behavior coach since 2006. So like, 18 years. I’ve been doing that just that was fine. It was great. Really enjoyed it. Did that along with having my kids. And so I was juggling work, kids, that thing. And then I added in practitioners thing as well. And then since COVID, things have evolved quite differently. combined the two in the online world.
Alexandra: Oh, fascinating. And before you found the principles, so many of my guests had been lifelong seekers people who were looking for answers.
Would you classify yourself as a seeker?
Julie: No, not really. No, I was interested in why are we here? And that thing. But I wasn’t like, No, I wasn’t a big seeker, I think because it seemed to me that it came up when things were bad. And so up until that point, I did have a burnout maybe about 10 years previously, but things are just being okay nothing major. So, no, I wouldn’t say I’m in that category.
Alexandra: Okay. All right. Good to clarify. And the thing that I’m fascinated by and what I wanted to talk to you about mostly today is this intersection between your dog training and the principles. And I just find that so fascinating. So yeah, let’s explore that a little bit.
Do you fold the Principles in with your dog training work?
Julie: Yes, I very much do. Interestingly, when I came across the approach that I share with dogs around our behavior, it was similar to when I came across the three principals. It was one of those Whoa, moments, where I had been trying to find ways to help my own dog and I was just coming up against a brick wall.
It was very much obedience and training and do this and do that. And nothing really resonated until I came across this approach, which is called Dog Listening. I did my training and all that stuff way back then. But what I found when I came across the principles was there was almost like I had a new language to share the same thing.
I was sharing the same thing, but just in maybe a slightly different way, slightly different delivery. And it felt much nicer, much more relaxed. Because the approach, the way I was taught with my dog listening approach was quite, although it was very different, anything else that was out there, it was still very much do it this way is this way or the highway. I was like, I can see it works really well.
But I can also see that the same areas look different in every household, and look different for each person. And so coming across a principle that’s like, Ah, I see what I was it just didn’t feel quite right. It’s a little bit antsy about it, because I wasn’t really in the game for dictating what people had to do or not do. So yeah, I think the first thing that really helped was bringing a new language to the to the same thing.
Alexandra: On your website, you mentioned you had quite an anxious dog. And that was the impetus for your search for help for her.
I imagine – I’m just guessing – that the human being in the room or in the house, and their state of mind affects the dog state of mind. Is that true?
Julie: Yes, I would definitely say that. That is true. However, I would want to clarify that very quickly, from a human perspective, we go into terrible judgment. And like, Oh, my God, I need to fix my anxiety. Otherwise, now I’m going to have an anxious dog and an anxious me and that just more and more thinking, escalating the whole the whole shebang. So there’s, there is a certain amount of truth in that. However, it is possible to still have anxious thinking and your dog is fine.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s really interesting.
How does our thinking affect dogs? Or when does it. Can you tell?
Julie: I think it comes down to like understanding your dog. So we very often put our thinking onto our dog, which obviously isn’t true, we’re making that up. So when we can start to really understand not what our dogs are thinking, because quite honestly, we’ll never know. But what they are telling us from what we do know about their body language, and what certain things mean, because there’s a lot of inappropriate representation. And a lot of confusion around for example my dog is really happy to see me when it comes home. And it’s really overexcited, and it’s wagging its tail and all that stuff.
Is that what’s going on? Or is it that it’s just really relieved to see you because dog didn’t know where the heck you were, and was really worried about the fact that you left, and they’re just really relieved? And that’s very different understanding what’s going on, and the action that you take from that place is very different.
Julie: I was seeing a client earlier today, just as another example, and she said to me my dog really enjoys the walks. But when I get the lead out, she runs away and hides. I’m like, so why do you think your dog likes the walk? And she said, Because she’s always asking to go for a walk when it gets to this certain time. She’s asking to go, and I was like, Ah, okay, so really, what’s happened there is the dogs been conditioned to know, roughly when they go for a walk, and the dog wants the walk to happen on their terms. And so the dog is then going, Okay, let’s go.
But actually, the dog clearly doesn’t want to go. But then once they finally wrestle the dog into the lead, and head out the door, the dog then is off first. And so it’s understandable. Why is that happening? And seeing that, oh, well, there’s definitely I’m missing something here. If the dog is hiding from the lead, then it’s not as straightforward as what we think.
Whereas we just assume that a dog likes to go for a walk, and maybe that’s not true. It will give us signs and signals. And so it’s really, really observing and listening and trying to understand what their state of mind is. And actually, they’re very obvious with their state of mind. You can see that if they’re like this, then they’re probably in a heightened state without putting anything else onto it just that is helpful to know. And we know that any being in a heightened state is going to make different actions or take different actions than any beings that’s in a more settled state.
Alexandra: It’s interesting. I saw a little video, and I don’t even know how I stumbled across it on YouTube the other day, and it was a mother dog, a golden retriever. And there are a bunch of puppies there. And I guess she was weaning them. And so they were inside, on one side of a baby gate. And then the mother dog came in, and they were all squiggly and happy to see her and their little tails are wagging like crazy. And trying to nurse.
It was the most remarkable thing, the mother sort of growled at them and snapped up them a little bit. And they all had to calm down. They all had to get quiet and calm and settle down before she would let them nurse. And I just thought that was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen.
This calm state of mind that we talk about in the Principles extends outward. It doesn’t just apply to us.
Julie: I think so. I mean, who really knows, but to my mind that’s a perfect example of in a very like, calm, gentle way. Okay, she was grown, but she was in a way aggressive with them, I’m assuming
Alexandra: No, she was very much just like, No, this isn’t happening. Very calm.
Julie: I would imagine she’s looking away from them. She’s holding herself tall, she’s very relaxed. She’s like, this is just not happening until you lot settle down.
And that’s one of the things that we share in dog listening, when we come across our dogs, when we come home and our dogs are going mental, is like, that’s not the time, that’s not the moment to greet them. That’s not the moment to engage with them. If that’s a behavior that you don’t want. And clearly, for in the bigger picture, we don’t really want them to be in that heightened state.
Alexandra: As a Little Peace of Mind practitioner, when you have client, or do you ever have clients that have that have dogs? And you’re working with them about their anxiety?
Does the dog behavior ever get folded in that way?
Julie: Yes, it does. Very nice, actually. So the way I work with people is a group online course. And basically, what happens is that people will come in and they’ll go through the modules, and they’ll learn that approach. And then we have weekly calls, and we have WhatsApp connections with everybody.
What tends to happen is when people first join, there’s a lot of activity, and then they fall away and then come back and all that stuff. And it’s really interesting, because I would say that 80% of people that I work with have some level of anxiety, identify as having anxiety, because nearly everybody has moments of anxiety particularly where their dogs concerned, because we’d like to be in control and we can’t control these beings. And that really upsets us. Yes, that does come into it. Definitely.
So on those weekly calls when I’m coaching. I do very much bring the three principals into the conversation, which can be very helpful. Although I would say that there’s definitely space for when I say like more of that more targeted.
One of the ideas I have for the next few months once we’ve unloaded the people for this month, this time this month is to actually target anxious dog owners, rather than owners of anxious dogs. And the idea behind that is to is to really, I guess, focus primarily on the three principles with the dog approach brought in underneath it, and then just playing with it, and seeing how that works.
And you know what happens? Yeah, it’s a really special connection. It really is. I was thinking the other day, actually, I’ve always had in mind about writing a book. Who knows if I’ll ever get around to it. But I did come up with the name. The Inside Out Understanding of Dogs.
Alexandra: Nice.
Julie: Yeah, that would that would work. That would be special. So yes, I think we’ll, we’ll see.
Alexandra: I imagine that anxious people with dogs can see their anxiousness reflected in the dog’s behavior? Is that true?
Julie: Hmm, that’s interesting. I don’t think so. I don’t think people who are in it can see. That would be my experience. When you’re in it, it looks like the dog is the problem. The dog needs to be fixed. And something needs to happen out there.
It is helpful to point people towards, because obviously, once we see that it’s all here in us then. Really, it makes life a lot easier, because you’re not trying to fix this dog that there’s really nothing wrong with the dog. The only thing that’s wrong ever is that they’re in this heightened state, and then they’re acting crazy from that. So we can take that down, then they don’t act crazy. I’m just covering the like, although she’s acting crazy.
Alexandra: It’s such a beautiful parallel because it is it is so similar with us when we’re in a heightened state. And our thinking is really stirred up where we’re acting a little crazy. And then when we learn that we can have a bit of an impact on that.
Waiting until our state automatically settles down, because it will happen that way, is so incredibly helpful.
Julie: It really is. It’s like the only job that we have to do, if there is even to do is just look after yourself, go have fun, do you know, whatever. You’re going to be in that state, it’s hiding there underneath. And it really is the same with our dogs.
And it’s often about creating an environment where they’re able to relax so that they can, rather than trying to make them relaxed like, go relax, like down there create an environment where they feel they can relax, which is making me laugh, because I think she was going to lie down because her bed is over there and it’s up against the wall. And she’s like, looking at it going because you please bring it down, please. She’s fine. She’s laid down.
So it’s creating environments where they feel comfortable, they feel happy, they feel relaxed, and recognizing where they’re not feeling like that and working up to those places not to say we’re never going to move to your edge. Like we all want to move to our age to develop an involve, but we don’t. We don’t want to go beyond that. Just in a horrible place we,
Alexandra: Looking back toward your dog ownership, parenthood, before you found the principles, do you notice changes in in yourself about that?
Julie: Yes, definitely, I would say the dog listening, that I came across changed everything with regard to dog ownership. And then I think the one thing that I felt with the approach that I share, without the principles, it did feel quite, maybe onerous, maybe like, there was quite a lot to do. There was a bit of a list, and you had to tick those off.
Now, that list is still there it’s just held much more lightly. I think that would be the best way to describe it as like, yeah, we can do it one day, if we don’t do it nothing the heck’s going to happen. And the good thing was dogs is you cannot get it wrong, because they will tell you, they will keep you right. So you just can’t get it wrong. They’ll tell you and then you can reassess and sort it out. It’s a much easier, lighter, way of being, I guess. I would say that’s, that’s probably for me personally that’s what’s happened.
Alexandra: I imagine it’s affected your parenting style with your human children as well, the principles?
Julie: Yes, definitely. Although, I would say that maybe there’s a work in progress there. With my youngest, although we are getting there and making progress, but yes, absolutely, of course, it has made a difference. It’s made a massive difference.
But I think, I guess it’s really interesting, isn’t it with the principles that we have blind spots. And I guess with dogs, it’s just blown open and it’s really clear, and it’s just so obvious to me. Whereas with children, maybe less so.
It looks really like the problem is out there. I know it’s not whereas with dogs somehow, and we never know which ones we’re going to get when, but with the dog thing, it’s like, I genuinely can’t see problem dogs. So when people come to me, there’s never any problem, it’s just we just need to settle down here. And you just need to keep things in place. And boom, before you know it. You’re like wow, whoa, what have you done to my dog?
Alexandra: You mentioned that, that when you stumbled across the principles, you were feeling overwhelmed. And burnout? Did you say burnout as well?
Julie: I think that would probably be the best way to describe it. Yeah, that would that would be the thing.
Alexandra: Do you find that has shifted since?
Julie: Yes. Massively. It did take a while for that to shift I would suggest actually a good few years, like the anxiety and the panic attacks seem to dissipate, dissolve not quite overnight, but very quickly, when I bumped into the principles. But the overwhelm was the thing the thing that you’re like, right, I mean, that to go now.
That took a while because it was quite a lot of resistance. But yeah, that’s definitely a lot less tight, I suppose is the word. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. But it never seems to have quite the same intensity.
And it really blows my mind how it doesn’t matter how busy you are, or how I feel I feel overwhelmed on holiday. And then when I’m back at work, and I’ve got everything going on, I’m like, Oh, this is fine. Just being able to see that it’s like, oh, yeah, yeah. Funny that.
Alexandra: It’s such a state of mind problem. That that we get into. And so what did you see?
What do you see about overwhelm and burnout that might help others?
Julie: That’s a really good question. It’s an actually, it’s funny, because I haven’t thought about it for quite some time. I think for me, the thing that really helped with all of that was to realize that being overwhelmed, I guess that it didn’t mean anything. I was able to, at some point, I was able to, almost laugh at it. I could see it for what it was, I could see my mind almost whizzing itself up. I was like, whoa, what really? To know. And it was like, oh, yeah, I can do that thing again.
There was something lighter about it, something less serious. Whereas I think before, I just thought, oh my god, I get overwhelmed. And then I’m going to get panicked. And then I’m going to fall out with the kid and I’m going to have to divorce my husband in about 30 seconds.
It was like, Okay, do you really have to do all of those things? I think at some point when you just have that maybe a little bit of distance between what’s going on up here and how fast it’s going to just stepping back a little bit and recognizing that it’s up here.
And actually, that springs to mind the thing that really, really helped me. And it’s so simple and so silly, but it was the snow globe metaphor. I’m sure you’ve heard of the snow globe. We just shake it up. And you just put it down. I could see myself shaking it. Be like, okay, okay, maybe it’s time to put this down.
I would literally look around myself and go, right. Is there anything that needs to be done right now? Right this second? And if there’s not, then you’ve got time to go and breathe for three minutes or whatever. That’s probably the things that helped me most thinking about it.
Alexandra: That snow globe metaphor is such a good one. My little snow globe is over there on the shelf.
Julie: I haven’t got one actually. I really do invest in one because yeah, I use it a lot for my dog clients, because we very easily can do that with our dogs. It’s like, Oh, my God, she went out and barked at somebody. And then this person did that. And then the next time this is what could happen and did a little a little a little. It’s like, okay, none of that’s happening. So, yeah, I do use that the snow globe.
Alexandra: Put one on your birthday list for next year.
Tell us a little bit about the little peace of mind program that you run, and how that works and how often you do it and and what people take away from it.
Julie: So the program that I’ve run is not a little peace of mind. That was the program that I did. That was the program that I was on was part of and became a little peace of mind practitioner. But these days, what I do is, I run a course called peaceful paws.
Alexandra: Oh, so it’s the dog training. That’s the course I thought it was the little piece of Gotcha. Okay.
Julie: The dog training, the new anxious dog owners one is still in my mind. It’s not informed yet, but okay. And I don’t know what that will be called peaceful people, maybe peaceful people.
Peaceful Paws is the one that I run that I love and have been running it now for well in various different formats for a few years, but as it is now for about just over a year. And it’s just it’s a place where people can come and be part of something.
You get the course the modules. And you can work through all of that, which is an education on that on understanding dog behavior and how they are, what they do, what we what we know of what they do. And so there’s that side of it is the court and then the, I guess the bigger part of it probably is the community, which is we do a weekly call every Friday lunchtime. We have a Monday evening, once a month. And we also have WhatsApp connection.
That’s where the magic happens, because you take the information from the modules, and then you put it into practice. And then usually, it all goes by Oh, what am I doing? But my dog didn’t do what not what I thought it was going to do when I did that. So I’m able to coach in those calls, is group coaching, but I can do one to one with people while everyone’s listening, which I find incredibly powerful, because you don’t have the almost the defensiveness. You hear more when somebody else is being coached. And it’s like, oh, yeah, don’t do that, too.
I found that really incredibly helpful. And that’s what my clients come back to me with, they love that just listening. And then in between times, if there’s like maybe, like a win or something good to happen, then they’ll share it in the group. Or if they’re having a panic, they’ll share that in the WhatsApp group. And we can keep everybody on track. I guess from when I first started it, with just a few people in it, we’ve now got 20 or so, it’s, it’s just been so beautiful to see how everybody has supported each other. It’s just a really beautiful space and really, really love it.
So that’s where I mainly do my work, actually. I find the format works really well. When people first come in, they do have a one to one with me like this. So I can get to know them and their dog really well personally just to start them off. And then go from there in the in the group space. It’s really special. I really, I really love it.
It’s a brilliant opportunity. It’s a brilliant way. And if it hadn’t been for COVID, I’m not sure it would have taken off in the way it has, because a lot of people couldn’t get their head around. Well, I need you to come and see my dog. Yes. So do you know the idea that I can help your dog when you know, really? Your dog’s just lying at your feet?
To be honest, I had known before COVID that that was a thing, because I could see that people learnt way better when I wasn’t there. Oh, think about it. You know, if you have someone come to your home, you’re already on edge. Because you’re like, Oh, God, what’s the dog going to do? And is it going to be bad enough? Because sometimes people like, now he’s being really good. I wanted to do thing so that you can see, and I’m like, I believe you. I believe you.
As long as there’s like that two way trust, and that they believe that I believe them, then we’re all singing off the same hymn sheet and then then it’s fine. In a much more relaxed atmosphere to whereas when the dogs there it’s a bit of a distraction. And you’re really only dealing with whatever is happening in that moment, rather than the whole day or week that the dog is living with you. Does that make sense?
Alexandra: Yes.
Do you work with people one on one from a three principles perspective, like about anxiety?
Julie: Yes, I do. I do the one on one thing. And I do enjoy the one on one thing, but I actually I think I deep down I prefer the group thing. Which is one of the reasons why this anxious dog owners coming to mind. But I do understand that when you’re feeling anxious, you maybe don’t want to be with other people. So I can see that there’s space for all of it.
For me, I’m quite excited about seeing what happens with the helping people from the owner recognizing their anxiety and wanting help with that. And then subsequently that will have an effects on the dog. So it’s the same, just a slightly different take on it.
Alexandra: We’re coming up almost to the end of our time here together.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share?
Julie: I think if anybody is watching this this week, and they are interested and want to come and find out what I’m talking about, principles and all that stuff, I can send you the link, I have a free three days of action that I’m going to do next week. I’m just going to spend some time we’re going to do some trainings each morning, and then a q&a.
It’s an opportunity for people to bring their particular question or their particular issue to me, and I can answer that directly in the right direction. I do that every few months, just as a way to make sure that this information is accessible to everybody, to be honest, you want it to be accessible to as many people as are possibly interested, because not only does it help us, the human, it’s the dogs and being an advocate for the dog. So the more people that can be touched by that. Yes, so yeah. So if anybody is happening to does happen to be listening to that this week, then they would I’d love to see them in that in that space.
Alexandra: I can put a link in the show notes. Unbrokenpodcast.com.
Speaking of which, tell us where we can find out more about you and your work.
Julie: My website is JulieHelpYouHelpYourDog.co.uk. And there are blogs. And there’s a free ebook that will that you can just download. There’s lots of there’s lots of things on there.
I am on Instagram as well. But I don’t use it that much. So I’m not even going to tell you about. Yeah. I’m just like, oh, and I’m also on LinkedIn now, as well. So do we clearly on LinkedIn? And yeah, I do do a bit of work in that space. But yeah, I just find the social media. Talking about overwhelming. Yeah,
Alexandra: I hear that. I’m not a dog owner, but I signed up for – you have a free video as well, about anxious dogs, and I found it really informative. I don’t have a dog, but I really enjoyed it.
Julie: And that’s the thing, it is quite fascinating just to see what’s going on. And to even just, I often say to people, if they are scared of dogs there’s things that you can do, actually.
I’m going to just share that with you right now is that if you are scared of a dog, and they’re running up to you. So the first thing is, if you’re find yourself among dogs, is just don’t make any eye contact. Whatever you do, do not make any eye contact, keep your eyes above the dog level.
You can take your hands and keep them out of the way, cross your arms, because then there’s nothing for the dog to grab. That helps, crossing your arms, keeping your eyes above the dog level, and then just not turning your back but just sort of turning like that, side on. You don’t want to turn back on in case you know. And whatever you do, don’t run.
Alexandra: Yes. Oh, that’s great. Thanks for those tips for anyone who’s anxious about dogs.
Julie: I will say to people with kids just say to them because kids are really good at like when you give them an action to do not are not doing to know what it means, like, don’t make eye contact. They’re like, what do you mean, looking for kids, just cross your arms and look at the sky.
Really powerful. Because then there’s no threat then for the dog and the dog will like literally 99.9% of the time just come to a halt and go in there. Whereas if you going like this and looking at them and going, Oh, I’m scared to talk like, Oh, great. Yeah. We’ll be having.
Alexandra: Yes, yeah. Oh, awesome. All right. Great. Well, thank you for that tip, Julie. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
Julie: Thank you so much for inviting me on. It’s been lovely.
When we start a new diet or eating plan we often have success for the first few days. Why is that? And why does that success quickly fade away? In this episode, we discuss how this is caused by a lack of understanding about how our thinking works and how a deeper understanding of Thought can help us to resolve an unwanted overeating habit.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
What specifically creates success at the beginning of a diet?
Why does that success begin to fade?
How does this phenomenon point toward the nature of our thinking?
How is thinking related to unwanted habits like overeating?
Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 31 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor, and I’m so pleased that you’re here with me today.
Today, the question we’ve got is, why do diets work temporarily?
I stumbled across this idea, perhaps again, perhaps I haven’t encountered it before. But in a recent interview episode with Juliet Faye, Unbroken episode 29 – I’ll link to that in the show notes for this episode at unbroken podcast.com – and we were having a conversation and I had a big insight about why when we go on some sort of a diet plan, or some sort of program to overcome or conquer our unwanted over eating habit. Why do they work initially, in the beginning?
Because they do. I’ve had this experience, and you probably have as well, where for the first, let’s say, two or three days, maybe a week speaking personally, at the outside, the plan that I’m on really seemed to work. It felt good, and I felt energized and excited. And things go really well for the, as I say, for the first few days, and then the wheels fall off. For me, the the longest I could go was maybe a week in a situation like that. And that happened over and over and over again.
The really cool thing is that I realized in that conversation with Juliet, was that, that occurrence, the fact that these diets and programs that we try out, only work for a few days or a few hours, in some cases, is actually really great evidence for what the Inside Out understanding is pointing to. It’s evidence for the work that I do, and that the other practitioners do, who are sharing this understanding. And here’s why that is what happens.
So, let me back up a little bit. When we have an unwanted habit, there’s part of us that enjoys it, of course, the indulgence and the feelings of comfort, and soothing and that kind of thing that go along with the unwanted habit. And what the habit is actually doing, like I touched on in last week’s q&a episode, is it temporarily quiets down our thinking.
I remember when I was doing some coaching work with Jason Shiers, and he said, this incredibly profound thing to me that really changed my world was that an unwanted habit or addiction, always comes back to a thinking problem. Always. It’s always a matter of overthinking. And we’re using that substance to quiet our thinking down. So that’s the first part of this.
But the second thing is that we’re suffering, right?
We don’t want to be overweight, we don’t want to have this over eating habit, it can really have a detrimental effect on our lives.
Speaking personally on it affected my self-esteem, it affected the way I felt about my body. I felt like my life couldn’t start until I figured this problem out, which is for 30 years, it was that was a long time to feel that way. So there’s this suffering, of course that goes along with it. And we know that. And that’s why you’re here, I’m sure. And that’s why I kept searching for answers. Absolutely.
What then happens, the next step is that we find a program or a guide, a guideline or a structure to follow about food. Traditionally we call those diets. We don’t eat certain foods, and we do allow us to eat others or we restrict our calorie count or we use an app to manage it or to track what it is we’re eating. You get it. You’ve been there. You know exactly what I’m talking about.
Initially, when we find this new thing, this new program, this new structure that’s going to help us we think, curb our unwanted habit.
Our thinking quiets down, right? We think, Oh, this is it, I have found a solution.
If I just do these things, if I just follow these guidelines and these rules, in this new program, everything’s going to be great and my suffering is going to be reduced. I’m going to conquer this problem. And I’m not going to have all the thinking that I have around this situation or this problem.
So what happens is temporarily, our thinking settles down. And like I say, for the first two or three days or a week, however long it is, that reduction in the amount of thinking we’ve got about food is really, really helpful. And we’re able to stick to the program stick to the guidelines, initially, because our thinking has settled right down.
The problem comes, because we don’t understand the nature of thought.
And because we don’t understand that we’re living in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances. And that we don’t see the nature of thought, like the weather, or like, a river of river of energy flowing through us that when the first thought then comes about, about cheating on the program, or the diet, or, maybe I can make an exception in this circumstance, like, I’m out for dinner with my friend, and I want to have dessert or whatever it is. And so that thought comes in, and essentially, we panic, right?
We think, Oh, my goodness, I need to fix this, I can’t do this, I’m on this program, I need to stick to it. And then the other thinking comes in opposing that. And saying, no, no, you can indulge yourself right now. And you can feel that battle going on that conflict. And now your thinking is getting even more stirred up and more stirred up. And it can feel like a tidal wave, right.
You know, and I know, I knew exactly what will make that thinking stop. And that’s indulging in your favorite food or your unwanted overeating habit. Because it does. It temporarily shuts down all that thinking, all that arguing that’s going on between the devil on one side, and the angel on the other side, all that chatter, all that back and forth. All that willpower that you feel like you’re trying to use to get through will go away, once you indulge in your in your favorite food, your overeating habit.
So that’s why diets and diet programs and all these things that we do work temporarily, they do work for the first little while, absolutely. And some people can make them stick even for months or years at a time and lose a lot of weight.
How often have we heard about somebody who’s done that, and then gained it all back?
You might be one of those people. That was certainly the case for me; I would lose tiny little bits of weight and then gain that back plus five pounds. And that went on for 30 years. When we don’t understand the nature of our perfect design or divine design, our kind design and that our cravings are pointing us toward the stirred up thoughts then we get caught.
It’s like being caught in a whirlpool and in the river or in the in a washing cycle. We just keep trying. And going back to the same answers that have failed before. But we don’t have an alternative. And so we just keep trying. And I know for me, I even went back to certain programs that hadn’t worked for me before. Five years would go by and then I’d try it again. And then another five years would go by and I try it again. And it never worked.
And yet, I always and maybe you can relate to this, I always felt like I was the problem. I’m just not doing this right somehow, I don’t have enough willpower or my cravings are too strong. There were times I’m sure that I couldn’t even put my thumb on exactly what it was. That was the problem, but I just knew it was me is that I was the failure. None of that was true. And none of it was is true for you, either.
We are doing the best we can with the tools we have at the time.
And then when we see things in an entirely different way. And we begin to explore this understanding about how we work. And like I said, just a minute ago, the kindness of our design. And we begin to look upstream like I always talk about, about how we work. And we begin to have insights about how that is, that’s when things start to change.
I hope that’s been helpful for you. I’m pretty sure that many of you will be able to relate to that personal experience of having diets work temporarily. And like I say, it really struck me that the fact that that happens, is pointing exactly toward what I share on this podcast and in my work about the three principles understanding, the Inside Out understanding.
I think that’s for me, it was just such a positive affirming thing to see. It’s another example of our design and how it works, and how we experience it, and why it can be so challenging at times until we recognize what’s really going on.
So, I hope that’s helpful, and that you’re doing well and I look forward to talking to you again next week. Take care. Bye.
Experiencing anxiety and panic attacks can often lead us to do more (and more) to try to manage and control them. Lily Sais found herself in exactly this situation – working with children as a school psychologist while suffering in silence about her own anxiety. When she found the Three Principles she was released from all that she was doing to try to manage her symptoms and now she helps others find that same freedom.
Lily Sais is a former school psychologist who now works as an anxiety coach and three principles practitioner. She works with compassionate, deep-thinking individuals who are currently experiencing anxiety and seeking a profound sense of relief. They’ve tried countless techniques, sought advice from numerous “experts,” and devoured countless books, only to realize that it all feels overwhelming and unnecessarily complex. Deep down, they know there must be a simpler way, but they haven’t discovered it yet.
Alexandra: Lily Sais thank you so much for being here with me on Unbroken.
Lily: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Alexandra: My pleasure.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles.
Lily: Prior to coming into the three principles understanding I was a school psychologist. And what actually led me to the three principals was my own mental health struggles.
I struggled with anxiety for a lot of my life. But then it really ramped up in 2011 when I had a panic attack, I had a bad reaction to a medication. And so I had a panic attack that involves derealization and depersonalization. This feeling of like unreality, and like I was losing my mind. And I had it when I was driving on the freeway in Los Angeles.
Actually quite a few people, their first panic attack will be driving or on a plane or something like that. But so as what happens with some people is that I started having like panic about panic, and you know, associating it with driving, and living in Los Angeles, we do rely on our cars a lot. So I had a lot of thinking about it.
And so I just tried so many things. I’ve always been interested in mental health and I just really ramped it up after having a panic attack. I’m really interested in somatic therapy, neurofeedback, cognitive behavioral therapy. I also get really into it, I’m like, Oh, my God, this is going to be it. And I’d want to and think about sharing some of it with the students that I would see and bringing it in, and going on retreats. And so I get really into it.
But nothing was long lasting. For me, I would still find and I think a lot of it was I built up this idea that I was different, there was a lot I needed to do for my mental health. And sometimes if it was like biohacking and the importance of sleep and mantras, and a morning routine. So I think these things that can be maybe helpful for some people are meditation and mindfulness, because I can then take it to like the nth degree and be like, well, I’m going to be certified to teach meditation and mindfulness, which I was, or I’m going to be certified to teach yoga to children. And if I do these things, and I’m going to meditate every morning and every night.
I just was like burnt out and tired and still anxious. So after seven years of like, a lot of trying to have the perfect diet, the perfect routine. It was like another day of barely making it to work with panic that I just put into Google again, like I don’t know, anxiety, panic, help. Up popped Sarie Taylor, who’s now a friend and colleague, but she had like either a five or seven day anxiety course. And she just sent you this little video, 30 minutes every day. And she introduced me to the principles. This is in May 2018. and I are like right before then. And I kind of just thought, Alright, here’s this other thing I’m going to try.
But I heard things that I hadn’t really heard. And one of them was there was less for me to do. No. And I started to see that my wisdom got me through every panic attack. And it was also very welcome, like, doing less. So I kind of was curious, like, Wait, there’s less for me to do. And then it’s just changed my life. So that’s how I came into the three principles understanding and I saw the benefits that it had for me, and I got excited to share it as a school psychologist.
They started doing the Spark curriculum, because it’s an evidence based curriculum. And as a school psychologist they like highlight evidence based. And luckily, there’s the three principles, evidence based curriculum. But even just I had read Jack Pransky’s book, Somebody Should Have Told Us and so I started incorporating some of that to the talk with the senior students. Just especially that green, yellow, red light, like when to make decisions, how to use them, I felt like some really important lesson.
So I started sharing the principles as a school psychologist, but then I still had this desire to share it with adults because I was like, Why didn’t anybody tell people with anxiety about this? That it was so simple, so long lasting? For me, it was the simplicity was because I had never heard anybody say, oh, there’s less for you to do.
I think with some people with a tendency towards anxiety or a tendency towards OCD like that, you can have these obsessions and like do doing, it was so different, like, you don’t have to try you don’t have to do. I think it was once I stopped doing my nervous system just settled on its own, my brain rewired itself.
Not knocking Joe Dispenza but there was a time when I’m like, I can rewire my brain and I would get up and listen to his hour long recordings and our brain can have new neural pathways, no hard work on our part. So it was the principles, all these things that were like, Oh, this is so cool.
But I thought, now I have to work hard at it. And for me, when I worked hard at it, I think for other people, maybe they can do it. And it’s and they don’t have more thinking about it for me, and a lot of people that are drawn to me, the more we thought about it and try, the more we stayed in it. And the more we ramped up, probably the stress hormones. So yes, I’m it’s kind of a long thing. So I got excited to share with adults. And then I finally started doing it during the pandemic, because people were online.
Alexandra: One of the things, there’s so much in there that you said, but one of the things that really stuck out to me was your feeling that you were different, that somehow and this is so common, and I did it too, we feel like oh, no, my problem is a little bit special. It’s a little bit different. I’m not like everybody else. I just wanted to touch on that a little bit.
I think it’s important because what we’re pointing to in the principles is how we all work exactly the same, right?
Lily: I used to think I’m just an anxious person. So that’s one story, which is so funny, because I would never think of myself as an anxious person. Now, I definitely have a tendency towards anxiety like that’s where my love letters will go rather than something else. But especially once my when I after having a panic attack, I was more like, I have severe mental illness and so that was my children’s father, who’s my ex husband, our brains just work a little bit differently.
Also, I think maybe having ADHD and like some neuro divergence. I remember one time, I don’t know who asked who first, what are you thinking? And I told him everything that I was thinking, which was a much busier mind than I would have now. So there might be times when I would just probably I don’t know, if someone asked me now what I would be thinking it might just be, I don’t know, one thing, you know, but I think back then, it was until I told him and he was like, what about you? He said, nothing.
But I think my mind was busier. But sorry, this was a tangent. And I guess there was two things of why I thought it was different. He also was much more in a state of well being. I am in a state of well being now. But I thought I didn’t recognize it as just like, oh, that my mental health was always there. I more took it as like, he can stay up late, he can eat the snacks, he can watch TV, I’m different. Like I’m on. I thought for me, I was struggling with my mental health. But also I could lose my mind.
Sometimes I would be in this thing of jealous of other people that could just live a normal life. Like I can’t, you know, and he would just do whatever, like stay up late and like fall asleep in front of the TV. I would be like jealous, but also feel bad for myself. Like, I can’t do that because I might have a mental illness. I can’t just watch TV and wake up and drink coffee. I have to have my hour long night routine, and my hour long morning routine, just to maintain this horrible place that I’m at because but also if I don’t, I could have a panic attack and maybe lose my mind. And so that kind of wavered between jealousy and dignity.
But also I’m struggling so, it was all an illusion to because I didn’t now I look at my phone and read my book and sometimes. I just have such a story I had like I thought I was such a oh my god I had trouble sleeping. I fell asleep all the time to the TV. It’s harder for me actually sometimes to stay awake to my boyfriend because we want to watch a show it I thought oh no, I have to I can’t just fall asleep to TV the blue light and the like I need to have this long routine.
That was where I was at in this story too. My cousin and his wife who I’m very close with they just had a baby and so I went home with them from the hospital and so I was really up within the first two nights that we were home. I never slept. I had a client right the next day because I changed everybody or I put everybody off besides my morning clients, because I kind of thought I’d be home. And so it’s like, now where I’m at. It’s not only that I’m different. I know that my spirit’s not even touched, if I don’t sleep. Obviously, I prefer to sleep. But my understanding is so different.
I would have thought before, I’m somebody who needs eight hours of sleep, and I’m sure that still someone who feels good to get sleep. But I didn’t sleep much for two days. And I had clients and I know I just show up. I drove even. I would have had to do all these things. And, and I so see, now, if I wouldn’t sleep, I would have been like, Oh, I’m not fit to be around. Anybody just locked me in my room because I would have canceled the day. And I was with the baby. And I saw clients and their midwife came over and I needed to do something. Sure they just drive my car before I would have been like, I can’t I can’t drive a car on no sleep and someone’s car. And so all of those were just false stories.
Alexandra: I really can hear when it comes to anxiety, all the management of it, it really adds to the problem. I talk about like a snowball rolling downhill, you’ve got the original thing. And then if you roll it downhill and do all this management, it just adds and adds and adds to the problem.
I loved what you said about how simple the principles are, and how it takes that sort of thing away and just makes everything easier, in a way.
You’ve mentioned bringing this into the with the kids at your schools and stuff. And I’m just always curious, where do you begin with them?
If someone is in your office, and they have are having anxiety where would you start?
Lily: I don’t work with kids as much for the past three years. But I can talk about where I’d start with adults. Well, with kids, if a kid came in and they wanted, they were talking to me about being anxious. Where would I start?
It’s hard for me to say it because I guess I don’t know if I have a set thing. I just listen. I think even before I came into the principles, I just I listened. I think sometimes If it works share a story about myself are always interesting. I remember when I did this, so I think and with kids, it depends on their age, but a lot of it I would find withdrawing with playing. And that’s where we have a conversation. So we’re like with books.
In some kids, they come in and they just want to talk, I think but that’s probably like 10% of kids. So when I worked with kids, and I did for as a school psychologist for 13 years, but before that I was a nanny and then a preschool teacher and ran an after school program. So the kids are just kind of having a chat. But even with high schoolers, we play Uno or we’d play basketball or we just like play a game. And then they would talk so I never would put pressure on.
With younger kids who would often come out with a play. And whether they were drawing and then they would draw something about it or they would have me draw something. And I know I’m trying to say how do I talk about the principles? I guess it’s hard for me to say where I start, I guess just because it’s kind of in the moment.
But even for example I talked with my son and my daughter are into embroidery. And so they’re embroidering their backpacks. They both had their first day of school yesterday, and they both are social and did stuff with friends but they had a plan to embroider but my son went to his friend’s house for dinner. And so he didn’t come back until later. And but he’s like, Oh, can I still hang out with his sister? And I said yeah, for a little bit, but I actually let it go even 20 more minutes but he wasn’t finished. He’s embroidering a football on his backpack.
And so I told him, I don’t think we’re going to get the embroidery done in half an hour. So I had come in and I’m like, okay, even 15 more minutes. So then I was like now it’s like it was 9:20, which is pretty late for a nine year old because we still do the night routine, who’s very disappointed. And so he said, I can’t go to school with an unfinished backpack. Mom, you would hate to go to school with something unfinished.
I actually have a tattoo. And it’s my maiden name and the name of my mom’s last name with my two older sisters last name. But it was a complicated thing of getting it and they actually misspelled one of the names. So they left out and it was supposed to have two rs. So I said, Hey, remember when I got this tattoo, and I had to wait three days. So I said, I had a name spelled wrong on me. And I said, I remember because I was looking. And it was right around July 4. And so it was like, No, I couldn’t fix it. And I said to him, I remember thinking I can’t go out of the house with a misspelled name.
And then I realized I had the power to focus on it. Or it felt like or I could just let it go and know. And so it was kind of felt like the choice was up to me. And I decided, well, I’m just goint o let it go.
That, to me, is the essence of the principles of yes, we can’t control our thoughts. So I just kind of introduced that to him. I don’t know if it was, it was funny, because then my daughter was like, Oh, you divert you, you left these things out of your backpack. So then he’s like, oh, and then I said, I’m ready to get a new Batman. He’s like, Mom, I tried your thing of not thinking about it. And then Mary said, backpack and you said bathmat, and I said, Oh, yeah, I said, I know. And I said, I didn’t really mean oh, I’m not going to think about it.
But to me, I said, I think what we can see all I can focus on it. Or I can let that thought come and go. I said you might be surprised that sometimes it might seem a big deal, and you get involved with your friend. And so even that we’re not talking about anxiety, but the principles are always at play. Where to me, it’s just oh, it comes into our mind. And then it flows and we can make it as big as we want.
Alexandra: That’s such a great example with your son’s backpack. That’s amazing.
And looking back at your experience of with anxiety and that kind of thing one of the questions I had for you was-
if there was one thing that you could share, and maybe you’ve already touched on it about the experience of anxiety, what would that be?
Lily: I don’t know if this is the right thing, but it came to me and it keeps coming, whoever’s listening, if you have anxiety, you’re very unique. You really are you’re special. And your anxietie is not.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s great. Say more about that.
Lily: I think you touched on that when we think Oh, nobody has anxiety is that is me. Some people might be thinking that and it’s sometimes I get that comment on social media where you must have never had anxiety, or you have must have not had it so badly.
I think often when we’re in our experience, we think, and I’m not denying how painful experiencing anxiety and panic and OCD can be but we think about ourselves so much. And we think if we hear other people, well, whatever this easy principles thing, she’s fine, it works for her, but she doesn’t know me and she doesn’t know my trauma, and she doesn’t know that I’ve experienced anxiety forever. And also, I have these physical symptoms, or I have OCD, and we can really unintentionally argue for our limitations. Or sometimes think Oh, but I did this thing, or I have these thoughts, or somehow mental health is not for me. This easiness it doesn’t apply to me at all.
I think also for me, it was really until I met Sarie Taylor I just I didn’t even feel like I’d know, my psychiatrist or therapist, like they just don’t get it. I really thought something was wrong with me. And so I think part too, is like really not to believe our thinking when we feel low. Because we have that low thinking whether it’s this is who I am, this is how I’m always going to be or this is even worse than anxiety. This has to be more but then we take it with us even when we feel better.
It’s really to not to leave those low thoughts down there. So just really the power of I think not taking your thinking seriously when you feel low, because I could see that I did that. So even when I felt better, I would bring these stories about myself up.
Alexandra: That’s such a good point. One of the other things I wanted to talk to you about, and you mentioned it just there about body symptoms, or earlier you mentioned and how, and I know, for people with anxiety that can feel like the next level of problem, right.
You have a blog post that talks about hyper fixating on that. Could you tell us a bit about that? And what you see.
Lily: When we activate their stress response, so the flight or fight response, which is so great, like, I’m so cool that human beings have that. So if God forbid, I was in a car crash with my children, hormones would be released, various things would be activated, like I would be flooded to feel faster and stronger, I would also probably dissociate a little bit, I would be a little bit removed. So I wouldn’t be like, Oh, my God, we just were in a horrible car accident. But so many things could happen. So I probably, you know, that happened when we are in true danger.
We’ve heard those stories of moms that can like lift up a car, or even Dr. Pettit had shared a story about a man who was saving all these people, he saw them drowning on the side of the road, and he went in and help them get out. And then safety people came or saving people came in, they wrapped him up and he was really shivering. And then somebody was talking to me said, Oh, you must be really cool. He said, Oh, no, I’m shaking, because I don’t know how to swim. But something had happened to him when he and that wasn’t even to him. He went into this life saving mode, and was able to somehow jump in and save these people.
So the reason that I brought that up with physical symptoms is that there’s body wide changes that happen when we go into fight or flight or a stress response, whether it’s to actual danger, or just perceived. So that’s what can happen with anxiety is it’s very helpful in real danger, but not so much when if I was just starting to have I just started to feel anxious on this call, well, if I felt dangerous, and then I thought there was a problem with it.
Also what can happen is we’re able to be in fight or flight for up to half an hour, every 24 or whatever, 48 hours, with no ill effects, it’s fine. Even if you’re like, oh my god, I overslept. And kind of got really fast.
But what happens with people when they have chronic stress or chronic anxiety is we’re in that stress response for three hours, six hours, eight hours a day, where we just get out of balance. So that’s why we can have experience physical symptoms. I’m obviously not a doctor. So you don’t want anyone to chalk up any physical symptoms. So please go to your checkups and not talking about go make sure everything’s fine.
What can happen, I know I had headaches for I was like an anxious child. And I had headaches, since even before I could swallow a Tylenol pill. I had stomach aches, and I had ulcers like in high school. So my stomach would ache all the time. And I always had headaches. And then that kind of morphed to when I was like an adult, I would monitor my headaches and keep a headache journal. And it’s so funny. I mean, knock on wood. I never get headaches now.
So rarely that one time, like two years ago, I had this pain in my head. And I went away on my day being busy and drinking water. And then I hit me, I’m like, Oh, I think I have a headache. Like I literally didn’t even realize that that’s what it was. But also then we can start to have very other weird physical symptoms, like, I would hold my breath, my breathing would come become dysregulated. But I would prolong it, because I hit actually read later after I got out of this phase of breathing, but sometimes animals hold their breath to like be as still as possible. But actually, it can also kind of help us feel a little detached. But so I would hold my breath.
Now looking back, I could see if I was going to be like late with my kids, so if I started to think something was serious, it wasn’t going the way I wanted. For whatever reason. I would hold my breath a little but what would happen is I don’t know, when I would notice it that I was my breathing was off. And so this is, before I came into the principles, I thought I should do some square breathing, some belly breathing, because I had been trained and so much of the alternate nostril breathing, the square breathing, and I’m in LA. So I would do all of that, but it wouldn’t work.
And I’m like, well, I should step it up, I’m going to go to a breathwork class, I’m going to go to a meditation and breath work class. But then literally, I would be like, I don’t know how to breathe, because I would be so in my head, when we were just, we breathe in the morning, when we’re one hour, one second old, we don’t have to think about it. So that’s where that hyper fixation can come in.
Sometimes blinking, swallowing, seeing our nose, the tip of our nose, and, and then we can try to like, how do I think my way out of here, with our intellect. I can speak for me and what I’ve seen it happen. So if people are hyper focused on something, they can get into this cycle of really wanting it to go away. Sometimes from the moment they can wake up, and is it here, it starts instantly.
I think another component is also if we’ve been in a chronic state of stress for months or years, it can sometimes take a little bit of time for the physical symptoms to go away. Nobody needs to be scared. There’s not permanent danger. But I was anxious for a long time, but very severely anxious for seven years. So, so much so. One symptom that I lost my period for three years didn’t have anything to do with weight or body fat. It was I was in such a chronic state of stress that my hormones change. I was in the postmenopausal range. So I guess, yeah, and but my son is nine, everything’s fine.
Our body’s going to take sometimes it sometimes a symptom can just go away. But sometimes it takes a little bit of time, just because I don’t want to scare anybody, like, oh, there was just a little bit of damage because we were in fight or flight for longer than we needed to be. And it’s often what I found is the symptom that we’re the most desperate for do to go away. Like for me? I don’t know, I did actually have a lot of thinking about headaches and stomach aches, but I have no idea when those just fell away immediately.
I would have I twitches. I had so many symptoms, I can’t really remember them, but so many. And those most injuries fell away. But my breathing, I would sometimes be like, I would wake up and think Is it is it gone? And it was even after my driving anxiety and certain things fell away. I was like, why is this breathing thing here?
It wasn’t until I had an insight about that listening to a podcast of Nicola Bird, she had John El-Mokadem on and something clicked when he was saying, what if this physical symptom was still here? And I realized at that moment, it was like, Oh, my life is so much better. So okay, my breathing is so weird.
At that moment, I just stopped checking on it. And then next thing I knew, because I think what sometimes people can get in that kind of compulsive awareness of I’m seeing progress, but what about this one area? It’s often when we take our attention away that then it falls away,
Alexandra: Yes, exactly. I love that.
It made me wonder do you do ever have a symptoms crop up now?
Lily: Yeah, I haven’t had the breathing one. But I had it around. I guess like three years ago. It was still like pandemic time. They were going to have a friend sleepover. And I remember my son had a friend over and my daughter had a friend over. And so the kids were running around and I was doing the dishes and I noticed that I held my breath and I was like oh.
All I see it as a truly beautiful love letter. It was to me was a tap on the shoulder. Oh, I’m taking this seriously. I think especially because my son at that time was just probably like five even though he’s nine so maybe we’re maybe he was six. I still would sometimes think oh, I want playdates to go well, and when they’re six you might Oh, I don’t want the kids to be upset and you know, I have to have the sleepover because I told the parents I go out and enjoy your life. They were going to a party. And I remember I think, running around and probably thinking, Oh no, what if they fall? What if they get upset and holding my breath?
That was the last time that happened. And I don’t know if I, oh, sometimes I’ll like my stomach. But it’ll be much like a shorter thing. But sometimes if I’m going to a party, or I’m going to on an airplane, my stomach will just hurt. And then but I’m like, oh, make sense, nothing to do. And but I think or sometimes, if I notice, I think it was last year, two years ago, it was last year for my birthday, I noticed that I was like a little dissociated when I was cleaning before people were coming over and talking to me, and I felt like I was removed. And so I was like, oh, so for me, I truly see them as love letters, where it’s like, I’m taking it too seriously. So it might sound strange if people are. But like, I’m grateful for those signals, because I truly see them as friendly alarms.
Alexandra: I think that’s such an important point that you’re looking at, we look at them so totally differently. Once we see what they really are, as you say, I call it a mindfulness bell. I love what you said about it’s just tapping you on the shoulder, letting you know, hey, you’re caught up in your thinking at the moment.
Those signals are real gifts. And when we see them for that, then they don’t need to linger.
Lily: Yes, I’m also noticing sometimes I have a habit of taking things too seriously. I really think that noticing without judgment. And just the noticing is enough, because there’s nothing I need to do. Because Oh, I got it. Because I know it’s not that serious life is never that serious. It’s all okay.
Alexandra: Such a good point.
We’re coming sort of towards the end of our time together, I wondered if there’s anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share for people who might be dealing with anxiety.
Lily: You have everything that you’re looking for. You really do because you have clarity, you have peace of mind, you have calm, it’s always there. And so you don’t even have to go looking for it. It’s when everything settles, and also that you’re designed to settle. But when it’s right there, I don’t know if I knew that.
Everybody that’s listening is sitting in the middle of mental health, sitting in the middle of clarity. Sitting there, because sometimes even people say, Oh, it’s horrible. If I took a medication that is the medication? Well, no, I mean, I’m not meaning to go on a tangent on that. But like, it just quieted your mind. And your well being it’s right there.
I think one time actually, I was recording a course, in November, it’s August now. And I had been talking a lot and I was reading some poetry. My breathing actually started to get a dysregulated. But I used my intellect. And I was like, it must be because I’m putting pressure and I’ve been sitting in recording, I need to go to like a SoulCycle class. And do a lot of exercise. And so I did all this stuff. It was so funny, because SoulCycle was so loud. And I went all these times, and just for these few days, and then suddenly, I was like, and I had one day where I just sat and did nothing and I went to record and I realized, I don’t know how I realized that the only reason my breathing was dysregulated was because I was talking. Talking much more. I was recording for like six hours.
I took the long way home, looking for peace and good feeling at SoulCycle. And there wasn’t anything wrong with that. But it was like three days that were just a waste. And it wasn’t until I actually did nothing. Because SoulCycle actually was fun, but it was so loud that it hurt my ears. So then I was like, Ah, now I need earplugs. I tried like three different ones. And actually, I was like, one class isn’t enough, I need two classes in a row. So I’d done a package and I needed to figure out how to do two in a row and how to have my boyfriend get the kids and it was like and so the day I did two in the row. The earplugs made it weird.
So then I was there on the second class and I have diabetes and I was like felt like low blood sugar. So it was so funny, because it was after that I just went home kind of feeling defeated. And it was when I stopped I had that insight. But also I didn’t beat myself up.
Also with anxiety we don’t have to do it perfectly every time I met, I wouldn’t consider myself to have disordered anxiety. I never have panic attacks. I don’t have OCD. But sometimes I still, like that example. Sometimes, I still have a setback of sorts. And now, I don’t see it any differently as having a little symptom. I’m like, oh, because truly, my understanding goes deeper.
I used to think doing the principles, right. I would hear people that would say, no, like, they’re still human. But I was like, well, I might if I just do them perfectly, like I’m always going to be present and happy. And no, because we were humans. But I notice it mostly irritability or the moment I hold my breath, I notice it. So I don’t take myself so seriously.
I see wobbles or whatever is just truly opportunities. And that’s my thing. My understanding, I have insights all the time that really like seem to profoundly like I’ll see new thing is still five years and I know there’s going to be more for me to see. So anybody that’s feeling anxious to like, I guess it’s not to put too much pressure on yourself for the moment you get caught up or because it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It just is the opportunities to see things.
Alexandra: Opportunities for greater insight. That’s so true. I love that. Well, this has been amazing, Lily.
Can you tell us where we can find out more about you and your work?
Lily: Yes, I really like posting on social media. So if anybody has social media on Instagram, Oh, me I always try to start with the ones that don’t have any high funny things in front of them but on tick tock I’m just at peace from within and but I know Instagram can be also annoying and unpleasant.
I do have a website which is just peace-from-within.com and there’s everything that you want there. I’m also on Instagram which is an underscore peace from within. But if you’re on anywhere you can usually find all of my stuff so if you on YouTube I think I’m just at peace from within as well.
I have a lot of long free videos on YouTube and on my website and then on Instagram and Tiktok a lot of shorter. I think Instagram is like a greater wealth because I’ll do a lot of like q&a videos so if people ask questions, I answer them and it’s a fun medium for me fun way to just share about mental well being hopefully in a hopeful way a light hearted way about anxiety.
I also have so there’s so much free content but I also have courses and options if anyone ever wanted to work one on one or learn more about how to have peace from I share a lot about what was my personal struggles which because those are the people that are drawn to me kind of specifically driving anxiety derealization intrusive thoughts, physical symptoms, health anxiety.
So but actually, usually everyone’s anxiety falls away and then we end up talking about relationships and jobs, like and work and career but anybody that I work with long term it’s the anxiety falls away and then we focus on you know, on general life stuff.
Alexandra: Nice. Oh, that’s great. I will put links in the show notes at unbroken podcast.com So people can find where you are on the on the worldwide web. Thank you so much, Lily. It’s been just lovely chatting with you.
Lily: Thank you so much for having me on. It’s been lovely.
When we don’t understand the nature of Thought, our thinking can (innocently) be fearful, to greater or lesser degrees. This, in turn, causes us to need to comfort and distract ourselves with unwanted habits like overeating. Alternatively, when we learn about the nature of Thought our unwanted habits become unnecessary and fall away.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How our thinking can be fearful, even when we don’t notice it
Our problem-solving brain is always trying to keep us safe
How our unwanted habits distract us (temporarily) from our thinking
When we see the nature of though our unwanted habits dissolve
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 30 of Unbroken. My name is Alexandra Amor. I’m really happy to haveyou here with me today.
Today the question is: is fear making us fat?
This was something that crossed my mind the other day that I really wanted to share with you as a way of looking toward the understanding that I share here on the podcast and toward this inside out understanding of the way that we work, and how everything that we’re experiencing is coming to us via thought. It occurred to me the other day, I was just thinking about my thinking. And I realized that so much of my thinking is insecure, or fearful.
We often talk about how our thinking is so often in the future or in the past. And it’s really clear to me that so often when we’re thinking about the future, when I’m planning things, or thinking about what might happen, or what could happen, or what should happen, or what I should be doing in any given situation, that thinking is quite fearful. We might not necessarily label it as such, unless we’re aware that we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances.
I started reflecting on the quality of my thoughts, or the nature of my thoughts even when I feel like things are relatively peaceful, inside my head, and calm and quiet, and things are fairly settled. And I realized that even then, my thinking can be quite fearful. This makes sense, because our brains ability to problem solve, I always call them big problem-solving machines. It’s their nature to want to look out into the world into what might be happening, and then solve that problem.
Where does that come from? That comes from a place of insecurity or fear.
There might be a situation that I as a human might encounter in the next 10 minutes. And my brain, being a problem-solving machine, wants to get out ahead of that problem, and it wants to fix it before it can happen. It wants to anticipate what might occur in order to keep me safe. And this, of course, makes total sense. I’m not judging my brain, or my thinking at all. It’s doing its job, and it’s doing its very best to try to protect me and keep me safe. And you as well, of course, we’re all designed the same way.
So given that problem solving nature of our brains and our thinking, so much of our thinking can be like I said, insecure or fearful, even when we’re really calm and quiet. And then what can happen – and this is where I see anxiety start to occur in people – is that thinking kind of builds on itself. It gets even more sped up and more sped up and more sped up. And now we’re spending a lot more time in that worried or anxious state. It’s like a river running faster and being really turned up.
That can become an unwanted habit as well, I realize. We get into this unwanted habit of being anxious and having these layers and layers of insecure an anxious thinking.
What does that have to do with an overeating habit?
Well, here’s what I saw about how fear is making us fat. When we have that kind of anxious, fearful thinking, and we’re not aware even a that it’s happening, that it’s something that’s occurring within us, rather than coming from our lived experience, and be that there’s such a simple way to deal with that thinking and that is simply to see it for what it is.
Once we we see the shadow puppet on the wall and recognize it as such, then we know that there isn’t a monster in our bedroom. That’s one of the analogies we use in this understanding. But when we don’t know these things, and we’ve got all this thinking that’s fearful and insecure, then what happens is, we need to comfort ourselves, that’s just perfectly natural, and normal. And of course, we want to feel safe and secure. And, in a way, create a buffer between ourselves and all of that insecure thinking.
So what do we do? We reach for substances to help us to do that.
And that can be anything; it can be food, it can be alcohol, it can be sex, it can be shopping, whatever it is, we’re trying to create a buffer between ourselves and our thinking, or distract ourselves from ourselves and are thinking or soothe ourselves from the thinking that’s going on within us. I know I’ve talked on previous episodes about how the substances that we use to soothe ourselves like food, like overeating, they have a way of, at least initially, quieting down the thinking that’s going on in our brains. So that’s why they work. And that’s why we use them.
All that is to say that this is why, in this understanding, in my work, we’re always pointing toward, we’re always pointing upstream, as I’ve talked about, in a previous episode. We’re pointing toward the root cause of what’s creating an unwanted habit. So looking downstream, and looking at the specificity of “I only eat when I’m anxious about being in the car,” or “I only overeat during the in that circumstance”, or “I only indulge in my unwanted habit during this specific circumstance, like if my spouse is out of town, and I’m in the house by myself” or whatever it is, doesn’t matter what it is.
That kind of specificity is actually looking away from the root cause of the problem. So again, we look upstream. And the root cause is our thinking, the fact that we’re living in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances, and that the feeling that we have the drive to overeat, the cravings that we have, are always, always pointing us toward the quality of our thinking, and letting us know if it’s gone in the toilet. And that looking in that direction is what ends up resolving an unwanted habit, like overeating, rather than looking in the other direction and getting really granular about what’s going on.
When we see that it is our fearful thinking that’s making us fat, that can be really helpful in helping us let go of an unwanted overeating habit.
I hope that that’s been helpful for you and that it opens a little window into helping you understand the nature of thought, the nature of where our unwanted habits come from, and how looking at how we all work as human beings is the thing that resolves these habits, and understanding the kindness and the perfection really, in our design, about how those feelings are letting us know that we’re caught up in this busy, fearful thinking.
It’s just the perfect design and it’s always there for us, always supporting us, always letting us know what’s going on. It’s our cravings are not a problem. They’re they don’t reflect that we’re broken, or flawed in some way or lacking. They’re always, always perfection, really and letting us know exactly what’s going on. I hope that’s been helpful for you and if you would like any clarification about that or have any follow up questions about that or about anything else, please let me know. You can go to alexandraamor.com/question, fill out the form and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future episode.
Thank you so much for being here. And I will see you again next time. Bye.
What Stress Is Telling Us with Vivienne Edgecombe
Sep 07, 2023
Even when we’re experiencing stress and overwhelm there’s far less for us to do than we sometimes imagine. In this episode I talk to Vivienne Edgecombe about that, about her experience grappling with the idea that she might never have children, and about her work with businesses helping their staff uncover their innate resilience.
Vivienne Edgecombe has a background in HR and Organisational Development. Her fascination with human beings and what stops us from showing up at our beautiful best every day, led her to an understanding of the mind that is transforming psychology, mental wellbeing and organisations the world over – from prisons and the streets of Chicago, to boardrooms, meeting rooms and living rooms.
This understanding now forms the foundation of the work she does in business and with individuals who are struggling with stress, anxiety or overwhelm.
You can find Vivienne Edgecombe at VivienneEdgecombe.com and on Instagram @vivienneedgecombe.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How other coaching tools become unnecessary once we understand the 3 Principles
The insight about how often we make up stories about our future
How insight about anything can change our entire outlook in a moment
How thought carries on even when our circumstances have changed
How change and shifts in perception are so natural to us
The difference between overwhelm and overworked
The liberation of seeing how our thinking impacts our stress levels
Alexandra: Vivienne Edgecombe, welcome to Unbroken.
Vivienne: Thank you very much, Alexandra, it’s lovely to be here.
Alexandra: Lovely to see you.
Why don’t you tell us about a little bit about your background and how you came across the three principles?
Vivienne: My background has been mostly in human resources throughout my career. And that led me through a whole raft of personal development, professional development, and combinations of the two, throughout 25 years.
I came to the UK in 2009. I wanted to study NLP with Jamie Smart, which I did. And Jamie at the time, was just starting to explore the principles. And so his NLP had a little bit of a different flavor about it, I think. And when he started teaching pure principles rather than NLP, I went along for that journey and never looked back. Really, it made so much sense to me and I got so many insights from it. And things just shifted and changed. So I didn’t, and still don’t, really see any reason to veer off that path. Because it just makes sense to me.
Alexandra: You mentioned being in HR. And had you also felt like you were a bit of a seeker?
Was there some searching going on as well?
Vivienne: I would say so. I don’t know if I would have termed it that at the time. I think it was, but I definitely was looking at the next cool thing, next interesting thing to learn. The next thing that could help me, that could help someone else, because I was doing quite a lot of coaching and my HR jobs. And so yes, there was definitely one of those that mindset of, oh, this is a great thing to add to my toolkit. And oh, and, and great. Now my toolkits complete. Oh, no, it’s not what’s the next thing? So the toolkit was ever expanding.
And, and it is funny, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before that when I came across the principles, a whole lot of stuff fell out of the toolkit. It just didn’t seem necessary to me anymore. The load got lighter and my mind got a lot quieter. When I was sitting in front of someone, whether it was in my job or a private coaching client, there was a lot less noise in there while I was trying to listen to them and help them because I didn’t have to think, oh which technique am I going to use now? Or, Oh, I’m going to do a double whammy, whatever, on this on this issue. So I just simplified things actually a lot, which was a relief really.
Alexandra: It sounds like you were able to take the Principles back to your HR clients and your private clients right away.
Vivienne: Yes. I guess it took me a little while, the things fell out of the toolkit not all at once. And I guess finding my own understanding and my grounding in what I was learning, but yeah, it feels like it didn’t take too long before. It just made more sense to have that conversation than any of the other conversations that I’ve been having.
Alexandra: You and I have spoken before on a previous podcast that I had, and one of the things that you shared, where the principles were really impactful was your journey about having a child was really affected by the principles. Could you share a little bit about that with us, please?
Vivienne: Oh, I love talking about this.
Alexandra: Okay, good.
Vivienne: For quite a number of years, I was in a position of wanting to have children and not believing that I would. And so having a lot of thinking, a lot of upset, a lot of round and round circular thinking. And it was impacting my relationship. And it was? How can I put it? I often term it my tumble dryer phase because it just felt like I was in this thing that was going round and round and round. And I couldn’t get out.
I was talking to anyone I could find, whether it was at work or at home or whatever, to try and get some answers. I don’t even know what the question was. But it was if I look back, it was probably, could I be happy without children? How could I convince my husband to want children, because he, he was older than me and had had a family previously, and he didn’t want to go around that track again. And in my searchings, no one ever told me that I could just be happy.
There was no message like that. Everyone took it pretty much as seriously as I was at the time, which is not a reflection on anybody at all. But it’s probably more of a reflection of society and the value that we put on, or the identity that we make for ourselves around this whole thing of having children or not.
And when I first had an insight, this was before the principles, but I had an insight that I had been making up futures and only two imagined futures, there was the gray one without children. And there was the beautiful Technicolor one with children. I realized in a moment that both of them were made up, neither of them were real.
I think, in this realm of childlessness, as it tends to be called, people can see me except that they might have made up the Technicolor one, that they might be looking through rose colored glasses, at what the future might be like. But they tend not to realize that they’re making up the other one as well. The one that says you can’t be happy, or that you that you’ll be sad forever, or all of those messages that we get when we want children, and we and we can’t have them.
So, in that moment of realizing, Oh, I’ve just made both of those up. And actually the world is full of infinite possibilities. I have no idea what my future will look like. It was like that, everything opened up for me, it was just a different experience, then it was Oh, right. So if I don’t know what my future is going to look like, what do I feel like doing? If I think well, it’s not going to include children? Then what what shall I do?
Not in any kind of pressure or purpose kind of way. Because that’s often the next thing if I’m not going to have children, then what’s my purpose in life? It wasn’t about that at all. It was just what do I feel like doing? And after that was when I came to the UK and started learning with Jamie and that I realized through understanding the principles what had actually happened to me in that moment of insight, what had taken place.
From there, I just got insights upon insights about how my value as a person as a woman, how I was already complete and there was nothing that I needed to complete me whether that was a child or relationship or financial security as they call it or any of those things. I was okay, I was complete here and now. And that building that building on the oh, you’ve imagined those two futures but it just transformed everything for me.
I guess I don’t I don’t define myself in any way about whether I have children or not. It’s not something that enters my head unless I’m having a conversation like this, of course. And I certainly I don’t think of it as a defining feature of me at all. And all the labels that go with it in, in society like childless, that doesn’t even that doesn’t make sense to me. Childfree doesn’t make sense to me. I’m just a person who doesn’t have children. It doesn’t define anything about me, as far as I’m aware.
Alexandra: To me, that speaks to the power of insight, because something that was so important to you for so long. And as you said, you were in your head circling around about it for ages.
And then in one moment, you realized how you were making it all up.
Vivienne: Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I can laugh now. And I could laugh, pretty much immediately when I had that realization. And for a lot of people I know, it’s not a laughing matter. And it wasn’t for me until that happened.
But what I also realized along this journey was that Oh, but that’s not unique to me I’m not special. And, and so anyone can have an insight that can change things for them that can make a full 180 on whatever it is, whether it’s about having children, or whether it’s about something else. We’re never stuck. We’re only as stuck as we think we are.
Alexandra: Right? Yes, exactly. It’s such a great story. I love hearing you talk about that. Thank you.
You’ve written a book called 28 Days of Resilience. And I was thinking about this this morning, while I was getting ready for our call; we can approach the principles from several different directions.
I’m curious about why it was that resilience was the inroad that you took and the and why you incorporated that in the title of your book?
Vivienne: It’s going back a little while now. So I’m not just making this up. I think I’ve always felt it as a resilience paradigm it makes sense. This understanding gives us such a solid foundation to navigate life with. And that, to me is what resilience means. Resilience as a term applied to human beings really is a made up thing. Probably relatively recently. I don’t think that people even 100 years ago, we’re talking about resilience, they were just getting on with life.
When I talk about resilience, it is that that ability to I mean, we’re all always navigating life, it’s not like we need a special ability, but it’s understanding as we navigate that we’re okay. And that we. will have what we need, when we need it. In face of the inevitable challenges that will come up along the way, because no one gets through life without having stuff happen.
As far as I can tell, haven’t met anyone yet. And we all deal with it. It’s interesting to me when people say, I don’t know how I’ll get through this. Because, and I have often said to my clients, you already are, you’re already getting through this. And there’s something that that lets us just take the next step and the next step and the next step. And that’s what I think if we want to put a label on it, I think that’s resilience.
Alexandra: The book, obviously is called 28 Days of Resilience that obviously walks people through exploring that what you’ve just described.
Where do you begin on that journey with them in the book?
Vivienne: From memory, so it’s a little while so maybe I should have a refreshment. I would start, like I start with my clients, really exploring how we are creating our experience of life through thought. So it’s a step away from how we usually think life is happening to a step closer to truth, I would say about how life is happening.
So looking at the innocent misunderstanding and the innocent misconnection, if that’s a word that we’ve made between our circumstances and our experience, and disrupting that connection, and helping someone to see that actually, the element of thought has been missed out in that equation.
We’ve forgotten that actually in between experience and in between our circumstances, and our experience, is a world of thought. And, in fact, the world of thought carries on when the circumstances or the events or the situations have gone. So thought really is it. It’s the beginning and the end. So that’s where I start. And that’s where we start exploring.
Alexandra: Shifting gears slightly, I was poking around on your website the other day getting prepared, and you have a free webinar called Life In Color. I’d love you to tell us a little bit about that and what that phrase means to you.
Vivienne: That goes back to the childlessness story.
Alexandra: Okay. Oh, wow.
Vivienne: As I mentioned, when I was in that tumble dryer phase, I had these two futures mapped out in front of me: one that was gray, and one that was in glorious Technicolor. And when I was talking with my colleague, our colleague, in fact, Laura White, and we wanted to do a podcast together about that subject.
We were looking for a name that wasn’t anything to do with either of our individual works. And we came upon Life In Colour because in that community of people who would term themselves childless I think there’s a perception that life can’t really be in color. There’s always going to be a grayness or, or a muting of the color. And we’ve wanted to kind of go that open. And that’s why on the podcast is called The Life In Colour podcast, and we have an Instagram page.
When you go on it, we’ve got a beautiful watercolor thing, it’s a watercolor might be a anyway, it’s a beautiful, just blob of different beautiful, vibrant colors that we use as the theme for all our posts and things on Instagram.
Alexandra: I can imagine if someone has something like that, like having a child that’s so important to them, that proceeding without it and believing that it’s, I’m trying to find the words to describe it’s. They might feel that they’re sort of living life with one of their limbs missing or with this experience that feels vital.
Tolerating the rest of their lives without this thing that was really important to them. I can see that that can happen in all kinds of different ways. Like if someone as you said it wants to be in a relationship and hasn’t found the right person or wants to find the right job and that hasn’t really clicked for them.
The weight that that can bring, I’m sure, to people’s lives, it must be so relieved by realizing that they’re making it up essentially with their thinking.
Vivienne: I love hearing from people. I wrote a book as well called Already Complete and I love hearing from people to say I read your book or I listened to it on Audible or now I listen to the podcast and something shifted, I feel different. Someone said, I feel like I’ve been in winter and now I can see spring.
I wrote in the book about the void. People talk about this, there’s this void that that can’t be filled. I wrote in the book about the void, that there actually is no void. That’s made of thought too and that it disappears of its own accord when we realize what’s going on, because it never existed in the first place.
I also know that when you’re in the depths of it, that’s really hard to get your head around. And getting your head around it isn’t how it works anyway. But it’s lovely. You don’t know what you’re going to say that’s going to click with someone or that’s going to that they’re going to hear on the level that they might need to hear it. But I just figured that the more things I can put out there, then the more likely it is that someone will hear something that’s helpful.
Alexandra: That’s the key, isn’t it? We never know what’s going to stimulate an insight.
You’re involved with two other coaches in something called the Alchemy Academy. Tell us about that, and why you chose the word alchemy.
Vivienne: The Alchemy Academy came about with my colleagues, Zoe Patrick and Allie Scott, when we were talking. Zoey and I are from business backgrounds, Ali’s been longer in the coaching and therapy side of things, although she had a business background to begin with. And we just were talking about how we could how we could help more people in in more ways, and we decided that we would like to start going into businesses, to talk to leaders in particular about performance, and well-being in the organization, what that means. And leadership, and you know, all of that stuff, culture that that kind of makes an organization do better.
The Alchemy Academy name came up because of the alchemy to all of it. When the word came up in conversation, we will we all kind of went ooo, because alchemy is, I guess there’s a number of definitions, but we see it as this seemingly magical process of transformation. And to us, that’s how it feels when you’re just in conversation with someone and they hear something that shifts things for them 10 degrees or 180 degrees, whatever, it makes a difference.
There’s nothing that you had to do to them or that they had to do for that to happen. It’s a natural thing that that happens to us when we see something different. And so alchemy, we knew that alchemy would be part of the title once we kind of fell on it.
And then Academy we wanted to give the sense of the three of us and the fact that this was it wasn’t just magic, there was some something behind it that was more structured and more of a framework that we could take into organizations.
Alexandra: How long have you three been working on that together?
Vivienne: It’s just over a year.
Alexandra: Can you share a bit about what some of the organizations have seen or what their experience has been?
Vivienne: Yeah, well, so far, most of the work we’ve done has been around resilience, and around relationships, like client relationships. And how to get past the barriers that we might perceive are in the way.
We work on uncovering blind spots, and people find that really helpful to understand that if this is all the knowledge in the world this on making the shape of a circle for those who are just listening in or watching, if that’s all the knowledge in the world, we have such a miniscule piece of that within us. And then there’s all this stuff that we know that we don’t know. But then there’s all this stuff that we have no idea that we don’t even know. And there are so many answers in the air that are available to us If we can start looking more in that direction of what we what we haven’t seen yet what we don’t know yet.
So that’s, that’s the journey that we take people on. People have really found that intriguing for a start. And they’ve been looking forward to going into their work with a more open mindset that I don’t have to have all the answers. What if I just listened better to this person? What would open up? If we just had this conversation, rather than the one we’ve been going round and round with for however long. It’s been really, really nice to see the shifts that have been going
Alexandra: What it occurs to me when you were drawing as that visual picture of what we know, all the knowledge in the world. And then what we know is such a small portion of that, that that goes right back to our initial conversation about imagining our future. You were imagining two things, the good outcome or the not so good outcome.
Outside of that, as you said, there’s so much else that’s available to us and possible. That happens in every area of our life, both personally and professionally.
Vivienne: One of the examples that I’ve used when we talk about uncovering blind spots, because it was such a blind spot for me, and I couldn’t see, I didn’t realize that there was more to see, even though I kept asking and ask, it didn’t feel like there was more to see until, until there was, huh.
Alexandra: When we’re holding really tight to something that’s feels very binary – it’s either this or it’s that – as the tumble dryer phrase that you use is so good, because you just keep going back and forth between Well, it’s either this or it’s that and neither of them feel good. Or maybe my attachment to one feels really clingy. And then desperately unhappy about the other. And that’s such an extreme way to feel.
I can just picture you bouncing back and forth between the two. And then when we open up and realize, oh, but there’s more than that.
Vivienne: And that’s, I guess, to anybody listening. That’s such an important point. Because I’d love for people to see that. If you feel like, there’s only two choices, and neither of them feel good, then you’re not seeing the whole picture. And maybe you can take some comfort in knowing that there’s, there’s more to see here. Even if you can’t see it. There’s something more to see. Yeah, that’s a really good, really good point.
Alexandra: One of the things that you talk about on your website about the Alchemy Academy is the connection between our thinking and stress.
I wondered if you could talk about stress a little bit with us now and just share what you see and what stress really is.
Vivienne: I guess it’s the other side of that resilience conversation, isn’t it? We like to talk about this as a subtractive psychology. I think that’s a phrase that Jamie Smart coined in the first place. But that articulates it perfectly for us, that we’re about taking things off people’s mind. We’re not about adding things to someone’s already overwhelming to do lists.
So you’ve got your overwhelming to do list, but we’d like you to meditate for 10 minutes and we’d like you to go for it go for a walk in nature and pet your dog and whatever. So the this is really about taking things off people’s minds.
In relation to stress, I think that’s kind of it really, the stress is an internal experience, it’s not caused by the outside world, although it might very much look like it is. Going back to the conversation, earlier, in the piece, where we talked about, we miss thought out of the equation we leave this world of thought out of our equation of experience, and we look at circumstances and we think, Oh, no wonder I’m stressed. My to do list is three miles long, of course, I’m stressed.
Whereas in the conversation that we might have with people, when we talk about stress, we will bring thought to light. We will shine a light on thought as it were, and help people understand what role that’s playing, which is 100% of the role in the experience that they’re having of that three mile long to do list.
Because really, when it comes down to it, no one can achieve all the to do’s on the three mile long to do list. And when we get all the stories about that out of the way, when we subtract the stories about what that means about me – if I can’t do it right, what my managers going to think what my colleagues are going to think, how am I going to do this, I’m going to have to stay up all night, blah, blah, blah, blah, neglecting my family – we have so many stories that when we look at the three mile long to do list, that come into play.
When we can bring that into the light and put the stories to one side for a minute and look at the to do list with a bit more clarity and less noise, then it becomes much more obvious what on the to do list we can say we’re not going to do we can put off we can get an extension on whatever it is we can have conversation with the manager and say, Look this is my three mile long to do list. It’s not humanly possible, here are the things that I think are a priority. What do you think?
It’s a much more neutral conversation, than, oh, my goodness, I can’t believe life is going to implode. So that’s the relationship between thought and stress in a nutshell, and that’s where we point people in that stress conversation. And as we said, it’s about subtraction. So it’s taking away some of that noise that’s going on, or we’re helping you to see past it to the clarity and the activity that’s waiting in that space.
Alexandra: I love that you bring up that it’s so common outside of this understanding when people are dealing with stress to add to what they’re supposed to be doing. I remember back in my corporate days, feeling the pressure of that.
In order to manage this, I should be doing more than it was already feeling impossible.
Vivienne: Yes, buckle down and work longer and work harder. And actually, one of the things that we’re talking about at the moment, among the three of us, and that we’re working on some things to put out into the world is this concept of doing more with less, because that’s a real phrase in business at the moment.
It’s perhaps not intended the way that we would intend in business, it’s talking about actually physically doing more, but we will give you less resources and less stuff to do that with. That’s not necessarily a welcome message to the people who have the three mile long to do list who already can’t get through there. So, when we talk about doing more with lists, we’re talking about doing more creativity, more collaboration, more clarity more.
More calm, more accountability, more of all of the things that we would like to be doing more of in our work and in our lives in general, actually. And with less on our mind, less of the noise, less of the insecurity in decisiveness. Less of the overwhelmed the stress, the mental blocks, the friction between colleagues or family or whatever, however, it’s manifesting. So that’s our kind of version of doing more with less.
Alexandra: Because when we’re stressed, our thinking adds so much more to the pile of stuff that’s already there.
In March, I was at a weekend with Michael Neill and Barbara Patterson and Michael talked about the difference between overwhelmed and overworked. When we feel that feeling of overwhelm we could have two things to do but just be out of our minds with stress and worry, because there’s so much thinking going on. I thought that was such a good example of what that feels like, and how our thinking gets so involved in whatever’s going on with us physically.
Vivienne: It’s in our language, isn’t it? I’ve got a stressful job. I’ve had a stressful day. This is a stressful situation. And in all of those constructs, it’s the circumstances, or the situation or the event that’s doing it to us, and we are at the mercy of it. And that’s it is by nature, it is the victim mentality. A lot of us wouldn’t want to think that we are in a victim mentality, but that’s what that is.
It’s so liberating to start to see, oh, hang on, I’m not at the mercy of that stuff. What’s going on here is that I’ve got a lot of thinking, and that’s a different story. I don’t need to wait for those circumstances to change before I can feel different, because I’ll feel different than my thinking changes. And that’s a much more hopeful, helpful, kind of place to be coming from, to me. Much more empowered, if you like.
Alexandra: Exactly. Because when a job is stressful it tends to feel like this mountain looming over us. And we start to think of, well, what can I do to change that mountain? And that itself becomes insurmountable. So realizing, yeah, that it’s going on in our minds and that’s what we have agency over, changes the game completely.
Vivienne: It’s like pulling back the curtain and seeing what’s going on behind the scenes, because it’s so invisible to us most of the time. When I started on this journey with Jamie, someone pointed that out to me and then I just see it everywhere how it was playing out in my life. And I haven’t stopped.
Alexandra: As we’re coming close to the end of our time here, I want to ask, is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share about today?
Vivienne: I feel like we’ve covered quite a lot of ground.
Alexandra: We really have.
Vivienne: No, I don’t think there’s anything else that I can think of off the top of my head.
Alexandra: Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Vivienne: I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, with under my name, Vivienne Edgecombe. I’ve got a website, VivienneEdgecombe.com. And I’ve also we’ve also got the alchemyacademy.co.uk website.
Alexandra: I will put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com to those things so people can find you. Thank you, Vivienne. It’s been so great chatting with you. Thank you for being with me here today.
Vivienne: It’s been such a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Alexandra.
Q&A 29 – Overeating: Is there such a thing as relapse? Part 2
Sep 04, 2023
This is part 2 of our conversation about whether or not relapse is a thing. In part 1 I left out an important part of the discussion, so this episode addresses the idea that when ‘relapses’ happen we can view the feelings we’re having to help us get back on course.
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 29 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
This is going to actually be part two of the conversation that we had last week on Q&A Episode 28. I went away from that episode and I edited it and did all the stuff that I do to, to get it up on the podcast apps and all those things. And then I realized, Oh, I left out an important part of that conversation.
The subject was, Why is there no such thing as relapse when it comes to an unwanted habit like overeating?
We talked about the elements of that and what I forgot to mention – and that’s what this episode is going to be about – is that when we’re having something that we would call a ‘relapse’ what’s actually happening is that our thinking has sped up.
It’s important to remember that the cravings and the the drive to overeat, that we feel in the moment are messages, they are feedback, they are a mindfulness bell, letting us know that we’re caught up in our thinking.
That’s a really important piece of this conversation about relapsing. So let’s dive in a little deeper to that. Last week, I gave the example of the trip that I was on and the birthday that I had, and the guests that I had, and those were the external events that I felt were interfering with my ability to eat the way that I wanted to.
But when we look a little bit deeper, and it’s so important to remember this, and this is something that traditional diet and healthy eating programs don’t address at all, is the intelligence of what’s going on within us when we experience those feelings, and those cravings. And this was such a pivotal part of this inside-out understanding for me, and it made such a huge difference to my ability to eat well, and to see my the drive to overeat that I experienced resolve itself. Because I didn’t do that.
My overeating resolved itself once I understood how I work and how all human beings work.
Let’s look at the examples that I used of traveling and birthday and guests. When I experienced cravings, and the drive to overeat, during those times, what was really going on, was that those cravings, that feeling, were letting me know that my thinking was a little bit sped up. In the case of having guests, it might be sped up around are the guests having a good time? Do they have everything they need? Have I remembered to ask them were they warm enough the night before? Or did they need another blanket?
That kind of busy thinking that can go on when we’re in a situation maybe that’s unfamiliar, or a little bit charged, or whatever it is. And then the sequence becomes, I find myself feeling a little more permissive with myself about what it is I’m going to eat. I don’t mean that in a in a way that I’m really holding myself on a tight leash normally, but there is a way that I eat now that I really enjoy and appreciate that feels good for me.
What I noticed was thinking that was more along the lines of and I mentioned this last week, treating myself or rewarding myself, and that’s fine. I mean, of course we’re going to treat ourselves and reward ourselves sometimes. But I did notice some discomfort with that feeling as well with those kinds of thoughts. I didn’t really want to be eating in a way that was outside the way that I normally like to eat. And yet I was doing it anyway. I was following the lead of those thoughts about treats and that kind of thing.
That should have twigged me, honestly. I didn’t think of those thoughts and feelings like feedback, even though I teach this stuff until after it had happened. At the time, I just got swept up in what was happening, the busyness here in my home with my guests, and the permissive thought would come in about having a treat or doing whatever. It was like being on a rushing river, I just got swept along with it, oh, that’s a good idea. My friends are on holiday, I’m just going to celebrate with them or whatever it was.
The more we look in this direction, the more we’re able to take a moment and see what’s really going on.
Now, I didn’t in that case, and maybe next time, I will, though. One of the really amazing benefits of sharing here on the podcast is that I get to learn as well, I get to be mindful of what’s going on with me by explaining it to you. And that helps me as well. So just as a little aside, this is it’s great for me to be here as well sharing this.
The bottom line is then that when we experience what we might call a relapse it’s really good to remember that we are so divinely designed, that our design is kind. And it’s not working ever against us. It’s always, always trying to help us and guide us and let us know what’s happening with our thinking.
If I had taken a moment, during those examples that I’ve given you, and stepped back a little bit and realized what was going on, that might have been really helpful to me to see at the time. Now it wasn’t the end of the world. And nobody’s had exploded. It was a moment in time. And now it’s over, and I’m back to eating the way I enjoy eating. And in a way that’s healthy for me.
I think I’ve mentioned I’ve got some arthritis in my knees so there are certain foods that I stay away from. And that’s really helping my knees. And so that’s the way I like to eat. I do love a potato, but I can’t I don’t eat them anymore, because they really bother my arthritis.
So all this is to say that I think it’s just really important to remember and to keep looking back toward how kind our design is.
Our cravings are simply letting us know that we are caught up in our thinking, either in general, or in a specific moment, as I’ve talked about before.
That was the really important piece that I left out last week. And I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned it because it is really important.
I think it’s so important for me to just keep banging this drum because it’s the opposite of the way that we culturally tend to look at these situations.
We think of going off the wagon and relapsing as failures as flaws as things that we’ve done wrong. And then we have to get right again, with ourselves and with whatever is going on with our unwanted habit. And the truth is, none of that is true.
We haven’t failed. I didn’t fail when that situation, those three situations that were going on that I told you about. I’m not a failure. I was a good learning opportunity for me to remember that. My feelings are always, always telling me about the quality of my thinking.
I’m thrilled that I’m able to share that here with you today. And I hope that’s been helpful for you.
If you have a question about this or about any aspect of an unwanted over eating habit that you’ve got, please do let me know. You can go to alexandraamor.com/question and fill in the form there and I will answer your question on a future episode.
Thank you again for being with me here and I will see you next time. Bye.
Love Behind Every Feeling with Juliet Fay
Aug 31, 2023
What if we humans are designed so perfectly that every feeling we have comes from a place of love? This is the question that Juliet Fay and I explore during our conversation, as well as looking at control and what it may have to tell us, and much more.
Juliet Fay divides her time between West Wales, UK and West Coast, US, sharing and teaching in a variety of ways: group programmes, online gatherings and 1:2:1 consultations.
She trained as a Three Principles Facilitator with The Insight Space, London in 2016-17 under the direction of Ian Watson and Carol Boroughs and returned as a peer mentor for their programme in 2018-19. She also attended The Three Principles School on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada in 2017 and periodically attends Three Principles Conferences (UK and 3PGC) and programmes virtually or in person.
Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a bit about your background and how you found the principles?
Juliet: Okay, so I was a searcher. I’m a seeker, and had been, I think, from a young age. And so the principles came across my path at a time in my life, I guess, when I was in a period of struggling more intensely than I had been.
I love the stories of how people find the principles or how the principles find them, whichever way you want to say. And I came across it randomly a video on YouTube, actually, through an email that I’d signed up to, but didn’t usually read. And it’s funny, isn’t it, because I’m actually quite good at keeping my inbox clean of when I’m no longer interested in something, I tend to unsubscribe and this one had had stayed there, all these months and months and months. And I never opened them. And then one day, the subject line just jumped out at me.
The webinar was called ‘Can an insight cure PTSD?’ It was Mary Schiller being interviewed by Molly Gordon, who’s a dear friend. So I’m sorry, Molly, that I didn’t open all those emails before. And I didn’t know much about PTSD. I didn’t. But I was aware it was considered a mental illness. And who knows why, but something really piqued my curiosity. To the extent that it was a live hangout, you could join, and I missed it, and then went back searching through my emails to find it again, because it pinged again in my head.
I’ve really learned to trust this. Now when something pings, and you don’t ignore it, it’ll come back. And then if you still ignore it, it’ll be back my way. So it goes. So I went and I found the recording, I watched it was an hour and Mary Schiller talking about her experience of PTSD and how this thing called the principles and she’d read Michael Neill’s book, I think, his first book, perhaps, and had had a life altering insight. And it really piqued my curiosity. I think that’s all I can say at that point, there was like, there’s something here.
I think it’s a very common story, I went off and just gorged on the Principles materials, webinars, books, anything I could get my hands on, for quite a while I went really deep into it.
I think the first thing that I saw that was so helpful to me at the time, which is maybe very obvious to, maybe if some people learn this already on the way, but somehow I had missed this one, which was that I am always at the effect of what looks true in my head at any given moment. If I believe what’s going on in my head, then what I say and do will follow from that. And that’s true for everyone else to.
Now, that was so helpful, because I’d spent decades trying to figure out and analyze why I was the way I was, and the way I was was I had really unstable moods. To an extraordinary degree. I looked at everything that came from diet to genetics to therapy and medication. I mean, like the loads of people, I tried everything, yoga affirmations, eating kale running. It was, and some things were helpful for a while, and I’m sure right now, from this distance, I guess I can see that we’re always having insights. So I was having insights, but things didn’t, I guess, give me lasting change.
And so this little really quite simple idea that we’re just at the effect of what looks to in any given moment, even if two minutes later, that changes and what you felt and thought five minutes ago looks ridiculous to you. In the moment, that’s all that’s going on. I do remember that, when I saw that there was this huge relief that all this analyzing and trying to sort of get all my ducks in a row to get this perfect, perfect outcome because perfect outcome was part of the problem. If I was a same sweet woman, that’s what I wanted, which is flawed, let’s face it as an objective. But it just took away such sort of layers and layers of complexity.
For me, that’s all that’s going on. I’d love to say that then everything dissolved, and I was fine. But that’s not what happened. For me, that was the starting point. So it certainly didn’t mean I wasn’t at the effect of upsetting distressing very insecure thinking I still was and still am. But it took away the need to go down all this these rabbit holes of is it diet? Is it genetics? Is it nurture nature? Is it my, my work? Is it my relationships? Is it where I live? Is it my bank balance?
Because you can see, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that many of us spend a huge amount of mental energy trying to figure out what the problem is, and then trying to fix the problem. And sometimes we might, sometimes we don’t. But I think for some of us, there’s a pattern there that the seeking and working it out, becomes an end in itself. Because part of us feels like we’re doing something we’re trying to address it. And we actually just get very, very busy in our head. And out in the world. In my case projects were one of my coping mechanisms.
Alexandra: You said so many interesting things there. And I had a huge insight while you were speaking. Many people who are on this show, talk about all the things they’ve tried, myself included to “fix themselves”. And almost everyone to a person, including myself, says the things were helpful for a while.
My insight just then was that that’s because our thinking shifts momentarily. We think, Oh, this is the thing that’s going to fix me, this is the thing that’s going to work.
There’s this honeymoon period, because our thinking has changed. And then that fades, of course, our thinking changes as it always does. And that fades away. And then we’re on to the search for the next thing. So thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it.
Juliet: You’re welcome. That’s really interesting what you said, because not only does your thinking change, but your thinking settles down, because it looks like the solution is here. And so all that stuff we have running about I’m wrong, it’s wrong, that’s wrong, everyone’s wrong, whatever it is, quiets down. And in that more settled mind it looks very true to me that as the mind settles down, the body settles down.
A lot of the fixes we look at are trying to do that the other way around, trying to settle the mind to settle the body. And it’s not to say some deep breathing doesn’t calm the nervous system a bit. But I think the power of insight is something I know you’re interested in. And before I call I was sort of reflecting a little bit so yeah, insight what, what was kind of what is that? And why is it such a common term in this conversations around the principles and what’s different about that from a good idea? Or a great strategy or and I think, for me, it’s a good idea or a great strategy. It’s something that I might try and put into place in my life.
I’ll probably need prompts and reminders and I might have to check in with why I thought it was such and my experiences that kind of relies on willpower to keep moving it forward, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Whereas insight feels that it’s raw is what I would call it. Where is a concept and an idea and a strategy is a bit abstract. It’s like, oh, that’s up there looks really great on this web page. And now I’ve got to like, pull it down, and I got to apply it. And you can feel it. It’s kind of work.
An insight is feels more like something arises in your bones. And because you know it in your bones don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to apply it. And so behavior shifting, or behaviors dropping away whatever it is, happens with apparently without effort. But maybe I should pause that, because I’ve got another piece that I’d like to say about insights.
Alexandra: I love what you’re saying.
For me, it’s pointing to that idea of freshness.
But you’re also pointing to, for me, it often can feel like the thing was already there and I’m just awakening to it. So that’s what I see in what you’re saying. Please, continue.
Juliet: Oh, that’s really nice. I really like that. Because it can have that quality of like, of course. Almost like I’ve always known this. I just didn’t know that I did. That almost. Is that what I’m hearing that that? Yeah, that’s, that’s beautiful. Because it is isn’t it once. It’s like, before we’ve seen it, we can’t see it. It’s invisible. And in the moment of seeing it has a rightness for us. It’s very tailored, I think, to each individual.
I think the other thing that is fascinates me about insight is …I can share an experience I had on Saltspring Island, it’s not far from you. It’s just where insight comes without any meaning or words or anything. In fact, I wouldn’t have even called it an insight. I was really, really lucky to get to go to the Salt Spring school, the Three Principles school on Salt Spring Island with Elsie Spittle in 2017. It was early in my Principles journey. And I’d been around it for a couple of years.
I was having an incredible few months just prior to going out there. A very kind of expanded feeling state. I can remember driving back from London to West Wales where I live, which is about five hour drive down the motorway. And after Three Principles training weekend, and the beauty of the autumn leaves on the embankment on the side of this freeway I just was welling up welling up and welling up. And again, no words, just this beauty filling me up in a way that I almost felt like I can’t contain it. It’s too beautiful.
And this was happening a lot. I often just had water falling out my eyes. I went to Salt Spring Island and I had just met the man who’s now my husband. And we were there together so that there is I should mention that because that was we were on a trip together there. But I sat in the three days school. And I just literally had water falling out of my eyes. I wasn’t crying in the kind of sense of being upset. And I was also moving around going to lunch in the evening, get together with people. I sat through the whole school and I can’t tell you anything that anybody said. I even watched some of the recordings they put out after the school. And I was like was I there? Because I don’t remember anything that they said.
But there was this what looking back it’s really interesting actually telling you about it now. I suppose I would say now that something was touched inside of me and all this was like a clearing or a cleansing and I had had no words for it then and I still have no words for what really was happening. But it was so outside anything I’ve ever experienced that I also didn’t have any questions you know, I didn’t I wasn’t disturbed or even confused and I just remember that everything else I was bringing looks so beautiful. I suppose what’s coming to me right now is I think I was surrendered. In that time and what a beautiful, beautiful feeling that is when we give up the fight.
Alexandra: What an experience! When the school was over, what was that like for you?
Juliet: Well, this very expanded state continued to some extent. I had a few days in Vancouver afterwards for flew back and again, I remember wandering around the city just being delighted by there’s some concrete works, you might know it on is it I can’t remember the exactly the name of the place. And they’ve painted them their huge structures with these gorgeous multicolored paintings. And that was one of many things I just found. Absolutely.
I had never been to North America, although I’ve traveled a lot elsewhere. And it was a dream, like getting the plane back getting back from London back here. And I think it’s quite a common story, as people who’ve been around this, I think I would say I had a sort of year, maybe more, maybe 18 months, maybe two years of just, oh, my problems have gone away.
I think that it’s very interesting, because what you’ve just seen earlier in the call about when we try different things and our thinking shifts, or settles or whichever it is, which allows wisdom to come in and then we might think that things on the outside are working in a funny sort of way. I think I’ve seen this really powerfully.
I obviously need to keep seeing this is that I somehow took the credit for what had happened. It’s a bit like, oh, go me! I’m really calm. I’m not calm. I’m the person I always wanted to be. And it’s really subtle. I think that you don’t realize you’re doing that. I was just very relieved. I just really enjoyed that.
I met some wonderful people and wonderful teachers through that time. And I was working as a facilitator myself and then it’s really interesting that in the last I’d say year, 18 months, the mood swings and things for me came back. And it’s very humbling. Because you kind of think, ah I’ve graduated. And so yeah, I mean, this is ongoing, and it is very humbling.
Alexandra: I was speaking to Maryse Godet Copans on a previous episode, and she had a similar experience. For her was panic attacks and physical symptoms that she has: headaches, that kind of thing. So that’s really interesting.
What did you see when your mood swings returned? Anything you could share?
Juliet: I think my first reaction was disappointment. Like, oh, these again.
I’m really glad you’ve asked the question, because just now as you were asking me, I immediately went into a lot of thinking about mood swings, which is a very old track for me, because I spent decades thinking about them. I’ve just seen that wants to kind of get going again. I sort of have an idea. And it was one shared with me by some wonderful teachers Ian Watson and Carol Boroughs, that things come back around. Because there’s something to see something further, something deeper to see.
And perhaps they would phrase it in terms of to see, either again, or more deeply the nature of the illusion. When we’re saying things come back around again, I can really see that where that’s gone on in my life, it might be a similar circumstance, it might be a thought pattern, habit. It might be a behavior. And sometimes you can be in a completely different situation, but it’s got a very old, familiar feel.
It’s really funny, I wrote a couple of poems called Old Tracks, one and two is very much about falling into the that habitual old thought patterns. And they’re kind of curious, because at one level, they’re familiar, and they’re comfortable. But then I think as our understanding deepens, they become uncomfortable.
I often feel like I should be in kindergarten with the principles. I’m a very slow and slightly stubborn learner. Because often, I see something, but I see it, and it’s helpful to see, but it doesn’t necessarily immediately change what’s going on for me. I think one of the deeper lessons for me, is that I’ve seen and felt what it is to be in a beautiful feeling to be in the flow of life. And it’s gorgeous.
Who wouldn’t want to be in that. But there’s a busy mind part of me that when things aren’t like that, which is often you know, often my head wants to get busy. That old impulse to try and figure it out, fix it, which went quite quiet for quite some time, kind of wants to come up again. So this time around, what it feels like is for me, I was on an episode of another podcast, which was called The Beautiful Feeling and we talked a little bit about it. I’m always curious about how deeply can I listen?
Where I’m at, I guess with it right now is that I have a sense that this is asking me to get quiet to listen more deeply, anything else that I might want to tweak and adjust. I am messing around with diet things, which is very familiar. Going back through those things, not to say that some of that might be helpful and menopausal. So there’s always things we can do.
I can feel the difference. My busy mind really likes the idea of eating more broccoli, or whatever it is. Because it’s got a sort of seek and destroy hunting and finding a solution. And it’s got that feel to it, which is very familiar, and used to bring an unlimited amount of satisfaction, let’s face it. Whereas getting really, really quiet doesn’t have that little pull, push pull.
It’s funny that I said about surrendered because I think that’s really what life is asking of me: to go deeper into not knowing. One of the things that I noticed in the disappointment is as soon as we make our experience wrong – it shouldn’t be happening, I should know better – it’s just more busy thinking. And then we’re listening to that. We’re just listening to that noise again. Which prevents us from falling into a quieter space.
Well, I don’t want to say prevents this because I do think it’s all, if I’m in a beautiful feeling, I feel gratitude. I don’t really think that I engineer that beautiful feeling. Maybe I can get in the way of it. But I’m not sure that I can click my fingers and go bright be here now.
Being still is like an act of faith that in looking towards the stillness, I’m inviting a felt sense of presence in and in that I do know that’s where the answers are. But it feels often that my busy mind wants to go off and be clever and, and go yeah, here. No, but what about this?
Alexandra: That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that.
I was listening to a conversation with Dr. Bill Pettit the other day, and he was talking about presence. And it struck me, I was going through a period of pretty low moods, like depression, at the time. It’s extraordinary to wonder what it would be like to just be present with that feeling. So I’ve been exploring that lately. Not trying to change it, not trying to make it better, make it go away any of those things.
I think that’s what you’re pointing to. I’m just saying it in slightly different words, would you agree?
Juliet: Yeah, I think it is. Because I think when we feel bad, it can be Pavlovian to just want to push that feeling away. I haven’t got time for this or I’m too busy, or there’s important things to do, or it just feels lousy. Just get away from me be happy. I think there’s something really beautiful in that.
I love this expression, there are no mistakes in relation to our experience.
And really, by the time you have an opinion about how you feel, it’s already happened. It’s like, you have it, you have some feeling, it might be a sensation, it might be an emotional feeling. And then your mind gets busy making whatever it makes of that. But really, it’s all after the effect. I love the way that the principles teachings and Syd Banks very famous quotes, I’ll paraphrase, happiness one thought away. Sadness is one thought away.
If you’re feeling low, you can take that and beat yourself up with it and cry should find the happy thought I find that which we know, it just makes you feel worse. Because fundamentally, you’re saying that how I feel is wrong. And what you’re pointing to is, well, what happens if I just come into acceptance? I guess that right now, this is what’s here, in my experience. And I think that in itself just opens a little bit of space. I don’t know.
Have you found that? What did you find when you were led into that?
Alexandra: I found peace for one thing, because I wasn’t pushing against it and doing all the things you’ve just mentioned, saying to myself, this shouldn’t be happening. Why is this happening? What have I done wrong? How can I fix it? All that stopped and went away.
The feeling I really get that I love when I do that is it’s like I’m sitting with the feeling as a really good friend. I feel this lovely feeling of just complete acceptance and presence. It feels like the depression appreciates that from me just like a good friend does when we sit with them without trying to change them or fix them or anything like that. That’s been my experience.
Juliet: That’s just so beautiful, isn’t it?
Alexandra: Yeah, it was lovely.
Juliet: And it’s such a lovely direction to look in because since the love part of love and understanding, when we’re down there battling with our own mind trying to see more or get insights the feeling, isn’t there. And we can do that, like, I’ve seen this, but the principles, so I should, I should be able to get myself out of this. But what you did there, it’s just so beautiful.
I just had an image as well as that kind of catching and holding the lovely warm blanket or whatever it might be. And it’s so funny, because it’s really the most natural thing in the world to do. You alluded to that if you were with a friend, generally speaking, if we’re settled, that would be instinctive.
And yet, it’s very common that people in their own distress can go any other direction. And really we might call it self-criticism or self-judgment, but it’s just thought. It’s just more sensation moving through the way we don’t always think of thought as sense sensory based.
I’m beginning to wonder these days, if it isn’t actually slightly sensory based, we certainly react to thought in our body. But actually, at the level of the mental level. I’m just very curious about that. Is it a sensory experience?
Alexandra: And this brings me to a question that I sent you in advance about control. You have a podcast episode with Carla Royal on your website about control. And it struck me, well, a couple things, I guess.
When you talked about the experience of driving on the motorway, away from the retreat in London, and being on Saltspring, and having that beautiful, expanded experience. You, Juliet, didn’t create that, it just came. And then when it leaves, you don’t control that, either.
I’d love for you to talk about the illusion of control. And how it holds us prisoner, which is something that you said in the in the podcast.
Juliet: Carla, Royal, my co-host when we did those is a wonderful, warm woman, and we had some amazing conversations there. Yeah, control. I think it’s, like so many of our kind of negative thoughts, it’s a very compelling feeling. And it has this urgency in it.
One of the other things we related to this, and we might talk about is, I think I also said something to the effect that love is behind every feeling. I was pondering again on this, as I said it a little while ago, and it really looks to me that even when you look at all the behaviors that come out of fear and control is one of the number one behaviors to come out of fear.
Why do we try and control things? We control things because we think we’re not safe. That might be physically not safe, emotionally not safe, not safe from existential threats. And it goes without saying that if you’re bad fall into a sinkhole, or there’s bombs that are going to drop on you, you don’t need me or Alexandra to tell you how to deal with that your instincts will kick in and you’ll be hopefully off or hide or whatever it is.
But we’re talking about control in which is often an overreaction to an imaginary threat. And I’m not a psychologist, but I think psychologists will see patterns of where you might be responding to something because of something that’s happened in the past and talk about triggers and all this kind of thing. But what’s so lovely about the principles is that they’ll point to the fact that it’s back to my first insight really, you have a thought in your mind that looks true, it doesn’t really matter if it is true to anybody else. If it looks true to you, then this amazing body-mind system will kick in and do what it thinks it needs to do to protect you.
That can be fight or flight, one’s probably freeze. I think there’s more, but control looks in that moment, like if you literally were faced with a beast attacking you, then all those responses would be appropriate, and wise. But the reason I said that control creates a prison is that in daily life, if our system is responding, as if we were living with a beast, then your life becomes about survival.
It’s a very interesting thing when the body or mind is severely threatened. I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that it shuts off various functions that are not critical to life, like digestion would be one. And so when you think about it, this is where the love piece comes in. Your whole body-mind system, because I think at the core of us is a love of life. And by life, I mean, this spirit energy, this intelligent energy, that that leaves us to you. So touching on that. And control. Weirdly, I mean, I’m just saying this, the talk to you know, is about, given what looks true up here, the body mind doing its utmost to keep you alive and safe.
When you see it through that perspective, it is actually a very beautiful thing. I’m on my journey, I’ve come to be grateful for my many and varied coping mechanisms that I deployed, where I judge them harshly and resented them and worried about them. I’ve come to see a certain beauty in the ways that I kept going. Doing what looks like the best I’ve had with what I understood.
The prison is a paradox in the personal thought system you’re living in, it is keeping you safe. And that’s the principles in action working perfectly. And as the illusory nature of those fears falls away – for some, it falls away incrementally, very much in my case, and they haven’t been gone. But at the core of it I think when you hear stories of people’s sudden collapsing of a lot of insecurity, it looks to me that what is being felt, and really discovered or revealed back to your point in the beginning, what’s uncovered? Is that safety is both an illusion, but it’s what’s really, inside us is perfect health. At that more essential level.
Every time I see a little bit more of that I feel really grateful. And then I bump into things in my life that show me that there’s still more layers there for me. There’s still more to see. And this conversation is really touching me because I think at the core of it we are safe. How could we not be?
Life, as you said, is living us. It knows how to do that far better than we do. So thank you because there’s this invitation to surrender, which I think life gives you meet all of us at every turn is it might come off in little bits. But it’s always pointing you towards you have everything you need, and you can let go. But you’ll only let go when you’re ready.
Alexandra: So beautifully said. Thank you. I’m going to have to go back and re listen to that because it was it was so deep. I think I missed some of it. So yeah, really thank you for that. That was beautiful.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on today that you’d like to share with our listeners?
Juliet: I think something that is really helpful to me as I go through and deepen the two things really is.
One is don’t be afraid to own your interest and your exploration as a valuable thing in your life. Stand tall with that, because you’re being called. Make no mistake back to your point, it’s not us thinking, oh, one day perhaps I’ll look at spiritual matters. I do believe we’re part of something wider and bigger.
There are many, many people all across the planet who are drawn to what I call home. Now, that’s not a coincidence. So be proud and be stand tall in their exploration. Because you’re not just doing it for yourself, it ripples out to everyone you come into contact with and beyond in ways you can never see.
And then just in case, we start taking it too seriously, my second side of it is, lighten up, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Give yourself a break, you can’t force any of this. And you can’t be asleep on the watch. Because so much is percolating under the surface like that insight on Saltspring like you said, there’s no way I could have engineered that. I love the sort of Buddhist idea of relaxed and alert is or is there’s just less to do than we think.
Alexandra: So true. Yes, absolutely. Well, Juliet, this has been amazing.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Juliet: I have a website, which I’m sure you’ll probably point people to, but it’s solcare.org. And there’s a blog on there. And as the podcast episodes, you can people can contact me through there. I’m not super active on social media. I post mainly pictures of landscapes. That’s my one of the things I love to do. So if people want to find me on there, you can look up my name on Instagram or Facebook, per se. I’m not very interactive or active.
Alexandra: Okay, great. I’ll put a link to your website in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com. Thank you so much for being with me here today. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you.
Juliet: Oh, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for asking me.
Q&A 28 – Overeating: Is there such a thing as relapse?
Aug 28, 2023
What’s really going on when we ‘fall off the wagon’? When we revert to the behaviour associated with an unwanted habit like overeating should we refer to that as a relapse? Or is it something else? Something less scary, less serious, and more natural.
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 28 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.
Today I want to talk about why there is no such thing as relapse when it comes to overeating or any other kind of unwanted habit.
This came to mind for me, because recently I had…I’ll go back a little bit and say that since I discovered this understanding, and especially in the last, I don’t know, six or eight months, maybe a little more than that, I’ve been eating really well. Eating really differently, not feeling caught up in my unwanted over eating habit because of the exploration of this understanding, which has been really, really nice. And not getting too rigid with myself about the rules of what that looks like.
So then recently, I had a period of time where there was a bunch of different things going on. One was, I was away with a girlfriend, we went on a little road trip. And then almost immediately after that I came home and I had some guests here for several days. And then almost immediately after that, it was my birthday, at which you know, requires chocolate cake.
Through all of those circumstances, I wasn’t necessarily eating as well as I normally have been lately. That’s what led me to this subject about whether or not I had had a “relapse”. I absolutely wasn’t thinking about it that way. So I want to share with you what I see about what happens when we’re eating one way, and then we shift to eating a different way and why that isn’t really a relapse.
The first thing I want to say about that is that we need to remember that whatever’s going on, we are either more or less caught up in our thinking.
And that’s really what it boils down to. In the case of the events that were going on with me for a month or so, all that was happening was I was a little bit more caught up in my thinking than I normally am. And the reason is that those circumstances like having guests and having a birthday, and being on a road trip with my friend, made my thinking sound like that the rules were different or that I should treat myself because of these things that were going on that kind of thing.
I saw it as it was happening. And I decided that that was okay, that that was that was what was going on in that moment and I wasn’t going to add a whole bunch more thinking onto what was already happening by beating myself up and being kind of down on myself about what was going on and holding really tightly to any kind of rules that I had set up for myself.
So then, when all those circumstances were over, what I noticed was that I just bounced right back to eating in the sort of more healthy way that I’ve been doing. For the last like I said 9, 10, 12 months and it was really easy to come back to that place and it didn’t feel like it didn’t feel like that on the wagon off the wagon situation that we so often get ourselves into.
That brings us to another really important point about this conversation is that when we do hold ourselves really strictly and rigidly to an on-the-wagon or off-the-wagon situation.
I see now looking back that we’re layering a whole bunch of thinking on to what’s already there about our overeating habit or other unwanted habit. And that doesn’t help.
In a recent episode I talked about the metaphor of a snowball and having it rolled downhill, and how it gathers up more snow as it goes and talked about how that’s a metaphor for our thinking. This is a perfect example of that metaphor, in real life, in a real circumstance, and something that was going on for me around eating.
So the choice that I made, I could see that the snowball, for me, the thinking about what I was eating and what I wasn’t eating, and that kind of thing was there. And it was definitely present for me during those circumstances that I mentioned. What I consciously chose to do was not roll that snowball downhill. I didn’t think of what was happening as though it was a relapse, as though I was doing something wrong. And I had failed. And I was disappointing myself, or all that thinking that we that we can participate in, when something like that happens.
I really consciously just left the snowball alone and thought, well, this is what’s happening right now. And that’s okay. And probably when I get back to my normal life, and things have settled down a little bit, and I’m a little bit more in control of what I can eat, and what’s happening, then I’ll shift back to the way that I prefer to eat now, which is much healthier way. And that did turn out to be the case, which was really nice.
In other words, I didn’t add any relapse language to what was already happening.
For me, I held everything really gently, and just noticed what was going on and tried to be not to be too judgmental about it. And I can do this, or I was able to do that because I’ve been in this understanding for a while. And I’ve been practicing and noticing, and deepening my exploration and having insights about what thought is, and how it affects us every day, all the time. So I’m sharing this as an exploration for you with the intention that hopefully you can see something in that.
The other thing I want to say too, is though, it’s different than what happened to me while those circumstances were going on, and I was eating a little bit worse than I normally do. It wasn’t that kind of permissive, “Oh, screw it, I’m just going to do whatever I want.” That kind of reaction that we sometimes have when we’ve been holding ourselves on, I could say quite a tight leash, about eating. And then we let go a little bit and there is that, that sudden permissiveness that, in the moment, it feels good. We have regret afterwards but as it’s happening it can feel like quite a relief. So there wasn’t that.
I often describe it as like holding an elastic band really tightly. And when we’re trying to eat well, and we don’t understand the nature of our thinking, because nobody’s told us about it. And we’re battling all that thought that’s going on, and we’re holding that elastic band really tight. And then eventually you just have to let go.
What I’m describing that happened with me, during that those few weeks, wasn’t like that. It was much gentler, and I guess this is an important thing to point out as well. Is the difference in the quality of my experience. I think that has to do with the awareness of what’s going on, the awareness that I had about my thinking and about what was happening, and therefore there wasn’t that kind of battle going on within me. I wasn’t holding the elastic really tight.
Then when I went on vacation, just letting it go and hoovering in whatever I could, while I was in this permissive state. It wasn’t like that at all.
I think when we talk about relapse, that’s what we’re pointing to, is that extreme reaction to something.
And instead, this was just a very gentle shift, I guess I would say, I’m not quite sure how to describe it. But there was definitely a very different quality to what was going on for me. And again, it just all boils down to the fact that I was, and am, aware of my thinking, and aware of the nature of thought, and aware that I am not my thinking, and all the things that we talk about on this podcast, and throughout this understanding.
There’s one other thing that I want to mention. And that is this metaphor that I first heard from Dr. Amy Johnson. I’m going to add that to this discussion, because I think it might be really helpful to see this, what I’ve talked about in a slightly different way, as well.
In the introduction to Amanda Jones’s book, Uncovery, Dr. Amy Johnson did the introduction.
It was there that I first heard her describe our thinking like a river.
When we get really caught up in our thinking, it’s like we go down to that river that’s flowing through us all the time. Sometimes the river’s clear, sometimes it’s murky, sometimes there’s stuff floating through it, sometimes there isn’t. And when we’re really caught up on our thinking, we go down to that river with a bucket, and we scoop some of the water out. And then we carry that around with us all day long. And in that bucket, there could be leaves and sticks, and all kinds of all kinds of stuff. So we get caught up in the content of what’s in that bucket. That’s where our focus goes.
Whereas when we’re able to take a step back and see the nature of thought as a whole, what we see is that river, and we don’t need to get caught up in any of it at any given moment. Like I said, it’s moving and flowing all the time. And it’s changing. Sometimes it’s a rushing river, really going fast and there’s lots of spray being churned up and lots of white caps on the water and all that kind of stuff. And then other times, it’s really calm and peaceful, and there’s not a lot going on.
That’s the difference between when we’re caught up in our thinking and when we’re not.
I love that metaphor. I personally found it so helpful when I was in the initial stages of this journey of understanding how it is that we work. So I wanted to share that again, because that’s a really good way to look at what’s happening maybe we have been eating really well and then that falls away and we’re eating in a way that’s not quite as ideal for us. All that’s happened is that we’re carrying around that bucket of water, we’ve lost sight of the river itself.
I hope that one of those metaphors in there that I’ve shared today is helpful for you, and that you’re doing well. I will see you again next week. Take care and I will talk to you soon. Bye.
Relief from Chronic Pain with Chana Studley
Aug 24, 2023
Coach Chana Studley had a personal and difficult experience with chronic pain after three violent muggings. She used all kinds of modalities to manage and try to control the pain but continued to suffer. Then a friend introduced her to the Three Principles, which explore the role thought plays in our experience of life. That understanding cleared up Chana’s pain and now she helps others with all kinds of health issues to look in the same direction.
Chana Studley has spent the last 30 years helping others recover from trauma, addictions, and working with all kinds of clients; adults, children and organizations. She has spent the last 5 years helping people with physical issues including chronic pain, allergies, migraines, skin problems and IBS etc., and more recently hormone problems and Long Covid.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How we don’t actually need to do anything about our thinking
Why slowed-down thinking helped with pain relief
How all illness has a common source: Thought
How we torture ourselves with our thinking (without realizing we’re doing so)
Why pain is a signal
The difference between acute pain and chronic pain
How focusing on symptoms is another form of obsessive thinking
How society and insecurity can fuel our symptoms
Transcript of Interview with Chana Studley
Alexandra: Chana Studley, welcome to Unbroken.
Chana: Hi, thank you. So nice to be here.
Alexandra: Great to have you here.
Why don’t you tell us how a little bit about your background and how you came across the three principles or how they came across you?
Chana: My background is I grew up in England. And I’ve had two careers. One was in the entertainment business where I did props and costumes and special effects. I started out in the theater in London, then ended up in California doing big Hollywood movies. And alongside that, I worked as a coach or counselor, to me, it’s all the same thing. It’s all a conversation.
I’ve been coaching people for about 30 years, in between projects, and it’s been my main, I guess, full time job for the last eight years. So yeah, that’s how I came. That’s my background.
And then the principles showed up in my life about eight years ago, I think. And you’re right. It’s like, I remember thinking, how come I never found this before? Because I’ve been coaching people for 30 years, I’ve been in the personal transformation, self-help world for a very long time. And I got stuck in the self-help aisle at the bookstore many times. I was a Enneagram life coach, and I did A Course in Miracles and all these kinds of different things. So it’s really weird to me that I never heard of it until I did.
It was a friend of mine. She and I were school teachers together. In between leaving Hollywood and coaching I was a school teacher for five years. And she was the music teacher, and I was the art teacher. So we put on the best school plays you could imagine. I live in Jerusalem. Now I’m in Israel, and her daughter lives here. So every time she would come visit her family, we’d meet up for lunch. And we’ve had these really long chats. I remember this one time, we were chatting for about, I don’t know, two hours catching up. And then we went for coffee somewhere else.
She said, Chana I went to this workshop yesterday, and I think you’d really like it. And I said, Oh yeah, what’s that? And she goes, Well, it was so funny. She’d been talking for two hours, and then suddenly, she was stumped. And she didn’t. I said, Well, how great was it? If you can’t even tell me what it was? She goes, Well, um, so I thought I’d help her out, because I had no clue what it was. I said, it’s a diet. And she goes, No. I said, is it an exercise program? She was No. I said, is it philosophy she was .
She grabbed a napkin and she wrote Sydney Banks, mind, thought and consciousness on this napkin and pushed it across the table to me. I wish I’d kept that because I’d have it in a frame now. So I came home, and I sat right here, I put on my computer, and I put in Sydney Banks into YouTube. And I was sold.
I had known for a long time the problem was in my thinking, I just thought I had to do something about my thinking. I had all these tools and techniques, I knew the problem wasn’t out there. I got the outside in part. I already realized that things on the outside aren’t creating my happiness or my misery. So therefore, it must be my thinking. And therefore, I was really good at thought hygiene.
I knew how to keep my thought hygiene really good. And it was exhausting. So my first big insight was just understanding that we don’t have to do anything. That was such a relief. It was so amazing.
Alexandra: I love that distinction.
You have a journey, I guess we could say, about pain. Tell us how that folded into this experience.
Chana: Yeah. So in my early 20s, I was mugged three times. Once is bad enough, but three times.
The first time I was still in college was in Manchester in the north of England. And it was the early 80s. It was all about music. I was in a nightclub, a band was playing and this guy pushed me into a concrete pillar and fractured my skull. I was unconscious just for a few seconds, but I lost my eyesight for a day, which was terrifying. Thank God it was only a day but when it’s happening, you don’t know. Am I blind? We’ve got mental brain damage. I recovered from that one pretty quickly.
And then two or three years later, I was mugged by three men who came out of the dark, it was only six o’clock in the evening, I was walking there, my home, and they slammed me on the ground and beat the living daylights out of me. I have three herniated discs from where they did that.
Then I moved down to London where I started working in the theater. And by 10 o’clock one evening, I was riding my bike home from the theater and a young 16 year old boy threw a bike at my head. So I was riding home fast this way. So it was like bam. That impact broke two bones in my neck. So my neck was thank God, not the spinal cord, but the C two and C three, and my bones just below your skull were fractured.
PTSD was only just being recognized as a diagnosis at the time. So my treatment was have a cup of tea, go home, and walk it off. And so I had this PTSD, I mean, I see that’s what it was now, which to me, I’m not a big fan of labels, but I just was reliving and reliving the trauma in my head for a good 10 years afterwards.
Then around the time that started getting better, I started getting chronic pain. I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, I just would get terrible flare ups in my back where I’d be bent sideways and bent forward. I had a walking stick by the time I was 27. I would get these flare ups where I’d be paralyzed and rushed off to the emergency room. And sciatica pain shooting down my leg. I was in agony, quite often not every day, but it would flare up like every few weeks.
Whenever I would go to the chiropractor or the osteopath, or doctors, they would always take a medical history. And when I tell them about all these injuries that go, oh, well, that’s why your arm is numb, because the nerves from your arm come out of your neck or your neck was damaged. Or you’ve got three herniated discs and that’s why you’re bent sideways and bent forward. I also had IBS, I had chronic allergies and asthma. I had all kinds of other what I now see as mind-body illnesses, but just conditions I guess. I learned how to cope with this stuff.
And I actually had a chiropractic appointment every month for 25 years, I was told, if I didn’t have that crunching and cracking, then my spine would sieze up and I’d be permanently bent over and, that’s a story I carried around with me that my spine is weak. And if I don’t take care of it one day, it’s not going to straighten up. And one day, I’m not going to get the feeling back.
I see now that was a really heavy story to carry around. And then when I came across the three principles, my pain went away. It was absolutely unbelievable. It’s funny, now when I work with people with chronic pain, they will say to me, so what did you do to make your pain go away? Like how long did it take them? I don’t know because I didn’t go into this thinking I got to get rid of my pain. I thought that was just the way I was. And I’d have to just cope and deal with it.
So the principles were not like a pain relief thing for me. But what I think happened is, as my thinking slowed down, my body got the message that I was safe because my brain I think all those years was on like hyper vigilance, that’s one of the symptoms of PTSD is hyper vigilance. We’re always weary of noises and surroundings. And even though I felt safe, I think my thinking was probably more anxious than I realized.
I think my body was screaming at me to slow down. And because I didn’t understand that I was running off to specialists and chiropractors and stuff thinking the symptoms were what was in, what I had to deal with. But now I see that that was just the, I guess you could say, the wisdom of my body trying to get my attention. And the back pain, the neck pain, the IBS, all those things, eczema, they all went away. My allergies took a little bit longer, but they’ve pretty much gone as well now. So yeah, it’s been absolutely miraculous. I got very excited about this and wanted to share that with other people.
Alexandra: You’ve written a book, called Painless. How soon did that idea start to form?
Chana: I’ve actually written three books. Painless is the second one. The first book, I actually written the book many many, many years ago, but looking back it was very preachy and teaching and so I think that was like my old thinking. You have to do this and you have to do that. I’m very preaching and teaching, and I left it alone.
Then I turned it into a novel, which is an idea that came to me after I came across the principles. And I found the novel format to be very useful. People liked the idea of reading a story. There’s plenty of self-help books out there so by having characters who do the suffering and the falling down, and the searching and the discovering, and the happy ending people identify with the different characters and go along on that journey.
So the first book was really, I thought it was going to be the only book I’d ever write because I can’t spell. I failed my English language exam in English High School four times. I tried. I had this idea in my head that I’m not an academic person. I had other skills with my hands, making stuff, but I didn’t know that I could write. And there was only about, I think, after my second book came out, and I caught myself saying, I’m not a writer. And I thought, I have to stop saying that, because it’s not true. I suddenly saw as another story I’d been carrying around for a long time, that I’m not academic, I don’t do that stuff.
Painless came out of all the experiences I had working with people with chronic pain issues. And it is a fictional book, but the characters are all drawn from real people I’ve known, either clients or colleagues and doctors that I’ve met and worked with. It just came about. And that was my second book. And then a third one came out a few months ago, about four months.
Alexandra: If you didn’t feel very academic, or that that was one of your strengths, it seems to me, it must have taken a lot of courage to even start to write down things in in book format. Is that true?
Chana: Yeah. That’s very perceptive of you. I hadn’t written anything since I was in high school. My first book I was in my early 50s, I guess when I when I started it. And I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it. Because I thought something might never come up it. It’s going to be really embarrassing. So I just wrote, and it just even started in the middle of this start filling things in.
This is going to sound pompous. But you know, that story about Michelangelo, with the statue of David. He says how like the statue was in there, and he just had to take off the, it feels like that when I’m writing. It’s like the story, I feel like the story already exists, I just have to be a catalyst and it just comes out. That’s why I don’t really worry about endings anymore. Because I know that I just needed to quieten down enough for them to like end up on the paper.
I remember when I first wrote that number one book, I have a friend actually, she’s the daughter of the woman who told me about the principles. She’s a book developer, and an editor and I reached out to her and I said I’ve written this thing and I was wondering if you could have a look at it. And I said, if it’s a load of rubbish, be nice to me. Let me down gently. It’s okay. I tell you, it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done pressing send. Because I say I hadn’t written anything since high school.
I sent it to her. And she knows about the principles and so she wrote, she went to the first three chapters, I think, and she wrote back to me, and she said, it’s good. It needs work, but it’s good. Keep going. Let’s do this. I was like, okay, all right. So she showed gave me some pointers of how to make the writing a little bit better.
And then I wanted someone who I respected in terms of the three principles to read it as a as a novel. I had a friend here, who used to live here in Jerusalem. Her father was Shaul Rosenblatt. I don’t know if you know that name. He’s the one of the organizers of the London conference. So she has grown up with the three principles. So I printed it out and put it in an envelope and took it to her house. And I just asked her if she would read it over.
The next morning, I woke up and I had ideas for like three or four or five more books. It was almost painful. It was weird. The moment I let go of the story that “I Can’t do it”. Like the fact that the floodgates opened and like all these other stories and ideas came up and characters and I was like, wow, I could write about this. And I could write about that. And it was it was really quite an amazing experience.
I think the common thread through the books is that I’ve like picked situations where people are struggling. And there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and then pointing people to the three principles as has been, it’s been good so far away that the last book was Amazon number one best seller for a few days. It’s been a really great journey. I love it. Now. I love writing.
Alexandra: And when you continue, are there more on the way?
Chana: Yes, I have at least three more stories, three books in my head that I can write about. The next one is half written, it’s about like ADHD and overdiagnosis. That one’s going to be a bit of a crime thriller. And then I’ve got one I want to do on addictions, and then another one on trauma. So that those are, and I’m also writing a textbook right now. This is a major project right now.
I had this insight about a year ago now that there are so many people in the three principles community who have recovered from some mental health diagnosis. I thought wouldn’t be amazing to collect all those stories together, what a great resource that would be. I’ve now collected 40 stories from Michael Neill and Amy Johnson, Linda Quoring who’s one of Syd Banks’, his first client, she was his neighbor. She gave me her story. Joe Bailey. Lots of names, you would know.
Because lots of people from the principles community, clients of mine who stories from psychosis to OCD to bulimia you name it, people have recovered from it. So the book is going to be like an introduction to the principles like how psychology has got it misunderstood the work of Sydney Banks, these stories, and I’m currently interviewing people like Dicken Bettinger and Judy Sedgman, and people who are mental health professionals, to get their take on these different labels and diagnoses. I’m putting it all together into a textbook type style book. So I think it’s going to be a great resource for people.
Alexandra: Lovely. Wow, that’s fantastic. I love hearing that.
Do you see a common thread when you hear those stories? Is there anything you notice that’s common among them? In terms of what people understand what they see anything like that?
Chana: In terms of the mental health diagnosis, the main focus of the book is showing that there’s one cause. And there’s a Sydney Banks quote, it’s in the Enlightened Gardener Revisited book, where he says, there is just one generic mental illness. It’s the misunderstanding of thought. And, as you read all the stories that are from around the world, from Argentina, to New Zealand, to Glasgow to South Africa, all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds and education and cultures.
The common theme is this misunderstanding of how thought works, and how people are frightened in themselves, with their own experience and their own thinking. And they may have gone off in different directions, like either they’re eating or not eating, or whether they’re creating ultimate realities in their heads and talking to themselves, or they’re trying to control everything, like compulsively or cutting themselves.
I’ve got one story from a girl who was cutting herself so badly, she needed stitches. And she’s doing so amazing now and helping other people. So, all of them, you see that they almost were torturing themselves with their own thinking, the misunderstanding, and then that’s compounded by doctors and therapists who are telling them that they’re broken, and there’s something wrong with them.
I asked most people were you told you had a chemical imbalance? And they all say yes, and yet, so psychiatrists are saying, no, no, no, we always knew it was a myth. We never said that was true. And I’m like, Oh my gosh. I mean, you can look in the textbooks. Being told something wrong with your brain being told that you’re broken, and you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life on medication and treatments that compounds this feeling of broken and wrong and bad.
People suffer so terribly with that, that all of these stories, then when they come across this understanding, and they have these insights, and they see that there’s actually nothing wrong with them, they just misunderstood. And some people can articulate it. And some people just know when it’s just incredible, just listening to how their lives change. I often asked them, I say, what did your therapist think about this? Because I’m always curious, like, What did the doctors think when they see this patient who they’ve been treating them for years, they keep coming back with for them, your prescriptions keep coming back for more treatment, and then suddenly they get well, I’m always curious what the doctors think about that.
Invariably, that the people in my book, they tell me that the doctors just poopoo it, they just like, it’s just a fluke, it’s just they they’re not interested. And even the girl, the self-harming girl, she was actually one of my clients. And she’s amazing story. She had drunk her way out of high school, she didn’t have any qualifications. And long story short, she managed to get into university, and that they wouldn’t accept her because of her mental health status, because she had been in a mental hospital several times attempted suicide, and all the cutting and everything.
So I said, to go back to the hospital and ask the psychiatrist to write you a new letter. And she said, Oh, that’s a waste of time. They’re not going to do that. I said, Well, you can try. You’ve got into the University. We’ve got this far. Like come on. I remember she went to the hospital, and I felt like the hour that she was in that appointment, I felt like Houston waiting for this space rocket to go. I was like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for them to reconnect. And then she came and she phoned me and she said, she told us amazing story.
She said the psychiatrists had been in this hospital for 30 years, and had never written a healthy letter before. She said she didn’t know how to do it. Yeah, she didn’t know what the procedure was. And this what this my client had left that hospital with 10 diagnosis, borderline personality disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, bulimia, anorexia she had the more after years of being told there was something wrong with her.
She is now graduated with her master’s degree in physical education. And she is off helping people. She’s a three principles physical education coach. It is amazing. And, and the psychiatrists was blown away. She was like, well, that’s gone, that’s gone. That’s gone. From just understanding how the mind works.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. So on that subject, then and circling, back around to, to physical pain.
When you work with people who are having chronic pain, something physical going on in their bodies, is there a place where you can begin with them to show them the connection between their thinking and what’s going on physically?
Chana: I usually just talk about some of the basics of pain of what I’ve learned. And it was funny, when I started doing this, I started reading a lot of research and a lot of pain management books. And I remember I had this really powerful insight in the middle of it, because I felt like I was getting a look not obsessive, but like, I just wanted to learn and learn and learn. So I could know I could sound like I knew what I was talking about. I suddenly thought, hold on a minute, my pain went away when I didn’t know any of this stuff, right. So that I relaxed a little bit.
It’s nice to know the terminologies. But what I like to show people is that pain is not the problem. I hesitate to say that someone who’s in pain, and if there’s anybody listening right now who’s in pain that might sound very dismissive, but pain is a signal. It’s a message. And it’s often quite unreliable.
In fact, people often ask me, how did I go from working in Hollywood special effects in movies to coaching people? My cute answer is that the brain has a better special effects department than anything me or Steven Spielberg could come up with. Pain is one of those special effects, right? And you can start to see this in your own experience.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had a bruise and you didn’t know where it came from. I used to get them on my leg. A bruise is tissue damage. You could see the blood vessels. That’s what the purple and green are and how come I didn’t even know it’s happening. And yet you can have a paper cut. And it kills. Like, that really stings.
Pain is, is a an indicator. But it’s not often a reliable one because there are people walking around in terrible pain, who have nothing of any seriousness on their MRI or an x ray. And there are other people with terrible MRIs, and have no pain. Right? So there’s a difference what I had to learn.
First of all, there’s a difference between acute pain and chronic pain. So acute pain is like the paper cut, it’s you know, if you’ve had a surgery, if you’ve fractured an ankle or something that the nerves in the body that could detect damage. And then they send a message up to the brain and the brain decides whether or not to produce pain. So for example, you could be out walking your dog or playing with your grandkids, and you twist your ankle, it’s going to hurt, probably because your brain assesses that if you keep walking on that twisted ankle, it could cause more damage. So it’s like a favour it’s doing for you. Because now you limping, you’re taking your weight off the you go to the hospital, you get ice you take care of it.
Whereas if you’re a soldier in combat, you could get a quite a serious wound or an injury, and not feel any pain at all. Because the brain assesses to stop right now could be fatal. So there’s we’ve heard the stories of like a woman rescuing her kids out of a car, and there’s a bone sticking out of her arm or something, and she doesn’t feel the pain, because she’s in the moment of taking care of her kids, the brain can switch pain on and off.
Chronic pain is when that starts going wrong. What I learned was that all injuries heal. So all those injuries I had in my back of my neck had healed 25 years ago. So how come I was still experiencing chronic pain, years and years afterwards, a couple of decades afterwards? They started to understand that chronic pain doesn’t show up here where we’re paying regular attention. It shows up here in the front of your brain.
And they learned this through MRIs, but it for people with chronic pain where the injury is healed, and they’re still experiencing pain it shows up back here in the amygdala in the limbic system, which is the emotional part of the brain. Oh, I thought, emotional. Interesting, right? So the point was, together with the principles, understanding that we’re feeling our thinking.
If my thinking is in the toilet, if my thinking is miserable, and grumpy and anxious and hyper vigilant, then I started to see that the pain was actually a signal trying to get my attention. It wasn’t about the state of my body, it was about the state of my thinking.
Alexandra: Right. And that was what it was trying to get across to you.
Chana: I think so. Because as soon as I started to understand this, my pain went away. I actually stopped chiropractic. I actually stopped those treatments. Because I didn’t know even before I understood this. And so not only have I stopped the treatments, and my pain has gone away, which is ironic. But as I started to feel calmer, feel safer, I think my brain didn’t need to get my attention anymore.
I’ve seen that in a lot of other people now when they start to calm down and feel and understand what’s happening and like Syd Banks his most famous quote if only people could learn not to be afraid of our own experience, when because when you’re very jumpy or you’re very cautious or anxious, then your muscles tighten up. And our bodies weren’t designed to sustain that level of fight or flight you know, full of adrenaline and cortisol for long periods of time.
If you’re in constant state of anxiety and stress and you’re worried about this and that anything, then our bodies are going to start suffering and it is real. I want to assure people you’re not imagining the pain. The pain is as real as any other pain. I used to feel like my pelvis had been hit with a baseball bat. It was really painful. And you know and sometimes I’ve worked with people with eczema you can see the sores on the skin. People get nausea from migraines.
We’re not saying that you’re making it up or exaggerating when we say it’s mind-body. You really are feeling it, but you’re feeling a signal a message from your mind telling you to slow down that you are safe you are Okay, because we have this innate well-being, and it’s always there underneath all that stinking thinking.
Alexandra: Have you experienced any temporary flare ups or recurrence of your pain?
Chana: Once or twice, yes. I hadn’t thought about this for a while. I remember, as I was reading all those pain books and pain research, there was one particular pain book was written by a man who had had an incredible story. Imagine my story plus three other people with similar tragic, terrible stories, all smushed into one person this guy had had. I mean, not only was he having terrible pain, his wife was paralyzed and their house was destroyed by a tornado, then his father died it was on and on and on. I was actually on holiday. I had two days to read this book was quite thick book, and I just sat in a very comfortable chair. And I started reading because he had a lot of really interesting medical insights, a lot of stuff I understand that came from books like his, and I could feel my back starting.
It would always start in the middle of my back, the muscles in my back would stay squeezed up. And then I could feel that my, I knew that when I stood up, my pelvis was going to be slanted and out of place, and then I could start feeling the soreness in my leg, and I knew it was going to be going down to my ankle. And I thought, that’s weird. Because I’m sitting in a comfortable chair, I’m on holiday, I’m reading a book I want to read. I haven’t damaged myself, I haven’t done anything. It has to be what I’m reading.
It occurred to me to put the book down and I thought, no, it’s a really good book. I want to know what he has to say. That night, it was actually quite painful. I’d forgotten how painful it is to try and sleep when your pelvis is in agony. Just turning over in bed you have to use your whole body to move. It’s really difficult.
But I knew that the moment I stopped reading the book, it would go away. And it did. The end of the second day, I finished the book, I put the book down stood up, I was straight up. Wow. Really weird.
Since then, I’ve had occasional little twinges. But I’ve learned not to be frightened by it anymore. Because I know it’s telling me I’ve got maybe got a little bit caught up in my thinking, or I’m going a little bit too fast. To slow down. I’ve learned to listen to that and then it doesn’t turn into anything. I’ve had a couple of times when it’s felt sore. But it’s a completely different experience. Now I’m not frightened by it. And then it does its thing it passes through and it’s gone. I know it’s going to go away.
Alexandra: That’s such a big part of it, isn’t it? It seems to me that not being as you say, Sydney Banks’ famous quote, not being afraid of whatever’s happening is such an important part of just letting that experience flow through.
You work with people around more than just pain: eczema, you’ve mentioned, migraines. I guess maybe for listeners, we should point out that because it all comes from the same source it’s not that you’re a jack of all trades. I don’t know what my question is in there. But maybe you could just comment on that.
It’s that upstream from that there’s this understanding about how our thinking affects everything that happens to us.
Chana: Yes, it’s a good point. I often get calls from people, from the pain management world, and they’ll say to me, they’ll want to know, have you worked with someone with plantar fasciitis? What’s that Google? Oh, it’s foot pain, right? That’s a fancy word for foot pain. And, or they’ll say, It’s like some weird and wonderful diagnosis or label.
I stopped looking it up or even answering that question anymore, because I know that’s not where the healing is. Doctors want to focus on the specifics, and they’ll want to find someone who’s did you have this and did you recover from this and like, I had a lot of things. I didn’t have that particular one. But that’s not what’s going to help you. Focusing on the symptoms is just another their version of obsessive thinking.
Other people, it might be their bank account they’re obsessing about or their angry teenagers or I do actually work with lots of different kinds of people. And it could be health anxiety, or it could be not health related at all. I’ve worked with people with businesses, I did a program for hospital staff in a UK oncology department, and we weren’t talking about pain. We were talking about stress at work.
What I’m pointing people to is that this, all of this, whether it’s insecurity, anxiety, whatever the source is, it’s coming to us via thoughts. And when we understand how thought works, then we can start to become less afraid of our experiences. And as you say, go further upstream.
Another thing I’ve found that’s really important, is helping people see that they’re taking care of your, Sydney Banks called it Mind, you can call it God, higher power doesn’t really matter what you call it, but there’s this universal loving intelligence is already making my heartbeat and the sun come up, and all those amazing things. I think a lot of people, particularly chronic pain, people, and people with anxiety, feel disconnected from that. And that society and insecurity is fueling the symptoms.
Some people are, don’t want to hear that. They want someone who’s going to specialize in getting rid of their pain, which is they’re trying to fix something that’s not broken. And they’re actually creating more stress. A lot of what I say to those people is there’s nothing wrong. So let’s put that over here. You don’t need to fix anything.
They go, Yeah, but you don’t understand how much pain I’m in. I’m like, No, I believe you. But try this, get curious about there. And see what happens. And some people are too scared to do that. They want to fix their pain. Other people do get curious. I’ve had people who knew nothing about the principles, they come to me for pain, and they fall in love with Sydney Banks, his work and they’ve probably read more books than I have, more tapes and more videos, because I just love, love it.
I never, never anticipated being such a catalyst or a vehicle for people discovering these amazing ideas, and watching their lives transform. It’s really amazing.
Alexandra: I love hearing that.
As we’re coming towards the end of our time together, is there anything we haven’t touched on today that you’d like to share?
Chana: I guess what you pointed out about when I say pain, it’s not just muscle pain. It can be migraines and dizziness, nausea, fertility problems, even. And then the latest book is about hormones.
This is something I found fascinating is that I was just going through menopause when I came across the principles and had horrific symptoms. My brain fog was so bad I could not think. It was like thinking through molasses. I was having hot flashes every 20 minutes, it was very hard to function. And that was my first question. I remember asking principals teacher I said, But what about hormones, like get out of that one? Because they’re inside of you. They’re making my mood go up and down. It’s not me. It’s the hormones.
That’s what I wrote the most recent book because the main character is a woman going through menopause. And she has two daughters. So between the three of them, that cover every hormonal experience, women go through from PMS, to postpartum to menopause. And the research I found shows, again, that your state of mind is going to affect how you experience the symptoms.
I’ve had people with really severe diagnosis, their symptoms have gotten better as a result of this understanding. My menopause symptoms pretty much went away. They’re very manageable and minor that now and again, as the mind starts recognizing that we’re safe, and our thinking slows down that all this physical stuff. It just doesn’t need to get loud and angry anymore. And the slightest thing gets my attention now and I couldn’t live without all those big flare ups. Thank God.
The main story is we’re not broken. You don’t need fixing. And innate well being is always there underneath all of it.
Alexandra: For the listeners, tell us the titles of your three books, just so people are aware.
Chana: Sure. The first one is called The Myth of Low Self-esteem. And like I said, I crammed everything in that one. So it’s basically about recovering from trauma. But there’s a lot of stuff in that my Hollywood stuff is all in there.
The second one is called Painless. That’s the chronic pain novel.
And the newest one is called Very Well. That’s the one about hormones, and they’re all on Amazon.
Alexandra: Okay. And tell us where we can find out more about you and your work.
Chana: I’m on Facebook, so you can reach out to me on Facebook. I have a website. It’s my name, ChanaStudley.com. And I recently opened a membership group for women.
I’m really excited. We offer for a monthly fee very, very low monthly fee. We get group coaching and a book club. We’re just finishing up Very Well right now and we’ll move on to probably want to Sydney Banks’s books.
And the young lady I was telling you about the the phys ed coach, she’s my physical health and fitness consultant now. She teaches a live Pilates class, because it’s good to move the body. It’s just about doing what you can. I say to women, you can switch your camera off, or I blur the background.
And it’s just a great example of how far I’ve come because I was so self-conscious about not so much about how I looked, but like doing it wrong. What if I made a mistake? I’ve never done a Pilates class before. What if I don’t do it perfectly? I would have just like not shown up, but now, because it’s my group I have to show up.
So I didn’t listen to that thinking put some shorts on a t shirt got on and did it and then it felt so good. She’s answering questions about health and fitness and nutrition and, and so it’s turning out to be a really nice group. I’m really enjoying. The details are on my website.
Alexandra: Great. Okay, I will put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com as ever. Well, thank you, Chana. This has been so lovely. So nice to connect with you.
Chana: Thank you so much. It’s been a real privilege talking with you.
Q&A 27 – Overeating: Why are diets a different kind of suffering?
Aug 21, 2023
Why do we fail so often at diets? The answer may surprise you: it has to do with what and how much you’re thinking and how diets exacerbate that thinking problem, rather than relieve it.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
The thinking that we have about our overeating habit
How dieting layers more thinking on, which doesn’t help
Therefore diets are not the answer
Looking at what our feelings are telling us about our innate wisdom
How this is what creates peace with food
Transcript of the episode
Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 27 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor, and I’m so happy to be here with you today.
The question we have today has to do with dieting and how dieting is actually creating a different kind of suffering than, let’s say, an overeating habit, but it’s still suffering.
I’m going to talk about why that is and where that comes from, and how we can do things differently.
If we think about an unwanted habit like overeating, or binge eating, or whatever it is – smoking – we know that we have a lot of thinking about that situation, right? It’s a thing that feels like it shouldn’t be happening. And we can have all kinds of stirred up thinking about why that is.
I know for me, it was always about why does it seem like it’s so not an issue for other people? And yet, it feels like such a huge issue for me. In other words, why have I spent all this time and energy and effort trying to fix this situation, and I’ve completely failed for 10, 20, 30 years. All kinds of thinking about being a failure and being someone without discipline or someone without willpower.
Lots of thinking about, of course, in this day and age, with all the visually focused social media accounts and all the messages that we get from the media, I would have lots of thinking about how my body wasn’t “right” and how I didn’t measure up. I’m sure you can relate to all of this and how I wasn’t perfect. And that until I changed that, that I wasn’t really acceptable. Just lots of suffering going on, because of my thinking.
What we see then, very often, is that diets and I certainly was someone who experienced this, diets and self-help programs that teach us how to eat, and apply rules and structure and whatever kind of program you want to call it, that would help us to change our eating habits seems like a solution, right? Of course it does.
If we’ve got a situation where we’re overeating, and then someone proposes something where we would be eating less, and we would be changing the situation that feels like it’s a problem, then, of course that looks like a solution. And absolutely it did for me as well, all those years ago, and up until just a few years ago, actually.
What I see now, that’s very different when we’re exploring this inside out understanding, is that diets actually just create a slightly different kind of suffering.
What I mean by that is, we’ve got all this thinking about our overeating habit already that I just talked about. And then when we come along with a diet or a new eating plan, what we end up doing is layering a whole bunch more thinking onto the thinking that’s already there. And so it becomes like, the metaphor I want to use is a snowball rolling downhill.
The original snowball is all our thinking about ourselves and our overeating habit. And then we start to diet or we find a new eating plan. And we think it’s a solution. And we may even feel some relief for the first few days. But what we’re actually doing is rolling that snowball downhill, and adding more and more thinking to that situation.
Because now we’ve got a whole bunch of thinking about what can I eat and what can’t I eat? And if I slip up what does that mean about me? And of course, in my case, and maybe yours too, you know, I would fail with the eating plan over and over and over and over again, whatever, they were all different all the time. And that just adds more and more thinking: why am I such a loser? Why can’t I figure this out? And oh, forget it. I just give up.
So that snowball is just rolling downhill, adding more and more snow to the snow ball. So at the time we do this because it’s all we know. It’s the way that our culture is focused. It’s the outside in paradigm of psychology. When we don’t see any other way of doing things, we innocently choose to try to find a solution to our overeating problem.
And I get it. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. As you know, I’ve said it over and over again, the reason I have this podcast is because of all the suffering that I experienced for 30 years. So what does that mean?
How is it different when we’re exploring an overeating habit from the inside out.
How does that differ? Why does it not add more snow to that snowball that’s rolling downhill.
The reason this approach is different is that we’re not actually looking at our drive to overeat, and our thinking about food and about our unwanted overeating habits as a problem. That’s the big difference.
We’re looking at how our feelings – in other words how that drive to overeat – how our cravings are actually coming from a very wise place within us.
That’s the difference. And when we turn our heads toward seeing what that wisdom is trying to tell us, and how it’s available to us all the time. Then those sorts of cravings for eating too much, or drinking too much, or smoking too much, whatever it is, begin to fade away. Because once we understand them for what they are, they don’t have a need to be there anymore.
This understanding points us toward the fact that we’re living in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances, that our internal experience of life isn’t coming from outside of ourselves, it is generated within ourselves. And that the feelings that we have are always a reflection of our thinking in that moment.
If I’m feeling a really deep, urgent craving for some kind of food, what that’s telling me is that my thinking is really stirred up. Now it may be stirred up in that moment, about a situation like if I’m out for lunch with friends or something. It’s also reflecting the fact that in general, my thinking about food and about life really, is really stirred up.
The only way that my innate wisdom has to get my attention about the state of my thinking is by offering me these feelings within myself.
So they’re like little mindfulness bells that go off, and that let me know about and you and everyone about the state of our thinking at that time. And then when we begin to look in that direction, seeing the wisdom of that feeling, the snowball of thoughts that we have, about our overeating habit begins to melt. Instead of starting to roll downhill, and add a whole bunch of things more thinking about the thinking that’s already there, that thinking just starts to melt away, we see it for what it is, we see our feelings for what they are, for the wisdom that they contain, for we see that we have access always to insight, and to the wisdom that we are essentially made of we are designed to be able to access insight and wisdom.
The design is perfect. It never ever fails us. So that’s why in my exploration of resolving an overeating habit I never will and I never have mentioned any kind of eating plan or structure that you should follow or foods that you should avoid and ones that you should eat and all of that kind of stuff, because that is just more snow added to the snowball.
What we’re really looking for is understanding, and really embracing the fact that we are designed so wisely. And that the way that we feel is always a reflection of our thinking. And that we naturally, that thinking naturally settles down on its own. Like I talked about last in last week’s episode about the snowglobe metaphor, that when we see our thinking for what it is, and just leave it alone, and don’t try to get in there and figure it out, it always, always settles down by itself.
That includes our thinking about food, and about our overeating habit.
I hope that’s been helpful for you. And if anything hasn’t been clear, or you’d like some clarification, please do let me know. You can submit the little form at alexandraamor.com/question, and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future episode, q&a episode of unbroken.
I will leave you there with that and I will talk to you again next week. I hope you’re doing well and taking care. See you next time. Bye.
Finding Freedom in Prison with Mason Suehs
Aug 17, 2023
Mason Suehs used to deal with anxiety and a gnawing sense that he was broken by using drugs. This, of course, led to some poor decisions and eventually to two stints in jail. However during his second period of incarceration he took a class offered by Anna Debenham and the Insight Alliance that pointed towards our innate well-being. The class taught him that he was not broken and didn’t need fixing.
Now Mason works for The Insight Alliance, teaching others what he has seen and helping to reduce the recidivism rate among the inmates at Portland-area prisons.
Mason Suehs works with the Insight Alliance teaching classes primarily to people who are incarcerated, pointing them to their wellbeing and the limitless potential they possess. Through deeper understanding of our minds, life tends to move smoother.
Mason took The Insight Alliance course towards the end of his second prison sentence, and it changed his entire experience of life.
Searching for answers to life’s questions and to feel better
How there’s so much less for us to do
How the recidivism rate for inmates drops when they learn about their true nature
How we both create our experience and then respond to it
Why no one is broken or needs fixing
Seeing unwanted habits for what they are and not defining ourselves as ‘addicts’
How we’re designed to have insights and change
Learning from an experience with a cinnamon roll (yes, you read that correctly)
Transcript of Interview with Mason Suehs
Alexandra: Mason Suehs, welcome to Unbroken.
Mason: I’m happy to be here.
Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you discovered the three principles?
Mason: Sure. I discovered the three principles when I was incarcerated six years ago. And as Anna Debenham, leader of the Insight Alliance or founder, she came into prison. It was my second time in prison, and that was in for drug offenses. And, man, it shook my world.
I had been searching my whole life, for what’s the answer, looking at all the billions of thing things out there and trying to solve my inner struggles and my inner challenges and then turning towards drugs, getting deeply into addiction, and then making not the greatest decisions.
When I took this class I had previously been involved in tons of meditation. And I even was sober for seven years between my two prison sets, got a degree in public health, when I was still felt like life was such a challenge. It was like I was still always looking for a way to try to feel different and feel better. Always looking for the next thing, the next self-help book. How do I escape this challenging experience?
And then when Anna came in, like I mean, she just started with you’re not broken, you actually don’t need to do all that. To fix anything, or fixing an imaginary soul. There were so many insights. And it really just helped me become like a better, better flow or a better surfer a better mover through life.
I realized there’s so much less for me to do than I thought there was not my natural capacity. Like who I was, was actually amazing. Incredible. If I let my hands off of it, and I saw the nature of where my experiences really coming from, I’d elevate. And I and it’s just been a journey of these last five or six years.
Alexandra: When you took that class with, was it with Anna herself?
Mason: Yeah.
Alexandra: Are they mandatory? Or is it voluntary, when you sign up?
Mason: I had a couple of friends who were picked because she’d repeat right? After 10 weeks, go to another one. Like, you’ve got to take this class. Like, okay, I’ll do it, you know. And it was all voluntary.
I’m actually in teaching these classes now at the same institution. And you sign up. I did it with some good friends. And, and it’s amazing now to, like, I know many people, I’m still in contact with people from that class. And they’re doing incredible. Six years later. Every person that was close to in there is doing amazing.
Alexandra: Wow. Oh, that’s fantastic.
Mason: The recidivism rate is like 60%, within like, three years or something. And if I felt like, I know, six people from that class are excelling. I don’t know how everyone else is doing. But that’s pretty good numbers right there.
Alexandra: So in the general population, the recidivism rate is between 50 and 60%.
Mason: Yeah, that’s even higher than 60%.
Alexandra: Wow. And so one of the things you mentioned in your bio at the Insight Alliance website is struggling with anxiety, severe anxiety, that was one of the things you mentioned.
What do you see now about what anxiety actually is?
Mason: My creative potential I guess. The amazingness of my mind. That was my lifelong struggle. I got to the point periods where I couldn’t even leave the house to get a haircut. I was on 30 different, maybe more than 30 different medications. and always looking for like always analyzing, like, how am I feeling, oh, that means something about me. And I go into myself, Oh, I’m feeling anxious about though, and then I get up to thinking a lot about it. And I feel it in my body.
I just thought, I’m an anxious person. That’s how I was born. That’s who I am. That’s at the core of my essence. And I mean, when I first heard in our class, you’re not broken, you don’t need fixing, like that rang so true. And then, when we went into, how is our experience being created, not even judging it, or needing to fix it or anything, but know just what is happening in our mind, for us to experience reality.
I don’t even know what really switched, I just know there were so many insights, of seeing myself do things and seeing myself do things that were helpful. And just getting more space in my head and getting more awareness about how I’m navigating. And what I’m taking seriously. And what I’m making up stories about.
It’s just like fat melting away off of really well cooked something, right, just like flit away. And, and then all of a sudden, life became a little easier. And I started to see, oh, I’m not only am I creating, that, not only is life creating my reality through me but then I was responding to that creation. I was really responding and thinking, Oh, I’m going to resist this, and they change this, I manage this. What can I do to feel. It’s looking in the wrong direction. Like, really the wrong direction. And then when I saw it, it’s not making sense to do that.
And so, what is anxiety right? Now, it’s like an experience of humans, we’re going to experience it, right, and I’ll just be feed it as much I know, to feed it all. And I can experience I maybe can be a little anxious about something and then also have a peace inside the same time. And that can be the awareness of that. And like, oh, this means nothing about me, I don’t have to go fix it. I don’t have to go manage my outside world. I can just be okay. And if I have an insight about something to do, that might help a situation I do it.
But there’s a journey of settling in, I guess. I’ve seen my anxiety for what it was. Because I mean, I am definitely not an anxious person today. I am not an anxious person. I have anxious thoughts on occasion. But they’re in my heart. I know without a doubt that not what, what or who I am.
Alexandra: It strikes me to ask you when you’re teaching a class to a group of people who have kind of run their lives off the rails in a way and they’ve ended up incarcerated, starting by telling them they’re not broken is such an interesting place to begin.
I’m curious about how do you do that?
Mason: We do it from just putting out the basics of our class; You’re not broken, you don’t need fixing. And our experience and our reality is being created from the inside out, that life is flowing through us. It’s not coming at us. And we do some exercises in some ways.
And we also say, Look, we’re going to explore these concepts for the next 10 weeks. We’re just going to have an exploration. We’re not here to teach you anything. We’re just here to remind you, or to point you in the direction for you to see for yourself. That’s it. We’re not the experts. Just pointing at it.
And, there’s a pretty high retention in the classes. And there’s some people who drop out. We have one. My class for the person was like, just like, No, this isn’t right. It’s like really upset. And it’s like, not really like, extremely. And we just get attached to our ideas in there. And we can feel attacked and this person left class a week later they came back like I’m sorry. They were like one of the most interactive participants. And sometimes people just it’s not for them. I would say at least 85% are like, I’m doing this. Cool.
Alexandra: That’s so great. Because I can imagine, it can be quite confronting for someone who’s in a situation they don’t necessarily want to be in, it’s not in their control, they’re in this place that where everything is sort of regulated for them, and they can’t leave. And then for someone to say to them, actually, you know what, you’re totally fine. You’re not broken. It could be a little confronting, I can see that.
I also see that because it’s true that it would catch light with people.
Mason: When we’re in prison, everyone says are broken. Everyone says we’re wrong. And I think we were also really careful to say, look, we’re not blaming, it’s not our fault. And our trauma feels real to us. And it’s something we’re bringing forward. And it’s not an attack on who we are. But sometimes we hold on to our trauma on our thoughts, and we just think they become a definition of our experience.
Especially if people aren’t seeing it, and I say just stick with us, and have a conversation. And then you’ll see over the weeks, people will start to open up or they’ll just get a little confused. They’ll be like, I don’t know what to say. I’m just confused. And you’re like, Oh, that’s cool. Something’s mixing up. Okay, let’s see what comes out of it. And you can see a light, you can see a light turning on and people like, you can see them.
For me, I found my freedom in prison, straight up. I found it 100%. I could be here forever be all right. Like, honestly, I had no desire or need for things to change in the situation. And sometimes it can be a really hard experience for people because of situations, everything in it. And there’s a possibility in that. To see that, like, I’m not going to get happiness through my external circumstances. I’m not going to get satisfaction through that. That’s definitely an illusion.
Sometimes being a prison, you can see it a little bit clearer. Because you can recognize I still experience happiness and joy in this space. I feel like it’s best space to actually bring this understanding because couldn’t be more receptive.
Alexandra: Wow. Yeah, and you’re so right, there’s someone in almost the worst of circumstances, and yet they can experience peace and happiness and joy.
So that must be so impactful. It was for you, obviously.
Mason: Right? Yeah. It’s just it’s amazing what we’re all capable of. And it’s amazing how elusive this experience is, how much it was stuck in that misunderstanding. innocently.
I’m constantly amazed at this creation of reality and our experience as we go through life. And always the possibility to see more. Six years into it. It’s like, I’ll see something that I’m like, I did not see that before. Wow, that feels like a deepening. Yeah, or that feels calmer. And then all of a sudden, I may have something else falls away.
Alexandra: One of the things I wanted to touch on was, you mentioned at the top of the show that you had had this seven year period in between two bouts of being in prison. And then I guess fell back into the drugs habit.
With this understanding, what do you see different now about falling back into old habits?
Mason: I’m just aware of it. I think I think for me it with addiction and drugs. I really thought I was an addict, I’ll be an addict for life. That was what it was when I was in all these many programs for addiction. And then also I was really successful in my life at the time doing everything, right. And then I started getting I had some challenges come up, and I started getting in my thoughts, I started believing what I was thinking.
I started rationalizing things, I started going on certain paths. And then I started using the second I use, well, I’m an addict. That’s what I’m going to do that I can’t stop now. I need to just continue doing this. And it’s like, that’s just who I am. My justification, right? And then I’m like, Well, this will be successful at it in this way. Then I started selling and doing not great, thanks, all. And then I just even after I had agreed that there are great jobs, like I just got stuck in this world of experience that I thought was real. I thought maybe it’s a time it made sense to me. Now I can’t fathom how it really made sense. And I know the day like I take my, I mean, I don’t have really bad habits anymore. You know, but it’s like there’s a lot less to do with my habits. So much less, and just that amazing awareness around it.
When I see them for what they are their habits of thinking, their habits of stuff I brought from wherever doesn’t really matter. And if I see it, I see it, I’ll let go. But habits of thinking that just are what I’m experiencing, it’s grist to the mill turning things and me moving through things. And I can just like, oh, this is just what it is. I could hold it with love, hold it with compassion and recognize with that awareness, these things will move on.
I don’t have to bind to my thinking of sickness or of I’m always going to be drawn this or that I have no control. I think is like this is the soul I really. We couldn’t control what thoughts come in. And we don’t have to respond to them. I guess there’s just a much a sense of ease around stuff. And I ended up if I ever am in a low space, a low state of mind, I just know not to trust my thinking. I know that I don’t have to look to feel better. I don’t have to look outside myself. That’s not going to work.
How many times have I used drugs and not felt better? But it’s that habit, that connection that’s like, this will make you feel better. This will do this, let’s look outside yourself, or let’s go find a self help book. I can at least have some awareness around like, I can do this, but I don’t have to put my well being on it and not the drugs but even working out or something like it’s not, that’s not going to make me more.
Am I really have an elevated experience and my well being I could be okay, if I don’t work out. It was that constant searching to feel different. To try to fix a feeling. All I did in my mind, I really thought my feelings were affected and changed by the substances I used to use or the situations I was in.
Alexandra: I think that’s such an important point that anytime we’re addicted or have an unwanted habit, that we do that because it looks like a solution. It turns out we’re looking in the wrong direction.
I always say there’s no such thing as self-sabotage. We’re always trying to do the best we can, with what we know at the time.
Mason: And it’s so funny; habits, addiction, with more awareness, we naturally change and evolve, we evolve, we’re made to have insights and change. We don’t always get to choose when those come, we don’t get to know when we’re going to see more. It’s just that openness and awareness. And when we see at least how the mechanisms are doing it, it gives us that space to then have the possibility of misdirecting changing, moving a different way, or habits might fall away.
Even eight months ago, I wasn’t eating very healthy at all. I was like, 20 pounds more. And that was fine. That was perfectly fine. I wasn’t exercising, but then I was like, let me get curious about this. You know, it’s just like, nothing to stress about it. You’re going to have a, okay, like, what’s interesting, and naturally, what developed is now it’s like, I’m working out three times, four times a week, just because I enjoy it. I feel good about eating incredibly healthy, and not like, oh, how do I manage this? How do I manage this? It just came. It just a rose and over time, and it morphed and modified.
But there’s such an ease in developing new habits when we don’t have as much on it. We don’t think we actually have to control it. And there’s also an ease about habits falling away. When we’re not judging ourselves and putting ourselves down and tearing us and making ourselves feel better, like, Oh, why did I do that? And we go into shame. And then we go back to feeling terrible. And then we do an action again, oh, yeah, this is a cool cycle.
Alexandra: I think you mentioned a little bit earlier about identity, how you identified yourself as an addict. And drew the conclusion that that’s just what you’re going to do.
I think that’s such an important thing to bring up. Because in this understanding that we don’t identify ourselves based on the habit, and something just struck me. I don’t know if I’m going to have the words to talk about it.
In the old model of dealing with unwanted habits and addictions, it almost reinforces what we’re trying to get rid of. It drives us back toward doing the thing because of maybe identifying with it and seeing it as a problem as well.
Whereas when we look in this direction, we’re looking elsewhere, we’re looking towards our wholeness and seeing that the habit is just there. And it can fall away, like you said, a few minutes ago.
Mason: It’s not punitive.
Alexandra: Not punitive. Yeah.
Mason: Like, let’s tear you down. Some people claim strength in that in their own way. But it doesn’t feel good either. And then also doesn’t tend to work for other habits. So it doesn’t really work for all these other supposedly big ones. You know, like, hold on.
Alexandra: Exactly. And so you’re now teaching with the Insight Alliance, which is so great.
What was that progression like for you from someone who was incarcerated to now teaching the principles?
Mason: I got out six years ago, and I just volunteered. And we did courses with Anna. I did like eight or nine of them. And then two years and one month ago, they were hiring the third person at the time. And I was like, Okay, this is what I want to do. That’s I just knew it in my heart. And I got it. It was super amazing.
Now we’re at like 11 people. And we do case management. We support people coming out of prison for wraparound services. And it’s looking like we’re going to be doing drug court. We’re going to be working with D star which is a federal program instead of going to prison to come in There are programs in the prisons.
And in my journey, I mean, it’s been a journey learning this process of teaching, you know, a lot of some insecure thoughts. When I was like, at least I knew what they were or, you know, I don’t have to take myself so seriously, and who will ever be able to do this? Yeah. But it’s been amazing. It’s been an incredible journey of just like, seeing myself more. And seeing other people more really grateful, I’m able to, like, be part of this organization and do what I do, because it’s really about self-development, which then you can like, share what we have. And then being curious and interested in just about other people. Having love and compassion for other people on seeing them for their true selves.
Alexandra: I imagine it’s so impactful for the participants in the course to have someone who has been where they are, to be able to show them the way.
Mason: Yes, it is. I mean, Anna was pretty impactful. And I was amazing, right? And right, there is a connection with some people that maybe wouldn’t have stayed around. And yeah, it’s really cool to like the year like, yeah, when I was here six years ago, they’re like, you are here. And like, yeah, that was your second time. Um, it’s definitely huge. Do you have to say to like, it’s cool.
I’ve mentioned this earlier, it’s last class, I had this before, like, I am moving through life better, and I’ve ever moved through life. You know, what one person there last class, he had this problem of always needing to steal. He’d go into the line and there’s cinnamon rolls, because that’s the big thing, right? And he go on line a second time and always get caught, get put on, like, green shirt or whatever. It’s always, like, I just can’t help myself. I just do it.
And then on the last classes, he had a lot of thoughts around a lot, but he was so quiet down as the weeks went on. And he was he was like, in ninth or 10th class. He’s like we had cinnamon rolls. And I went and get in line for a second cinnamon roll. And I’m like, I don’t need a second cinnamon roll. Why am I even doing this? I got out of line.
I can’t like what happened and from that he’s like when I realized is that I never need to come back here. Just from a cinnamon roll and have such a deep he’s like, I just there’s not. I don’t have to follow that. I just don’t. And because he loved us cinnamon rolls, but it was just like how this is a small little thing. He just saw something really deep for himself.
He saw the agency in his life and where his experiences coming from and he able to listen to his wisdom.
Alexandra: That is so amazing. The wisdom in a cinnamon roll. That’s awesome.
Mason: There’s so many more like stories. That’s just kind of a funny old one. Because you think oh, cinnamon roll. But no, it’s little things. We never know what insights it can lead to.
Alexandra: That’s the thing. When we see the nature of thought and how it works, it can be that from the tiniest thing to the biggest thing. It’s always the same source. Very powerful.
About how many participants do you have in a class at a time? I’m just curious.
Mason: 15 to 20.
Alexandra: And you said it’s 10 weeks?
Mason: Yeah. And then we do have participants that take it a second time. So I think like five of them are retaking it. It’s nice; the second time around, they see different things.
And then at the woman’s I know it’s going to be 20 because we’re starting the women’s prison here. And they’re really excited because they had years ago when Anna went in there, and so we couldn’t get back in because of COVID and complications, we have at least one year in the woman’s classes. And then the youth is all the smaller we probably have like 10. Each woman that’s because they’re separated by units.
Alexandra: Say more about that. So is it a different prison for people?
Mason: Yeah, we have the McLaren the youth, which we’ve been doing do a lot virtual that they’re kind of the exception, they can do some virtual zoom versus just better for paying attention. But they have different units and they don’t like to mix them. So we’re going to be going on Wednesdays and do a morning class and an afternoon class with the youth. They’re present. It’s like anywhere from like, 14 to 25 they use that to go to adult prison when they turn 25.
Alexandra: Well, this has been lovely Mason.
Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with our listeners today?
Mason: I was going to say thank you for having me on. It’s been a pleasure. And it’s just so fun to even talk about this. Thanks for wanting to hear my journey. Yeah, thank you.
Alexandra: Oh, you’re so welcome. My pleasure. Thanks for being here. I’m loving this.
Tell our listeners where they can find out more about you and about the Insight Alliance.
Mason: Okay, TheInsightAlliance.org. They have all our contact on their emails, reach outs, pretty much to go to and some videos and resources as well.
Alexandra: I will put a link in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com to that so people can find it. Well, thanks again, so much Mason for being here. I really appreciate it. You take care bye bye.
Q&A 26 – Anxiety and Urgency: Does your past matter?
Aug 14, 2023
When we experience feelings of anxiety and urgency do we need to dig into the past to figure out where they started in order to deal with and resolve them?
In this episode I explore how the answer to that question is actually, ‘no’. Feelings of urgency and anxiety are feedback from our innate wisdom. We experience them so that they can help us and when we see them this way they begin to dissipate without any kind of intervention, pharmaceutical or otherwise.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How urgency and anxiety fall in the same family of feelings
What anxiety and urgency are really trying to tell us
How we misunderstand that message
How we’re designed to settle down automatically
What to do (if anything) when we feel anxiety or urgency
Transcript of episode
Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 26 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
I’m here today with a question from someone who emailed me over the weekend. And I thought it was a really good subject so that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
The question is, does our past matter when we’re dealing with things like anxiety and urgency?
This is such a good question because in the old psychological paradigm, the one that we’re so used to, and the one that most self-help type books and courses and understanding are based on our past does matter, it really matters. And we need to dig into that past in order to heal or resolve the things that are going on with us in the present.
What I’m here today to share is that actually, our past is a lot less important than we think it is.
As I say that, I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to negate the things that happened to you or to me in the past, and the feelings that we had about those. About neglectful upbringings or trauma that we experienced in the past. So this is the caveat at the beginning, I’m not framing this in a way, or trying to get across the message, that your past doesn’t actually matter because of course, that’s not true.
What I’m going to talk about is how, when we’re looking for resolution to problems that we’re having, or things that we’re experiencing in this day, in this particular case, we’re going to talk about anxiety and urgency, is that the past isn’t the place to look. That’s what I’m that’s what I’m trying to emphasize.
So let’s talk about the question that I received from a listener was about, specifically about urgency. Another thing I want to say too, and I’ve talked about in the past, and this is why she actually emailed me, I’ve talked in the past about how urgency is one of the things that I’ve dealt with in the past. And it took me a while to realize, and I’ll share this with you guys that:
Urgency and anxiety are the same thing. I think of them as falling under the same umbrella, or the same family of experiences that we have there.
They’re specific in that they might feel like, like someone with anxiety might feel like they don’t feel a sense of urgency, and vice versa. But the two experiences are trying to bring you the same message, they’re just doing it in a slightly different way. And that’s really important when it comes to exploring those situations via this inside out understanding.
The metaphor I thought of just before I hit record here is that, imagine that you have a weed in your garden. And it’s unsightly, it’s something that you don’t want there on your lawn or in your flowerbeds, or whatever. And the way that we tend to deal with weeds, or the best way to deal with them as far as I know, I’m an amateur gardener, is to really dig down. When we’re pulling out the weed we make sure that we pull out all the roots. Just chopping it off at the top isn’t going to do anything because it’s going to grow back.
So that metaphor about the weed is a really good explanation of the old paradigm of psychology, that we innocently in the past have felt that dealing with uncomfortable feelings that come up like urgency and anxiety. What we needed to do was dig way, way down to the tiny roots where they just become almost like hairs. They’re so thin and small and fragile, deep down there in the earth.
I certainly had therapists who helped me to do that. I would bring up the feeling of urgency or anxiety and we would dig into the past. Where did that come from? Was there a specific incident that I can recall where I felt that kind of urgency when I was really young? Where did it begin? That kind of exploration again, completely innocently.
We do the best we can with the end information we have in the moment. So that’s the old paradigm way of dealing with these feelings like urgency and anxiety.
In this inside-out exploration, we’re really turning that on its head. Because if you’re experiencing urgency or anxiety, it’s not actually necessary to go digging back into your past, to look at the root of where that experience came from. And here’s why. It’s not because your feelings and your experience, and your history don’t matter. But the reason we say you don’t need to dig into the past is because that feeling of urgency or anxiety that you’re experiencing, is telling you something different than we’ve been led to believe.
What it’s telling you is that your thinking is really revved up.
So the feeling of urgency or anxiety isn’t a problem in itself. It’s actually an alarm bell, you might want to say, although that that wording makes me feel a little anxious. It’s a signal, it’s a piece of feedback from your brilliant design that is filled with wisdom, your human design. And what it’s alerting you to is that your thinking is really revved up. And it’s not to be trusted in this moment. This is not the moment when you’re going to make good choices or healthy choices, because you’re coming from a real place of fear, and lack, and a lack of understanding about how you work, how you’re designed to return to a state of peace, and calm and quiet and wisdom.
Innocently, in the past, before we knew about this inside-out understanding when we feel a sense of urgency or anxiety, we would do one of two things.
We would dig into the past, as I’ve mentioned, trying to find the root source of that feeling in order to eradicate it, get rid of it, you know, heal it in some way.
And then the other thing we would do is we would look at the feeling itself as a problem. Like I’m feeling this sense of urgency or anxiety. And it’s really, it’s a problem, some part of me is broken. And I need to get rid of this feeling. I need to medicate it or I need to resolve it by stopping doing the activities that I’m interested in. Let’s say driving on a freeway, because that’s what makes me anxious.
The reality is that none of that is true, that your feeling of urgency or anxiety is actually a perfect part of your design. And it’s simply bringing you information, and letting you know that your thinking is really revved up. And that, like I said a little bit earlier that your thinking can’t be trusted in this moment. And it’s a reminder that if you just let yourself settle, knowing that your design is its default is calm and clarity and wisdom, that at some point in the future, this feeling of anxiousness or anger or urgency will dissipate.
If you’re watching on YouTube, I’m just going to scoot out of the frame for one second. I want to grab my snow globe. So the metaphor we often use in this instance, is that of a snow globe. And if you’re watching on YouTube, I’ve got a little snow globe here, and I’m just shaking it up. So when we’re experiencing urgency and anxiety, those snowflakes are swirling around inside that snow globe and making us feel like we need to do something about them in that moment.
But if you know anything about snow globes, you know that if you just set them down, all the swirling snow just settles to the bottom of the snow globe. That’s how it’s designed.
There’s nothing you could do once you said set the snow globe down to make that snow swirl around again. Gravity is doing its job.
What we innocently do when we get really concerned about urgency or anxiety that we feel when we misunderstand what its purpose is, we were innocently shaking the snow globe up even more. So it might start to settle. And then we just start to add more and more thinking to it. What does this mean? Does this mean I’m broken? How am I going to deal with this? What am I going to do if I need to drive on the freeway sometime tomorrow> All that kind of thinking just adds more swirling activity to the snow globe.
When we understand that life is moving through us, that we’re experiencing our thinking via our feelings, and we know that we’re designed to settle down, then we come to understand that there’s nothing we need to do about those feelings.
Personally, I can tell you that the urgency that I experienced for years, and it. dogged me all the time. And it did that for a specific reason. Because that way that we are designed that message that’s trying to get through to me, to let me know that my thinking is really stirred up, is never going to give up until we see it for what it is. So for 30 years I dealt with, I describe it as a feeling that there was a demon breathing on the back of my neck all the time telling me to go faster and do more and that I couldn’t rest or relax.
It cropped up in all kinds of different ways. One of the things that’s easy to describe is that if I was ever out and about, and I mean, this went on for decades, if I was ever out and about running errands, and had a list or in my head, I had four or five errands to run, I would get maybe two of them done maybe three, and then the pressure from that voice screaming on the back of my neck to be finished with at all would just get to be too much. And I would say Oh, forget it, I’m not going to do these last two or three errands, I’m just going to go home.
That would ease it off a little bit. And at the time, that seemed like the logical thing to do. I want to emphasize this as well, we’re always doing what we think is best for ourselves. We’re always trying to feel better. So I don’t blame myself or you for doing what we’ve done in the past to try to deal with those really, really uncomfortable feelings.
When I began to learn about this understanding, and I began to see that feeling of urgency for what it was – that it was simply letting me know about the state of my thinking – the more I remembered that, the more those feelings of urgency and anxiety could dissipate, they could go away. And now I experienced them really rarely.
And the important thing to remember is I still am divinely designed, I’m still tapped in like you are like all of us are to wisdom. So when I’m in a situation, and I feel a lot of urgency, butterflies in my stomach, or that feeling of needing to rush and, and be really fast about doing something. Now, most of the time, I remember Oh, right. Okay, this feeling doesn’t mean that I do actually have to go faster. If I’m replying to an email or recording a podcast episode. All it’s telling me is that my thinking is very busy. And I can wait and that thinking will calm down.
So in the case of let’s say I was feeling that urgency feeling while replying to somebody’s email. Let’s just say for example, I might take a few deep breaths and kind of remind myself that I don’t have to go super fast. I can take my time replying to the email. And remember that for whatever reason, something has just made my thinking speed up.
The other thing I can do sometimes as well, I’ll just save this email, and I’ll come back to it when I’m in a calmer state of mind. The same thing happens actually, when I’m having conversations with people. If I suddenly start to feel like a real sense of urgency, and like I want to interrupt the person that I’m talking to, or that I really want them to stop talking so that I can get my point across. That’s simply feedback. That’s just letting me know that I’m really caught up in my thinking.
The best thing I can do for myself, and probably for the other person as well, in the conversation, is just let myself settle. And that may not be the moment to say the thing I want to say, I might want to wait until I feel like I’m in a much calmer, quieter state of mind.
And remember, I don’t have to do anything to get there. That’s just going to happen automatically. The same way that the snowflakes in the snow globe just settled down on their own as soon as we set our thinking down.
I hope that’s been helpful for you, if you’re dealing with any sense of anxiety, or urgency. And again, if you have any questions and you’d like me to address them on a future q&a episode, I’ll be happy to do that. You can go to Alexandraamor.com/question, and fill out the form there and I’ll be happy to answer.
Thank you again for being with me here today. I hope you are well and I will talk to you again next week. See you later. Bye.
The Joy of Well-being with Joy Belonga
Aug 10, 2023
Like many others who have been interviewed for this podcast, Joy Belonga describes herself as a lifelong seeker. Until she found the Three Principles as articulated by Sydney Banks.
Now, Joy works with her clients to point them back to their innate well-being and natural state of peace, possibility, mental resilience and yes, Joy.
Joy Belonga has a zest for life, learning and being of service to others. She has a loving, calming, healing nature about her along with a natural joy that is infectious. As many of her friends have commented, her name suits her!
Joy has been a student of energy, 3 Principles, healing, and a life coach most of her life. At the young age of twelve she witnessed the mystical, transformational power of intention and energy which began her lifelong quest toward the mystical, healing and metaphysics.
Tell us about a little bit about your background and how you found the principles.
Joy: Sure. Background has basically been an educator within the extension system, which is a national system: Cooperative Extension. I worked for Michigan State University Extension for over 21 years, and it was a great job. And they really believed in personal development, so I had 18 days, if you can believe it, to have personal development. And some of those days were fall and spring conferences and things.
And speaking at fall conference in Lansing and was introduced at a seminar that was being organized through the income health department, and health realization. That’s dating me a little bit, but I was really intrigued. That was a nine-month seminar presented by Dicken [Bettinger].
So I traveled once a month from upper peninsula of Michigan, where I was based for my job and had another lifetime there. The funny thing was, is that it took like, four hours to get down to Lansing to learn more about my thoughts for our car ride to think a lot about my thoughts. But it was the gift to learn from Dicken who learned directly from Syd Banks. It was just such a gift.
I think it took me a while, I’d say at least maybe nine months to maybe get my first insight. And the first insight was, I didn’t have to believe everything I thought, which was huge, really huge. And so from then on, I made some changes in my life that I had been wanting to do, but didn’t have the courage or the gumption. Or I felt like I was stuck.
I saw that really, from a new perspective, that our thoughts appear real. That’s the trick, isn’t it, they can appear so real. And then we end up believing them. And we think they’re our truth. So anyway, that just opened up a home a whole new world for me.
Alexandra: What transpired after that? Did you transition away from the work you were doing?
Joy: I tried to incorporate it within my work. I did a lot of volunteer development. And that basically, I just continued to learn on my own. I think the real telltale sign of the impact that this had was, I left to a marriage, I didn’t feel like I was with my life partner. And so that created some turbulence, but I knew that I was going to be resilient and find my way and, and sure enough, I did.
Then at a certain point down the road, I knew my job was ending so I decided to take a journey. I got myself a road truck, van and traveled for a year with the main idea of getting out of Michigan for the winter. So that didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I needed to get out and explore and it was just really a beautiful, beautiful trip.
Had I not known the principles, though, I would have never taken the trip because I would have been in the what if. What if this happens, what if I break down? What if I get attacked? What if I get lost? I realized that was just fear and I didn’t need to certainly listen to it. I needed to have some safety measures but to be able to do a year with embracing the unknown, I didn’t really didn’t have a plan other than to get out to the West Coast. Because my kids had moved out there earlier, a couple of years prior and, and it turned out to be such a magical trip with the idea that I didn’t have to have all my ducks in a row and plan how to get from point A to point Z, just the big aha was like, I realized that whatever I needed to know, would be revealed to me and that I didn’t have to figure it out. That was just huge.
Because I think previously in my life, and as part of our programming and conditioning, we’ve been taught that you have to have a goal, and you have to work hard to be successful. And how about a five year plan? All of those things just kind of went out the window, and I was really had this beautiful sense of freedom of creating my life. In the moment, pretty much.
Alexandra: You have an affinity for travel. You talk about going on adventures on your website. But it sounds like this was a new experience for you. Is that true?
Joy: The joy ride and going with the mindset that I would just figure it out, or it would come to me was totally different. At a very young age, a really good friend of mine, Kendra, and her mother introduced me to travel. I went to Florida with them, with my first airplane ride, and then actually, we went in a van at the time, another trip. And maybe that’s how that all came about. But I really think that she introduced me to adventure.
Alexandra: Oh, very cool.
The other thing you mentioned on your website that I wanted to take note of was that you had a mystical experience when you were 12. Can you tell us about that?
Joy: I think I overheard my mother and her friend talking about, I don’t know, some kind of like mystical thing as far as I thought maybe it was tarot cards. Somehow, I got the idea about levitation. And I was at my friend’s house right next door, and we had a slumber party and just had the right amount of people.
I took the role of facilitating a levitation. I had no previous experience and how to do this. But in the first 20 minutes of this one person lies down on their back. And then we have three on each side, one at the foot and one at the head. And with just two fingers, other than the people at the foot in the head, two fingers of each hand under the person that’s lying down, and we repeated things like, “She’s as light as a feather. She’s light as a feather” went all the way around, and then “her cells are compacting, her cells are compacting.”
So that first 10 or 15 minutes, we just cracked up laughing like, what are we doing? And then I was so adamant. I remembered I said, you guys, I really, I really need to know if this works. And so then we settled down and started over with repeating the phrases. And sure enough, on the count of three, we began to lift the person over our heads.
It was just astounding, just astounding. And as through the years, I’ve talked with other girlfriends, and they have reported a similar experience. But this was pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. And so each of us took a turn in the center of the circle.
And then I was last and you lie with your arms folded and your eyes closed. I knew I was being lifted. And then I had to just open to my eyes to make sure or just to validate that this was really happening. The ceiling was just about this far away from my face.
Alexandra: Wow.
Joy: Yeah. So that was really bizarre. It also showed me that wow, our beliefs are really powerful. And at that young age of 12 we didn’t have a lot of obstacles in our way of thinking, Oh, this isn’t possible, right? We’re really fresh and really got serious and really saw that we can change reality with our thinking.
Alexandra: What did you see about it then and what do you see about it now? Are there differences? Or do you see it the same way?
Joy: Good question. I was in a little bit of a shock. I didn’t study to really talk to about this. And years later, my sister was saying, Well, no wonder you went into energy medicine. I’m an Eden energy medicine practitioner. I really didn’t even see that connection to that, until she saw it.
Now, of course, with the work that we do, and the journey that we’re on about the power of belief, I see it so clear now that our beliefs and our thoughts are so powerful. They in a combined grew, yeah, that extra power now that I’m thinking about it.
Alexandra: Yeah, with a bunch of people there. It surprises me that people were able to change position, and it still happened. Like it didn’t just happen once with one person, and it was kind of a fluke.
What you’re saying is one person would get off the table or the thing that they were on, and another person would get on, and it would happen again. Is that right?
Joy: Yes, that’s right. I was the last to go. But what occurs to me, you’d think I would have maybe explored bending spoons. But it never occurred to me, it was almost like I put it away and never really gave it much thought.
Alexandra: You describe yourself as a spiritual seeker, until you found the principles. What changed when that happened?
Joy: I definitely was a seeker. I had such an intense motivation to want to figure this life out. And maybe I saw that it wasn’t really working in my family, or with my parents or other adults, I don’t know. But I was really motivated to read as many books attend as many workshops, learn as many techniques as possible, because I thought then I’d have a handle on how to do this, because maybe there was another intention to get life.
What was so interesting is once I came across this understanding, and also hearing from Dicken, that he used to have all these affirmation journals, a dream journal, and he’d meditate for four hours each night or day to day and same kind of energy about that. And then it was like, Oh, my gosh, I have wisdom within me. That is what I was learning is like, I have we all have wisdom that comes to us. I don’t have to look outside of myself.
All that search was looking outside of myself. The big shift was when I saw that spiritual teachers, including Sydney Banks, said to look within, and as the story goes, there were so many people that would flock to see Syd, and he would tell them go home, look within.
I also had a visual, wouldn’t it be fun to see at a bookstore all the shelves of the self-help industry? And what is it like $12 billion now and if they were just take all the shelves or all the books off the shelves and just have a picture of Sydney Banks and then the phrase ‘look within’. The answers are within, and they come to us, we are so divinely engineered.
I am so continuously wowed by that to really understand who we are. So when you think about it, we don’t have to think how many breaths to take per minute, or how to how many beats per minute that we our heart needs to beat. It’s like life is living through us if we allow it. I don’t know if we have a choice. But if you see it that way it turns out to be just a lighter way to live life less struggle more joy.
Alexandra: You mentioned you had adopted a lot of techniques and that kind of thing. I’m assuming you saw those begin to fall away or let them fall away when you discovered the principles.
Joy: Yes, I was a big meditator too and thinking that way. I do think it really serves a purpose to quiet your mind down. And that’s where I think when you have just a quiet mind, and then out of the blue insights come to you, or things come to you that are somewhat magical, that that’s just how we’ve been designed.
You don’t have to analyze or figure it out because we’ve just been so conditioned that we have to give some things to some more thought, and we have to research or analyze. And it really frees up your time.
Alexandra: That’s a good way to put it.
I want to go back to travel for a second. I should have said this when you were talking about your trip around, was it North America? Did you come to Canada as well? Or was it just the US in your van?
Joy: It was just mainly the US and a lot of time on the West Coast.
Alexandra: And you’ve climbed the Egyptian pyramids, you mentioned that on your website.
What else do you think travel teaches us about ourselves or about our place in the world?
Joy: I think the idea of getting out of your everyday world shifts everything. So we are habitual, right, we get into patterns. And pretty much they get automatic without a lot of thinking, I know that you can relate to maybe driving from point A to B and not really realizing how you got there. Because you were so in your thoughts. It becomes automatic. That’s kind of kind of how we are in our day to day life.
When you take a break from that pattern, and change everything, change the scenery, change, food, climate, human, you name it, everything’s different. And then it’s almost like you come back alive for the first time. Because you’re seeing everything new. I’m in Bend in the beautiful mountains. And then sometimes I forget, it’s like, oh, yeah, there’s the mountains. But when you’re first here, it’s like, Oh, my God, these mountains are beautiful.
Alexandra: I have the same experience here on Vancouver Island. We become so habituated to it. And then in the summer, we get a lot of tourists. And what happens is, it’s actually quite nice, I see them taking photographs of things. And that reminds me Oh, right. This is really beautiful. And I should pay more attention to that. If I could be a bit more mindful of it.
Joy: Powerful, isn’t it?
Alexandra: Yes. And when you were traveling in your van, did you have any experiences where, like you talked about, you might have hesitated to go before you knew the principles. Because what if this happened? Or what if that happened?
Did you run into any situations that were a little challenging where you were able to be in the moment and just see what happened?
Joy: Yes, two incidents come to mind. When I first got to the west coast and visited with my family, I thought about well, what do I want to do now? I actually Googled it because I was at the time a big affirmation person. So I just typed up the word affirmation and Googled it. And then Louise Hay took over my laptop, and I thought, oh, yeah, I was more in alignment with Wayne Dyer. And whenever I saw Louise Hay, I just thought, Oh, she’s saying the same thing. Well, this was different. And then I went to explore Well, what’s going on now?
There was a conference happening in San Diego. And I thought, right then, oh, I’m going to go to San Diego. That’s where my next stop is. And the journey just turned out to be a healing journey. But at that time, it was my first leg of the trip from the West Coast and 50 people from around the world were gathered, which was mind blowing at the time. And then we would have different breaks.
I was there for about five to seven days. And this one particular day, I was at the beach, had my van locked and I had the music blaring and I was doing some exercises. And the next thing I knew I looked to my out the window and there was a gentleman parked right next to me and very interested in what I was doing. And so right then it was like okay, I need to you know vamoose. So I left in a hurry. He followed me for a while. So that was a little unsettling.
Several months later, this was like part two of Louise Hay’s training, she was doing life coaching in Sedona, and it was headed up by Patricia Crane, because Louise wasn’t doing the training at the time. nor was she doing the training in San Diego. I didn’t realize that that was still you know, that incident of being watched very carefully was still in my mind. But in Sedona, after the week long conference there, I got permission to park at a friend’s house, in her in the road, right by your house. And anyway, the energy and everything within Sedona, and being just coming from a really wonderful group experience.
All of a sudden, I felt really alone and vulnerable. I saw another car in the distance just about 100 yards from me. It looked like three men in the car, and I swore that they were watching me, What’s another word scouting me I don’t know. Yeah. And it just took me back to you know, being in a fearful state. And this is such a great example of where we can go in our thinking. So it’s really based on a fearful experience that I had before being you know, scouted, watched, stalked, whatever.
I was just a true believer that this was happening. Finally, I collected myself and somehow you’re going to sit here and worry about it. Are you going to drive by and see if that’s really what you’re seeing. And so I took off and drove past this car, and there was nobody in the car.
I just had to laugh because I thought, Oh, I’m seeing my thinking play out big time, because I was so fearful that I was being stalked. So other than those two experiences, it was just a wonderful trip and met a lot of people and they would say, make sure you see XYZ, like if you’re going in this direction, and then I got invited to workshops up in Idlewild when I was visually visiting Joshua Tree, National Park. It was a beautiful time.
Alexandra: You mentioned The Eden Project, or what did you call it?
Joy: Yeah, it’s based on Donna Eden. I think she learned a lot from like healing touch, I believe. And anyway, she put a curriculum together. And I got certified. It was a three-year study. And she thought that everybody could see energy. And she was gifted with that ability.
She was able to heal herself with this technique, this energy medicine, and she had been told, at least once or twice that she should get her life in order because there was nothing else they could do for her. So literally, she took her health in her own hands and was able to move blocks and energy and all kinds of things. That started this journey for her to teach others their health, specifically when our medical system told her that there wasn’t anything else they could do for her.
Alexandra: Do you still practice that to this day?
Joy: I do. I have a few clients that I’m working with but my true passion is really this understanding because I think everything is created through our thinking. And sometimes we feel it in our body. And if we can change our consciousness to a greater sense of well-being, which one of Syd’s sayings is that we’re only one thought away from our well-being. And once we see that the body mind spirit, it’s all connected. Then it has a tremendous impact on our health and well-being and whether pain gets what they call stuck in the body. So I’ve been on this healing journey and I have joy-of-well-being dot org If and anybody’s interested and love to have conversations to explore if this is a fit for them.
Alexandra: If you’re working with someone using the Eden method, do you fold in the impact that their thoughts are having on their physical being?
Joy: It’s sometimes because the emotions come up. And usually there’s a story connected to the emotions. So it brings up the conversation for sure.
Alexandra: Oh, fascinating. Wow, that’s really, really interesting. One of the other things you do – your plate is quite full – is your rewilding coaching. You’ve been trained by Angus and Rohini. Correct?
What does rewilding mean to you?
Joy: It’s based on the metaphor that they found how wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, which is an amazing four minute video if you get a chance to watch that.
To me, what it means is rewilding us back to our true nature, before all that programming came in and conditioning and coming from the formless energy into form. You can see this rewilding at its best with young kids, because they are so spontaneous and loving and laughing. And just having a great time and being curious and not in their thinking very much into their being.
I think that the rewilding is coming back and letting go of all that story that we might have made up over time. Because number one, we want to be loved and accepted. And throughout the course of our journey, we might change who we are to be loved and accepted.
Rewilding is a great term I love the whole process. I’ve learned so much from Rohini and Angus. I was able to go deeper, I think, in this understanding.
Alexandra: Were there any parts of you that you discovered during that rewilding process that you had sort of shut down? Based on the social things that we learn?
Joy: Yeah, there was a number of things that came. I was just going through a heartbreak, and realizing that we’re built to be resilient. And in the story that I made up after the breakup as to what that meant about me and that I was not enough and creating a lot of pain and struggle for myself.
It’s part of the human experience. We have to go down the rabbit hole at times. And now I find that I’m not going down the rabbit hole as deep as I used to. And so that that’s been a big shift. I see, as I’m on the other side of the breakup, I see that my world is opened. And I see that things happen for a reason.
We can get really caught up in the chaos and that change of it all. And we don’t see it at the time. But down the road, we see that it’s happened for a reason. It’s happened for our own evolution for our own rewilding, that something needed to shift.
Alexandra: What a lovely way to look at something challenging. That’s beautiful.
Joy: Part of that is to be held and supported, loving group, then what I see is the irony is when I first joined the rewilding group, it was in lockdown. Couldn’t leave my apartment, but yet I was connected with 34 people around the world. Isn’t that hilarious?
Now the group is just continuing to be close and we connect and it’s just a beautiful experience to be held and supported to be seen, and reawakening to who we really are. And that is love. We are all love.
Alexandra: Oh, beautiful. Thank you for saying that. That’s lovely.
As we get towards the end of our time together, is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet today?
Joy: I don’t think so. This is my passion. And I love, love, love having one on one conversations. I just finished a four week series in person here and then. I’m really excited about doing more of that and recreating that experience that I had in the rewilding group.
It’s a group of nine other women plus myself that gathered here in Bend. I’m looking to do more of that. Because I really, really do believe this is the answer. It’s all about this understanding. And it’s all about this the misunderstanding that we’ve grown up with. I can’t think of a better time with all the issues regarding mental health issues. There’s no, there’s never been a greater time to share this understanding.
Alexandra: I totally agree. Absolutely.
Where can we find out more about you and your work? You mentioned your website. Tell us the address again.
Alexandra: Perfect. Okay. And as ever, I will put links in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Joy. It’s been great chatting with you.
Joy: It’s been a delight. Thank you so much for the invitation.
Q&A 25 – Overeating: What are we escaping from?
Aug 07, 2023
So often we believe we have unwanted habits like overeating because of the circumstances of our lives. We innocently believe that we’re trying to escape from old feelings (maybe even trauma) by doing our unwanted habit.
What if that’s not the case? What if the only problem lives between our ears? What if, when we understand that our experience of life comes from the inside-out, our unwanted habits dissolve?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode number 25 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today, I want to talk about what we’re comforting ourselves from, or escaping from when we have an unwanted habit like overeating.
I’ve talked about this before in different ways on this show, and I even had a podcast with my guest, Jonelle Simms, to talk about it. And then last night, I was out for a walk and saw it insightfully in a new way. So I wanted to share here in case you hear something new and fresh and different, and as always, with the intent of helping you to resolve an unwanted overeating habit and reduce your suffering.
So here’s how it goes. Here’s what I saw. As you probably know, as I’ve talked about, lots, for 30 years, I really delved into the self-help world to try to resolve my overeating habit. And that was completely innocent. I did what felt best, what was available to me at the time, and maybe you’ve had a similar experience. The message that I got from that exploration was really a very outside in message, that we in life have experiences and circumstances that are difficult, and they create difficult emotions in us.
It’s all coming from the outside in, and that we’re using our substance of choice -in my case, it was food – to comfort ourselves about those experiences.
It’s about the residue that’s left within us from those experiences, supposedly. And so therefore, the next step in that healing journey was to, for me, and through via all the self-help stuff, was to try to learn how to comfort myself in a different way, and to excavate the trauma that may have been laid down at some point.
Looking back in the past, and seeing what events or circumstances could have led to me having this what looked like a need at the time to comfort myself with food. And again, all very innocent, all motivated by wanting to suffer less and wanting to heal this problem.
The challenge is, though, that as we explore the inside-out understanding that our experience doesn’t come from the outside in.
And so what we’re really trying to manage, I now see, via things like diets, but other kinds of things as well, the self-help approaches to things… I always hesitate to mention what the self-help protocols could be, because they’re not bad in and of themselves, they’re just coming at the problem from the wrong angle.
You know what kind of self-help stuff you’ve tried. And willpower, that’s another thing that we all try. And maybe behavioral changes like not keeping certain foods in the house or creating rules around what kinds of food we can eat or what time of day we can eat, or whatever it is. All those kinds of structures to help us to resolve our unwanted habit.
For me, it looks like a two prong approach.
The first prong was trying to make behavioral changes. So all the things I just mentioned.
The second prong was this this idea of figuring out how to comfort myself, that’s what I call it, without food. So finding some sort of replacement for that habit, that behavior. And so that might look like there was this program called The Solution that I did. We used to do this little mantra thing. And we would even put one hand on one shoulder and rub the shoulder, sort of like a soothing person. Again, completely innocently.
Those were the two prongs, changing the environment and the behavior and then trying to find a different way to comfort myself.
I hope that you can relate to some of that or see some of what you’ve been experiencing in that.
Then when I came across this Three Principles understanding what I’ve come to see, and what I saw freshly last night was that all of that that I was doing in the past really does go from the outside in, and that what we’re really trying to comfort or what I was really trying to comfort myself about, was actually, on the inside, it was simply my thinking. And until we see this insightfully, it can be a little bit difficult to see.
So I’ll try to explain it as clearly as I can to be helpful to you. And then if it’s not resonating, if it’s not making a lot of sense, that’s okay. Because within you, there is infinite wisdom and resilience. And eventually, the penny is going to insightfully drop with you. And of course, it’s not just one penny, it’s a series of cascading series of insights, like I like to say, copying that phrase from Dr. Amy Johnson. So yeah, just hold what I’m about to say really lightly, and know that your wisdom will speak to you in a way that makes sense to you. When the time is right. The more that you explore this understanding.
What I see now, is that what I was really doing was using food to comfort myself to soothe myself, about my thoughts.
That’s really where the problem lay. In other words, I didn’t need to manage my circumstances, or change my circumstances, or dig into the past and relive things that had happened. I don’t and didn’t actually need comforting from anything, that comfort and soothing and peace of mind are there available within us at all times.
Where we get – I was going to say confused, but that’s not really true – what we don’t see until we see it is that that wellbeing exists and it’s perpetual, it’s innate, it’s infinite. It’s a deep well, of peace and understanding within us at all times. It’s what we’re made of. So there’s no comfort that needs to be had. There’s no soothing that needs to be had because it’s already there. It’s already available to us at all times.
Going back to the to my earlier 30 year self-help strategy, it was as people often say, it’s kind of like a game of Whack-a-Mole when we’re trying to fix these things from the outside in because it did feel like to me, I would sort of get practiced at a behavior that I felt would help me with my overeating habit. And then something would change – I would have a hard day or I would experience a loss or just life happened, I would get stuck in traffic or whatever. Something so minor like that could completely up end the applecart and have me behaving in ways that I didn’t like, have me participating in my overeating habit.
Now, what I see is that life just happens, good things and bad things.
We experience experiences, all day, every day. And the only thing, and I really mean it, the only thing that affects me is what’s going on between my ears. That’s the only issue that I have going on. So something really challenging can happen, a loss in my family, or whatever it is. And it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to feel things and think things about that situation. But my baseline is so different now. Because I understand that I am made of peace of mind, and resilience, and well-being, and all that innate wholeness, that exists within me.
My thoughts and feelings are not something to be conquered, and managed and overcome at all.
They are simply the weather, as the metaphor so often says, that moves through me. The greater me is the sky that doesn’t change that’s always there, it’s always blue. We can’t necessarily see it at all times, because it can be obscured by clouds and thunder and rain and all those things. It can even be dark at night if the sun is on the other side of the planet.
When we know that it’s only our thinking that is causing us to participate in an overheating habit, it’s only our thinking that creates the turmoil, that we then feel we need to soothe ourselves from. When we see that insightfully especially it changes everything. There’s nothing to manage anymore, there’s no rules that we have to set up for ourselves, to be able to cope with the temptations that are in the kitchen and in the world.
The awareness that the situation, any situation that we’re in, is only going on between our ears, is what provides us with the freedom to let go of any unwanted habit including overeating.
That’s what I saw freshly last night. And it’s so interesting about insight; I have found anyway, I see the same thing almost over and over again, just at a deeper and deeper level. I’m experiencing more and more awareness of what’s really going on and what my true nature is, and how my how thinking works, how thought works and how my thinking affects my life and my experience of life and how understanding that makes everything so much easier and so much better.
That has enabled me to let go of my overeating habit, which is such a relief after three decades.
I wanted to share that with you because it’s fresh in my mind and so clear. And I hope that that is helpful for you. I hope you’re doing well and taking good care. And I will see you again next week. Bye.
The Unbroken First Responder with Rick Ruppenthal
Aug 03, 2023
Rick Ruppenthal worked for 30 years as a paramedic and knows intimately the challenges that come with that job. He also knows that every human can rely on the innate resilience and well-being that are part of all of us. And how seeing Thought for the temporary, moving energy it is, can help first responders with their work and their response to it.
Rick Ruppenthal is a 30-year retired Paramedic, Mental Health Educator, Transformative Coach, and Certified Change Practitioner Facilitator.
His clients gain a greater sense of self-confidence; less worry, less stress; joy, and freedom; better and easier decision-making; more presence in their relationships. In his work he uses no techniques, there is nothing to memorize. No long programs or steps to take. Rick goes straight to the heart and soul, our true source of power, well-being, and resilience.
Alexandra: My pleasure. It’s great to have you here.
Tell us about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Rick: Okay, well, I won’t go too far back. But primarily my focus has been on my paramedic career. So I’ve just, although I keep saying recently, it’s been almost six years now that I retired from being a paramedic, and I spent 30 years of it, bits and parts mostly in the Lower Mainland, a little bit on Vancouver Island. And eventually, I also took on roles of supervisors, supervision, roles, managerial roles, and also as an educator.
I also had a wonderful opportunity to travel around the province of British Columbia, and meeting different all the paramedics and having an opportunity to not only train and teach them, but also I had a team of instructors also that we were part of putting the paramedic program together the three principals. Everybody, I think, that has ever come across the three principles is from a, from a seeking point of view, like searching for something, something we feel is kind of missing. And I got a brief and I’ll just call it a brief understanding, almost 40 plus years ago, through a workshop that I had taken that was, at the time very controversial, very, very cutting edge kind of a thing.
What they were doing was they were pointing to this thing that we were more of a thought created world. And how our experiences are being generated and things like that. I really embraced what they were teaching at that point and started to experience that as a reality for myself. And when I got into Paramedicine, I often reflected on how different everybody’s experiences were with the work.
It was so fascinating, because part of my education they pointed to how stressful the work was, how tough the work can be, that we were going to witness a lot of different, we were going to see people in, in most cases in their worst time of their life. I didn’t have the experience, the reaction, I would say, or the response that I thought it was going to have, as I continued on my career, while others were having not so good experiences, like I really enjoyed every moment of it, the good, the bad. And I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but what I mean, it’s hard to explain, but I took it as a calling.
When I first my very first patient, I was able to after the training that it was my patient. I remember kneeling down and reaching over and checking the pulse of this elderly lady. And it was sort of like a spark, just something within me said this is what you should be doing. This is exactly what you should be doing. And so I just got so involved in in it and wanted to continue to have that same feeling. So I caught myself a few times chasing the feeling.
But long story short, I had noticed, I really would have considered myself to have thrived through the experience of being a paramedic, as opposed to others that have survived and some that have not survived because the suicide rate in the first responder field and I don’t know why but particularly in the British Columbia area is actually quite high in comparison to other places in the in the North America. And the unfortunate part is the stats are not well informed in that so to look for information I want to confirm a lot of things. It’s just not there. Because a lot of lot of what we’re experiencing when it comes to post traumatic stress and suicide and things like that there’s sort of it’s not attributed to the work itself. So it wouldn’t be a WorkSafe issue. Now, trauma and PTSD. Yes, it’s a work workplace issue. But, but the results of are not sort of thing. Well, it’s work related.
Now, in fire medicine, they’re just starting to get a lot of like cancers and things like that being associated with the work and workman’s compensation is looking at it. When it comes to mental health and mental illness as it’s being labeled, it’s just a different ballgame. And that’s another rabbit hole. But when I retired, because the work gave so much to me, like I had so much experience from the work, I felt I wanted to give back. I’m still in the scheme of things, I consider me relatively young. So I started to put workshops together I was because I was in education. And I was part of that I had an opportunity of training hundreds of people in a Jung based workshop on behavior studies and what makes you an introvert, what makes you an extrovert in which things like that.
There was so much value out of that, people were really tuned into it, they hadn’t heard a lot of these things before. And it opened up a lot of new thinking for people. And so I thought I, I think between what I experienced 40 plus years ago in that one workshop, and what I was seeing with this behavioral type workshop, like Myers Briggs, it wasn’t Myers Briggs, but it was like a Myers Briggs. And it resonating, so I thought that that would be something to offer people.
So I did a couple of them outside of out of work, and they were okay. But I always felt there was something missing. And I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I did a search. And like so many others have came across Michael Neill’s work. I came across a YouTube video, Why Aren’t We Awesomer? And I thought, What a great question.
Because given what we have available to us, particularly now with the internet, why aren’t we doing better? We’ve got these treatment plans. We’ve got this going for us. We got libraries full of self-help books. How is it possible that, according to all the stats that everybody’s presenting, we’re doing worse than we were before? It makes no sense. So I really I started to really listen deeply to what he was saying. And I had to look at it a couple of times.
Two things caught my attention. The first thing was, it was resonating. The second thing was the slides that he was using was matching up some of my slides that I was putting together already for a workshop. Because it was about perspective. It was about how we were creating things like that. And I thought, okay, there’s got to be more. And then of course, he started to drop hints about certain people. And I had to go and investigate who these people were.
So I got more into Michael Neill’s work. And he talked about the Pranskys and Bill Pettit. And then he mentioned Sydney banks. And it’s like, and Sydney banks lived on Saltspring. And I lived on Saltspring in the 1970s for several years, and never knew about this guy.
Although a bit of an anecdotal story, I believe I actually met him on a ferry back and forth and actually had a conversation with him. Based on what I’ve been told from some of the elders, it sounds very much like a Syd thing to do.
He just casually walked up to me. I was I was in a suit, I was on my way to my new job as a banker, this is back in the 70s. And, and he just started casually talking to me like because I stuck out like a sore thumb. People on Saltspring don’t wear suits, at least very often. And so what were you up to? And I said, Well, I’m going to my new job. And then he says, Well, what’s worrying you the most about this new job? And I said, Well I’m curious about the people that I’m going to meet. And then he says, Well, what kind of people are you hanging around with now? Wonderful, I says, we’re, we get along together and yada, yada, yada. And he says, Well, I got a I got a feeling you’re going to find the same people on Saltspring.
Yeah, I didn’t know I was part of a Zen story at that particular moment. But it stuck with me because I went back to my wife that evening, and I said, the strangest thing ever happened to me out of the blue. This guy comes meet me on the Saltspring ferry. And it’s a small boat, right? And, and when it was all over, I turned my back. And then I looked back at him again, and he was gone. It was almost like he was an apparition like, just dropped in on me.
And, anyway, so I started to really get into The Missing Link. And it truly was the missing link. What I was kind of searching for was filling the gaps of what these workshops and how I felt I needed to contribute to not only the first responders, but to anybody that was more than willing to listen to me. I’ve never really looked back.
As I keep going deeper and keeping involving myself it’s interesting, because when you’re dealing with education, you’re looking for techniques. And I’ve got a whole library of techniques and how to do the presentation how to do this and agendas. And when I started to hang around the coaches and listening to other people in the community, I couldn’t hear anything about techniques. I heard this thing about intensives. But nobody would ever point to what the intensives were at. And so it was really strange to try and look for something that never really existed, but was hinted to and then later have a have a sort of an enlightening discovery about them.
What we’re pointing to when it comes to the three principles. It was really changing. And at that point, I saw a real big shift in in everything that I was doing in how I was approaching the subject, how I was engaging others in a conversation. Like everything shifted, everything shifted. Yeah, it was quite remarkable.
Alexandra: Up until that point, I imagine you had been training other paramedics with a lot of techniques to, among other things, deal with trauma and PTSD. Is that true?
Rick: When I first got into it as a paramedic, we had labeled it more like burn-out. That was our terms that were picked up from previous wars. Paramedicine is actually was first started in the Vietnam War. Where they had medics in the field that would go and treat people before it used to be it was a scooping run kind of a thing. And then it discovered that people actually had a more of a survival rate, if somebody could do something immediately, and then take them to the hospital. The concept of what we term as a stay-in-play scenario is actually relatively new. A lot of things are done through protocol. So when you see something, this is what you do kind of thing. So you run a you run a script. Because at that point, that’s the best knowledge that you have of what works.
If anybody’s ever taken CPR or Heimlich maneuvers and things like that, those are all relatively new concepts. And they were developed through theories and ideas that people had, because other things weren’t working. Now, the way we did CPR 30 years ago is not the same way. Again, new information is always involved, right. But it’s still kind of protocol driven.
What I point back to people in what they’re experiencing right now is that the shift happens when new information comes in. So it’s like, yes, at our level of understanding, that’s the best we did. While we probably harmed a lot of people that well, maybe we did. But at that moment, that was the best we knew what to do. And we just did it. Today, we can look back at it and say we might have done a little bit more harm than then then good. But again, that’s in the past, we have new information.
I think our responsibility is to when we have new information is to look at that information from an objective point of view, and say, Okay, what if, and let’s explore. And medicine is an interesting field, especially when you’re trying to bring in actually an old paradigm, because the original paradigms before psychology took over was very much thought based. It was like looking towards like, why are we thinking and now, it’s become more behavioral based. So we were systematically treating as opposed to getting up to the source.
In medicine, they’re very stubborn, for a really kind of a good reasonable reason, I would say, because the Hippocratic Oath says, First do no harm. And the fear of doing harm, I think, weighs in, when it comes into introducing new modalities, new procedures, and that’s why they research everything so well. They want to make sure that we’ve got it right. Even though their forefathers didn’t worry about that too much. They’re like, well, I guess that didn’t work. Next time, we’ll keep the leg on and see what happens.
Alexandra: Given the way that medicine is slow to adapt things, what has been the response to your bringing this new / old paradigm to paramedics?
Rick: It’s mixed, because it’s interesting the work of Roger Mills was one of the original pioneers with pot with or was taught through Syd Banks and things like that. And, in one of his books, I was reading he was talking about when a schizophrenic is having an event, and they’re wrapped up in their reality of their thinking, it doesn’t matter what you say. Doesn’t matter what you say. And I find that very similar, right? Not that they’re all everybody’s schizophrenic, although, sort of said, we are all caught in our own schizophrenia.
We do get caught in our reality. And we believe it’s true, and we will respond according to that truth. So it’s really, and when you’re wrapped in it, particularly with medicine, thinking that everything I’m doing I believe I’m doing it for all the right reasons, and you absolutely are doing it for all the right reasons. To have something so simple being presented to you, which points you in 180 degree different direction is sometimes very, very hard to, to accept. I could understand how Syd felt when he was presenting to psychologists and people like that, particularly a person that wasn’t in the field. It’s one thing for somebody to be in the field and come up with it or a new discovery, saying, well, and that’s how Freud did it. Freud came up with it but I have a new discovery, I got this new theory. It’s called the three egos you know, not the Three Amigos the three egos. And you know, and everybody kind of bought into it.
First thing, though, is that if you were to objectively look at what’s going on right now, you’d notice that, like, there’s 150 ways of treating depression, there’s all these modalities. The DCM manual keeps growing as we start to fragment. At one time there was trauma, then there was post traumatic stress. And then there was post traumatic stress disorder. And now, now there’s a complex post traumatic so they were fragmenting and that was the one thing that Dr. Mills was really worried about was that we would continue to, because we weren’t getting definitive treatments, or people getting well soon enough, that we would specialize things more and more and more thinking that if we were to dissect it more, we would get better answers, we’d find it and yet, we keep moving ourselves more away from the source than we are going towards the source
Alexandra: Going downstream, instead of going up.
Rick: Go upstream and figure out why people are jumping off the bridge in the first place. You see that in our drug addictions and what’s happening on the East Side [of Vancouver]. You can bring people out of the water, save them from drowning for just for so long before you just get exhausted. But now, from our from a personal point, like getting to an individual, I’m finding that any paramedic that has been willing to sit and remove the judgment that you’re looking at it from an objective point of view, I’ve noticed this remarkable shifts, is the biggest one.
It’s so apropos that that your podcast is called Unbroken. I came up a couple of years ago with this idea of The Unbroken Hero, because that’s been the biggest significant impact on any first responder who is hurt it is they’re not broken. I’ve had paramedics come to me because and say, nobody has ever told me that. Nobody is ever said, I’m broken. As matter of fact, I am broken, and I’ll never get fixed. And like things like that. And it breaks my heart. Because that’s not true.
But when you’re wrapped up in that reality, you can’t see it. And when you’re really living that reality, and when I say wrapped up in that reality, you are always acting at the level of your belief. So if that’s what you believe to be true, you’re naturally going to act that way, you’re going to naturally act unbroken, you will do things under the guise of I’m going to have to somehow manage with my pain or manage with my illness. And learn about the struggles and do you know, like, all the different things that they have to do. And it’s as sad as it is. It turns out that suicide is the only option based on that level of understanding.
If I am so broken, and I have to learn to live with it, whatever it is. I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t get put on this earth to have that. And it becomes truer and truer that that’s your whole world. What else would you do? It sounds unreasonable. In some ways, it’s a reasonable thing to do. And it’s interesting that the in Canada we have MAID. Medical Assistance In Dying. People who are in good frame of mind, who happen to have a disability in the sense of a terminal cancer and from all indications they’re probably going to have a very uncomfortable ending, and they have some kind of sanity, for lack of better descriptions and words, that they choose to have a more meaningful death, where they can celebrate it with friends and family and things like that. I really get that, I really get that part.
And then it sort of expanded its criteria to look at disabilities, like physical disabilities. And this is just some something recent that I’ve discovered that I think over the last year or two years they’ve included so if you’ve got something that is diminished your quality of life from a physical disability side, and, again you’re deemed sort of rational that you could ask request for a medically assisted death. As I was researching some of this, because what ended up happening, it was just recently, and now they’ve stopped for more research. They wanted to include mental illness, as part of the criteria.
From everything that I’ve been able to get my hands on and research, both from the Principles side of the equation and others, is that the community is split. There’s nothing definitive when it comes to, like, we can’t even agree on which what is the correct treatment for. We have treatment guidelines when it comes to producing drugs and giving people things like that. But when you look at all the different modalities that are out there and everybody’s saying that they have the answer. But nobody’s has the answer in the sense of a consistent result, right? It’s not like two plus two equals four in the psycho, C world. And we, they would love it, we would all love that. Right?
So I’ve been writing a lot of letters to my member of parliament, and both the opposition and who’s in power now explaining that this is too much of a slippery slope. First of all, if we agree to include it in this type of service, what are we saying about the psychology field? What are we saying about mental illness? Are we saying that mental illness can’t be cured? Thosse are curious questions I’m asking.
But in my experience, we’re not broken. Our thinking system works quite well, as a matter of fact, maybe too well. You see it for what it is when you see it and, and I just use my life as an example, because how can I go through something that everybody else can’t seem to go through? My partner will have a different experience to me.
I know you live out in the Tofino area. I don’t know if you remember several years back, there was a tragic ambulance accident at Kennedy Lake. Both were to my crew members. And it was probably the most intensive three weeks that I’ve ever spent. I spent three weeks in Tofino, not only through the recovery, through the investigation, through putting the ceremony together, and laying them to rest was on my shoulders.
And even though I had not had a formal Three Principles understanding at that point, I knew enough of when I was getting stressful, and I knew enough to understand my feelings, and how they were creating a situation that if I kept holding on to that paintbrush, that’s how things were going to get painted in a suit says like our thoughts are the paintbrush, and that’s why it was so missing link because every time everything I heard, I go yes, I’ve experienced it. Yes, I know that I see that. And when my team, all said at the end, like it was a they said, because I was calm that you know, that calming force.
But just having that context of knowing that, if we can keep it at this level, we could do a whole lot better. And there were so many tough decisions to make, that if I had gotten into my head, there would have been a lot more struggle involved in it. And there’s so much wisdom and guidance in and we talk about that in the impairment and then in ambulance calls. Like we talked about being in the flow of a call, we teach people not to rush into scenes, not to get involved in the anxiety of the scenes. So intuitively, we’ve been teaching this for a long time. We just didn’t do the connection between the post traumatic stress and the mental illness in the in the unrest that was happening afterwards, as being part of the same equation, we just kept pointing towards the when you’re in a flow state, you’re going to perfect balance between what you know what to do in the right timing and things like that.
Alexandra: You touched on the Unbroken Hero Project. Can you tell us a bit more about what that and what it entails?
Rick: I was in a Three Principles workshop that was being conducted in London, live on stream. And I started to listen to the testimonials of people that were taking the Principles, the understanding into prisons, and youth, organizations and things like that. And something struck me and I came up with this Unbroken Hero idea.
It just made sense because I know there’s a lot of connotations around being a hero has been in the first responder field is very lot of culture. We’re still living the macho man type of reality, although there’s a lot of females in the in the field and they’ve been bought in there. I did a podcast on this one time around, like the females coming in, are taking on that same mindset, that they have to be mentally tough, they have to be the tough ones now, and forget about their feminine side kind of thing. And the guys are going well, I don’t want anything to do with my feminine side and forgetting that we’re all just this one bundle of energy and experiences.
So they’re trapped in the macho game, they have to prove themselves, which is even more extra thinking and more extra thought added on to the whole layer of things. So not only are they being judged constantly on every call and everything that they do, and they know that right, so I you know, hats off to any female that wants to get into the service. Because, yeah, unfortunately, it’s getting better as, but there’s still a long ways to go. But it’s all layers of thinking, it’s all layers of thought. And that’s what’s getting in the way of doing good calls.
When we’ve often know that we often say things like, you can’t take the last call you did into the next call. I never told them why. It’s intuitively but, but it just goes to you won’t perform better. You have to treat every call fresh and new. Regardless if this is the 10th call you’ve done today. And so, it’s interesting, there’s so much of the and I’ll just label it as principles, but because the principle is universal, but when you when you have that understanding and you have that bit of a lens, you start to see the evidence of how the principles work, everywhere, we’re just not calling it that. We’re just not pointing people to that.
And yet, the more we point people to those things that particularly the responders, like you’re you already understand what flow means, you already understand not taking past thinking, we don’t call it we say your past call into a call you, we’ve got all that in place, we just haven’t bundled it properly. So that’s kind of what I’ve been doing is kind of bundling the experiences of being first responder. I’ve also got firefighting experience. I spent a lot of years in the streets, lot of it downtown Vancouver, very busy call volume. Did I have tough days? Were there days where I was totally exhausted at the end? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. But here I am today, and there’s a reason for that. That’s not because I’m special, it’s just that I have a little bit of information, a little bit of an understanding, for level of consciousness as to what’s going on. And that’s all it takes. It doesn’t take a big leap. It really is dropping, and getting curious, letting go of what you think can be true. And just be curious about? Well, maybe, maybe there is something different.
Alexandra: How do you bring this to paramedics and other organizations?
Rick: I have less of a strategy than I had at the beginning. Because at first I thought, Okay, I’ve got to get into the academy, because I see the benefits of and I still do, I absolutely still do. There’s no doubt about it. Because what we’re teaching people nowadays, and from what I’m hearing is, it’s not if you’re going to have post traumatic stress, it’s when and if we’re starting to teach people to be in that mindset, you’re going to be the creator of your future. And that if that’s kind of what you’re being taught, then it’s no question that you’re, we’re seeing a rise of it.
And to get that understanding that it’s not the work that’s causing your stress, it’s the thinking about the work that’s causing your stress. I had this great little metaphor I was sharing with a client a couple of days ago. I just happened to be looking at a at a napkin holder. And the napkin holder was the kind that had a bit of a weight on the on the top. So there’s little roller on top and a bunch of napkins that are holding the roller up. I said it’s like this napkin holder. The napkin is the layer of thinking that you have about the situation. And I said, What happens when you take that thinking away, and I physically took it away and the roller dropped to the bottom.
What do you think happens with that? And he says, Well, the problem kind of goes away. And I said, absolutely. Because the only thing that’s holding that problem in place is the layer of thinking, the layer of thought that’s there. When we identify ourselves with that layer of napkins, as being our reality, we forget the fact that we are the napkin holder are the ones that are holding the napkin in place. So it was funny; a light went right on just like that.
That’s how simple it is. It’s is a simple concept. But we’ve got so much of these complexities and paradigms that say treatment has to be complicated. Things like I was talking today like, we have to have the struggle before we can have the happiness, like who bought into that? But innocently. Somebody that’s how life looks like. And then we sort of say, You know what? I have struggle, I can see that Yeah, okay.
Istill continue to attract and take every opportunity I can to speak to groups and organizations speak to individuals that reach out to me. And if anybody comes across on my radar, I just automatically reach out. So I’ve been doing it more from an organic type of seeing what comes and then responding accordingly, with not a lot of, sort of, well, I must have must do kind of thing. And my intention is to continue to do it that way. And as people start to have their turnaround, they’re telling other people and, and part of me goes, it’s not fast enough. But it is what it is.
Alexandra: So you work with first responders individually, like coaching?
Rick: Primarily, the bulk of my work is one on one. I have been putting on various workshops, usually at the beginning of the year. And there’s a few things I’ve got on, like, just some thoughts that I’ve put down just as place card holders kind of that I feel in the moment. I’m looking for some more nudges in direction on that, I believe.
I started a men’s group that was worked out pretty good for a while, and then it kind of went away. And that was an interesting experience to, again, not having any agendas, other than just to bring people together to talk about their shared experiences. I find that most helpful because I think what’s lacking is their voice. Like for them to be heard more of the silence has to be broken, there has to be avenues for them to speak, speak more.
And we’re also discovering, within the organization, that maybe the deep briefings are not being as helpful as we thought we were there were first because there was this paradigm was if we relive the experience went over it. Yeah get get it out, get it out, it would be helpful. I’ve had paramedics come to me going I don’t like this treatment plan on going through, they’re asking me to relive everything over again, over again and over again. Until I become numb to it. And I’m not having a good enough experience.
I said, Well, you do have every right to pick something else. There’s enough of them out there. And that’s the other thing being an agency that’s funded by the taxpayers you hear in the province is that everything has to be bid out. So if you’re if they’re looking for a type of program, then it has to come from the bidder, right. So people present this is what I have to offer. This is the kind of things I do so. One size does not fit all and we know that they know that.
But paramedics and other first responders are kind of stuck with what the agency has bought. And it’s through their medical doctor that sometimes they can get other treatment plans and get that changed and workman’s compensation seems to be more lenient about well you have to at least try this. And then you get 10 visits and after 10 visits, if nothing works, we’ll revisit it again you know, kind of thing. And there’s so many limitations on upon it like things like you only get 10 visits. If you’re not cured in 10, then what are we going to do kind of a thing, one year to be on this program, and after the year, you’re on your own all those different things like and then, and then we have to throw in this mix.
Well, if you’re not going to get well anyways, here’s another option, you can ask for a medically induced death. I go, Oh, man, it’s so sad. We can do better. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not going to pretend I know the answers. I’m not going to pretend. But I certainly can point people to an area where their common sense kicks in. And you can see it for yourself. And that’s where I am right now. So in the beginning, it was more like a teaching and educating. Because that’s my path. That was my normal path. Now, it’s more just pointing and supporting.
Alexandra: Lovely. We’re almost coming to the end of our time together.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share today?
Rick: We’ve covered the good basics. If that’s the one message to really understand and explore the idea, let’s just explore the idea that you’re not broken. And start from there.
Alexandra: Nice. Lovely.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Rick: Google me. I’m everywhere. You’ll find all sorts of great things and, and maybe not so great things. I have the Unbroken Hero Project website. I’m on Instagram. I’ve decided to rebrand myself just as regroup and thought it’s much easier that way.
Yes, I worked with first responders. But I also work with all sorts of different people from all different walks. I recently had some great conversations with some teenagers. I just love being in this conversation, not from a correcting or a healing point of view. I just love having in this being in the conversation, and then you hear what you want to hear. And we’ll go from there.
Alexandra: Thank you so much for being with me here today and talking about your work. I really appreciate it.
Q&A 24 – Being Present With Ourselves
Jul 31, 2023
What happens when we try to be present with ourselves, including uncomfortable feelings or experiences we have? Is there a way to be with ourselves the same way a good listener is: without judging the experience or tying to change it?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode number 24 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today I wanted to talk about the power of presence.
I was listening, as I mentioned, I think on the previous episode Q&A Episode number 23, I was listening to a conversation with Dr. Bill Pettit the other day. One of the things he mentioned that has really stuck with me and I’ve been contemplating ever since, is presence. Being present, both with ourselves and with other people. And it’s something that I try to practice quite often.
I’ve been challenged with a lot of feelings of urgency in my life and tend to feel quite sped up. And that really comes about, I noticed, with myself in conversations with other people. I tend to sort of step on their heels when somebody hasn’t quite finished saying what they need to say, I try to jump in and can be a little more focused on what I have to say, rather than what the other person is saying.
And yet, when I’m recording a podcast interview and when I’m working with coaching clients, one of my favorite things to do, is to really drop in to that space of presence. I’m trying also to practice that in all other areas of my life as well. I’ve had some success, and sometimes not, but that’s okay. I’m learning. So when Dr. Pettit brought this subject up about presence the other day, somehow it occurred to me that it might be useful to be present with the depression that I have had been experiencing, or was experiencing at that time. Luckily, it’s resolved itself for the moment.
I want to share what I experimented with, with you, with the aim of always of pointing you back towards your innate well-being and easing your suffering.
So this is an exercise I think we could do with anything that’s going on, we can practice it with other people, but with ourselves, what I’m practicing is being very present with whatever’s going on with me in the moment, and so I’ll explain that now.
Here’s where we can begin: imagine that you have a friend who and maybe you do have a friend like this, who when you’re sharing something, that’s a challenge for you – maybe you’re upset about something or something upsetting is happened, that kind of thing – I want you to imagine the type of person who is able to just sit with you while you share what’s going on, and what that feels like for you.
Now our culture tends to be so focused on fixing things and making our experiences go away that this kind of presence can be a bit rare. So if you don’t have anybody in your life like that, I want you to imagine someone imaginary who could do that with you, who could just sit with you, and be very present to whatever it is you need to share or need to say. And it could be a fictional character. I was thinking of someone like Mary Poppins or someone like that. It could be a character from a film who you found very sympathetic. A character from a book, anyone like that, who you just imagine, has the ability to be very present with you when you’re sharing something that’s a challenge for you.
I’d love for you just for a minute to sit in what that feels like.
I know that for me when I’ve been with someone who listens who can be present with me in that way, it’s such it’s such a good feeling. For me, there’s just nothing else like it. And the person is not being with me and listening in order to change me, or in order to argue with what I have to say, or in order to point out where I’m wrong, or try to help try to change my mind about whatever it is I’m experiencing. They’re just there with me in it.
That lack of expectation for change or resolution even to whatever the issue is, is such a peaceful, beautiful place to be. So if you can feel that in your body for a moment, what that feels like. Whenever I drop into that space, I feel my shoulders drop down, and my solar plexus unclenches, a little bit. I love the feeling, it just feels really great.
So now, this is the second part of this little exercise. If you’re struggling with something, so if you’re struggling with an overeating habit, and the cravings that come along with that, or if you’re struggling with a low mood or depression, like I have been recently, I invite you to take a moment today, even just two or three moments, and be present with that feeling in the same sort of way, without having to change it.
Let’s talk about let’s say it’s a craving.
Being there with that feeling, without having to change it without having to make it go away without having to fix it without feeling like it’s a part of you, that’s a problem that needs a solution. Just being there with that feeling dropping into a real presence with the feeling.
And really, that’s it. I’m not looking for any outcome. When you do this little exercise, I’m not saying that things will shift or change for you at all. But I think what I’ve noticed is that in so much of life, we, especially those of us who are seekers, and who are trying to improve ourselves and learn more about ourselves, and maybe yes, fix some challenges that we have in our lives, like an over eating habit, we can and I know I should speak for myself, personally, I can spend so much time trying to change myself, trying to change these things about myself, and make them go away.
So there’s this resistance going on inside me, in my experience, all that almost all the time. And that’s what I’ve been noticing. That’s what brought me to think well, what if I was just present with this feeling without any expectation of, like I said, making it go away, or fixing it or changing it or understanding more about it? What if I really tried to let all those expectations drop away.
Again, like I say, you don’t have to do this for an hour or anything. But just for a couple of minutes.
See what it feels like to be completely present with, with that feeling that’s challenging you in the moment.
I was just going to tell you what that experience has been like for me, but you know what? I would love to hear if you give this a try, what that experience is like for you. What happens when you drop into that space of presence with a feeling or with an experience?
If you’d like to share, you can do that you can email me support (at) AlexandraAmor.com. Or if you go to the corresponding blog post for this podcast episode, you can submit a comment there as well. So this is Q&A episode 24. And you’ll find the list of episodes at unbrokenpodcast.com. Then if you click on Q&A number 24 that will take you to the page where you can leave a comment.
I look forward to hearing from you and I hope this little exercise maybe brings you some peace. Maybe you discover something interesting about yourself or about a feeling or an experience that you’ve been having.
Until next time, please take care. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
The Truth of Who You Are with Fiona Jacob
Jul 20, 2023
On this episode of Unbroken, Fiona Jacob and I talk about my favorite subject: the field of possibility that is within all of us. That connection we all have to infinite universal intelligence, peace and well-being.
Fiona shares about her journey to coming to understand and trust this intelligence, and also what she does when she happens to fall out of the awareness of it.
[Programming note: There will be no episodes of Unbroken next week (July 24 and 27) while I take a quick summer break. Back to twice-weekly episodes again starting on Monday, July 31, 2023.]
Fiona Jacob’s greatest passion is to take an uncompromising stand for people’s greatness, waking people up to who they really are, no matter what they are up against in life right now or what has happened in our past. She facilitates explorations with Leaders, Coaches and Healthcare Professionals to create insight and transformation, unlock their greatness, access their innate, limitless potential and help them show up fully to the world as their truest self in every moment.
Her educational background includes an MBA, a Masters in Coaching & Behaviour Change, Certified Master Transformative Coach and a Certificate in Professional Supervision. She is also an RGN with 20 years’ experience as a Nurse Director in hospitals internationally.
You can find Fiona Jacob at FionaJacob.com and on LinkedIn.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
Being held hostage in Iraq in 1990
Experiencing profound peace during that harrowing experience
Waking people up to their own innate greatness
The value of ‘soul listening’
On the ‘magic’ of connecting to the alive, creative essence in all of us
Fiona: Thank you. It is an honor to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Alexandra: Oh, you’re so welcome. I’m so excited to be speaking to you today. So why don’t you give us a little background?
Tell us tell us about yourself and how you came across the Three Principles.
Fiona: Sure. Well, I’m a 50, something on my mind. I am from Ireland, as you can probably hear in the accent. I have lived all around the world, including the Middle East for 25 years. My background is nursing. But what I have done and what I’d love to do is lead transformational change in organizations, which I’ve probably done for about 15 years of my 25 years as a director.
I’m also a very quiet academic. I’ve done a couple of masters in the background just to kind of keep things ticking over. But don’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.
And how did I find the principles? Great question. So I did not find the principles, the principles found me. And I’ll explain because I think it’s important, I think many listeners will have maybe not the same experience, but they’ll have had experiences in their life where they’ve experienced something that comes from nothing in the moment that has really, really helped.
When I was 25 years of age, I was a very young nurse, I worked in the operating room, and myself and my best friend went to Iraq, as you do. There was a beautiful Irish hospital there that was really helping the local population with complex disease management. And so we went there on a contract for a year. It was in EU 1990. I loved Iraq; it was a beautiful, and I’m sure it still remains a beautiful country today. But halfway into our term, it was about August, when we woke up one morning to find out that we were not able to leave the country. It took maybe seven to 10 days, but after a short period of intervening time, we suddenly woke up to find that we were hostages. Interesting.
Now, I panicked. Everybody around me panicked. We were initially 20,000 people in the whole of Baghdad that were hostages. There were some Irish, some English, some Americans and Canadians and Swiss, but also a lot of Indians, a lot of Filipinos and so forth. And so we were a large group for a very short period of time, maybe three to four weeks.
I was just so crazy in my head. I was like, I’m going to die. My life is over. I’m never going to see my parents again. I’m never going to see my boyfriend again. All of these thoughts came to my mind and it was like, wow, I’m only 25 and my life is over. And over this period of time, as the number of hostages shrunk, became I think 150 in month two, a lot of people had gotten out. So there’s a little bit of hope there that we might get out but not a lot. Saddam Hussein had taken over Kuwait, if you remember the times, and the world was coming out war, we were coming after him.
It was an unusually warm November, I remember that. And I remember having access to a swimming pool that was in my complex, let’s call it my complex because I’m really strange. You’re a hostage and you have access to a swimming pool. But we were working and one of our physician staff had a had a swimming pool. And I remember just doing backstroke, Alexandra, and looking up at the sky was dark, and it was like the stars were hanging like fairy lights on the Christmas tree. I mean it was stunning. It’s beautiful. This navy, black sky and these beautiful twinkly stars. I was doing backstroke and I had this experience of profound peace just from nowhere, not invited even it just showed up inside of me this quiet.
I knew I just knew in that moment that I was going to be okay. I didn’t know if I’d be physically harmed or but just this sense of peace of quiet and okayness was so profound. So when I say that the principles found me, I think this is the first experience where I really woke up to my human life. There is something other than my crazy thinking. There’s something that can show up any human being, even in the most complex, most dangerous, most horrendous of situations. And we can have that experience of peace of quiet of calm of ease, and okayness.
In the intervening three, four months that we had left as hostages weren’t easy. So it wasn’t like being the whole world was put to rights. I was sexually assaulted in Iraq. I was held at gunpoint for 16 hours. So many things kind of happened. People shot in front of me. It was a lot to take for 25 year old nurse who was doing a missionary mission, if you know what I mean, in that sense, going out to help others. But that sense of okayness never left, even in the midst of all of that.
And my abiding memory of leaving Iraq was heartbreak, because I knew I would never see some of the people that I have met who had been so supportive, so loving and kind. And these were the Iraqi people, I did not know if I would just leave and never see these people again. So I had a great love and affection for the country. I still do.
The principles came to me and woke me up.
Alexandra: Wow, what a great story. Thank you so much for sharing that. I have some follow up questions then.
Sometimes when people have an experience like that, they then go searching for what it means or the source of it. Did you experience that?
Fiona: I’m going to have to be very honest here and say that I had this wonderful experience, I got in touch with something deep inside of me. And then very arrogantly made that about me.
When I got home, after the four and a half months, five months, almost being a hostage, I was oh, look at me, aren’t I great? I went into an ego ride for a while. So I will be honest. And I’d be honest, because the universe never lets go of wanting us to see the truth. I got another two very, very loud knocks from the universe to the back of my head at two different times that went no, Fiona, you might pretend that you’re courageous. And you might pretend that you know this peace of mind and grace and ease was all you but hey, it’s not. So I had a couple of other opportunities to practice.
The last one of which really woke me up to ah, there is no way that this little ego person that I am, could have in any way either created the scenario or allowed me escape from the scenario and keep my mental health and well being through the scenario. It was just not possible. And I really woke up to oh my god, there is something beyond me there is an intelligence bigger than me.
All I knew at that point was that I wanted to coach and I had two three different programs on my horizon. One of them was a master’s in coaching, which is actually what I have done. I’ve done a master’s in coaching. But sitting at the bar in a University in England, fellow student came to me and said, Hey, have you heard this guy called Michael Neill? I went, nope. And he said, I would give up my master’s program today to join his academy if I could, but I can’t. I went, Oh, okay. That’s interesting.
So I went back to my room, I Googled Michael. I listened to a couple of his podcasts. At that time, he was actually doing radio shows if I remember, and I signed up the following day for the academy, and that’s how I find my way.
Now, you could say again, how is it that you’re sitting in a bar with a person who is informing you that they want to do this and suddenly you’re the one in the room with Michael. I love that the universe is so serendipitous that it kind of brings us little nudges to help us find, because say the truth of who we are or the intelligence that flows or the energy that flows through us in the moment.
Alexandra: Serendipity. I love that you use that word.
Fiona: I’ve had so much of it in my life, but I put it down to good luck, or, yeah, we can put it down to religion or good luck. You know what I mean, we kind of we make excuses, we come up with a logical reason that I met this person on this day, or I was there when that happened. So I was able to prevent it from getting worse. So a whole have that we have logical explanations for.
I love the fact that there is a bigger grace that we lean into, that we can trust that we can play with, that we can rely on moment-to-moment that’s got us in its sights and is on our side. And can help us navigate our life with so much more ease and grace and allow us to thrive.
Alexandra: When you began investigating Michael, it must have connected with the experiences you’d had of your own.
Fiona: Well, it’s actually going to sound a weird story. I did the first SuperCoach Academy that Michael ever held back in 2010. In those days, he had a beautiful lineup of speakers, there was less of Michael and more of these internationally renowned speakers and influencers, cultures. I walked into the room, there were 50 was beautiful souls. And the first guy who was starting that day is a guy called Bill Cumming. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Bill, but Bill is a beautiful, beautiful soul.
He was wearing denim overalls, a kind of a wrinkly jacket. He had a scraggly beard. And he looked like the farmer had just hopped off the tractor. So no judgment going on him. I thought, “What am I going to learn from this guy.” And by the first break I had found my way back to my okayness.
First where he spoke from how he shared was from a place that I knew of. But I spent so little time there. I spent so little time there. But my body felt the truth of how he shared and all he shared was filling your perfect whole and complete. Not needing fixing. You always have and you always will be. And I remember dissolving into tears and probably crying for an hour and a half. Because I never knew that was true. And even though I had the experience of I’m okay, that had felt at the time.
It had felt at the time that there was a safety net that caught me. But the feeling whole had never occurred to me that I could be or I was or anybody could be. Maybe those good-looking people over there were. There were certainly maybe classes of people or categories of people that look whole. But I didn’t think that apply to me, that I could stop fixing. I could stop judging.
And then Michael took it to of course new levels by just sharing what we share about how human beings work and really what we’ve got going for us as human beings, this deep connection to life, the real time responsive intelligence that infuses our aliveness moment-to-moment, our creative potential moment-to-moment. Our joy our experience of unconditional love, deep impact others and of life. It’s built in. But I took the glass elevator 160 floors very fast. I kind of landed on a soft cushion or something.
Alexandra: That’s amazing.
Connected to that, on your website, I noticed you say one of your favorite things to do is stand up for people’s greatness. What does that mean to you?
Fiona: I think it ties back into the whole, perfect and complete and we are just so amazing when we get out of our own heads. You just don’t do it very often. Me too, by the way, and I can attest to that.
And greatness is not our kind of personal ego greatness. Our greatness is this impersonal nature that we have to live in purpose, to live on purpose. To live from this creative potential that we are that’s infinite, and boundless and filled with everything that will allow us to thrive and grow. So when I see person playing small, when I see myself playing well, when I see my clients playing small, I want them to experience the greatness of being human being alive, being joy, being content, being a thriving person, filled with love, life, energy, delight, compassion.
All of it all of its available, I was going to say at our fingertips, but it’s even more than that. It’s infusing us every single moment of every single day. And I want to wake people up to that. So they see that for themselves. And they go out and do whatever it is they want to do, knowing that to be true for them. I don’t have a great plan for them, but in the sense of them waking up and touching that space. That possibility that infinite potential, it’s just so exciting to see what wakes up any human being and what they do with that when they feel more alive.
Alexandra: Spekaing of that, one, the place that I crossed your path was in Michael Neill’s SuperCoach, cafe. You do supervisory calls there. And the thing that struck me about the calls, where someone submits a coaching call that they’ve – just for our listeners – that they’ve done with a client, and then you listen to it, and then on the supervisory call, give them feedback about what they’ve done.
The thing that struck me was that I could feel as you did that, that energy of possibility, that space that you stepped into, and you invite the person you’re supervising to come into that space with you as well. I want to ask about that. Because it’s been such a unique experience for me.
When you step into that space, I feel everybody else on the call go there too. And it feels like magic.
Fiona: Sure. It can feel like magic but actually what we’re feeling is the truth of our being. When we’re living from the truth of our being anything’s possible and it’s our greatest way of being impactful. Because we can feel heart we can feel truth. We can feel clarity, we can feel wisdom, either in ourselves or other people.
The way that I describe it is, most of the time the people are in conversation, we’re listening. We’re listening to be right. We’re listening to judge, or we’re listening to see if we agree. Or we’re listening. So we’re kind of in a debate mode, like, Oh, I agree with this. So therefore, I will listen, or I disagree with this. So therefore, I won’t listen. And then you get your head full of thoughts about what you’re going to say when the person they were listening to shut up.
There is a listening, Alexandra, that’s I’m going to call it soul listening, because I don’t think I have any or the other words for today, might change tomorrow through different words. So when you’re listening to human being, whether they’re a coach, or whether you’re listening to be coached and you’re listening from that quiet, so space you get wisdom and insight about how to take something forward. Because that is our nature. So whether it’s a coaching client who’s stuck, or frustrated or suicidal or judgmental about themselves or others or whatever is going on, when we’re listening quietly from our soul we know where to go with that. Such that we can help the client see because we’re not in Fiona’s ego, as a coach.
If I’m coaching from my ego, I am the worst coach in the world. I ask the worst questions, you would never want to hire me. But if you touch into that space of you can call it divine guidance, wisdom, clarity, problem solving, creative solution, it’s not unique to me, every single human being has this, we all do. My job is to wake people up to it. But we all do. When we’re there share my wisdom and your wisdom we see new things together, we have insights together, you wake up to a way to solve the problem. Not because I’ve said anything, maybe but even just by hanging out in this space.
That’s one of the cool things about coaching this way. It’s like there’s not a lot of effort required. But you can’t fake this space either. It is either in you in that moment. And you’re either coming from clarity or we’re coming from our minds our own thought created experience. But you know the difference because one has impact and the other is just going bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.
My intention is to create impact in the world and wake the coach up to their greatness and help the coach find the greatness within their clients. And the best way I know how to do that is for me to be quiet, to listen, and let whatever wisdom speaks speak.
And back to the thing does that feel like magic? Yes, but it is who we are always in every moment. So you’re feeling it means that it’s alive, so alive in you that you recognize the experience and the impact that’s possible when we had in that space.
Alexandra: When you were in Michael’s Academy and learning to about the Three Principles and coaching in that way, was this something you stumbled upon? What did your learning curve look like for that?
Fiona: Well, I have to say I’m probably having the same insight every day of every year for the last 14 years would you believe me?
So first of all, I had the insight being held hostage in Iraq that I was okay. I talked myself out of that, of course. But I have that today. I have that insight again. So what comes to mind is what we need to see in the moment to help us navigate peacefully, insightfully through life. And then I have lots of other insights. So for me, I’m surprised and delighted. Because the learning curve is not so much I need to learn anything. I’m finding my way back to what is truth about who I am, how I work, what I’ve got going for me, what intelligence is available to me.
And my experience of that or my access to that or my moment-to-moment experience of that changes. And it changes and gets deeper and the fun is it like an accordion, sometimes I change it gets really deep, and then I guess Oh, a little bit. And then it gets even deeper. So it’s not what I experienced, I suppose is that I never lose what I have seen. Like really.
But it’s a cloudy day here today in Gothenburg. As sometimes it gets like a cloudy day in my mind that I miss that I’ve had the insight. And then I fall back into that space once more is like, ah I’m home. I’m home. And then I like any human being goes gets caught up in my head with whatever else is going on. And all that’s shifted for me is I just don’t trust crazy mind that I have that tells me my husband is this or my dog is that or my mother or whatever. Because we all have it.
We all have the supermarket lane is this and that person’s an idiot. And they’re driving like crazy or whatever. We all have the running commentary. I no longer trust it because I just know it’s not giving me any valid information. And that’s really cool when you don’t get caught up in that but let it Yeah, yeah. Yes. All right. Oh, here you are back again to tell me. I love to ignore my inner chatter.
Alexandra: At the beginning of learning about that space did you ever feel any resistance to it?
Sometimes when you’re coaching on the supervisory calls I almost feel a little frisson of fear about stepping into that space.
Fiona: Ah, interesting. There’s a brilliant question. The answer is yes. There’s a couple of things because I think for me at least, so I can’t speak for you, but for me, I can speak it puts me firmly in the unknown like two feet, all planted, going over the edge, what’s going to happen next? That’s kind of my thing right?
Now, if you were to follow my track, my life this is how bad things got. I used to go to an astrologer every six months and go what’s going to happen next? And when am I going to meet my husband and am I going to write books? So I could control my life. So is it going to be ABCDEFG? Yeah. I want to control I’m a control freak. Or I was. And the idea of not being in control terrified me.
But I heard somebody say this and I cannot remember who to quote on this. ‘This space unknown is simply everything that is known, but not by us.’ It is an infinite energy of life that supports stars and planets and trees growing and acorns and oak trees, all of that is an energy of life that infuses it’s an intelligence, bigger than film as purely a little ego intelligence. And I call myself and classify myself as decently intelligent, but oh my god, we are relying on the source that manages everything. And it has our back.
I can’t say tangibly, but it infuses us with life with energy with wisdom, with clarity, with creativity, with problem solving. It is a field of possibility. It is a field of love. It is a field of creation. It has the answers to the asked questions and the as yet to be asked questions. It’s the field of which every form of art has come from, every piece of music has been created from, every relationship that’s been created. It is all in everything. It’s just that we think we’re tipping over a cliff, and there’s nothing there. But the space is full. It is filled with intelligence. So yes, I was afraid until I wasn’t.
Alexandra: I can see that that would be frightening to our egos, to let go of that kind of control that they think they have.
Fiona: Well, the ego in my mind is a blade of grass in a football patch of grass, it’s one small piece, but it’s not everything. And it’s like it cannot see this expansiveness it has no possibility to see what’s possible, what is out there, this intelligence that we are in a way and looking in the wrong direction, just going, I’ve got to keep my job. It is working on that level I’ve got to keep my job. So you know, let’s play. Let’s play it as we’ve always played it, let’s do like we’ve always done.
But the deeper invitation is that the unknown has all the goodies. We get moment-to-moment insight that enables us to thrive to step out to make decisions to love to stop loving to create, to stop creating to build a business to stop all of it. We have this moment-to-moment insightful intelligence informing us moment-to-moment.
There is nothing unknown about that. I don’t think there’s something we can rely on in the moment. And that’s beautiful to wake up to.
Alexandra: When you find that you’ve maybe fallen out of that space, or that your mind is really busy, is there anything that you do to get back there? Or to touch in with it again?
Fiona: I think it’s a great question. I think the first thing for me is recognizing that I’m not in that space.
I tend to know that with a couple of things. One is the feeling. So for me, if I have an intense or urgent feeling then all my thinking is on the first place. And all that awareness simply is coming back to the present moment.
Somebody described as think might even be Michael, but it’s like, if you know you’re drunk, you’re not that drunk. If you know you’re lost and why you’re not that last one. Right? If you don’t know then you’re off to the races with your crazy thinking. Right? Me too. So the first thing is an awareness.
And the second thing is just once you recognize where you are what naturally happens is we fall back into that space of quiet. Because we’re back in the present moment. And when we’re not in the present moment, we’re in our thinking.
There’s only two places where ever are in life really. One is in our thinking last, usually. And living in the feeling of that and then the roller coaster of all of that emotion. They act with a judgment that are the frustration that whatever it is, or confusion, because they feel very different. So if you’re not home last, okay, good to know.
As we come back to the present we meet ourselves and present. And we tap into and access all of those beautiful intelligences, that and capacities that we are. So I won’t say that I don’t or do meditate, or I don’t take walks the dog or I do all the stuff that people do. I listen to music and dance around the kitchen, like a crazy person and all that. And I know where I am. And even if I’m lost in thought, I know that I am not concerned. This too shall pass.
Alexandra: Oh lovely. That’s so beautiful.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share before we wrap up?
Fiona: Hmm, great question. Let’s see what shows up.
Two words come to mind, which is really interesting, which is just ‘know thyself’. Sounds very good. But it’s know the truth of who you are because it’s awesome. It’s beautiful. It’s moving. It’s joyful. It’s filled with possibility. We all are it. It is an all of us. So the invitation is to anybody listening. Wake up to it. You’re already great.
Alexandra: Nice. Oh, thank you so much.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Fiona: I do have a website. Yes, I just don’t do a lot with a very often so you probably find me best on LinkedIn. It’s very interesting. I happen to get referrals all of the time. I very rarely use things like marketing or my website. So yes, let’s go to LinkedIn, you will find me there. Reach out say hi, send an InMail or a message and I’d be delighted to respond, explore. Have a conversation with anybody who gets in touch.
Alexandra: Great, awesome. Well, thank you so much again for being here with me today. Fiona. It’s been a delight.
Fiona: I have had that thrilling and beautiful climb being in your company. Thank you so very much.
We tend to think of our uncomfortable experiences in life – unwanted cravings, depression, anxiety, etc. – as problems. What if instead they are love letters from the innate wisdom and well-being that is within all of us? What if they are trying to get out attention and point us back toward that innate wholeness?
[Programming note: There will be no episodes of Unbroken next week (July 24 and 27) while I take a quick summer break. Back to twice-weekly episodes again starting on Monday, July 31, 2023.]
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
What is the real source of depression?
How are our food cravings and the drive to overeat wise?
What should we do when we experience unwanted feelings like this?
Hello Explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode number 23 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today I’ve called the episode Love Letters from Wisdom. I got that phrase from the lovely Dr. Bill Pettit. I was listening to an interview with him the other day while I was puttering around in the kitchen. He used that phrase about basically the things that happen within us – our feelings and our emotions and our thing experiences that we have – things like depression, and I’ll get into that more in a minute and talk about what I saw in that.
I can’t even remember actually what Dr. Pettit was talking about specifically, it might have been depression. In the moment when he uses that phrase ‘love letters from wisdom’. And when I had stopped listening to the interview, I wrote the phrase down and I realized that so much of what we experience in life is love letters from wisdom. And here’s why I say that.
I often talk about on this show – and in the course that I’ve designed about letting go of an unwanted over eating habit that you’ll find it freedomfromovereating.com – I often talk about how our cravings, cravings for a substance and what ends up becoming an unwanted habit, how those things are those feelings, that craving, that drive to overeat is not a problem.
This is one of the reasons why I say that.
What Dr. Pettit is talking about when he’s talking about love letters from wisdom, he’s referencing the idea that our design, our human design is perfect.
And it’s not working against us. When we have these experiences, like a craving or like an anger or an upset at a spouse or a friend, or a feeling of anxiety or something like depression, I’ve been experiencing some depression for the last couple of weeks. And one of the things that really helped me was to remember that there is wisdom in all of these things that we experience.
They are reminders that point us back toward our true nature toward our innate well-being and the peace that is that we are made of. So when we experience something – I’ll use the depression that I’ve been feeling the last couple of weeks as an as an example. I really chose to look at that as I was experiencing it and it wasn’t fun. I didn’t enjoy it. It wasn’t a good time. Certainly it was just not a lot of fun for me.
But at the same time, I knew that there had to be wisdom in that experience. And what that wisdom was pointing me toward was this idea that we are always entirely whole. The way that I tend to look at something like depression is that it’s almost letting me know that there is an insight to come about something in my life that I hadn’t seen up to that point. At least, that’s one of the experiences that I’ve had of depression.
The other one I’ve had is the one I’ve probably talked about on this show. The burnt out hairdryer metaphor that Michael Neill uses. When our minds are going so fast that we become without realizing it quite burnt out. Depression is a is a gift that’s getting us to slow down. And it’s letting us know that we’re overheated. That’s the metaphorical use of the example of the hairdryer. When you’re using a hairdryer, and it gets too hot, it’ll just shut off.
So when I’ve been experiencing this depression, for the last couple of weeks, I really tried to remind myself that that that depression was made of wisdom, and that it wasn’t something that I needed to fight against. And I think this is really the the key about that, what.
The key elements that I wanted to address today, when we have these love letters from wisdom, and we innocently push against them, fight against them, what we end up doing is denying ourselves the experience of learning or growing or seeing something in a new light.
For example, when it comes to cravings for food, when we simply try to wrestle those into submission, without seeing them for the wise messages that they are, then we miss the lesson that we are whole, and well. That lesson can eventually seep out, pervade our entire lives, all elements of our life. And I think it’s such a shame in our culture, that we’re generally unaware of, the way that our divine design works in this way that Sydney Banks pointed toward.
It is a shame, because there is when we lean into the things that are happening when we notice them, and respect them, and turn toward them, and sit with them in a very present kind of way. Sort of a mindful way. That’s when they can teach us and show us a greater understanding of our innate well-being and the, the profound piece that is our true nature.
Like I said a few minutes ago, when we fight against them, when we push them away and try to control them in the case of depression, I could have spent that last couple of weeks, beating myself up about being depressed or feeling like there was something wrong with me, that needed to be addressed.
Instead when we when we view these things as love letters from wisdom, as Dr. Pettit says, that’s when they have so much information for us. I’ll be the first to say it’s easy to forget to do that. It’s easy to fall into a place of fighting against these uncomfortable feelings or things that we’re not enjoying the experience of. And then it’s enough when we just if we periodically remember Oh, right. This isn’t this feeling that I’m having. It isn’t a punishment from the universe or something.
It does not mean that there’s anything broken about me. It’s actually my perfect design at work. And I love that.
I just want to sum up to by referring to this quote, I think it’s from Albert Einstein, who said,
There are two ways to look at life: one is though everything is a miracle, and the other as though nothing is miracle.
I feel like now my approach to life is like that quote, it’s just slightly different one:
“One way to look at life as though is as though these feelings that we have these things that we worry about that we feel are broken about ourselves are actually wisdom. And the other is to imagine that they’re not.”
What if the cravings that you might be having or the drive to overeat, what if that is actually wisdom? What if it’s not a problem, but it’s wisdom speaking to you from the greatest part of yourself?
So I’ll leave you there with that question. And I look forward to talking to you again on the 31st of July 2023.
Until then, please take care. And I will see you then. Bye.
The Wisdom in Unwanted Habits with Charli Wall
Jul 13, 2023
Charli Wall has experienced so much of what life has to offer and much of it hasn’t been easy. She’s dealt with chronic anxiety, stress, C-PTSD, dysfunctional eating, devastating, debilitating loss, and much more. Her experiences also included tremendous success with a health and fitness business.
Then in 2017 she discovered the Three Principles and began taking the Clarity Coach training course with Jamie Smart. This exploration led her back to herself, and to her innate health and well-being. It also led to helping others discover theirs.
Charli Wall is an Experienced Transformation Coach having coached and counselled for some 20+ years and is a qualified Three Principles coach. She helps women reconnect to their inner wisdom, and their body’s innate wisdom, to let go of the internal shackles that weigh them down, so that they can live in the full power of their deeper knowing.
Charli: Thank you, Alexandra. It’s lovely to be here.
Alexandra: Lovely to meet you and to have you on the show.
Why don’t you give us a little bit of background on yourself and how you came across the three principles.
Charli: It’s quite a lengthy story. So I’ll try and keep it brief.
My father had just died in 2016. And I’d been looking after him for some 20 odd years by that point. And so it’s pretty significant loss. And what I decided to do was, I had my own business, I was running a very successful fitness business in Cambridge, where I’d been looking after him, my son was 16 at the time. And I’ve just got really stuck in this grief that I was in because it wasn’t just about my dad. My brother had been in the same accident in 1993. And that killed my brother. And then I subsequently looked after my father.
When he died, it was like a big explosion for me in my life. So I decided to sell everything, my house and my business. And at that point, I was looking to become a life coach, I’d been doing a nutritional therapist qualification alongside running a business. But I just saw, no, I have got so many skills, I wanted to put them all under one umbrella as a life coach. So I was looking for courses. I came across a course called Clarity Coaching. I was being interviewed by lots of different coaching companies. I spoke to the person that was doing clarity coaching, had no idea about the principles at all.
I spoke to this person, and I thought, right, if I see a squirrel, I’m going to take that on, like this is how my mind was kind of working at that point. And so I walked into town, but not via any parks or anything. I walked into the shopping center in Cambridge, and there was this massive squirrel, a cardboard one. I was like, Oh, right. Okay, I’ll do that course then. And it just so happened to be a three principles coach training course.
I was so anxious back then, that when I started in September 2017, I couldn’t even have my video on Zoom. I was just sort of on Zoom, but just the little black square. And they were all so happy. I was like, ‘What is this?’. I couldn’t understand what they was talking about.
That was my initial how I got into the principles. And then I started working with Jamie Smart one to one. And then I was a mentor in the second year of clarity coach training. And then I had some significant life changing insights, which propelled my journey into uncovering our innate wellness and seeing that really, truly deeply for myself. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell.
Alexandra: I’m sure there’s a lot more detail in there. I have a million questions. One of the things you said say on your website is that when you sold everything you went traveling for a while.
Can you tell us a little bit about that? I’m just curious about what that looked like.
Charli: Well, it didn’t look like traveling, like people do when they go all over the place. I went to India for five weeks to study to become a yoga teacher. I literally sold my house sold my business. And then I was on a flight on the next day to India, still with chronic PTSD.
Back then, at that point, I was still suffering with very, very bad PTSD, chronic anxiety. And so if you’ve got chronic anxiety and PTSD, India is the worst place you could go to; it’s noisy and full of people. And anyway, so I went to India for five weeks. And then I came back and I then went to Corfu for three weeks because my son was over there. So I was kind of exploring Corfu for a bit and then I went to a place in Spain and I was rewilding for a week and I was just I was with a guide. I do I run my retreats with him now actually in Spain, but I went there and he was teaching me about the land and the animals.
It was silent, but utterly beautiful, profound experience for me in my life. At that point again, I’m still sort of chronically anxious. But there was something that stripped everything back about that week. And then I went to Crete for three weeks now, that’s not really traveling for me, because I have a villa over there. But I did explore different parts of Crete. I was just on my own, apart from being in India, I was just literally on my own. So it wasn’t really traveling. But it was more like I was, I needed a rest.
I needed a deep rest from the trauma of the past from the age of 21 to 44, it was very traumatic was a lot going on. I was running a business looking out for my son looking after my dad. I just needed some time, but I didn’t really know that. That’s what I wanted. So it was after that, that I joined clarity coach training. So traveling sounds very, you know, exotic, and like I’m moving about I didn’t really move about I stayed still but in apart from the yoga, which obviously I didn’t test it at all. But Corfu, Spain, in Crete, I was still and I was on my own.
I just couldn’t, at that point really even think about talking to anyone; it was quite extraordinary. And then I came back and just happened to land in a place in England called Norfolk. And ex client said she had a house that I could rent, which was another kind of weird synchronicity. And I isolated myself in Norfolk for a good few months before I started to come out of this dark night of the soul. So yeah, I wouldn’t I don’t know if I call it traveling, and maybe I need to change it on my website. But I think it was just, I couldn’t be at home and I didn’t have a home anymore. And I didn’t know where to go what to do.
Alexandra: You mentioned both anxiety and PTSD there.
When did you begin to see those things as something different than you had seen them previously?
Charli: I started the training in September. And it wasn’t until February of 2019 that I had my first insight around anxiety. I was walking my dog. And, as I said, I’d been working one to one with Jamie and I’d been doing the coach training and I was really studying it, making notes and studying and trying to understand it. And all of a sudden, I was walking along and I just got this new thought is very difficult to articulate, isn’t it?, when you have an insight to someone else, but I literally got this new thought.
The new thought said, You’ve been doing all of those things because you didn’t know you were safe.
What I mean by all those things for me was like I used to have to have all the labels out of clothes. I used to have to feed my son at the same time every day, drink from the same cup. That’s just a very, very small example. I picked my face, my hair was falling out, I bit my nails, I was doing all sorts of kind of compensatory behaviors. So that was the thought. ‘You’ve been doing all these things because you didn’t know you were safe.’
In that moment, and I suddenly saw all along, I’d been okay, all along, I’d been safe. And actually those behaviors and thoughts that I believed were actually making the anxiety worse, because if I didn’t have my cup, I was like, Oh, if I didn’t have my 1pm sleep I was, you know, so it was very interesting. And then literally about a month later, I was driving to see a friend and a motorbike pass me. Now for all of those years from my being 21 to that point, every time I saw motorbike, I’d gone into this flashback. And the flashback was around all of the stuff around the night of the accident and then subsequent events happened afterwards. So every time I drove a car or a bike this would happen. You can imagine how actually dangerous that is because you understand thought like your literally in a movie, aren’t you?
So this motorbike went past and this automatic response started and I suddenly again, this new thought popped in it was like, you don’t have to follow that. And that was that. It literally changed it.
And then there was another experience. If you don’t mind me telling this story. My son was still living here. He’d just got his first car. So now we’re in 2020 is lock down time. And he went out for the first time in his car, and I started to think, Oh, my God, he’s going to have a crash. What if he doesn’t get back in time? I started to feel this anxiety.
Then just before the time he was do home, I felt myself go into this movie, right? And then he walked through the door, and I was able to snap out of it. And then I realized, again, flashbacks are same as a flash forward, they’re sort of the same. It’s a movie. It’s thought that we get caught up in that we then experience in our body as real. There’s been so many kinds of insights, but the PTSD and anxiety were the two that had the biggest impact on my experience of life, for sure.
Alexandra: I sense that, from what you’ve described, taking yoga teacher training and being interested in life coaching before you knew about the principles that you’ve always been interested in health and wellness and those sorts of things. Is that true?
Charli: It is true. But I’ll caveat that by saying I now walk the walk and talk the talk. But I used to talk the talk and not walk the walk.
I was an addiction specialist after the accident and prior to that I was doing teacher training as in children. And then I went into psychiatric nursing, then I specialized and became an addiction specialist. And then I got into fitness, and started a fitness business that then exploded. But all the while I was drinking smoking. I had a very bad relationship with food. I was binge eating, I was starving. I was over exercising sometimes four or five hours a day. And still running this business which was growing and growing and growing.
So yes, I had a really strong interest in being different. Like I wanted to be different. Prior to that, as an addiction specialist, my real name is Charlotte. And I was like, I’m going to be different. I’m going to do this fitness training. I had had a breakdown, but it doesn’t really matter because I was just thinking I was broken. So if I change my name, I’m going to be okay. So then I created this sort of double personality where I was this successful business owner, well known in my town, fitness business owner, teaching fitness to hundreds of women every day.
Behind the scenes, Charlotte was not taking care of herself in any way shape or form. So this is really interesting dichotomy in my life. As an addiction specialist, I was drinking heavily. I was a workaholic. The accident changed me. My brother’s death changed me. And the way that I compensated for my grief was to overwork, drink heavily, smoke, be a drama queen, but be very successful. In front house, you wouldn’t have known there was anything wrong with me. And it’s only now when I talk about it because I’m 51 you can see it on my face that you know that I’ve smoked that I that I haven’t taken care of myself.
The principles opened it up for me in a way to be able to understand the depths of my wisdom. It was all wisdom that I just didn’t think I could cope unless I had these things in place. They were keeping me in a state of anxiety that anyway, now I’m very, very honest about all of it. I don’t have anything to hide anymore. Charlotte is Charli; we’re the same. It’s brought me here to this point in my life. And I feel very blessed that I’m not dead basically. Because there could have been many times where I’ve put myself in very risky situations over the years.
Everyone has a bit of a nightmare, don’t they, when they get to 50? And I was like, I made it. I’ve lived a lot of lives in my 51 years. To speak to your original question, yes, I’ve always had a real interest in it. I’ve studied it, I’ve learned it, I’m qualified in so many things I can’t even mention because it was another addiction. But now I really do live by that. And my body is thankful for. Because I’m post menopause now. A lot of women I meet now are my age or older and are postmenopausal and are really, really struggling because the stress has a huge impact on your body. I felt again, so blessed because I haven’t taken care of my body didn’t for many years, and I think that the impact of no stress, or very little stress in my life has had a profound effect on my body. I’m very lucky.
Alexandra: I’d like to go a little deeper than into those unwanted habits that you had, if you’ll indulge me
We talk about on unwanted habits a lot on this show in my work, that’s what I tend to focus on. So this is kind of a vague question.
What can you see now about over drinking, over eating, maybe over smoking, that you couldn’t see at the time?
Charli: That it was a solution.
Alexandra: Yes.
Charli: That [the habit] was quietening me down in some way, it served me. Smoking, for sure you’re breathing in, and then you have a longer exhale. So there’s calming of the parasympathetic nervous system.
The drinking, I was always drinking because I couldn’t handle my grief, I couldn’t handle the trauma of what I was having to deal with, with my dad for so many years. For the drinking. I was drinking to blackout often. And so I slept. So there’s even wisdom in that because it was a solution to a lot of heavy grief and trauma that I didn’t know I had, I didn’t know how to process I didn’t even know I was anxious, like, all I knew is that I had been diagnosed with PTSD, no one said the symptoms of anxiety.
I even see the suicidal ideation, which I suffered a lot with, as a solution. It was a solution that my brain was coming up with. And of course, over the years, you build up this neurological patterning, which is then the thought comes in, or I’m going to do it, I don’t even think about it. And then you go into the judgment. So then you’re in this sort of familiar repetitive cycle of self-loathing and doing the behavior and self-loathing, not understanding neuroscience and not understanding thought, not understanding the nervous system and trauma and the shutdown and free state that I was sort of perpetually in.
I see that it was a solution to things I didn’t understand very well. And my main habit was probably being horrible to myself.
Alexandra: I can really relate to that and to the dawning realization that these things are solutions. We’re doing the very best we can in the moment with the thinking that we have.
There really is no such thing as self-sabotage, is what I want to say too. We’re always trying to help ourselves.
Charli: I say exactly the same thing. It’s not self-sabotage. It’s a solution and if you can turn it around and see the gifts in it, and that your body is taking care of you. And these things are rooted in strength, not weakness. Because the hardest thing for people is that they beat themselves up and they feel shame and shame becomes secretive, and it becomes like a knife in your heart. And you’re going to do it anyway. It was always something that was protecting me from my own pain. But it always comes out in the end.
Alexandra: Is there anything else that you that you see about what we would call addictions that you didn’t see in the past?
Charli: I think because I’ve studied and worked in addictions for 30 years now, I never bought into the whole ‘you’re born with it’. I never bought into it’s a disease. So I’m not sure, I think the only thing I do see differently is that people are stuck in freeze response. And we’ll do what they can to get out of it. So there’s wisdom in it. And it’s been a solution to years of either trauma, or just grief or pain in some form, which is of course, individual and subjective to the human experiencing it. These things are not to be punished.
And connection is key. I always had that way of thinking anyway. And it’s actually one of the reasons why I left, one of the many reasons why I left the NHS, was because I just didn’t believe in the medical model anymore. I didn’t believe in these things being medicated pharmaceutically. I wanted to go out there and explore different ways of being with the client who often were seen as below the doctor or the nurse or whatever. There’s huge stereotyping and all that stuff.
So I’ve kind of been blazing my own trail for the last 20 years, in my own business and doing this work privately. But the principles gave me a deeper understanding of the nature of that solution. That all of them are just looking for peace of mind. And they don’t realize that it’s within them, because we live in a conditioning that says something outside of you can make you feel better. So where I might have gone into with clients the pain or you know, because I’ve done all of it, psychotherapy, CBT all the things, I’ve trained in all the things and now what I see about that is like, I was really traumatizing myself when I was being a therapist, and I was reached for re-traumatizing others so that there’s that’s different.
But I think I’ve always known on some level that it was not for me, I was my biggest critic, but for everyone else, I could see that it was a solution. But for me, I couldn’t. I was being too judgmental on myself.
Alexandra: So interesting, what you say about re traumatizing. So by going into the past, that’s what you mean by that?
Charli: Yeah, because I don’t know how many therapists I had over the years many one of whom said I was fu CK Ed. And wanted me to relive it and of course, every time I’d come out of that session, I would be utterly exhausted and bereft and I’d go and smoke and drink
Of course I was doing that innocently to the people that were in my care with the NHS and then as a private counselor. But with the two principles, I can see that that is literally bringing it up in the moment again and asking someone to relive it in the present moment, which that’s not helpful. It’s just not helpful to anyone. I can’t remember what you asked now.
Alexandra: We were touching on re traumatizing and going into the past.
Charli: I think it’s important for people to make a connection between their nervous system responses as children and then their behaviors that come up or whatever the behavior is. It doesn’t matter to me the thing, and I’ve done, basically all of them. Because that’s not what it is. It’s about people going into chronic state of activation, a nervous state, and then story gets created.
So if we think about the principles as we’re feeling our thinking with the nervous system was built in utero. So actually, sometimes that response could have been from when we were in our mom’s womb, which means that the thoughts weren’t necessarily conscious thoughts. So sometimes we have to roll around and help people join the dots, but not in a re traumatizing way in a way that has them understand their nervous system, how it can get activated, and how they’ve innocently been trying to get them out of getting themselves out of that, then they have all this judgment and conditioning. And who am I in the world?
It’s complex, isn’t it? But I do it in a very gentle, careful way that has the person not get you traumatized. Because I wouldn’t want to do that to anyone anymore.
Alexandra: You’ve mentioned the freeze state a couple of times. I’m guessing that has to do with the nervous system as well.
Tell us a little bit more about that. And about if someone is in that state, coming out of it.
Charli: The freeze state; if you think about the nervous system as being part of your autonomic nervous system, so everything, all the things that are going on in your body, which your body is very wise and very brilliant. And if anyone needs to look at their health, and you have to go and go inside, my food is being digested. And my heart is beating, and there’s blood going around in my veins. But the autonomic nervous system is you’ll have heard of like the maybe have you heard of the parasympathetic? And the sympathetic?
Alexandra: Probably a million years ago in like grade nine.
Charli: It’s kind of moved on from when we learned about it in biology. And they’re talking about there’s three states.
There’s the social nervous system. That’s you and I connecting now giving each other eye contact, facial expressions, the whole thing.
And then there’s the commonly known fight or flight, which we’re going then into the sympathetic nervous system.
And then the third one is freeze or shutdown. So it’s like a deer caught in headlights, for example. And they freeze.
These are evolutionary survival responses for every human. When you’re a baby, or you’re very small, and the social nervous system, you’re not getting attuned to, you’re not getting your needs met. As a child, you’ll go down to the next one, which is fight and flight.
Now if that doesn’t work, small children can’t fight and they can’t run away. So then their system if they’re in a space that they perceive to be unsafe in some way, they will shut down. Now over many years, if you’ve been in shutdown and then in flight or fright, and then shut down, you’re going to be in this state of constant either anxiety or confusion, disorientation, apathy, tiredness.
When people don’t understand that they think there’s something wrong with them, so then they drink and then they smoke and then they take drugs and then they might go gambling to feel something to get them out of the out of the shutdown and the freeze. And if people could just understand that, even that because what we point to in the principles, right is it’s universal, like what’s doing the heavy lifting thoughts, the mind consciousness. The body is also often very wise and the body holds that score literally.
So something that happened to me for is still being held in my body. Now if I haven’t completed that stress cycle, like animals shake it out, it’s stuck. It’s stuck in my body. And people don’t know that and they go from freeze to flight or flight to freeze.
I can tell in people’s language where they are in their nervous system. If people come to me with anxiety, it’s because they’ve been in chronic activation for many, many, many years, they’ve become hyper vigilant. There’s all of those things that happen too, so if you think about me and you are here, and there’s a lion coming for us, we are going to be hyper vigilant, and we’re going to try and run away. So then people turn it inwards, because I find need to know when my body is in space and time to be running away. And that’s not actually happening.
It’s coming from my thinking, I’m going to go inwards and think my body is shit. What am I going to do about my body, I hate my body. So there’s loads of signs that I can see that someone’s been in chronic activation. But I talk about, obviously, the principles and I go a layer deeper with the body with people just to give them an understanding of that universality as well, because these inner systems are 500 million years old; they all work the same.
But when we lack understanding of our brilliance, we think there’s something wrong with us. And there just isn’t just a misunderstanding of a body and mind, which are just working beautifully.
Alexandra: I love that. And with my guests, we circle so often come around to the wisdom of the body. Tania Elfersy works with people with menopause. And I had Stephanie Wood on recently, and she was doing kind of a nervous system reset program after the trauma of the pandemic that we’ve all been through. So yeah, I love hearing that. That’s great.
I want to touch on your podcast and your what you offer to people. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Charli: My podcast is called Courage Dear Heart, and I have guests on there like I’ve had Tania on and Michael Neill and different people and sometimes I’ll do solo episodes. It started when I first started this life coaching business and the name came to me and because I really believe most people don’t know how much courage they’ve got. And there’s so many wonderful people out there with courageous stories and they will shut it down or poopoo it away.
But that’s what I kind of work with people on is their courage their heart, their brilliant, their uniqueness. I have a Facebook group as well, a ladies only Facebook group, although I do work with some men but my work would appear femme centric. My website’s very female driven. I have a wonderful free community on Facebook where I do lives like this and I sometimes my podcasts live in that group and then I have a membership a circle membership, that’s again, female only. And we do lots of different things in there.
And because of my experience, there’s yoga videos in there, there’s fitness videos in there, there’s recipes, it’s Hormonal Health, and then I’ll do group coaching and a theme of the month so that’s kind of how I work with people spreading myself as much as I can to share this message as many places as I can.
Alexandra: One of the things I love about your podcast is that sometimes you’ll broadcast a coach a live coaching session.
Charli: They’re live in my free group. All of my stuff is usually live in my free group and then I usually upload it and so I’ll ask the ladies in the group, ‘Anyone up for free coaching, if you don’t mind it being recorded?’ They are brilliant.
They’re my favorite thing to do, actually. Because in my experience on those live coaching people genuinely hear something. I don’t know if it’s because it’s live that they’re a bit more quiet within or I don’t know what it is, but they really do. You hear something in it. And then it gives people an opportunity to relate. And then other people hear things. Thank you. I’d forgotten about that. Thank you for mentioning that.
Alexandra: They’re really powerful, I find, and there’s something about, of course, being coached that is so powerful. But I totally agree that even hearing somebody else be coached, it puts me anyway, in a really nice space of openness to insight. I just I love those ones. They’re great.
Charli: Thank you. I love the group coaching as well, for that very reason. And my circle group has its own, like Secret Circle podcasts. And I get that feedback a lot as well from them that you know, they heard something in so and so being coached. And that’s the wonderful thing about hearing other people being coached because you’re out of your own story.
Alexandra: Yes, absolutely.
Where can we find all this juicy stuff?
Charli: I have a website: I am Charli Wall. And then on Facebook, I’m Charli Wall. It’s Charli with an I. And so on my website, you’ll find my group you know, this links to my free group of links to my YouTube my podcast, my retreats, because so it’s kind of all on my website. But if you want to add me on Facebook at Charli wall, and I’m really public. I have a public profile. So you can pretty much see everything and find my groups from there as well.
Alexandra: Great. Okay. I will, as ever, put links in the show notes, so people can find that. Thank you so much for being with me here today, Charli. I really appreciate it.
Charli: It’s been really, really lovely. Alexandra, thank you very much.
Q&A 22 – What does looking upstream have to do with diet and weight-loss?
Jul 10, 2023
When we use the phrases ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ in the conversation about the nature of Thought, how does that relate to resolving an unwanted habit like overeating? What does the way we look at our thinking, and whether it’s upstream or downstream, have to do with weight-loss? Today’s episode answers these questions.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes:
What does looking upstream or downstream mean?
Examples of getting caught in our thinking when we look downstream
What does looking upstream entail?
How does looking upstream resolve an unwanted habit like overeating?
Hello Explorers, and welcome to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today our question is, what does it mean to look upstream when we’re talking about diet and weight loss?
Someone that I was interviewing recently touched on the subject of looking upstream or downstream. And this was something that confused me a little bit at the beginning of this exploration. And also, previously to that I remember some family members talking about looking upstream versus looking downstream years ago, and I didn’t really know what it meant. And now today, I find it a really, really useful way to look at what we’re exploring with the three principles understanding.
I’m going to talk about that specifically, as it relates to resolving an overeating habit, and to diets and weight loss and all that kind of stuff.
In this understanding, in the Three Principles Understanding, we’re always looking upstream. And I’m going to come back to that in just a second.
First, what I want to do is talk about what it means to look downstream.
In our culture, currently, what we tend to do reflexively, and because that’s what other people do, and because that’s where our culture seems to be focused, is we tend to look downstream at any given issue.
When you think about a river, which is really all this metaphor is about whatever’s going on downstream from where you are, is the stuff that metaphorically is more granular, more detailed, definitely. We’re more absorbed in the content of the things when we’re looking downstream at them.
The reason we use this metaphor is because what happens is when we look upstream, and we understand what’s going on up there, then the things that are downstream resolve themselves.
Let me give you a specific example, so that we’re on the same page.
When we think about dieting and weight loss and resolving an unwanted overeating habit, very often, and I absolutely did this, I spent a lot of my time looking downstream at all the details around that over eating habit.
When did it occur during the day?
What kind of foods was I attracted to?
Did I feel like I had an unhealthy preoccupation with or an addiction to?
And what sort of things could trigger me to want to engage in my overeating habit?
Did any of my specific other kinds of habits in my life, or thoughts about things have an effect on my overeating habit?
I would get really caught up in all those kinds of details that, in the end, I realized didn’t actually matter. And that’s why we’re going to talk about what’s upstream. But I’ll give you a specific example.
I’ve talked more than once about my soda habit, and I talked about it in It’s Not About the Food and how that habit disappeared. But for 25 plus years, while that unwanted habit was ongoing, I could get really fixated on the fact that it always happened at noon. I didn’t tend to drink soda outside of that. It was always just something that I had at lunchtime. It wasn’t a habit that that I participated in throughout the day.
But at noon time, that compulsion, that drive to habitually have a can of soda was definitely with me. For years, I really tried to look at what I could do specifically about that situation and that time of day, and that specific substance that I was overusing.
Those are all the kinds of details that I would spend a lot of time looking at.
And then I would also and what we do when we’re looking downstream is then we develop strategies to deal with those kinds of situations and that sort of granular detail that we’ve gotten into about the unwanted habits. So for example, I would try things like having a glass of fizzy water with a wedge of lemon at lunchtime, instead of having my soda. I never did try diet soda but that’s something that’s that some people might do instead, so they’re still getting the, the taste, but less sugar, or whatever it is.
Those are the kinds of techniques and strategies that we tend to use when we’re looking downstream. And what I liken in it, too, is that it can eventually feel like when we’re managing our feelings around whatever our unwanted habit is, and the behavioral situations around them, it can start to feel like at least it did for me, like I was spinning a whole bunch of plates. So I’ve got all these thin sticks, and I’ve got plates spinning all over. And I’m trying to manage each of these different plates that are spinning at different speeds. I’ve started them at different times, you’ve seen plate spinners, no doubt on videos, it’s remarkable what they can do. But it started to feel like that for me.
It felt like that for a very long time. And that would manifest itself in situations like I don’t want to go to a certain restaurant at lunchtime because then I’ll feel like I want to have my soda at lunchtime, which I was trying to avoid, or I don’t want to have certain foods. I knew that if I had certain a certain food that matched really well with a soda, then that would be my downfall and I would have the soda.
I hope you’re getting a picture of the sort of things that we innocently, so innocently, do in order to deal with an unwanted habit when we’re looking downstream.
Now I want to shift and talk about what we mean when we talk about looking upstream, which is where we’re always looking with this Three Principles understanding. What’s happening when we when we’re looking upstream, is that we’re looking at how we work as human beings. As a species. How all of us work all the time.
We’re looking at the nature of thought, with a capital T, and what that how that affects our lives.
We’re looking at the fact that we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances. When we start to understand how we work as human beings, and what is true for all of us all the time, which are those things that I’ve just mentioned, then the things that are downstream, start to resolve themselves on their own.
When I started to see the nature of thought, with a capital T, and that I was living in the world of my thinking, when I began to grasp that, what that meant was that I stopped taking my thinking quite so seriously. I started to create a little gap between myself and my thoughts.
By doing that, that’s what enables the situations, the circumstances that are happening downstream to resolve themselves, because they’re not necessary anymore. And the tangled thinking that’s occurring as we look downstream, that’s resolving itself as well.
When we when we look upstream, what we’re also looking toward is the nature of insight and how we change.
Change always, always happens insightfully so we can think about it this way: insight is upstream, and what our minds know is downstream. I’ve talked before on the on one of these Q&A episodes about how our minds know what they know. We can get caught in knowledge loops. So another way to look at it is that all that knowledge and all those loops that we can get caught in are downstream.
But when we look upstream, what we’re ready to experience, what we’re what we understand is true about life is that change occurs insightfully. Upstream is the place where wisdom and insight and Universal Intelligence exist. Downstream is where our thinking is really busy and caught up in itself and innocently trying to inform us, trying to help us and trying to help us to understand what’s going on with us.
That’s where definitely I spent 30 plus years reading books and trying to increase my understanding about what was going on without realizing that there was another place that I could look for answers. And that is upstream.
The easy way to visualize this, too, is that if you think about a river, again, if someone is dropping, let’s say, food coloring into a river, and you’re downstream, and you’re trying to catch all the droplets of food coloring that are coming down the river, that’s going to be a really, really difficult task. Almost impossible because the river is constantly moving, and it’s flowing around you. And as soon as you catch on to one droplet of food, colored water 10, others are going to go rushing by. If the river is moving really fast, then your task gets even harder.
So the difference with this understanding is that when we go upstream, and we understand the nature of thought, that’s like removing the bottle of food coloring entirely from the flow of the river. It’s just not being dropped in there anymore. The activity is still going on downstream, but we understand what it is, we understand that it’s thought, that we live in the world of our thinking. But it’s a much, much more peaceful way to be. And we rely on insight to help us to resolve these issues that we have.
So I think that’s about all I have to say about that: the difference between looking upstream and looking downstream when we’re trying to resolve a habit. If you have any questions about that, if it didn’t make sense, please let me know. You can always fill out the form at Alexandramor.com/question, and I’m always, always happy to answer questions from you guys who are listening out there.
If you’d like to learn more about finding freedom from an overeating habit, I encourage you to go to FreedomFromOvereating.com. And there you’ll find lots of information about the online course that I’ve created. There’s over five and a half hours of content in that course. And you’ll find two lessons that you can preview for free. So that’ll give you an idea of what the course contains.
Listeners to the podcast save 20% on the course price when they use the code podcast at checkout.
I hope you are well and taking good care and I will talk to you again next week.
Life Wants to Live with Maryse Godet Copans
Jul 06, 2023
Maryse Godet Copans suffered with anxiety and other physical symptoms for years and sought out answers for this suffering. Then she found the Three Principles and her symptoms fell away. She received coach training and began to share what she’d seen with others.
Then her symptoms returned, which was frustrating and confusing. Maryse used this experience to deepen her exploration of the life that is living though her and allowed herself to be present with whatever that brings, knowing she is safe.
For 15 years Maryse Godet Copans searched high and low for ways to overcome chronic stress, anxiety, and their many symptoms. Techniques, tools, analyzing her past – you name it, she did it – yet peace of mind remained elusive and symptoms stuck. Then she read Michael Neill’s book The Inside Out Revolution and learned about how human life really works. Today Maryse lives in the flow of life where anxiety is allowed to dance freely with happiness and excitement. And underneath it all lies Peace, ever present and unchangeable.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
The return of anxiety symptoms after having resolved them
Being reminded that everything is temporary
How it is normal and safe to experience everything life has to offer
On knowing that the ‘bathroom’ exists and walking with others as they find their way there
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Michael Neill
Nicola Bird, A Little Peace of Mind
Transcript of Interview with Maryse Godet Copans
Alexandra Amor: Maryse Godet Coopans, thank you for being here on Unbroken. Welcome.
Maryse: Oh, thank you, Alexandra. It’s a pleasure.
Alexandra Amor: It’s so nice to see you again.
Why don’t you take us back to the beginning and tell us about how you came across the three principles.
Maryse: I’m going to condense what, six years or whatever, all the time before, I’m going to make it very, very, very short. So basically, for me, my history is with anxiety. It started in 2003, physical symptoms, and then the beginning of a long, long search for a fix. Which, every single thing helped along the way. I tried many, many things.
It led me one day to hear Michael Neill because I think at the time I subscribed to Hay House, I can’t remember why. But I subscribe to Hay House and I listened to a short something he had, I think on Facebook, I’m not I can’t remember precisely but saying ‘we live in the feeling of our thinking’. Those were his words. We live in the feeling of our thinking. And I was like, Heck, no. But he got my attention. And I got curious about that.
So I started listening to him. And I was like, well, it’s interesting, but to be really honest, the terms he used his vocabulary around the three principles – mind consciousness and thought – I was not really comfortable with. So instead of sort of on the back burner. And because I was listening to him, something from Nicola Bird appeared regarding anxiety. She was in the process then to be having been, I think, one of Michael’s apprentices. She was in the process of launching A Little Peace of Mind, her anxiety targeted program. And I thought, What do I have to lose at this point? This was 2017. I had been added with anxiety since 2003. I really had nothing to lose.
So I listened to her and it really resonated. For the first time in my life, I had the feeling this woman knows what she’s talking about. She’s been through panic attacks, she’s experienced the whole thing. I’m going to listen some more so I signed up for her program. And it just snowballed. The progress I made, the insights I had, everything was just fabulous. Really.
I trained with Michael Neill, we I did Supercoach Acadamy, and then in 2020, COVID hit. And you know what, that first year was totally fine. Fine. I didn’t mind the lockdown. Nothing. I’m still doing so well. And then in 2021, I’m not sure why and I’m not sure it matters, it all came back. It all came back. Dizziness, electricity in my body most of the time, panic attacks at night and during the day, whatever. And I was like, what’s happened? Nothing helps. What the heck is going on?
I was just so lost, to be honest with you. So lost. And I just did my best, for a few months. I think at the time, the only thing that I could see clearly and I think that it somehow we know that it saved me because I didn’t need to saving but it was really like a lifeline.
Something inside me said, “Remember, this is temporary. It will pass.”
So when I looked at everything I had learned from Michael, Nicola, and everybody else the only thing that was still helpful in what I was experiencing at the time was this is temporary. And I knew that it was not a belief. I just knew it. But I knew that it would change at some point. But I didn’t know when I didn’t know how it felt horrible.
I went through a whole gosh, so many medical tests everywhere, to make sure because I had even new symptoms, stomach upset and stuff like that. So it was a whole saga, which was not helping. But everything just came back normal and everything else. And then the anxiety sort of calmed down. But I found myself in a big dark cloud, really sad, really depressed, really dragging my feet for the best part of 2022.
Somehow, by some miracle, that allows me to look at what actually happened, what I was told, turned out to be true. I moved through, I moved through it, I came out on the other side, again, not sure how it started, not sure how it ended. But it’s ended. Because it’s been a few months now.
I feel more so actually solid, I feel much better at all levels. And so now it’s just looking back at, what happened? And again, not to prevent it from happening again. But more being curious as to what can I see about this, that? That would help me get more grounded. And be more okay, should it ever happen again. So that’s where I’m at today.
Alexandra: So much stuff in there that I would love to unpack. And just so many interesting things that you said.
You mentioned that it started sort of in 2021. Do you feel like there was any kind of COVID connection. In terms of anxiety?
Maryse: I think it was a looking back again, it’s my best guess. I don’t know. I think it was a built up of a lot of dark, dark stories. About some family issues, and we were having about COVID, about the vaccine, I had a lot of stories around or that. And basically, I really think my body went enough. Enough, I’m gonna make you feel all that. And I felt it.
But for the life of me, I had no idea as to how to change that. So again, this knowing that I didn’t need to, that somehow it would change for me, at some point really helped. Because 5 or 10 years ago, it would not have been like that I would have been, I can’t live like this anymore. And if something needs to change, I need to find the next person to listen to blah, blah, blah. And here it was more.
I feel defeated in a way because I thought that I had found the answer. And it was very humbling, very humbling to realize that even for myself, I had not found the answer that stuff like this could still happen. But yes, it was definitely a buildup of all that stuff. Yeah, I think definitely, I don’t know, as I said, it’s my best face.
Alexandra: There’s that expression in the principles that we’re always feeling or thinking. And so our body lets us know the quality of the thinking that’s going on in our minds.
Do you feel like this confirmed that expression to you?
Maryse: Yes. And no, in the sense that, definitely, I’m feeling something that’s happening at the thought level. But it’s not necessarily thinking I’m aware of it. It’s more what is going on in my mind, based on the past, on the conclusions that my brain is drawing, and so this is what we need to think about now, because that will keep us safer, and all that sense, all that stuff.
But yes, I definitely see deeper today that my experience is thought created, but thought in a broad sense, so that I don’t get trapped into thinking that I need to change a belief or that I need to change the story that’s going on in my head that they Oh, that minute or that moment? It’s more a question. Oh, that’s where it’s coming from. Okay. No big deal. And that’s it’s going to change. And but yes, definitely, the experiences thought created. Yeah. For me, it looks really true.
Alexandra: Good to hear that. And such an important point, I think, about how we’re aware of some of the thoughts that’s going through our heads, we can hear that voice in our head that sounds like us.
And then there does seem to be another level or layer of thought that we don’t necessarily hear. But it’s there nonetheless. Would you agree with that?
Maryse: Yes. And to go back to what you said in your previous question, that’s what the body lets us know. Yes, the body lets us know that something is going on.
And, it’s funny, because in the 3P world, especially at the beginning, I heard a lot the expression, the feeling basically, lets us know we’re off track. And I don’t think it’s an off track thing or on track thing.
It’s not a good or bad thing is just happening.
The feeling is uncomfortable, because there’s an uncomfortable something going on in the background. And again, sometimes it makes it makes sense to look at it closer and maybe adjust my behavior or whatever. And sometimes it doesn’t, it really depends.
To answer your question, yes, I agree. I think there’s a lot of stuff that we’re not aware of the brain is busy. And it’s funny, because I was talking to a friend of mine recently, and how we were taught to sleep on it right? I’m a big jigsaw puzzle fan. So I move away from a puzzle. And then I come back, and I’ll find the piece that I was looking for. But it’s not random. My brain continues working on it when I’m not aware.
So that’s what is going on. The brain continues, the mental activity continues, even we’re not we’re not aware of it. And then at some point, we feel it. So for me, that’s more thought that way. Rather than real thinking.
Alexandra: That’s such a beautiful description of the distinction. And you’re so right.
In fact, just last night, this is kind of goofy, but I had written this number down. I was adding up a bunch of stuff, and walked away thinking it was fine. In the middle of the night, I woke up with the realization that I had done a calculation wrong in this list of numbers. It wasn’t on my conscious mind at all. I thought I had done the thing correctly.
Yet my brain kept working on it, obviously, and then let me know there’s a mistake there.
Maryse: That’s a fabulous story. Because, again, we hear a lot about fresh thoughts and this and that, but it’s not woowoo. Fresh thought is not woowoo. It’s really how the brain works.
There’s something going on, it works on it, and then you wake up in the middle of the night or the next day, I go, and I place the piece, because it happens, and I don’t have to get involved in that process.
I think that’s another thing that I’ve seen over the last year or so is how literally involved I need to be to move through life to move through challenges or anything. Really. It’s taking care of me. I’m there obviously, because if there’s a piece to place on the puzzle, it’s not going to happen without my hand doing it, obviously, but it’s just so less of me of literally involved in my life these days. That’s a that’s a consequence of all the last few years, I think.
Alexandra: One of the things too, that I thought was really interesting that you said was that you when you found or discovered the principles and began to learn about them that you thought you had found the answer.
I’ll tell you what I heard from that, which was that you thought you would be symptom free. Is that how you would express that?
Maryse: I don’t know if it was completely to be symptom free, but I would be. I think I had set a level of symptoms that I would be alright with. Talk about stories, right? So everything that I experienced was sort of measured to that. And it measured really well.
I thought, after 14, 15, 16 years of seeking, this is it, this is it. This finally works. My family couldn’t believe the transformation. I would be afraid of doing everything. And then I signed up for SuperCoach Academy, Europe. I live in New York, and I traveled to Athens and Prague in London. And then it seemed as if it was taken away from me.
So more than an answer, I think I found at the time what I needed to find, to improve, to get some grounding again in my life. And somehow, maybe, I don’t know, that grounding wasn’t solid enough. So life, as life is known to do, just shook things up a little for me.
It’s interesting, because at the time, I was really having a bad day. And a friend of mine, said, Maryse, remember when you go through phases like this, she had no idea that it was a long phase, I was hiding it very well. But when you go something like that, it means you’re going to see something new, you’re going to see something new at some point.
That was a great reminder they because it got my interest going again, I was like, Okay, maybe that’s true. What more could I see around this? I got out of my victim mode. And got curious about what was going on. And that was slowly slowly and the way out.
Alexandra: What it says to me, you having that experience, is that you’ve gone even deeper. This is sort of another way to say what your friend says. You’re gonna see something more. And to me, you sharing your story has just shown me the wisdom and the perfection of our design.
It sounds like you see you see that as well. Would you say that’s true?
Maryse: Okay, let’s see the perfection of the design. I don’t know honestly. To me, it looks as if life wants to live. Life wants to experience life so that’s perfection. That’s perfection. I don’t know. And why we we get to see more or don’t see because some people want and I have no idea for me. That’s all the mystery of life. That’s what I saying what when I don’t have answers.
I thought I had in the sense that oh, but of course this is happening because mind, consciousness, thought and blah, blah, blah, blah. And now it’s like, I really don’t know. And to be honest with you, I don’t really fit. Like it’s more a moment by moment thing. So I think we are designed to live.
We are designed to experience everything.
So in that sense, is the design perfect? Yes. Because we are there is no question in my mind after the last years. We are resilient. We’re a resilient bunch. There’s no question and when we see that, it helps us but why some people see it and don’t see it, I don’t know. For me, it still looks as if some people can go through a lifetime without seeing that.
So are we perfectly designed it? I have no idea. But, but it looks true that we are deeply resilient, and that life wants to experience everything.
That’s something else that I saw is most of us are going to come into the Three Principles conversation because we are looking for answers. And we are looking for a way to live better to change us. I was feeling circumstances, whatever or to escape even those circumstances, feelings or whatever. And what I’ve seen around that is that it’s not so much about the deepening as it is about seeing how normal and safe experiencing all of life is.
Do I hope I never go through a phase like I’ve went through again? Yes. Do I know that it’s not going to happen? Because I know the three principles? No. Oh, do I know that it? It’s probably going to be a little easier to navigate? Because of what I’ve seen and felt? Yes. But there’s no guarantee.
Underneath all of that, I know I’ll be able to experience it. That’s it. I had a client once tell me, “If life sees fit to present me with something, it means I’m fit to experience it.”
Why are we fit to experience life? Because we will design by life? We are life itself? It makes complete sense to me today that, of course I’m able to experience everything. Because there’s nothing out of this bottle of life. I always like to say we didn’t invent the baby. We didn’t invent the human being. So there’s more ease with all that for me now because it feels normal and safe. Let’s see whatever comes.
Alexandra: Say that, again, what your client said.
Maryse:
If life sees fit to present me with an experience, it means I’m fit to experience it.
That wasn’t me. That wasn’t me. That was him. And it was one of those moments you love, when you talk with someone? It was a deeper realization for me around this.
When you have anxiety, basically, the core thing is that you don’t feel safe being alive. You just don’t feel safe being alive. And then some people don’t feel safe around health around food around this around that. But the core thing is that you don’t feel safe.
So to be able to develop, through seeing how resilient you are, or how life works and all that stuff, develop the sense of inner city safety, being alive, regardless of what you have to move through. It’s sort of sort of important when you suffer from anxiety because it doesn’t mean that you’re not anxious anymore, but it means that you’re not afraid of being anxious. That’s a big difference.
Alexandra:Yes. A huge difference. Nicola Bird used to have this phrase about having a pink fluffy life. I loved it when I first heard her say that and how we’re all looking for that, something that’s easy and trauma free and joyful and delightful all the time.
The way that I phrase that, which is a little more pointed, is that there’s no cure for life. There’s no cure for the experiences that we’re going to have.
I love that you’re pointing to the resilience that we all have to deal with anything that comes up.
Maryse: We really we really do. And we come out on the other side, because that’s just given also.
Alexandra: Exactly. You noticed at some point then, a reduction in those symptoms that you were having the panic attacks in the night and that kind of thing. And you obviously kept exploring as all that was going on?
I’ll give a little background for our listeners. I was in a cult for 10 years in the 1990s. And one of the unspoken rules, anytime you’re in a cult is, don’t question the premise. Don’t question the spoken rules, but also the unspoken rules in the organization or the group.
Did you find yourself questioning the principles? And were you comfortable doing that?
Maryse: I’ve always been comfortable questioning everything. So that’s, that’s just not a problem for me. I have a deeper version of boxes and structures and everything, which, like I said, at the beginning, was the structure of the three principles as a teaching, I was never comfortable with it. So I very rarely use the words mind, consciousness, thought.
But it’s very rare. I’d rather go through what I’ve seen. So to answer your question, did I question what I had seen, rather than questioned the structure of the principles? Did I question what I had seen? Oh, yes, yes. Because if I had really seen something that was true, how come I was feeling so bad again? So I went there. Full speed.
And in a way, it was a good thing, because I really believe when we talked about answers and stuff, every human being, even though we’re all come from the same life source, every human being has to find their own grounding their own answer, their own way. Every human being has to find their own way. So it helped me, this phase, to really look for my own way again, which, of course, is the paradox. It is the way for everyone.
Michael Neill, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him say that people are looking for the bathroom. And when we have the three principles, we know the way to the bathroom. So we can just help them see that wait for the bathroom. And that’s where I was.
Today, I don’t see it like this anymore. I’m like, Yes, everybody’s looking for the bathroom, I’m looking for the bathroom, everybody is. My way to the bathroom is not yours. So for me to show you my way is not really going to help you very much.
I can guarantee you that the bathroom exists.
I can keep reminding you that it’s there when you think you’ll never get there. And I can be with you as you look for your way. And that’s that. So it’s a very different space to be in. It’s more of a space of I don’t know, really.
I know that there’s a way but is it the three principles, or it is something else for that person? I don’t know. When we can do is explore together. And that’s where I’m finding myself and it counts for me too. So whenever I questioned something, it’s not like the principles that didn’t work. What else can I find and all that.
It’s like, no, having seen and felt what I’ve seen and felt. What else can I see about this? And let’s explore. And there’s always something more to discover. For me, the big gift of of the last six months has been this exploration of self-kindness and self-compassion. I was well versed into it, but not really. I didn’t really need it in my own life until recently. And now it’s like, oh, it’s really nice. But that’s for me in this moment.
So again, it’s not 3P. It’s self-kindness. I like to say that everything is 3P, because the three principles explain how life works. And if you find it helpful, it’s great. If you don’t find it helpful, doesn’t matter. You’ll find something else. That’s helpful.
Because that’s what we’re looking for. And so that’s what we find. And so to answer your question, yes, definitely comfortable questioning, have questions. And even though I still see what the principles are pointing to as true for me, I’m not saying it has to be the answer for everyone. That’s, that’s, that’s where I’m at. I’m happy to explore.
Alexandra: I love that. That is such a great metaphor about the bathroom. Yes, it exists. And it’s so true.
The path that someone’s going to take could be completely different to getting there. That’s so great.
Maryse: It’s just a lot of humility, really. More listening to because I don’t know. So I know that I don’t know, for someone else. I really feel that if I don’t know, for me, at some point, I will. Because that’s how it’s been working. But I certainly don’t know for someone else. And they only know so I’m much more humble than I used to be.
Especially at the beginning, oh, my god with the principles, yes, she is. If you could only see this, yeah, your life would be transformed. And now it’s more like your life can be transformed. Let’s see how to go about it.
And it’s the same for me. Okay, I’m not seeing it right now. Well, let’s look below the surface and see what else is there. It’s actually makes it much more interesting than you think.
Alexandra: Good point. It’s so much more fun to explore than to think you have the answers. I agree. Absolutely.
Is there anything else that you see now that you haven’t shared yet that you didn’t see before this experience?
Maryse: Anything that I have seen? Well, I think if it had to be something, it would have to be presence. And it’s a big word. So what do I mean by that? It’s really being aware of the experience that I’m having without a ton of thinking about it.
To me this ability to want to stay with what I’m feeling. So especially when it’s uncomfortable, and again, to stay without clinging to it. It’s just to be with the experience as it moves through me. So there’s a deeper awareness.
Maybe it’s because there is this temporaryness of things was the number one factor that helped me but I’ve seen it deeper. It’s like everything is so fluid. I’m not so afraid anymore to stay present with it. And being present for me means just feeling what I feel without having an opinion or or needing to change it, because it changes by itself. But it was a nice idea. And now it’s become really cool exploration.
I have little glimpses of being experiential now. And really I’m feeling terrible right now. And it’s not a problem. It’s going to pass and be with it as it passes. It’s really weird in a way to talk about that it’s hard to describe, but to really be in the experience. I think that’s allowed me also to really be more present with others. It’s a work in progress, because it’s easier for me to be present to myself than it is to be present to others. But I guess that’s a good start.
Anyway, just start right here and then moving out. If I had to say something, it would be that I find that topic fascinating. And that’s gonna sound weird, but even when I’m not present, there’s still some part of me that is. And it’s like what we talked about before with the puzzle piece, are you waking up at night? It’s like, knowing at a deep level, that there’s a part of me that, that still registers everything, and that still moves along. It keeps leaving me It keeps moving me. So that’s new. That’s another thing that seemed to be a pretty big deal.
It’s evolving, we’ll see what it brings. But definitely something there.
Alexandra: Wow, this has been such a great conversation, Maryse. I have loved it so much. I feel like I’m floating, I’ve gotten so much out of it.
Maryse: Oh, thank you, that’s the gift right at the end. And it’s funny, because I have a friend who sees that much more clearly than I do that when we go through challenges, or when we go back into the pit it’s actually not bad news. It’s really another opportunity to see more of what we want to see, really. And I’ve started to, not look at it that way, but to experience it more that way. It’s getting more clear for me that way. So that the challenges in the pit, the darkness of the pit basically, doesn’t look so scary.
I use the metaphor of the diamond recently. It’s like we’re born, when we’ve got this diamond, right, it’s life. And it’s wonderful. And we’re children, and we play with it and everything. And then it’s like we go backwards, so we have this diamond from birth, and then it goes back into the ground, we slowly slowly put it back into the ground, and then we have to go and, and find it.
It seems to me that every challenge, everything that is put in our way, is an opportunity for us to to unearth that diamond or to polish it or to enjoy to see another facet. Once it’s there, we just scratch there and say, Oh, it shines slightly differently, and with different color or a different shade. And it’s really beautiful, beautiful process.
When we look at it that way, I suppose. It’s something I’m open to look at, which I wasn’t ready to do when I was feeling very bad. But now, I’m like, what if every challenge, every darkness, every cloud, every storm we go through is just another opportunity for us to see another facet of the diamond.
Alexandra: Exactly. The way I see it is I see it as wisdom everywhere. What what if there’s wisdom, even in the in the experiences we don’t enjoy? And what if there’s wisdom in our body, even when it’s making us uncomfortable? That kind of thing.
Why don’t you let our listeners know where they can find out more about you and your work.
Maryse: That’s a good point. I have a website I suppose. It’s flow-erpower.com Because yes, I love being in the flow. And I’m on Facebook too, so they can, reach me there.
Alexandra: And you have a lovely group with James Abbott, the Built In Brilliance Facebook group.
Maryse: Yes, I have a Facebook group there. And we have group calls with James. I met James through A Little Peace of Mind. He trained as a coach, I trained as a coach and now we host a group calls together which are really weren’t don’t teach at all. There’s just a forum for a joint exploration. It’s lovely. So we do that together. And yeah, it’s been it’s been fun. Or shall I say, it’s fun again?
Alexandra: Was it not fun? While you were going through this?
Maryse: Now, when I really took a pause, I needed to pause. I just we did some group calls. But in terms of coaching, I stopped everything.
It was my my beliefs. Well, my grounding, I suppose, for lack of a better word was shaken that badly.
I thought I have no business being with anybody right now. And now that’s changed because I’m like, it would be nice to explore from this new space with someone again, so I’m getting back to that. But it was no fun.
Alexandra: Well, I’m glad you’re back to it. That’s awesome.
Maryse: Me too. It’s nice. And again, like all of us. I have my moments, but it’s not a problem.
Alexandra: No, exactly. It’s life.
Thank you again, Maryse. This has been awesome.
Maryse: Thank you so much for having me. It was great.
Q&A 21 – Overeating: Putting the Cart Before the Horse
Jul 03, 2023
Traditionally, when we tackle an overeating habit with diets and white-knuckling and other strategies like that, we’re innocently focusing on the wrong thing. Using this horse-and-cart analogy, today we explore where to instead place our focus and how that leads to lasting change and the resolution of unwanted habits.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Hello Explorers and welcome to Ubroken podcast. This is Q&A episode number 21. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Thank you so much for being here with me today, I really appreciate it.
The other day this expression popped into my head, it goes like you’ve like this: you’re put the cart before the horse.
I was thinking about that in terms of unwanted habits like overeating and realize that it’s a really good metaphor or analogy for the two different approaches to dealing with an unwanted habit. So that’s what we’re going to explore today.
As I’m speaking in this episode, the cart that I’m talking about represents the unwanted habit itself. And the horse is the healing or the recovery or the changes that occur about that unwanted habit. And so culturally, what we tend to do, when we’re trying to fix an unwanted habit is, first of all, innocently, we don’t see the wisdom in the habit, we don’t see that it’s a solution, it’s not a problem.
And we don’t see that we’re always simply very simply and innocently, trying to feel better, trying to get back in touch with our innate mental health. If we’ve temporarily forgotten about that, or if we’re even unaware that it exists. That’s what unwanted habits are doing for us. They’re a sign of our mental health, actually, because they’re trying to get us to a good feeling, the good feeling that we instinctively know exists within us. But given all the thinking that we have about our lives, and about our unwanted habits, we’ve maybe fallen out of touch with that.
So the cart is all the techniques that we try to try to heal that unwanted habit or resolve it. In the case of overeating, it would be things like dieting, it would be whatever the strategies are that we try to resolve that unwanted habit. So things like bribing ourselves, maybe white knuckling it through the discomfort of sort of quitting something cold turkey. I’m thinking back to a lot of the self-help strategies that I used things like talk therapy, digging up the past, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness. So these are really you can think of them as strategies, or tactics that we’re applying to try to manage the unwanted habit or control it. And ultimately, to get rid of it. I mean, really, that’s, of course, the aim, when we’re doing anything like that.
So that’s the cart in this cart and horse scenario. And as the expression goes, when we put that first things don’t work out so well.
I’m a perfect example of someone who did all those things, who spent a lot of time and energy and effort and money, trying to fix the cart.
Really trying to put the cart back together, make sure that the cart was doing well or I’m trying to fix what I interpreted as the broken pieces of the cart. And instead, what I see now is that my attention should have been put on the horse. Because when I put the cart first, it just doesn’t work. The horse can’t push the cart. The horse needs to pull the cart.
The horse to me now represents insight. It represents the exploration of our innate well-being and resourcefulness and resilience. It represents how that our mental health is always they’re always with us that as Dr. Bill Pettit said, There’s nothing broken and nothing needs fixing. And that was the stuff that I really missed in my 30 plus year exploration trying to heal my overeating habit. So as I say, all my attention was focused on the cart. And taping that back together.
Mistakenly believing that the cart was broken.
What I’m picturing in my mind is a little wooden cart with metal wheels. And there’s duct tape and twine all over it. I was really trying to just pull all those pieces together with a lot of mental effort. And it never worked. It never worked, because it’s the horse that we need to focus on. So that’s where our attention needs to be.
When we dive deeply into this exploration, and when we begin to have insights about our innate well-being, then the cart just follows the horse naturally. And that’s definitely what I’ve been experiencing.
I’ve had, as Dr. Amy Johnson says, a cascading series of insights, I love that expression so much. So once I had had a cascading series of insights about my well-being about my true nature, about the fact that I wasn’t broken at all about the fact that my unwanted habit was a solution, not a problem. It was part of the beautiful human design that we’re all made of. It was giving me feedback about the fact that I had forgotten and never really known in my case, who I truly am, which is someone who is well and whole and resourceful, and who has access to the ocean of universal wisdom and intelligence that we swim in all the time, that I wasn’t alone in my life, trying to solve my problems at all, that there was all this intelligence, and wisdom surrounding me in every direction at all times.
Once I began to focus on that on the horse, and have that cascading series of insights, that’s when the unwanted overeating habits started to fall away.
And when that happens, then the cart just as I said, a few minutes ago, just begins to follow the horse naturally. So our habits fall away.
I have found, I’m not focused on food as much as I was in the past. And I’ve had situations where I talk about this in my book, It’s Not About the Food, were a habit that I might have had for 25 years I talk about a soda habit that I had for years, just suddenly stops appealing to me. And that wasn’t because I had fixed the soda section of the cart, that I had bandaged it up or cut it out of the wooden structure of the cart, or that I pretended it wasn’t there or made a rule about how I was never allowed to have that kind of beverage again. It wasn’t that at all. It was that I was focused on the horse. As I said, the innate wisdom and well-being.
So I wanted to bring that up once it occurred to me, and one reason is that I think, I certainly was at the beginning, I didn’t really understand how this exploration was different from anything else that I had tried before. This horse and cart analogy to me makes it really clear that we’re or that I had been really focused on one area for years and years and years, and shifting my focus to something entirely different, which even in the in the beginning can look like it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Like how is me exploring my innate well-being going to work? That all sounds very nice and good, but I just didn’t see how that could have an impact on this habit that I was struggling with.
With so much energy and had been doing so for so long, three decades plus. But what I found, and I’m a testament to the fact that focusing on the horse is really the thing that brought the change about in my life.
I thought this analogy was kind of interesting when it popped into my head and I thought it might be helpful for you to see the difference between what we’re exploring in this understanding and kind of a visual way to imagine what we’re focusing on. So I hope that’s been helpful for you and I look forward to talking to you again next week. Take care bye
Recovery from the Need to Be Perfect with Gabby Pritts
Jun 29, 2023
Like so many of us, Change coach Gabby Pritts lived for a long time with a misunderstanding about where her experience came from. This led to her developing the unwanted habit of needing to be perfect so that she could be safe. And this focus on perfection led to some disordered eating.
Thankfully she came across the inside-out understanding and began to question her thoughts. She now helps her clients to see the innate wisdom within themselves.
Gabby Pritts was born and raised in a South Texas Bordertown. She has always enjoyed the outdoors and being active and later became more serious about fitness through marathon trainings and runs. This lead to her stories of struggle.
Gabby got caught up in how she thought life should look. Disordered eating, obsessive compulsions, and anxiety came to the forefront. She tried it all to help alleviate and cope: traditional therapy, coaches, online programs, supplements, and diets. Some worked for a while, but so often the struggles and habits came flooding in again, sometimes even worse.
Then she came across a podcast with Dr Amy Johnson who spoke about becoming habit free with no willpower. Dr. Johnson said we are innately healthy, and our thoughts, habits, and addictions are a way for our mind to help us. Gabby decided to learn how to share this understanding through Dr Amy Johnson’s Change Coach Certification Program.
Tell us about a little bit about your journey, your background and how you came across the three principles.
Gabby: You can go in so many ways as far as someone’s background is concerned, but for the purpose of this podcast, and the people may be listening to it my background is your typical child that grew up with a certain set of ideas of how things should be and coming to realize that sometimes, a lot of times, things aren’t the way that you thought they were going to be. And just trying to figure it all out.
I grew up in a not-so-typical home. I grew up with a couple of aunts, and my mom was there and a couple of brothers. My mom remarried eventually, and there was a lot of step-siblings. And that didn’t work out too well. So I went back with my aunt and was raised by them. My mom was still in the picture. But she wasn’t living with me. So at an early age, I didn’t have her. But I did have a lot of love.
I will say that I still had my brothers and I had my aunts. Growing up practicing Roman Catholic, there was a lot of rule and regulation involved in the home. And so things were the way they need to be because that’s the way things were, and you don’t question things.
Well, I questioned a lot of things early on, and I challenged ideas, I challenged everything I was the kid that always asked why and would not stop asking why. So eventually, still having that in me, that innate, regulated way of being I always strive to do the best, I always wanted to do the best, I always wanted to be as perfect as possible. And always falling short. Because once you reach that perfection, you always want more, you want something different and you just use continue to fall short.
Early on I always got praised for being a pretty girl and being good at sports so those are the things that I focused on. Okay, so if someone doesn’t say that I’m pretty or someone doesn’t say that I did well in this particular game or whatever, in I felt bad and I was I was always looking at how I could better myself or what I did wrong and should have could have would have been. That morphed into just trying to be perfect, like I just mentioned just all the time.
One of the ways that I can be perfect dealt with controlling things. And one of the ways that I could be perfect was to control what I did with a rigid schedule and including exercise and what I ate. So that led to a lot of disordered eating. That just unraveled and began a journey of how to how to eat perfect, how to do things, how to have a perfect schedule, how to be perfectly organized. That was my jam.
That’s what I that’s what I did day in and day out. I woke up, what is my schedule? What am I going to eat? That type of thing and rinse, repeat and do it again. So I got tired. I just I just got worn out and felt I’m so tired. I did not know what to do not to be tired. And then there was times I was tired and just dragging, and then I would kind of get a second wind and I was okay for a while, then I would just get tired again. Life is just happening while I’m trying to control this.
And I went through a divorce, that was tumultuous. I was a single mom for a while, that I had financial hardships. So, all of this is going on, and I was still in my brain thinking, what am I going to eat? What’s my schedule look like? What am I going to do for exercise? How many calories is that? Was at the forefront and all these buildings were burning around me and things like that.
And, and I was like, this is just weird. Why am I like this? Things were just out of control. So I had a lot of what I call disordered eating, and for a good while, and that didn’t happen until adulthood. I must have been in my 30s, or something, maybe my 40s I don’t even remember. There was always a tinge of it, or a theme of the disordered eating, but not really, but it really manifested itself, like, later in life for me, not your typical teenage eating disorder girl. So then I’m like, Man, I can’t even do that. Right? I can’t even have like, disordered eating at the right age.
Like, what’s wrong with me? It was a constant beating myself up about this, that and the other. And that’s just been my journey. Like, there’s no specific thing. I’ve just always continuously beat myself up.
Alexandra: I always think it’s so interesting; you were doing this behavior, controlling your schedule, controlling your food, in order to be safe, would be a good way to encapsulate it. And then there is a part of you that’s aware that there’s another way to experience life, and that that awareness is just innate within you.
The words you used was, “This is weird”. So there’s part of you that just knows that there’s another, perhaps more free way to go about living your life. I think that’s fascinating.
Gabby: That is so true from even as a child and questioning why. So even from that point in time, just questioning why already at that point in time I knew something wasn’t necessarily true. For others, that was true for me. So I questioned why so right there, that I was bucking the, is this true? Why is this true? Or what’s going on?
I was curious, that a young age, and that curiosity did stay with a lot. And then I became aware of the curiosity. I became aware of that curiosity. And I became aware that that curiosity is my friend. And what I mean by friend is that, that curiosity is a safe place. It’s not it’s not a bad place.
So controlling my eating in my exercise, I was always group fitness classes, I taught group fitness classes. At one point in time in my life I was always a gym rat, most of my life. So I always came across ladies that were asking me Hey, have you heard about this diet? Or what do you do for this? And they were asking me for my opinion or my advice, and they sent me other. So I would always try like the fad diets just to see how I would do and naturally I would fast. I just got into, like I said, a very rigid schedule.
I was planning my meals, and then I would fast until the next point in time of my day that I could eat no, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And I was going to need at this time, if I was hungry and not hungry, whatever, it was at this time. So the keto diet. I shouldn’t even say keto diet, that a diet, whatever, an idea, any it could be any diet came along. And I was like, Yeah, I think I could do this one because it’s I naturally fast and fits right into my lifestyle, blah, blah, blah.
I got into the keto diet and started looking at people who did this diet, I became part of a group. And mind you at this time I was plant based. So with the keto diet, if some of you familiar with it, it’s all animal fat, and mostly animal fat and animal protein. I wasn’t eating any animal at all at that point in time, and I was plant based because of health reasons. And not a vegan. But anyway, so there wasn’t really too much option for me to eat.
I ended up losing a lot, a lot of weight, where there was a big concern in my family where they intervened. And they said you needed me to stop. Mind you before that point in time, I had already been in therapy a few years before, to gain some weight. I was in an outpatient at a rehab center. And I did that for a couple of months. I did gain some weight, and then I just lost it again. So I just went back to what I was used to doing.
I’ll touch on that, because in that rehab center, I did meet a therapist who was very, I should say New Age, for lack of a better word. He tried therapy that was non traditional and he did Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle, he recommended a lot of people that authors that, that come from this understanding, he was just short of Sydney Banks.
That happened right before the whole, when I really lost a lot of weight. And there was a family intervention. I realized I was just very weak. And I realized my family really, really was, there was a big concern there. And I just wanted to I wanted to live, as like, I just, this is done, I can’t be doing this. And that’s when I started to really realize like, like, I’ve got this pro for, I mean, going on over here, but then I have something over here telling me, No, you want to live so you need to stop that programming over there.
You need to get another program or you something needs to shift something has to be different. Well, it was this this girl that I was following the who did the keto diet, and she kind of had a breakdown, and she said, I’m done. She had this one guest on her show where she the guest talked about binging and it’s normal to binge and I was wait, what? It’s normal to binge. Wait, what? Like, she was talking about how you can binge and it’s okay. It’s not a big deal. Your body’s perfectly built for binging. Like you can do it.
I was just so confused. I would just I was like, Okay, I’m trying to gain weight. I don’t want to be binging. Although I do want to binge because I did have binging tendencies. I did have a type of tendencies, whether it was I would overeat. And I would exercise it all off, or I would throw it up, off or whatever, both, or I would just starve it off. I was just a little bit the spectrum of the disordered eating.
So I was like, This is no, that’s not true. And so I’m like, But wait a minute, she’s saying that it is true. So then that little girl with a curiosity as to why, why is she saying this? And why is this? Why might this be true? So I started following her and through her I listened to one of her podcasts where she had Dr. Amy Johnson on. I bought her book. I didn’t really get it. I was like, okay, whatever but I really understood, I think she on her website, she has some videos as standard introduction, and she touches on the three principles of it. So the three principles I kind of came to on a back end from Dr. Amy Johnson. I really haven’t gotten too involved with three principles. But it’s not mind and consciousness. It’s all the same. It’s all the same understanding.
I did The Little School of Big Change. I enrolled in maybe 2017. I think it was, I enrolled in the program, I did the six week course. And then I really understood Oh, my gosh, I was so right when I was a little girl. When I was a kid, I was just so spot on. I was so curious. And I asked why. And I took things very light. I just took things as they were. It brought me full circle back to when I was a kid. I’ve pretty much not every single moment of every single day but I’ve pretty much been that way. I’ve had that already. And that curiosity, like I said, has just been a place where I just, I find I find to be safe.
I’m back home. So I don’t know if that answers the question that was that. But it’s just questioning. It’s questioning things. And if you question something, it might not be true. And what is true? I did a lot of that with when I was in therapy when I was in the outpatient therapy. We did Byron Katie, at Byron Katie’s The Work. So we would pull up worksheets and everything, unbeknownst to me, what I was doing, I was going through the motions, and I was understanding it.
But now later on, I can go back to it and I can say, Oh, wow, like now I see it so differently. It’s like with the saying that nothing’s changed, but everything’s different.
Alexandra: Asyou gradually begin to lean into your curiosity, and when you were enrolled in The Little School of Big Change.
Is there anything you can point to that you started to see that you hadn’t seen clearly before?
Gabby: As an adult I had layers of different filters, just mucked up, what I had already been seen as a kid. The awareness of where my mind goes, and where my thoughts go. And that’s just perfectly natural, to have different types of thoughts and to have different thinking and it’s perfectly natural. It was the conditioning, it was a conditioning that I had. Things had to be a certain way because I already had a few strikes, quote, unquote, against me, coming from somewhat of a broken family.
I really don’t want to say broken family because like I said, I had a lot of love growing up. But I didn’t have the traditional mom and dad and I had my aunts and I had my brothers and that was it. We were making our way and doing what we need to do. My aunts did have a lot of structure on how things should be and how things should go. So that’s what I went by and good girls do this and I need to be proper about things and, and I tried to be as perfect as I could with anything and everything I could, came my way that I just had a lot of filter.
Like I said, that mucked up my natural state, my natural curiosity and that awareness of, Hey, it’s okay to have to be different and to have different thoughts and life is not going to be so perfect. Or what you think would you consider to be perfect. Like what is perfection?
Alexandra:Angus and Rohini Ross use the term rewilding, bringing something back to its natural state. I’m being reminded of that as you speak.
Gabby: I love that. I did listen to their podcast. I don’t think they’re still doing the rewilding podcast, I’m not too sure. But I really enjoyed them. I’ve been on a phone call with Rohini. She’s wonderful. And yes, just being in that natural state, because that’s all there really is. Simple, simple, simple, simple. We just tend to pick up that simplicity. And we tend to run with it and try to go somewhere with it. And it’s like, no, you know.
What’s fun now, I have to say, is that when I do have thoughts that run wild, and then just go off, I can come back and say, Wow, isn’t that wild? That’s just crazy. That was like, wow, it’s kind of like, you’ve had a night where you’ve had these wake up, and you’re remembering your dreams. And like, random people have come and talked into your, your dreams. And then you wake up and you’re like, Well, that was weird. Why did that happen?
I consider my day dreaming the same thing as my night dreaming and my thoughts is the same thing as my dreams. And so, yeah, that’s way I see them now. I see them as, as just running wild, and just being okay with it. And just coming back and saying, wow, that’s interesting.
Alexandra: I loved what you said about how you had filters over the innately well and wild part of yourself. I see this little stack of dirty filters, and you pulling them back one at a time. I love that visual.
It was all that thinking about what the filters are about trying to be perfect. And trying to control everything in a way.
Gabby: Yeah, and maybe you want to put a filter on and there’s nothing wrong filters. They are like the tool, see your thoughts in your mind?
When I say mind I don’t mean it universal mind. I think the three principles is Universal Mind is like the isness. But for me, the mind is I can kind of consider, like the thought, the little mind or something, these thoughts are like filters, you can put in a filter. And if it’s a tool that you can use, great, use it, have fun with it, and then you know that you can take it out, throw it away.
If it kind of lingers and stays just know that it’s a remnant, and it’s eventually going to fall off on its own that filter. Some people equate it to clouds going by, or the weather going by, and then you’ve got some filters that you put on, you’re like, Oh, this is so uncomfortable. Or I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here. I don’t like it.
Sometimes these thoughts, these filters can manifest themselves physically. And boy, do you feel them? I mean, like, or do you feel them, it feels like a, like a tornado, or, or major hurricane is going on. You can feel it physically, physiologically in your body.
I’ve gone through some, since last year, I’ve had quite a few surgeries. Some were planned, and some were not planned, and having discomfort physically, and some people call it pain. And, yes, I mean, some things were very painful. Some were very uncomfortable. Either way, I knew that these were things that were that my body had to go through and that eventually, they were going to dissipate. And if they didn’t dissipate, then I knew that I my body was going to take care of itself in a sense in the sense of I was going to end up getting more help with this problem. Or they were going to go they were going to go on their own type of thing.
I don’t know how to explain it, but to kind of lean into it and to be with it and to continue. That’s the physical pain that I had. And the thoughts are the same way to, I think is that you kind of lean into them if you can and they continue to go. And sometimes they get lost. And sometimes they come back and they get you they get you, then they go away. Yeah, very fickle.
Alexandra: Whenyou finished the Little School of Big Change, then you were drawn into the facilitator training with Amy Johnson.
Gabby: I went to The Little School a Big Change. And I was a wallflower. I didn’t really actively participate in the conversations there were so many of us. I wasn’t the only one. But I remember right before we would have the group calls, I would get ready. And I would do my hair and this, that and the other. And I’d be like, Okay, maybe I’ll say something and I wouldn’t say anything.
Finally, I started speaking up a little bit. And then sometimes I find myself like in this conversation I’m having with you right now, sometimes I find myself word tripping, and not knowing how do I say this, or I really want them to understand this. But you know what I mean, the person hearing is going to get whatever they get out of what you say, that’s not on the person speaking. So I really want to try to express myself better with this understanding. So I can tell my family and my friends about it.
So when I heard about Amy’s coaching program, I decided to join. And I thought this would just be a different perspective of what was going on in middle school, a big change, besides the community group calls. It’s like a spin off community. The coaching community is a spin off community of the graduates of the other community that we had going on. So it was more intimate. We had intensives, which I really enjoyed.
I was starstruck with Amy Johnson. She’s just so giving and just listening to her over and over and in her group calls for a few years, and then having her ear was just like, oh my gosh, it’s just amazing. So yes, I did the course last year in 2022. And I graduated in June, we had a gathering in Chicago, which I went to and got to meet the other, some other coaches live. And that was a treat. I don’t have too many friends here. I don’t have any friends physically, that are physically with me, that have that. I shouldn’t say have this understanding. But when we talk about this understanding, it’s usually friends and now I consider you my friend.
It’s usually through zoom, or it’s just online or on the phone. It was really nice connecting with them live. So after the program, I decided to create an LLC and put myself out there as a change coach do website and everything. I’ve been doing free coaching and that’s a given just to get to know people and to see if I’m a good fit for them. I do coaching, I have packages, things like that. I also do other types of coaching, where I go out for walks with some people around here, especially the elderly. I help out with a program, where we help with at the senior assistance program that helps with running errands for them and driving them to medical appointments and grocery shopping. So I get to know a lot of the seniors intimately and what’s going on with them. And I get to practice a little coaching with them. So it’s really nice.
Alexandra: Whenyou’re working with someone who has experienced disordered eating, where would you begin to if they’ve never heard of this understanding?
Where would you begin to try to introduce it to them?
Gabby: It depends on the person. It totally depends on where their mind is, for lack of a better word, at that point in time. My job, when I do any coaching with anyone, whether it’s a senior or someone that’s struggling, because I did work with some that were that were having issues with eating disordered eating, it’s just having a place to hold them. It’s just having a place to say tell me what was that been like? Tell me about the binge.
That’s the same place that I was held when I started listening to Amy Johnson. And the other girl’s name, I think, was Stephanie. I think your program was called beyond the food or something like that. I know you have something similar to that? Or you had a book or something like that.
Alexandra: It’s Not About the Food.
Gabby: And hers was beyond the food. And I don’t know to be on. I don’t know, if she’s still around with her podcasts. Yeah. But anyway, it was that place to hold and say, just be curious about them, and what they’re thinking and what they’re going through, and just holding them and saying let’s explore this, let’s be curious about it. Let’s question it. Is it true? is it really true? Is it really true that you’re no good? Because you ate an extra doughnut? Or is it really true that you’re not perfect? Because you had a whole large pizza by yourself?
Is that true? And so just questioning and exploring themselves back to home, I call home and back to their pure essence. And having that connection with them, believe I truly believe that we all have it in us. And it’s just a matter of uncovering it. Is that really so much? It’s not it’s not a discovery, you’re not discovering it. Because it’s not new. It’s there with you already. You’re just uncovering it.
We all have that in us. It’s that common thread. I find that common thread with people in this understanding, like with you, and people in The Little School of Big Change, and Byron Katie’s people, wherever. I find it with people that have this understanding three principles, etc. Those that come questioning, and with grief and not knowing that they have it. I feel like I’m here to help them point. The way to uncovering that in them.
That’s just the best thing ever to see someone uncover it and say, Oh, my gosh. Wow. This was just all a story. Like they woke up from a dream like, Oh, wow. You remember back in was it the 80s that primetime show called Dallas. The whole thing was for the last couple of seasons, I think it was who shot JR? And they played out the scenarios and whatever was a big drama for a couple of seasons. And then at the end, what was it was a dream.
I think with our lives it’s just a big dream. And we wake up, it’s like, oh, that didn’t happen.
Alexandra: Goingback to your filter metaphor, it’s helping people to first see that the filters even exist. When we’re not aware that they’re even there we think that what we’re seeing and experiencing is real.
Then when we discover that there’s something in front of my understanding, this filter that’s all dirty, and we begin to pull them away.
Gabby: And we begin pulling them away and even having fun with them. Because even though I don’t I still – going back to the disordered eating – I still kind of eat the same in the same sense but without any. I like to eat, I like good food, I like to make my own food. I am picky, I don’t like going to just any restaurant.
Before I used to tell myself, well, you should be able to just go into a restaurant and, and eat like everybody else. Why not? And it’s like, no, I like to take care of myself. And there’s nothing wrong with saying I don’t want to eat that. That was a thing, trying to get over in my recovery, trying to be normal, and eat like everybody else. I just couldn’t sometimes bring myself to do it. And then I would beat myself up for that.
And it’s like, no, well, that’s okay. You’re just trying to take care of yourself. And that’s okay. So I’m not saying that that. Gosh, I don’t want to say rigid eating is okay or not okay, or whatever. What I’m trying to say is if that if that filter, that tool is working for you use it. But that’s all it is. It’s a tool.
Alexandra:I really like hearing too, that you’re just giving yourself permission to be who you are.
You’re letting the rules fall by the wayside, as though there’s some right way to be. Letting that fall away and doing what feels good to you.
Gabby: Right? The rules are that there are no rules. That’s the rule. The rules are that there are no rules, because what’s working for me right now, as my body ages, and as I change may not work for me later on. I was plant based for six, seven years. No animal body, or anything like that. Because I was afraid that I was going to have a cardiac arrest or something was going to happen to because it runs in my family, high cholesterol, there’s so many other so that’s why I was plant based.
And then when I went to different cardiologist and I started the keto diet. I started eating all this meat and my body went like haywire and this at the other end, and so it’s just my body reacting to what it is that I’m putting in it. And that’s just the way I see it now. What works right now may not work later on, and that’s okay.
Alexandra: Exactly.
As we’re just about to wrap up here, is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on today?
Gabby: Um, there’s always something to share. I think that the thing is there. There is such a thing, right to take away from this conversation is to always be curious. And always question. And always know that. That if, if it if there’s a question involved, it’s probably not true. Question about that. There’s curiosity involved. It’s probably not true. And that’s okay.
Alexandra:I love that. That’s so great. Well, this has been lovely, Gabby.
Why don’t you let everyone know where they can find out more about you and your work?
Gabby: Sure. My website is GabbyPritts.com. And there there’s a tab where you can send me an email. And you can schedule a conversation with me if you’d like. And it’s always for free. I love being in this conversation. I do practice coaching. But like I said, I love being in this conversation with anyone anytime.
So if anything that I talked about today interested you and you want to talk more about the three principles, this understanding or The Work by Byron Katie, anything that has to do with you being curious about whatever’s going on with you. Whatever habit or thought may be bothering you. I’d love to talk to you and so you can definitely schedule something with me on my website.
Alexandra:Perfect. I will put a link in the show notes to your website so people can find that easily. And thank you for being here with me today. It was lovely chatting with you.
Gabby: It was it was a true joy just chatting I love talking about this stuff.
Q&A 20 – Two Ways to Look at an Uncomfortable Feeling
Jun 26, 2023
We innocently tend to think of discomfort and unwanted feelings (like food cravings) as problems that need to be solved. What if they are actually something else? What if they are reminders, pointing us toward our true nature of peace, calm and joy?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How we innocently compound our discomfort by thinking it’s a problem
What if we saw unwanted feelings as feedback, pointing us to our true nature?
How we’re surrounded by a sea of wisdom at all times that can help us with any problem
Transcript of episode
Hello, explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 20 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today the topic is about two ways to look at an unwanted feeling.
I was journaling this morning in my journal, as I often do on a quiet Sunday morning, and I had this situation where I was uncomfortable about something. I had a really distinctly uncomfortable feeling. And for the past couple of days before that I had been wondering what to do about the feeling. And as I journaled, I reflected that there are two very distinct ways to deal with an unwanted feeling when it comes up.
And that the understanding that I explore on this podcast has pointed out to me the fact that there are these two different ways to deal with things like this, and how the old way, which I’ll talk about in a second, that I used to deal with things was really fraught with a lot of anxiety and pressure and self recrimination.
The second way that I’ve learned to deal with these things like this on uncomfortable feelings, or unwanted feelings, discomfort, things that look like problems, is so much more peaceful and relaxed, and it just flows so much better.
The Old Way to Deal with Uncomfortable Feelings Like Cravings
So let me share a bit about what I see about this. When we have an unwanted feeling, and that could be a craving, it could be something like the drive to overeat the first way, and this is the way that I learned how to deal with any situation like that in the past was or is to see that feeling as a problem. Let’s say you’ve got a craving, and you we culturally, we just kind of automatically look at the drives that we feel to participate in an unwanted habit, the cravings that we have, we see them as problems. And that’s totally innocent and totally natural.
I approached that situation like that for three decades. And unfortunately, what happens is when we look at an uncomfortable feeling, and unwanted feeling like it’s a problem, then innocently, we end up layering a whole bunch more thought, and thinking onto this to a situation that a doesn’t require it and doing that really isn’t helpful at all.
Speaking from my own experience, looking at my unwanted overeating habit, and the feelings that were associated with that, looking at that like it was a problem actually only dug me deeper into the hole of having that unwanted habit.
When I saw that situation, that feeling, as a problem that meant that I was looking for solutions. And as I said a little bit earlier, adding a whole bunch more thinking on to that situation. Where might it have originated from? And what what might have caused this within me? What sort of brokenness or damage within me might have caused me to have these ongoing cravings?
The the more years that went by with me thinking about that situation like it was a problem, the more the more thinking and the more discomfort was heaped on top of what was already originally there. And like I say that it was like trying to get out of a hole that I was in by digging deeper into the hole.
Again, we’re always doing this innocently. I’m not laying blame at my own feet or anybody else’s feet. This is how we tend to look at the human journey and the human situation and it’s only when I began to explore that this inside out understanding that seeing that situation, that uncomfortable feeling, that unwanted craving for food, not as a problem but as something else, that’s what began to release me from the unwanted habit itself, ironically.
That brings us this brings us to the second way that we can look at how we deal with or experience an unwanted feeling.
This way, is the much more peaceful way. It’s the way that we lean into what’s happening and see the wisdom within it. So when we have an unwanted feeling, or an uncomfortable feeling like I had this morning the second way that we can look at that is like it’s information. It’s feedback. It’s coming from our beautiful, innate divine design. And it’s simply letting us know, two things, at least, this is what I see:
It’s letting us know the quality of our thinking is a little bit cloudy, perhaps, or messed up, or it’s not as clear and wise as it could be.
The second thing that it’s telling us is that, as I mentioned this on last week’s podcast as well, we’ve temporarily innocently forgotten who we are. We’ve forgotten that we’re entirely made of well-being, and peace, and that our default way of walking through life is one of joy, and wonder, and delight.
Those uncomfortable feelings that come up within us, whether that’s a craving, or whether that’s an annoyance at your spouse, or whether that’s an argument with a neighbor, maybe some really grouchy feelings about your next door neighbor, or whatever it is. That is simply information.
What it what it’s taught me to do, when I feel that way, is to not layer more thinking onto the situation. So if we can catch ourselves when we have a really uncomfortable feeling and there’s going to be a lot of habitual thinking that comes along with uncomfortable feelings, and unwanted feelings, and that’s okay. But eventually, you might be able to catch yourself when that’s happening and simply wonder about the feedback that that feeling has given you.
There’s really nothing at that point that we need to do. And I always, in my mind, picture myself taking the problem and setting it down. Like literally, I picture it like it’s in a little container, a little box, with a nice lid and everything (because I love boxes) and setting it aside, putting it on a table and just leaving it there. And every once in a while my mind will come back to it, and want to chew it over a little bit. And then I might remember that I don’t need to do that. I can just leave it there.
There’s something greater at play that’s trying to help me.
As I talked about in previous episodes, we’re always, always swimming in a sea of wisdom, and unlimited possibilities and infinite answers to any problems that we have. It’s everywhere, in every direction that we can look. There’s this wisdom and innate universal intelligence that is available to us. And so if we can simply remember to lift our heads up and rely on that wisdom, that’s the way that uncomfortable, unwelcome feelings get resolved.
And that applies to an argument with your neighbor. If we leave that alone or your spouse, leave that situation alone and wait until we feel like our thinking is at a better place that we’re thinking more clearly. And you can just feel that.
you know the difference between when we’re rattled and maybe being a little bit mean to ourselves and uncomfortable.
There’s a difference between that and when we’re in a really clear state of mind.
And that unwanted craving or feeling is really just there as a reminder. It’s like a little mindfulness meditation bell, letting us know what’s happening with the quality of our thinking.
So I could encourage you the next time you feel something uncomfortable or unwanted going on within you. I just wonder if you could try to catch it and see it for what it is. And that’s really all that you need to do. This isn’t homework. But it’s an exploration of the brilliance of our true design, our true nature.
I hope that’s been helpful, and that you are doing well and I will talk to you again next week.
Remembering Our Innate Wholeness with Jeri Kramer
Jun 22, 2023
Psychotherapist Jeri Kramer was experiencing burnout (and grief) when she discovered the Three Principles. Exploring the understanding that we are all well and whole has revitalized her enthusiasm for her work and brought lightness and laughter into her time with her clients.
In this episode, we talk about how understanding that humans are designed to be resourceful and resilient, and to return to a state of peace and well-being, changes everything for those previously diagnosed with issues like depression and anxiety.
Jeri Kramer is a psychotherapist and mental health coach. She brings 20 plus years of training and practice to her work, and also a wealth of life experiences. She has known many joys and triumphs in life, as well as many struggles and pains.
She’s experienced marriage and divorce and now lives in a beautiful relationship with her husband of 16 years. She’s raised children both as a biological parent and as a step-parent and knows the struggles and rewards of building a blended family. She’s weathered devastating loss and found joy and laughter in the aftermath. And, perhaps most importantly, she’s learned to know that love, health, and ease are always available to every one of us, and knows that where to find it isn’t as hard as we might think.
Alexandra: I’m so glad to have you here. So let’s begin.
Tell us a bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles.
Jeri: I’ve been a psychotherapist for… so it’s always hard to think of this over 20 years, 25, I guess, and doing pretty traditional psychotherapy, one on one, talk therapy, various kinds of modalities, and really enjoyed what I was doing. But looking back now I know it was kind of burned out, didn’t know it then, but definitely was burning out.
So how I ran into the principal’s it was so in 2019 actually begins with a little tragedy: I lost my daughter really suddenly. And right after that COVID happened. So lost my daughter, I kind of shut my practice down. About the time I was kind of gathering my thoughts together, COVID happens, we shut down. I found myself sitting at home, locked down, and we were really locked down.
I had my elderly parents with me, we were being really careful with nothing to do. And at some point, probably about six months, and I realized I was drinking every day. Not a lot but I’ve never done that. I was drinking every day. So I signed up for a 30 day sober challenge. And I wish I could tell you the woman’s name. She wrote a book called This Naked Mind.
Alexandra: Annie something…
Jeri: Grace. That’s it. Annie Grace. So she wrote that book. And I did a 30 day online challenge with her and I just really loved how she was looking at a mindfulness approach. And on that challenge, they interviewed Amy Johnson.
I thought, oh, there is something here. So I signed up for the Little School of Big Change. All the time going, oh, there’s something here, having no idea she was talking about the three principles, because she didn’t say it.
And then she gives you Bill Pettit, who was a psychiatrist, working with the three principals and things just started lighting up. I just knew this was something so much more than I was seeing and got my hands on as many books as I could.
It was COVID, everything was coming online, I just was able to immerse myself and found myself really revitalized, not only personally, but in my work. Really excited to go back to work. Couldn’t wait for things to lift so I could see more people, which is not where I’d been.
And then personally, things were just shifting and changing and easing and just the whole the world. And it continues. So that’s how I ended up looking to the three principals.
Alexandra: When your practice started up again, and you began sharing this, what did that look like?
Jeri: Oh my gosh, I remember the day I walked back, the first time I was ever going to have somebody back in my office, right as it was lifting… actually I take that back. It was in my my office, which is attached to my home, and it was in my backyard. Because we could be outside. And it was beautiful. Here it was, it was springtime. But I had to walk through my office to sit down with that person.
I had a bookshelf sitting there full of all my years of psychotherapy books. And I remember go on, oh my gosh, what am I doing, and that I couldn’t use what I that changed a little we can certainly talk about it. But realizing that everything I done wasn’t going to serve me in the same way or my clients. I was sitting down with so much excitement.
So what began to change is I wasn’t the expert anymore. I was along for an exploration with my clients into really looking at something different. It was no longer what psychotherapy traditionally had been for me, which is identify a symptom, have some kind of technique to deal with a symptom. That’s really bad, go get them to the psychiatrist and they can get medication. That always felt a little thin.
As far as treatment goes, I knew I was always able to give a really good space for people they felt safe. They felt heard. And I think that was really valuable. But this was different because now I could shine the light back on my clients and really see their health. And that was the journey now is getting them home. Giving them something that was theirs.
Letting them see something thing that was theirs, getting them home, and they can walk out with it. And it was theirs. You didn’t need to come back for a tune up. You didn’t have to have another crisis and come see me. So it was like this revelation of hope.
And the feeling in the room changed. There was a lot more laughing. It wasn’t like, let me tell you what to do. And if you don’t do it, you you’re not doing it right or something. Right, just all that change.
Alexandra: Did you have any clients that you’d worked with prior to coming across this understanding that came back? And then you introduce them to the principles?
Jeri: I did it subtly. It was interesting, because I had this artificial gap in there between the death of my daughter and COVID. So people came back. And I just started kind of subtly shifting. I don’t know how subtle it was, what I was doing. And I had a few clients who returned from before and came back. And I had clients that I had seen on and off for years, that at some points I had thought, well, the best I can do is just giving them a safe place to land when they need it. People with some pretty severe mental illness, what I called mental illness at the time.
Now I see those people are well, and remarkably so. So they trusted me enough to think I was too kooky. I was I didn’t say oh, here’s the three principles, I just started living it in connection with them. And I just kept saying, here’s what I see now. Here’s what I see. And that was really important you can only give what you see.
That was another changing space in this. When I started this, it was for me, at one point, I thought a little loss, because I started looking at is like, how can I use this to help my clients, which is what you do when you’re learning. Psychotherapists, you learn it so you can teach your clients.
The thing that became really different is I needed to learn it for me, because that’s all I could give. So all I could do, I had to get off that track of oh, I’m going to tell that to my client, or I’m going to use that metaphor, or I’m going to remember that idea that somebody said, if I didn’t let it be here, it can’t go there. It’s got to come in and live before you can give it away. So that’s also part of the excitement. And you learn it. I sit with a client and I learned and I learn and unlearn while I’m talking.
Alexandra: You mentioned burnout early on, that you were feeling a little burned out.
I’m assuming that changed?
Jeri: Absolutely. I will steal a description I heard somebody else use and it was Angus Ross. I remember him talking to us, saying at one point in his life, and I’m going to steal his story because it fit me perfectly.
He remembers looking around, like, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? I guess I’ll do this till I can retire. That’s how it felt to me. I thought, well, I guess I could show up, punch the clock. I’m good enough. I could do this. I didn’t think I would be of poor service to my clients. But I wasn’t going to be alive. I was just I was like, Okay, how many years? But I can’t imagine stopping now.
Alexandra: Wow, that’s so great. And it’s so funny. You say that about stopping. I mean, Mavis Karn is in her 80s now. George Pransky, too I think. People keep talking about slowing down but and then just don’t do it.
They’re so filled with the joy of life and love and the creative energy that’s flowing through all of us that they can’t seem to walk away, which is so great.
Jeri: Yeah, right and bringing that overflow to the work you’re doing. Doing your work from that space and people benefit from it.
Alexandra: It’s so interesting that we’re talking about burnout. I interviewed Joe Bailey a few weeks ago. And he, I think he worked, he may still work with therapists in the preventing burnout space.
I loved what you said about it becomes a peer to peer relationship. And you’re simply sharing what you see. And it’s the same thing that’s available to your clients, rather than you’re up here and you’re trying to save them.
I love that equal playing field.
Jeri: When I’m up here trying to tell you what to do, I’m the expert. Let me tell you how to fix your life. And if it fails it’s my fault. So you don’t leave people room to to find what works for them. Either it’s my fault, because I’m a crappy therapist, or therefore, because they didn’t do it well enough. Either way, it doesn’t work. But we’re all well, we’re all whole.
Alexandra: Exactly. And you mentioned the Little School of Big Change.
Were there any other trainings that you took or anything?
Jeri: I’ve done a number of pretty extensive. I don’t know what you call them webinars with Bill Pettit, online seminars. I finished six months with Angus and Rohini Ross and the Rewilding program, which is how you read them to me.
Alexandra: Tell us a little bit about rewilding. What does that word mean to you and what does it look like?
Jeri: I know you’re somewhat familiar with it but for the audience, the rewilding paradigm came from the the process that happened when they rewilded Yellowstone National Park by reintroducing the wolves.
The wolves had left the landscape, literally, physically had changed, right, but with the removal of the wolf, so when the wolves came back, the deer population went down. The erosion went away, the plant life came back, the beavers came back, bears came back and the rivers changed course. And the eagles came back. It’s just this remarkable thing.
When nature was restored to its its original way, I guess, is what we call balance. So in the rewilding, that that was the metaphor that really drew me that that we are well and whole and wise and our capacity to balance ourselves and to heal ourselves and to to be well, I guess, to be at ease even through the eye of the hurricane, I think is Joe Bailey calls it.
I was really drawn and that had come out of I’d been drawn to that with Bill Pettit’s work. Nothing broken, nothing lacking is his tagline. So I was really curious about that. That a life changer, for me, and for my own, and for my clients to really see that. Under the noise, always under the noise, we’re well, we are at peace. The noise comes the noise goes. But we are wild nature, if we can rewild ourselves it’s that wise part of us that it knows what it’s doing.
Alexandra: That wolf story from Yellowstone is such a great metaphor. And there’s a video actually, that I’ll link to, it’s maybe five or 10 minutes long, and it tells the story. I think it’s called how wolves rerouted a river or it’s something about the connection between the wolves and the river.
Jeri: I found it by googling rewilding Yellowstone on YouTube. It’s a five minute. It’s so delightful in its hope and promise for our wellness.
Alexandra: I want to ask a bit more about that. The difference you see, we’ve kind of touched on this already. But the difference that you see between the old paradigm psychological approach and this one.
Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you notice when you’re working with clients?
Jeri: In the old paradigm, maybe from other podcasts, Psychology has it Backwards, like Christine Heath, and Judy Sedgman said, that it’s a traditional psychotherapy. You have some different schools of thought, but the one of the big ones, which is really kind of seeped into our culture is you go back into trauma, and you dig through it, and you dig it up and you get good with it. And that somehow going back and revisiting all that is going to heal us.
I don’t know that I wouldn’t say there’s no value in visiting our pasts. But to know we’re well first and then we can digest our past is really different than digest your past so that you’ll get well. It’s like going into battle wounded versus being whole. And then not even battle, that’s probably not a good word. But, doing something difficult.
You want to be whole and well, you don’t have to do the difficult thing to get whole. Well, so there’s that, that paradigm shift of digging into a thing to almost resurrect the past to be okay, today. So that’s very different.
For me, I really am very now focused that we may talk about the past, but man, I want us to know we’re whole and well before we we go walking around back there. So that’s from one school of thought.
There’s cognitive therapy, which gets a little closer to three principles. Cognitive Therapy is you change your thinking, so you’ll feel better. You think a certain way and it makes you feel a certain way. But then therapy takes a step up going. But let’s talk about changing that thinking. And so you’re policing your thinking.
In the three principles we do look at our feelings as a reflection of what we’re thinking.
But the kind of therapy then use thinking to fix our thinking. So it’s more thinking about what’s causing us distress, which is our thinking. As opposed to maybe noticing and letting it be okay, letting it be. So all of the strategies that would come from those schools, I don’t use those.
The other thing I think about a lot is exam anxiety is a big one. For me, when I was doing traditional psychotherapy, I got where I wouldn’t, to the best of my ability, I would refer people with high anxiety to someone else, because I felt so hopeless about it. Like so stuck in in not feeling like I could do much for those people other than give them some coping skills.
Now it’s like, anxiety come to that with me, we got this. Let’s do anxiety. I see it so clearly and so differently now and it’s not just like, well, let’s be rational about it, or let’s do a breathing technique, or let’s dig through your trauma that at or let’s look at the thinking. It’s very, very different. And it’s permanent.
When people see that is when they have an insight around it, it’s theirs. They don’t have to remember to practice a breathing technique or remember to scour through the thinking and make sure it’s okay are the second answer that.
Alexandra: I love that. And I love the, I’m going to call it a reversal, that you said approaching things from the position that we are well and if we need to look into the past, we’re going in there with that awareness versus feeling like we’re broken, and approaching life that way that we need to get well.
That’s such a great way to look at it. I love that.
Jeri: Right. And it’s so now it’s just about of discovering our way home, not going back and rebuilding the foundation of the house while you’re living at it and whatever metaphor that would be.
For people coming in who have been given a diagnosis, they’ve been told they’re bipolar. They’re been told they’re OCD. They’ve been told they’re grab the DSM, there’s hundreds of diagnosis in there. And they feel burdened with that label. Right? Like, this is what you walk with. This is now who you are to be able to realize that that’s just a construct kind of laid over them. And that the wellness is still in there and they can burst back out.
Alexandra: That’s so great. I love that. One of the questions I wanted to ask you was what you love about working with your clients? I feel like we’ve kind of talked about that, is there anything you’d like to share about, I don’t know, something fun or interesting that’s happened with one of your clients.
Are there any big shifts that you’ve seen?
Jeri: I’m a little hesitant because I don’t want to give away any information.
There was a couple clients that I had seen prior to three principals who pretty routinely were hospitalized with some severe suicidal ideation once or twice a year for years. Electroconvulsive therapy, tons of medications that I don’t, and I wouldn’t be anxious about. I always felt hyper vigilant around monitoring, and making sure that all the safety, bumpers were in place, right and seeing, seeing these people as fragile, as broken.
First off, one of them hasn’t been in the hospital in two years. Another one, I think has gone once. I don’t worry about it anymore. I just know that they will, if that’s what they need, that will just come up. It’s not this kind of constant assessment, which I think feeds the concept that somebody is so fragile, that they have to be constantly attended to and then how can they not see themselves in that way?
So to me, the most remarkable is that change, that beginning to walk with their own sense of resilience, and while in health and knowing it’s there, even though it may get lost to them sometimes, but that they know it’s there, and they can find their way home. That’s a big one.
The other thing, I think I have a lot of, I just have a lot of fun with this way of there’s a lot of humor and lightness and laughing at ourselves. And really recognizing how wacky we get innocently, but but, gosh, it’s fun.
Alexandra: That’s great.
That makes me think of how powerful the story of ourselves is, the story that we carry around with ourselves and about ourselves, and how powerful that can be in a detrimental way before we realize that it is a story.
Jeri: And what a gift to be able to see it’s a story of your own creation, and you’ve read it put it down.
Alexandra: Exactly. And I guess that’s what happens with a diagnosis, isn’t it? We’re assigned this story, and we feel like we can’t put it down and we have to carry it around. It’s about me and it’s kind of like a leech. It’s attached.
And then realizing, no, there’s fluidity there. It’s not attached to us.
Jeri: Well, and it doesn’t even even if it were something like I mean, I guess there’s some stories that you would say you lost an arm. Like you would walk with one arm, but I guess you would walk with two arms. But you don’t have to have a story of yourself as I’m a one armed person. It’s just not to see us as so much deeper than that.
Labels make people feel like they’re stuck with them. Like how do I don’t stick this thing slapped on my chest or my forehead. I never liked labels before, but they’re even harder to swallow now.
It just occurred to me one of the things I’ve heard Bill Pettit say a number of times is, so one of the things that comes up in psychotherapy is resistance, there’s this term of resistance, like the client is resisting, they’re not doing what I’m telling them to do. Therefore, they’re not getting better. It puts all the burden on the client for not getting getting better.
He has this thing that he’s been saying lately that resistance is the absence of hope that a client is resisting, because they don’t really have hope that what you’re telling them is going to make any difference. And that’s a little bit married to a label. You will have this all your life.
But what I see in the three principles, resistance is not even an issue because their hope springs eternal in that space. It’s not like you have this label that nobody’s ever cured or gotten better for all you can do is cope with it find your way to cope. I can’t remember the last time I thought of that idea that a client was being resistant. Like it wouldn’t work in this paradigm. There’s so much more hope.
Alexandra: So beautiful. I’ve been in therapy myself quite a while actually, before I found the principles for maybe six or seven or eight years after I left a cult that I was involved in. And it was helpful to a certain degree.
Then I got really interested in self help, so then it became reading all the self help books I could find and all that kind of stuff. And what I walked away with from that was that when things didn’t work, I was the problem. When somebody strategy or technique or the way they did it didn’t work for me, that meant that I was at fault.
I love the way that that has changed so much with this, that it’s not about taking somebody else’s advice.
It’s about looking toward, as we’ve said, our own wisdom and well being.
Jeri: And that that is something that’s portable with you for life. Like you’re not forever at the mercy of, I need to go back and see a therapist again, or now I have a crisis, I need to see somebody. Like it’s almost like, for some people, it it was like, Okay, I’m done with therapy for now, until the next problem.
I think that the physical metaphor of this, I love it a lot that , we trust our bodies, for the most part to heal. If we just leave a wound alone, don’t poke at it, and pour salt on it or infect it in general, most times it takes care of itself.
I love that parallel to our emotional world, our psychological world, our mental well being, that why wouldn’t we be built to heal? Why wouldn’t we be built to knit ourselves back together? Because nobody’s making it from birth to death without some kind of trauma or often.
This idea that that always means intervention, as opposed to turning in just feels really profound to me that yet to get people to see that. The other physical metaphor I really love is is how the system is built to give us feedback when we’re misusing our thinking.
If I’m stepping on your toe and it hurts you tell me to get off. But if you’re thinking a certain way and it hurts for some reason, we were never taught to believe that hurt and say quit thinking that way. Somewhere else like that. It’s so exquisitely a one to one feedback system.
If you’re sitting there and dwelling on what somebody said at work yesterday you feel horrible. The system’s going, “Stop this. Get the burning poker out of my hand.” And yet we lean into it, we think harder, like, that’s somehow in our culture, or I don’t know where it came from, but we’re stuck. Many of us are stuck with it thinking that means.
If it feels bad, I need to think some more about it. But that’s like saying it hurts when you’re stepping on my foot. So step harder. In that alone is just like a breath of burden off for for so much of where we get stuck.
Alexandra: I totally agree.
I’m imagining that, that you work with your clients for sort of shorter periods of time now. Is that true?
Jeri: My sessions last longer. That was always really hard in the traditional therapy as there’s the therapy hour, which is 50 minutes. And somehow you were supposed to sit down, and 50 minutes later, leave with it all in some nice package. And that just doesn’t to me anymore. Feel honoring to where people are at. So I have much more open ended.
It was a little scary at first, because I didn’t see people as I won’t have clients. But you get to be done and go away, not be done and be good enough. Right, not be done until the next time. I mean, certainly that there’s things that happen, right. But to know that somebody’s walking out of my out of the work we’ve done together, and they are prepared for so much more than just getting past whatever it was. Or just not having social anxiety more or not having panic attacks, or not having a problem with their boyfriend or girlfriend like it’s so much more. It is a global solution. Not let’s patch this problem together. And then this problem together.
Alexandra: Where do your clients come from?
Jeri: Word of mouth for me as is most of it. When I was more plugged into the traditional psychotherapy, I had a referral stream from other psychiatrists and stuff. I did a lot of couples work. I still do a lot of couples work. So at this point, it’s it’s mostly word of mouth. Which is fine. They know what they’re getting into.
That’s the other thing that’s so different. There, what is there in traditional psychotherapy training, there’s a lot of emphasis on empathizing with where some were there. It was just reporting to say I get it. But it would almost become this. dramatizing of the pain, like really? Oh, my God, that’s horrible. What happened? Tell me it was poking your finger in the wound to hope.
Which made it kind of underscoring that. So back to the inside out things, underscoring that what happened out there as the problem in here, and we underscore it by really getting into it and asking for details and what happened and how, what were you like, really? Making it alive? And then as if that outside pass thing was what needed to be fixed as opposed to this.
Alexandra: Is there anything you can share about working with couples that you see in addition to everything we’ve talked about?
Jeri: When I was trying to work with couples, originally, so 20 years ago, I’d say two things. One of the kind of, I would say kind of unspoken truths in the psychotherapy community is most people don’t like doing it. They don’t do it. But they didn’t want to actually love it. I really loved working with couples, and I still do, but most of the work would be done with a couple together. And it was a lot of trying to get them to hear each other different communication skills, maybe some looking at family of origin problems.
What’s so clear to me now is that it’s almost like you’re talking about like getting well before you walk into the past, I almost do almost all of my work with couples now separately, individually, so that they can come together for a better space.
It’s so important to me that they feel grounded. And if they want to talk about something that happened 10 years ago, that they’re coming to it well, not wounded. That same thing, like, oh, we have to fix that wound, that thing you that betrayal five years ago, or this or that, we have to go back and talk about so we can be okay. I really see a different now, like we have to be pretty okay, before we can talk about that. Or we will just be pouring salt on wounds.
I do that really differently now. A lot more personal awareness and sense of what they’re bringing to the relationship before all before I walk backwards, if we decide to walk backwards.
Alexandra: I hadn’t heard anybody explain that before. In that way. I love hearing that. It’s exactly what you talked about at the beginning. It’s the same thing when we know we’re well. And then going into any situation.
We just always have that wellness with us.
Jeri: And we can recenter and reground and reregulate and not be as insecure. That overwhelming thing of if we’re feeling insecure, we drop several levels of consciousness. And we go to battle. Insecure places is where we do our damage to our loved ones. So I want to make really sure somebody’s secure before we we go to something that’s that’s difficult.
And that we really need to talk about oftentimes when the the security comes back up, and the general level of consciousness is raised, and we see more clearly where our problems are coming from. It’s not what they did. It’s our thinking about what they did. Lots of stuff melts away. It’s just doesn’t matter.
We don’t have to look at it. Right. It’s just Yeah, yeah. So that’s beautiful. If you think about, are you in a relationship, or have been like, the things you fought about?
When we get centered, and we see our own wellness and our security we’re not feeling insecure we don’t have to have those conversations anymore. We don’t have to fight about who threw the wet towel on the bed or loading the dishwasher a certain way or right or whatever.
Alexandra: That’s great. I love that. So we’re just about to wrap up our time together. What is there anything we haven’t touched on?
I feel like we’ve touched on so much, but anything else you’d like to share?
Jeri: I guess my own personal wish is that more therapists knew this and saw this and there’s a lot of good therapists doing good stuff out there but man, it’s like it’s not putting the turbo juice in it. It’s like never getting out of granite gear. I don’t know. So that’s just a wish I have for the world, that this was more widespread.
It’s funny when my brain is going. When Syd banks first brought this into the world he was targeting psychiatrists and psychologists. That’s not what happened. There was the grand scheme, and there’s Bill Pettit and Christine Heath. There’s a few people out there in the mental health field, Mark Howard.
But it didn’t explode like I would have imagined. So it got picked up by coaches and stuff which is great, it moved. But I think there’s more awareness coming. So that’s my hope is that it’s funny almost when I found this, I have to renew my license every two years to continue to be a licensing to licensed therapist. I was not going to renew, like I was so like, Oh, this is not what we need but then I realized I need to renew I need to stay in this. This needs to come to the mental health profession. This awareness needs to come here. So if there’s any mental health therapists listening.
Alexandra: Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Keep spreading the word. That’s one of the reasons I do this podcast. We’ll hope that it will spread out. Ripples in the pond, so to speak.
Why don’t you tell us where we can find out more about you and your work?
Jeri: The easiest is my website, which is JeriKramer.com. I do my personal work in Arizona. I do zoom work.
Alexandra: Well, thank you, Jerry. This has been so lovely.
Q&A 19 – What’s happening when I feel a craving?
Jun 19, 2023
When we feel the drive to participate in an unwanted habit what’s really going on? This three-part answer is based on my experience over 30 years of dealing with an unwanted overeating habit, and on my exploration of the field of spiritual-psychology called the Three Principles.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
What is happening when you feel a craving?
Our experience of life from the inside out.
How to deal with a craving.
Understanding the nature of cravings.
The true nature of who we are.
The nature of habits and habitual thinking.
How to resolve an overeating habit.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Freedom from Overeating – the self-paced online course with over 5.5 hours of lessons, plus bonus materials
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode 19 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today the question we’ve got is:
What is happening when I feel a craving?
This could be a craving for anything really. Specifically we’re talking about overeating, or that’s what I talk about very often in my work. But it could be anything, any sort of that what I call, I call it a drive. That drive to participate in a habit that we perhaps know better and or think we shouldn’t be participating in something that we’re overeating. Like overspending, over shopping, over drinking, over TV-ing, whatever it is.
When we feel that craving that drive to do that thing, what I see from my experience, and based on my exploration of the three principles is that three things are actually happening. So I want to talk about those things today.
The first is that we’re experiencing some weather, and we’re not aware of that.
The three principles point to the fact that our experience of life comes from the inside out, it doesn’t come from the outside in. What that means is we don’t live in the world of our experiences or our circumstances, we actually live in the world of our thinking. And that thinking flows through us from the inside out.
The metaphor that we so often use is that it is like the weather. And we don’t have control over the weather, either the weather that’s in the sky, out there in the world, or the weather, that is within us, it’s energy, just like the outside weather, it’s moving through us, it’s calm sometimes, and it’s volatile, at other times and everywhere in between on that spectrum.
Before I came across this understanding and got my head around this idea that our life is moving through us from the inside out, whenever I felt a craving or the drive to overeat, as I call it, I thought I had to do something about that. Which was a very innocent misunderstanding.
I would have the feeling, have the craving, and immediately jump into a whole bunch of thinking about how to battle with that, how to suppress it, how to control it, how to avoid it, or whether or not I would give into it.
All of that was done innocently, of course, I just didn’t know any better. Now what I see is that when we’re experiencing any kind of craving, any kind of drive to do a habit, it’s weather moving through us. When we see that, we understand that it will pass that we don’t have to white knuckle it even that we don’t have to manage it, that it is temporary and flows through us like a river.
Sometimes it can be really tricky to try to just be be with the things that are flowing through us in the moment they can feel, of course, they can feel incredibly powerful and urgent, almost, especially when it comes to feeling a craving. And that’s simply the nature of thought. It’s such a powerful force, that it really affects our experience of the world. And especially when we’re not aware that that’s what’s happening, and that we can simply leave it alone.
Now that is not to say that I was ever very successful at simply watching those things happen, experiencing those craving feelings and just letting them be. That was something that I was never very good at. I took lots of mindfulness classes years ago and did other things related to that, and the difference that this understanding made for me was simply from a broader perspective.
Understanding the nature of that craving, and that it is always temporary, and that it will move on, just like any thought or feeling or experience that we’re having.
So that’s the first of three things that’s happening when we have a craving.
The second thing is that that craving that drive to do our habit, is actually a brilliant piece of feedback from our human design, which is so elegant.
The way that we feel is always a reflection of the quality of our thinking. So what that means is that whenever we experience some sort of discomfort, uncomfortable feeling, a clenching within us, any sort of feelings of disgruntlement, what that’s a reflection of is the quality of our thinking in that moment. So when we can look at our cravings, our drive to overeat, instead of seeing them like they’re a problem, we can develop a little bit of detachment by seeing that they are actually simply feedback about our thinking.
Their feedback about the fact that we’ve individually and collectively to actually we’ve fallen asleep to or we’ve forgotten or we’ve never known the nature, the true nature of who we are. And that is that we are entirely well and whole, always, no matter what’s going on that our default, our innate nature is peace, and well-being and resilience, and resourcefulness and joy really. Our habits, it seems to me, and what I can see now is, unwanted habits are there to point out the fact that we’re unaware that this is who we truly are.
As we gradually begin to explore this understanding and see that insightfully not just take it on board intellectually, as a piece of information that we understand, but to have insights via this exploration about our true nature about who we really are about our well-being, and our innate peace.
That’s when the habits that we have the unwanted habits, the cravings, the drive, things like the drive to overeat, begin to fall away, because they become unnecessary.
So that’s the second thing that’s happening when we have a craving it’s feedback from our divine innate design of our humaneness.
The third thing that’s happening that I see is that there are some neural pathways that are being fired up.
That’s the nature of habits. And it’s the nature of habitual thinking. That’s another part of being human. We have this physical brain that’s in our head. Part of what we’re exploring is the habitual nature of the primitive part of our brain that has this little cycle that it goes through that when we feel a craving, all kinds of neural pathways are fired, that are familiar. They’re like grooves in a record, and the needle just falls in there. And then we just follow through on all the things that we’ve done in the past, to get rid of that craving.
Very simply, the way that we can get rid of that craving is by doing our habit. So if someone if I have a craving for a chocolate chip cookie, and that pops into my head, all those neural pathways from dozens and dozens of years of eating chocolate chip cookies are going to fire up. And my brain knows that if I have the chocolate chip cookie, that that craving feeling is going to go away.
There’s a very physical response in the tiny little neurons in our brain. And that’s the third thing that’s going on. In my experience.
When I was able to get my head around all three of these concepts, that’s when my unwanted overheating habit fell away.
There were just there was no need for it anymore. And like I said earlier, it wasn’t a matter of simply understanding these three concepts. I had to come to this understanding insightfully. And the way to do that, because that might be your next question. Well, how do I do that is really simply to stay in the conversation to continue to explore this understanding. To learn more about it.
There’s nothing wrong with educating yourself and learning and then and gathering information. And then from that comes insight, and when we begin to see things insightfully, that’s when real change starts to happen. So I hope that’s been helpful for you.
If you would like more about resolving an unwanted habit, specifically, overeating, but other habits as well, I have an online course called Freedom From Overeating. You can find that at FreedomFromOvereating.com.
On that page, there’s lots of information about what is within the course. There’s over five and a half hours of material related to resolving an unwanted habit. I’ve put that together based on my 30 plus years of experience with an overeating habit and then finally having that resolved because of my exploration of this understanding.
So I hope you found that helpful. And I look forward to talking to you next week. Take care. Bye.
What happens when we lean all the way in and meet life on life’s terms? I discuss this question with coach Michael Fall and we wander into some interesting territory, contemplating the role of action in our lives and what we do when life presents challenges.
Michael Fall is the President and founder of Insight Based Coaching. Since 2007 he has inspired greatness in executives, professionals, first responders, and pro and amateur athletes in various capacities, including taking on greater responsibilities, key projects, challenging issues, career changes, and performance.
As a student of coaching, Michael loves to hone his craft continually. He is always seeking opportunities to expand his coaching skills and deepen his understanding and impact.
Michael: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate the invite Alexandra, it’s good to see you again.
Alexandra: Yeah, it’s good to see you again, too.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to find the three principles.
Michael: We’ll do the background really quick. I am a professionally certified coach through the International Coaching Federation. I’m also a three P coach through the 3PGC. I’ve got a couple of children; one boy, one girl. A great relationship. That’s kind of the not so exciting stuff. But very exciting to me.
How I came to the three principles is, is an interesting story. What happened was, I was at the lowest point I’ve ever been in my life when I came across the principles. I had a relationship that was falling apart, I had a business that was trending away from me. And, I was spending a lot of time abusing my body with drugs and alcohol is the truth of this.
It still amazes me to this day how evident our resilience is that that I could have been so abusive to myself and still ran a business and raised two amazing children. But the tertiary story, so how I came to the principles was, I used to own a gym. And one night, I think it was September 18 2015, I got a Facebook message from a young man who I knew from the neighborhood who I trained in my gym for a long time, always for free. Neighborhood kid.
He sent me this rather cryptic message saying, “I think you might like this. This will be as payment for all of those years you trained me for free at the gym.” Okay, this sounds cool. This is cool. What he sent me was with three of Sydney Banks’ recordings. He sent me the Long Beach lectures, the Washington lectures, and for some reason, the other one escapes me now but but and then a couple of book recommendations.
A few days later, actually, one of Michael Neill’s books showed up on my doorstep from him as well, and one of Jack Pranskey’s books. So for whatever reason, I was at home alone, sober. And I was listening to the Long Beach lectures. And that’s misleading, because I was five minutes into the Long Beach lectures when everything changed.
That language gets used somewhat regularly everything changed, but everything stayed the same. Well, everything changed. Not everything stayed the same. And yet, everything stayed the same. So what’s funny about it is I’ve gone over the Long Beach lectures I don’t know how many times since then in eight years, there’s nothing in the first five minutes. And there’s nothing there where it’s like, oh, my god, that was so profound.
There was something that I heard within the first minutes of this audio that that had me crying and laughing.
My suspicion is, if someone had been witnessing what was occurring for me, it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to be describing it as a psychotic break of some kind, maybe on the lower end a bell curving that. But, yes, so it was a fluke. I’ve always been interested. I mean, as long as I can remember and through my family as well, this exploration in the direction of what more is out there has always intrigued me. And then one of my coping mechanisms again, without too much detail, led me away from that exploration for quite a few decades. And then, yeah, it’s it’s all of a sudden, things changed and what I heard and we got the disclaimer out of the way early what I heard in that moment was holy bleep.
I’ve been making it all up.
That’s that I remember. So clearly sitting in my bed or lying in my bed just sobbing maniacally. And what ran through my head in that split second was, I’ve been making it up and the world changed.
I could go on about this, but I have this articulation of it that are a view of my life now. That is my life before. And my life after. And without being overly dramatic about it, I feel fairly comfortable saying that, if whatever happened doesn’t happen I don’t, at the very least, I don’t find the relationship that I have now with Julie, whom you met. My guess is my son had shortly after that came to live with me full time. My guess is that if this occurrence, if this, I don’t know what the language is for what I experienced, but if that doesn’t happen, we’re not having this conversation. A lot of things were trending not in a good direction at that point.
So yeah, it was mind blowing how significantly and how effortlessly and easily everything can just suddenly be different than how you’ve known it.
This might be moving away from the question a little bit, but it probably bears saying, in the aftermath of the experience, which lasted for ages, I was on a high for like eight months. It was wonderful. Wow. But yeah, it was significant. But one of the interesting things to be confronted with was the truth of the creation of my own victimhood.
All of a sudden, I had to confront the fact, and I won’t say it as a large F fact, that is a fact for me, that I’ve been making it up. And what does that actually mean? It means that the suffering that I’ve been enduring I made up. And coming to terms with that afterwards was a really steep learning curve, if you will.
To come to a place where I saw with absolute clarity that it wasn’t my relationship or it wasn’t my dad, or wasn’t the money in the bank. It was an all of these things that I have habitually looked towards, for my experience, to be now suddenly confronted with the fact that it has nothing to do with out there. And in fact, the way it looks out there has everything to do with how it looks in here.
So putting these pieces together afterwards was really interesting. And of course, led to, and I suspect this as with many people who have an awakening of some kind, is you double down on it. So for me, that doubling down meant, let’s read everything I can, let’s talk to everything, everyone I can. Let’s interview all of them.
That intellectual pursuit is actually not helpful. So for anyone out there listening to this around the three P world, you’ve got it already. You don’t need to chase it. And in fact chasing it will keep it at arm’s length from you. So save yourself the trouble.
Alexandra: A slight digression here then, one of the things we talk about a lot on this show and what I talk about in my work is unwanted habits.
How did that experience affect your unwanted habits with drugs and alcohol?
Michael: It transformed them. Escaping through drugs and alcohol started if I’m being honest, probably at the age of 15 at the very latest by 18. So it’s decade’s worth. And it stopped. I went from being an addict to not being at an addict.
That’s not to say that I don’t drink. I still do occasionally drink. But my relationship with drugs and alcohol just it just changed. So that’s pretty cool. And it’s pretty cool that it can happen without all the effort that it’s supposed to take. I shouldn’t say supposed to take but that society kind of suggests that it’s hard work, that you’ve got to work at these things that you want to change or to move away move towards what’s wanted from what is unwanted is somehow effort. And one of the big learnings for me, particularly with the addiction piece, is that, no, it doesn’t have to be effort.
There’s an effortlessness that I think is inherent in life and innate to us that once we clue into a little bit, really makes life really opens up the potential to life to be quite enjoyable most of the time, if not really enjoyable all of the time, but yeah we remember and forget.
Alexandra: Exactly. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was because of a Facebook post that you made recently.
You talked about living the life we love and loving the life we live. So can you tell us a bit about that?
Michael: Muddy Waters. It’s interesting. As I was reflecting on our conversation, I realized that a lot of what I wrote came in inspiration. It’s not necessarily something I’ve thought about, so I had to go back to the post. Like, what did I actually say here?
Living the life we love and loving the life we live. It speaks for me to a harmony, it speaks to an acceptance of oneself in one’s totality, not just as an individual, but as a participant in life, but also as life. So living the life we love living the life we live stems from the realization, at least for me that all I desire is to be happy, I just desire to be satisfied. And that are not the best of synonyms, but I mean, them synonymously.
So there’s something in acceptance of who you are your role in life, accepting your warts. We all get angry, we all say silly things sometimes. And there’s something about loving the life you live, living the life you love, that allows one to have characteristics within oneself that we might not choose to live from there. Being okay with the fact that we are also that and not having to do anything about them.
And that’s not an excuse to be in a-hole. It’s just that that is there’s an answer. There’s something encompassing about that, that quote from Muddy.
The other big piece of that, for me, anyway, is, again, back to this idea that we’re the creators. So living the life we love, loving the life we live is something that we’re responsible for. And maybe responsible isn’t quite right. We’re the creators of that possibility.
It’s an interesting one. I’ve read the post a few times in anticipation of [this conversation] and I think it’s still a work in progress is the absolute truth for me of what that really means. It flowed through me. I’m still not 100% sure what it means. But there was something that that felt like, yes, of course, this is the way it should be. Yes, of course, this is what we all aspire to.
There’s probably an undercurrent of celebrating the fact that you’re here. Okay, I’m here. That’s pretty big. And if I can realize that I’m here. That’s a pretty cool thing to celebrate. So you’re halfway to living a life you love already just in your acceptance of being here.
And maybe that’s part of accepting yourself in your own time. It, you know that you’re not trying to work on something we’re trying to deny an aspect of you. So that I know that’s a lot of words there. Alexandra, as you can see, I’m still working on it a little bit.
Alexandra: Let’s explore it a little bit further. It’s the opposite of victimhood. You didn’t say it that way just now. But that’s what struck me as well. Let’s look at what if someone’s having a circumstance in their life that they don’t like how could they you talked in the post to about leaning into life?
How can we lean in when things are looking like we don’t want them to look?
Michael: That’s a good question. How can we do it when things are not how we want them to be? Because it’s easy to lean in when things are good.
I’ll just start with this, we’ll see what happens. There’s something in that quote that, to me, speaks of being completely satisfied and eager for more. So leaning into life, again, embracing all that is, but there’s something more nuanced there. It’s about embracing what is minus your story that you’re making up. So fully accepting your existence in partnership with life.
How do you lean in when things aren’t going? That’s a good question. I would say the trap of that is trying to do something in order to, right, so I don’t feel good in this particular moment. Of course, our natural desire is to do something about it, we typically approach that from an intellectual perspective of solving for a problem. Well, I will say from my own experience, once we understand that we’re making up the problem, it’s a lot easier to lean into it, there’s less to do then.
I think the way to begin – and I like how you asked about unwanted – the way to lean towards what is wanted begins with being gentle with oneself. So there’s something when I’m feeling off or away from home or out of center out of alignment, whatever language we want to use there, what is incredibly helpful to lean into is twofold a) the understanding that I am creating that experience and accepting that okay, I’m doing this. That’s a challenging one at times.
And then allowing some gentleness there. So not being too hard on myself when things aren’t looking how I want them to look, which happens. So I would say that the first step I think is to step back from the desire to get in there and metal to try to make it the way you want it to be.
We spoke about Michael Neill before we started. He talks about holding a beach ball underwater. It takes effort to hold a beach ball underwater and we’ll experience resistance and the bigger the ball the deeper we hold it the harder it is to hold it there. So what do we have to do to get back to center to let the ball float is we have to let go and I think the at least from my experience, trusting that letting go was all you needed to do took some time it took practice.
I hate to say that, especially in the 3P world. I don’t mean practice. It took the creation of new habits. It took an intention. It took attention to okay how do I feel right now? This doesn’t feel how I want to feel. What am I going to do about it? The old default the panic or worse, blame everything around you? Well if I can just solve externally everything will be fine.
What do you do? The short answer is nothing.
What do you mean? Anything you try and do is going to likely have the opposite effect, although in a superficial way it might look like moving the blocks externally is going to make a difference. I think I think leaning into life is words like trust come up. Words like appreciation come up acceptance, stuff like that. Allowing comes up. And gentleness that we all have, all of us have years of experience with things working out. Even at their worst, even at the very worst of my experience in my life, I can point to things working.
We have evidence within our own lives that things work out work out when we take our foot off the accelerator a little bit when we stopped trying to do it all. Now, that’s hard to remember when things aren’t going well, that what you really need to do is step away from it.
A practical piece of advice. And this is a bit of a segue, but I keep an appreciation journal. I’m a coach, and I keep an appreciation journal of all the testimonials I’ve ever gotten. And recently, I was kind of like, Ah, man, I don’t know, I’m terrible at this. And my wife Julie looked at me, and she said, have you looked at your appreciation journal recently? And no, I haven’t.
So there’s something about being able to in times of crisis, enable yourself to remember that you’ve come through things like this in the past, and you have a lifetime’s worth of experience to prove that. It’s just being able to see it.
Alexandra: I love what you said about trust, because for me, that was such a big piece of it. My brain was so busy, and working so hard to fix everything all the time that it took a while for me to build that muscle of stepping back.
When something happens, I can trust that this is going to work itself out. There’s a greater intelligence at play.
Michael: It’s challenging to come from ‘everything is broken’ to ‘nothing is ever broken’. To how is my perception in any given moment? And how is my ability to remember those two things?
I like how you put that: it is building the muscle. It’s not something that you’re necessarily trying to do, but it’s helpful to be conscious. Or to be conscientious in your desire to look towards what is preferable to what feels better. And maybe that’s all it is. Maybe the simple answer is just having the ability to look towards something that feels a little tiny bit better, doesn’t have to feel a lot better.
So things are down. I can look out the window, and oh, yeah it’s sunny, maybe that’s enough of a sliver to interrupt that momentum of thought that has us feeling low, when without interruption, like give space for new thinking to come. and then as we allow more space. I’m a big fan of appreciation. So as I appreciate, oh, it’s green out, it’s sunny, it’s and I can it just it feeds a wellness it feeds in a liveness into, and that’s kind of and I might be jumping ahead and our question, but that kind of feels to me where life leans back.
Life leans back at the intersection of, that’s not even an intersection, but life starts to lean back. The more fully you accept how it works and your role in your experience. So it feels to me that the more deeply I make my focus and my commitment to feeling good, not only does it ripple outward to everyone around me, but life seems to reward that.
There’s something intrinsic to the interplay between an actualized or becoming actualized individual and how life rewards that I’m not articulating that quite right. But there’s some kind of a convergence between me at my best. And seeing the fullness of life at its best. It’s almost like in those moments, the separation disappears. So there’s a full immersion not of me as an individual anymore, but me as life, not an aspect of life.
It’s almost like when you lean in with some intention, life leans back and in that coming together, one leaning in, one leaning back, there’s no longer two things. Appearance of distinction or separation kind of vanishes. So that to me is kind of like life leaning back. There’s a, dare I say this, a partnership with God. And I mean, God as in universal energy formulas, whatever language we want to use, but there’s something.
I feel like I don’t know if this is going to be on video or not. But I can feel the energy in my fingers. I think that’s what it feels like when we lean in. And when life leans back, it opens up. What it does is removes barriers. So when life leans back, it’s almost reminds you that it’s trustworthy, that I can lean further. I can keep leaning further, I can keep leaning into what feels really good. And I’m going to keep getting more and more evidence that I should keep leaning and leaning and leaning.
The possibility that becomes available. It is just mind boggling. There’s something quite incredible about what’s possible when you’re no longer a victim of life. But when you’re partnered with and then even further, when you’re no longer partnered with you just are what becomes possible. It’s just amazing.
It’s astounding how it’s really tipped in our favor, if we can see it. It’s really, truly tipped in our favor. And again, maybe that’s what I was trying to articulate with leaning back, that we see that it is tipped in our favor. This has already been very thought provoking. There might be another post in here somewhere like Alexandra. So thanks in advance for that.
Alexandra: Oh, you’re welcome. I tend to like to use the analogy of either treading water, feeling like we have to work really hard to stay on the surface, or when we float learn to float on our backs when we’re learning to swim. And when we learn to float on our back, I remember, as a kid, it was really hard to trust that the water would hold me up, and that it wouldn’t come up over my face. That’s the thing I really remember. Because it does come up quite high. But it always holds you there.
Michael: I like that a lot. And something that popped up for me is there’s a stillness. So when you’re lying back in the water, and the water is like here you have to be still and if you’re not still, the water comes over your face and it ends up in your nose and your mouth and your nose sputtering and you can’t see. So yeah, I like that. That’s cool. I like that. That’s a great metaphor.
Alexandra: You’re completely right.
It’s when we really relax and get completely still. That’s what makes it really easy to float on your back.
Michael: I don’t want to trivialize anyone’s effort or work but it’s when you realize that doing less very often is a good thing. I’ve certainly never found my keys when I’ve been running around like an idiot looking to find them. It’s always when I stopped. Okay, hold on. Oh, there they are or worse, they’re in my pocket or we whatever it is.
When we’re treading water, when we’re trying to stay afloat, when we’re trying to do it’s just it’s so effortful. There’s so much work and the payoff is I mean, it’s a bit of a segue, but I built my gym business with hard work and effort. It’s not how I built my coaching business, let me tell you. I’m going to build anything ever again. So there’s I like that image of the floating something very peaceful about that something very easy and effortless and okay, and gentle.
Alexandra: Say more about the difference between building those two businesses.
Michael: I used to run a martial arts club in the early and mid 2000s. And then in 2006, 2007, I started experimenting with this thing called CrossFit, who brought it into our martial art studio, I brought it into, and then I opened up a boutique gym, we went from there.
The difference was that when I was building the gym, and I mean, it was successful, I got a house. But it took effort. It was hard work, and reflecting back on it now. And when I think about it, it was always at its most successful when I was the least involved.
Now, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing things. But my involvement in the things that I was doing was coming from a place of inspiration, rather than a place of necessity or thinking that this had to be done. And every time I fell into ‘I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that’ is when business lagged and not just that business lag, but my own well-being lagged.
The difference now is that my coaching business is being built from the perspective that I’m actually partnering with God. I’m not doing it on my own. So it’s been effortless. I joke when I started the business unofficially in 2015. In 2015, I was done with the gym, it took me four years to get out. So officially, my coaching business started in 2019. I laugh about it now. I started it on my deck over the summer, sitting in the sun every day. And my reminder when I’m trying too hard at it is to go and sit back up on the deck and lounge and sit and read or be on the computer.
The fundamental difference is that I’m no longer trying to move pieces to give me something to make me happy. Well, I mean, that’s my ultimate goal is just happiness. It’s all about being happy. It’s all about becoming more of who I am. I used to think that I could do that by manipulating the pieces that are external to me. And that just evaporated rather quickly in September, 2015.
The difference is one of effort versus effortles. Trying versus allowing, and seeing that. And I’m not sure this will be quite accurate, but the truer I can be to what I believe I am, the easier the things that I desire appear in my life.
A simple example is this cottage we have now. Julie and I have been talking about this and get a cottage and they are expensive. It’s expensive to buy a cottage. I don’t know, we held it really, really loosely. Didn’t really talk about it for well, probably well over a year. And then actually, this is funny because Julie’s father came to visit when we were out over Christmas, and he says, You know what? We’ve got the guest cottage that we’re renting out. We don’t want to rent it out anymore. We want you to have it.
Alexandra: Wow.
Michael: So you’re giving us waterfront property? So you asked about how the business building was different. It’s been about allowing a true desire to come through without chasing it. So allowing the expression of what we wanted. We wanted a cottage. How are we going to get it? No idea. No stress about it. No trying, no plan. We held it let it go and it turns out that Julie’s dad was the shortest distance or what we wanted.
The difference was is one of trusting and allowing that that things will work out versus thinking I’m the one who has to do anything. I built the gym and it was successful and I did it. And now the coaching business is growing, it’s successful. And I don’t feel like I did anything.
I’m a participant in this thing that’s coming into creation. I’m a role player. I’m not the one who’s trying to do it to make it happen. So I feel I’ve said this a few times now, though, I feel like the coaching business has grown in partnership with life. Not by me trying to manipulate life. I hope that answers your question.
Alexandra: You mentioned allowing things to happen a couple of times. Does that include some action?
Michael: Yes. It does. The distinction for me is that action, then pre 2015 action was a means to an end. It was something that I thought of that needed to be done. And I did it in the hopes that there would be a particular outcome for me.
Action now, from this place, feels inspired. It feels like the action itself is worth doing, but not because there’s an outcome attached to it, just simply because I can feel that there’s an action that wants to express itself.
I think what has tripped me up in the past was denying this inspired action to express itself. So I get this. Back then it was planned. I got to do this, this, this. And now it’s like, oh, that’s a good idea. Let’s see what happens. The difference there in the action is that action now feels like it’s coming through me that it feels like I’m the expression. I’m the person that supports the expression of the action, rather than the doer of it.
I mean, I am doing it. So this is this might be a good example of the post that I wrote. Well, that was an action. No idea where it came from. Yeah, all of a sudden, I was writing. And I was like, Oh, my God, look what I’ve got. And this is kind of cool. Where did this come from? No idea. But I know that had I not put pen to paper, which is how I first write these things, I would have felt something I would have felt the resistance of the lack of that expression.
Action just feels different. Now it feels like I can tell the difference between Whoo, this feels good. This is juicy. This is coming from more than me thinking, well, I want to get more clients into the gym. So I have to do a B and C. So yeah, it’s an interesting question.
And it’s not something that I that I have fully hashed out yet. It just seems that action just kind of happens now. And I think the key, at least for me, is that and this might capture it, I’m so comfortable. The majority of the time, I am supremely comfortable with who and what I am these days. So action is really easy. It just happens. I think inspired action comes when you’re at home, when you’re in partnership, when you’re centered, when you’re in a state of love or appreciation.
Action is the obvious thing that has to happen. It part of life kind of saying okay, yeah, things are good, awesome. This is what you’re doing next. This is what’s happening next. This is what’s happening next. And the word that comes to mind now is that the difference is that one is contrived in the hopes of. And this as there’s nothing about there’s nothing contrived there is just action for the sake of action. It’s it’s I mean, it’s the cliche of enjoying the journey. I mean cliches have value because they’re often true. But yeah, gosh, I could just go on and on couldn’t I?
Alexandra: The difference I see you use the word contrived. I really liked that because we tend to do things “if I do this, then this, that and the other thing will happen.” I’m doing it for a reason. And what you’re saying is, that’s not the way it is.
Now you just do the thing because it feels good. And it feels like the right thing to do.
Michael: Yeah. It’s almost like I do the thing, because not doing the thing isn’t going to feel good,
Alexandra: Right.
Michael: I did this experiment on myself and it was around action. And the thing that I set, the first experiment was call my mom. Now I have a good relationship with my mom, we talk regularly. But I wanted to test this inspired action thing.
So every time the thought came up, call your mom, I would call my mom. And I started to notice that when I didn’t, when I had the thought call your mom, and I didn’t, it didn’t feel good. So the lesson there was that somehow the action that wanted to express itself already knew it was going to feel good in its expression.
Alexandra: I love hearing that you did that experiment because that can be kind of a fun way to go. And going back to what we were saying earlier to learning how to lean into what’s what life has to offer.
Michael: I offer something now, one of the programs I run is called The Joyful Life Project. There are six experiments, all of which came after 2015. And were, in a way, my way of testing the experience that I had. So there’s six of them, they all start with A’s. It’s kind of cool, actually allow I’ve used some of those words. But anyway, I digress.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s great. We’re starting to run out of time.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share before we wind up?
Michael: So much! No, no, no, no, that’s cheeky, um, for anyone listening, who hears this. There’s a one and 28 trillion odds that you as yourself are here on this planet. And that’s a miracle as far as I’m concerned. And that is worth noticing and paying attention to the like, you’re here.
Depending on how old you were, either sooner or later, you’re not going to be here. And right now you have every capacity, potential, and possibility available to you. If you, gosh, I hate to say this, if you get out of your own way. So I don’t know that that would be my I guess that’s a closer for me you’re a miracle.
Alexandra: I love it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.
Michael, where can we find out more about you and your work?
Michael: The easiest is through my website, which is insightbasedcoaching.com There is a rework happening but should be done imminently. Actually, we’re right there. So through the contact pages there, you can also get me on Facebook. Michael Fall. I have a group on Facebook. It’s a private group called the roundtable coaching life in the three principles. And otherwise email at Michael@insigntbasedcoaching.com.
Alexandra: You mentioned The Joyful Life Project. Does that run periodically?
Michael: Yeah, we were we’re getting all the details hashed out. I’ve been running it for young adults, actually, for barrier young adults, which has been really, really interesting. Very cool. So we’re launching this the joyful life project as an eight-week program soon as well, and it’ll run three times a year. Right is the plan for and all the details are on the website as well.
Alexandra: Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with me here today it’s been great chatting with you again.
Michael: Thank you Alexandra I really appreciate the invite.
Our minds love what they know. But did you know that when we’re searching for answers to life’s problems there is another place to go for answers other than our minds. It is a field of possibilities that holds infinite fresh thinking and creative ideas that contain the answers to our questions.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Transcript of Episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today I want to talk about the field of possibility. There’s that great quote by Rumi that I actually included at the end of my memoir, and it goes like this:
Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field, I will meet you there.
To me that, quote speaks to the disagreements that we have in life and the conflict and how there is a place where we can simply exist in love with one another. A place where we can set down our differences and just be together, with one another, and not have our opinions and our thoughts and our beliefs, and the other things that drive us. We can set those down and just be together. And I love that.
What I wanted to share today has to do with the other way that I think about the field of possibility.
This has to do with when we’re trying to resolve an unwanted habit like over eating.
Lately, more and more, I recognize how often the opportunity is presented to me to turn to that field of possibility when I’ve got a problem or a challenge or a question in my life. Until I came across this understanding no one had ever introduced this idea to me. And a few episodes ago, I described it like we are swimming in the sea of Universal Intelligence. And that’s, of course, absolutely true.
And I just saw this idea of the field of possibility this morning while I was writing in my journal, and it’s really just another way to point toward this place where we can go to for answers.
Looking for Answers
So in my life personally, anytime I come across a challenge or an issue, something I want to resolve, maybe some sort of disruption in my life, or today when I was working in my journal I was thinking about an unsupportive belief that I have. And the inclination that my or the habit, I guess we could say that my mind goes to the thing it automatically does is it tries to really dig down and really get its hands around that problem. In this case, the unsupportive belief and hold on, hold on to it really tightly and examine it from all kinds of different angles.
What does it mean?
What does it mean about me?
Where did it come from?
Where did it originate?
And where else do I see it showing up in my life.
And in the past, I would have said that that kind of examination was really the way to go, really the helpful thing that would help me to resolve that unsupportive belief. Now I see it completely differently.
I see that my mind wants to do all those things. And it does do some of them, it starts to wander away and chew on that, and really grapple with whatever’s going on. And then as often as I can, I try to remember that there’s another place to look for answers to things.
The Field of Possibility
It’s so much more peaceful. And it’s less laid laden with self blame and shame and embarrassment and those kinds of feelings, which I felt in the past when I’ve tried to deal with things like that I felt weren’t working in my life. And that place is the field this field of possibility, metaphorically speaking.
When I go there, in my awareness, when I just notice what my mind is doing, and then take a tiny step to the side what I feel in the field of possibility is so much different. I feel so much more more at ease. And softer and wide open.
I feel my shoulders go back and my chest open up a little bit. And it’s the complete opposite to the way that I feel when my mind is really grappling with a problem. And wrestling with it. Those are good words, it feels like that’s what minds do when I’m doing it that way, when I’m trying to solve the problem with my mind, and with what my mind already knows.
It feels I feel very constricted, I feel so often like I’m turning in circles kind of bouncing around to the same answers, again, and again. I feel heavy weighted down. I feel frustrated very often.
Sydney Banks so often said to look toward the feeling, follow the feeling, I think is what he actually said, that’s going on within us. And I think this is such a perfect example of that of how different things can feel when we’re taking a new approach to solving the problems that we may have things like overeating, and other unwanted habits. There’s such a different feeling to these two approaches.
Our Built-in Feedback System
I really started to appreciate when I noticed that difference because right away, I can tell what’s going on in my mind and whether or not it’s going to be helpful. So we have this built in feedback system that I so often talk about, and that I learned initially from Mavis Karn. What might Mavis says is, “You can’t slip of thought past the body.”
So whatever’s going on in our minds, we feel that in our bodies, and we can then immediately and automatically tell the quality of our thinking. So if our thinking is really constricted, and if we’re really coming from that circular, heavy place in our minds, we can feel that right away. We will feel those feelings, and they might be slightly different for you, but I’m sure that you can feel the difference. And that difference then between that and the field of possibility, where the answers don’t necessarily appear right away.
That’s something I’ve had to learn as well, that I can step into that field, and then just leave things alone. And the answer will come; maybe not immediately, and maybe not on a timeline that I would prefer, but the answers will come in that field of possibility.
It’s all fresh thinking. And it’s all creative. And things that we haven’t thought of in the past.
There are infinite possibilities in the field of possibility.
It’s so different from the knowledge loop that I’ve talked about in the past on this podcast, that our mind gets caught in. Our minds know what they know. And they like what they know. And they really want to focus on just finding solutions that way.
If you picture a little grocery shelf, they only want to choose from the things that are there on the shelf. And then when we step away from the shelves, that’s where the field of possibility is.
What else might be possible?
That’s a question I tend to ask myself quite often. What else could potentially be here? What other answers might be available to me, related to this issue, whatever it is, whether it’s an argument with a spouse, or a, an overeating habit, something we’re trying to resolve in that way?
So I wanted to bring this up and share that metaphor with you. It’s something that’s present with me a lot these days. I really am appreciating how valuable it is to know about the field of possibility in our life.
I hope you’re doing well and taking good care.
If you have any questions at all about this or any other topic, please let me know. You can go to alexandraamor.com/question and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future episode.
Letting Go of Trauma with Azul Leguizamon
Jun 08, 2023
Azul Leguizamon experienced trauma and disfunction in her childhood, which led her on a path of healing as an adult. She trained in several fields, but still believed she was irreparably broken and damaged by her past experiences.
However, when she came across the Three Principles and began to explore them she discovered that her true nature is one of innate wellness, peace, and wisdom, as it is with everyone. She came home to her infinite wholeness and now shares this with others via coaching, webinars and other training.
As a passionate transformational coach, Azul Lequizamon guides others to release the shackles of their past stories, find inner peace regardless of circumstances, and unlock their true potential.
She is a registered 3P practitioner in the 3 Principles Global Community and the 3PESP, serving as Project Manager for 3PESP. Additionally, she has mentored at the Mindifit Coaching Academy in South Africa, contributing to the growth of aspiring coaches.
Azul: Thanks so much for having me. I’m so happy to be with you here.
Alexandra: Did I pronounce your last name correctly?
Azul: Perfect. Yeah.
Alexandra: Oh, good. Okay.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles.
Azul: My background is mixed. I’m a former primary school teacher, but I’m also a former Reiki master teacher, meditation teacher, Bach Flower practitioner, all of that. You can name it, and I have been there. So that’s the background.
I actually found the principles when I was reading a book, as a teacher. It’s a book called Positive Discipline. The title sounds kind of hard, Positive Discipline, but it was really interesting because it was pointing children in direction of really connecting to their well-being and how to behave, and like circles of trust, and lot of wonderful things.
And in between what the author was sharing, she says, “Everything changed for me after I found out about the three principles.” She mentions George Pransky, and I was like, what’s that? So I started looking for information in the internet, and I found so many webinars in the 3PGC YouTube channel. And then you get to get in touch and start like joining Zoom calls, and then you’re just there.
And that was for me amazing because I wasn’t looking for anything. I think it was the first time I wasn’t looking for something to grow. It was really out of pure interest. I was very happy in where I was at that moment thinking that that was enough. You couldn’t like really experience well-being all the time. So that’s how I found the principles.
Alexandra: And so, before that, you mentioned being a Reiki teacher and Bach Flower remedies and other things.
When you were investigating those things and learning about them and teaching them and that kind of thing, were you searching for something?
Azul: Yes, absolutely. I have been through a lot of different traumatic experiences and I developed a deep connection with people and I really wanted to help people, really, really wanted. So I was looking for just tools, techniques, and I was shifting from one thing, to the next thing, to the next thing.
Everything was really working out, but I still felt something is missing here, because my thinking was like, “Okay, perfect. Bach Flower remedies, they work. Reiki, it works. But there’s something that is missing because how come a human being needs to find something specific and find a practitioner in order to restore their well-being?”
I don’t believe God or the Universe or the divine intelligence of this, sustaining all life created that need. How come we can’t be complete, whole, and in well-being if we don’t find the right technique for us? It’s didn’t make any sense at all.
So, I was using all of that and, like, for example, I was seeing in Reiki, okay, you teach this program and you support people learning the technique and it really works. But when we look at children, small children, 3, 4 years old, when they fall, they quickly put their hands there, they know what to do.
They’re adding energy to that place, so they already know it, so they already got it. So they don’t need a Reiki ceremony to open their energy channels. Everything is already there.
I’m not diminishing at all the power of Reiki. I understand that we have been having a lot of thinking and conditioning, and we need something extra when we are in that path to open up our energy channels.
But when you find these three principles and understand how everything works, everything gets easier and easier. These days sometimes when I feel like offering a Reiki session, I still do it, but it’s about pleasure and it’s about sharing and it’s about expanding the whole being. It’s not about needing that to happen in order that I heal. So that’s a huge difference for me.
Alexandra: Yes. As opposed to, for me too personally in the past, learning other healing techniques, where you’re coming from a place of, “I’m broken and I need to use this method or whatever it is to fix the brokenness about me.” Very different.
It’s such a simple thing, and yet it’s so profound that idea that we are already whole, already well.
Azul: Absolutely. Like one different world. Because even if you go to have the sessions like myself as a patient or myself as the teacher, like there’s an imbalanced relationship because if you come to me because you think I am able to fix you, then I have certain power over you, which is not true at all.
But when you come to have a Reiki session because you enjoy it, and you know that you really don’t need it, but you would love to have the experience, then that’s a different journey and you can see more.
Alexandra: That’s such a good point. I love hearing that.
You mentioned that you had had some trauma in your past, and you recently gave a talk, for the 3PGC about letting go of trauma. Could you share a little bit about that with us?
Azul: Yes, of course. I was raised in a family that used to have lot of violence, and there was some addictions going on. So since I was, I don’t know, I think 5 years old, I had a clear idea of, okay, this is hell. I need to grow up and just move out as soon as I can.
So I have been through a lot of psychological abuse, physical abuse, a lot of different experiences, and it was really difficult because I left my home when I was 18 years old. And you are not really an adult. So you just start doing the things you learn, like having like toxic relationships and finding yourself in the world and getting a job and keeping the job, and like paying your bills, and blah, blah, blah.
And I would say that there was a lot of suffering in my early years, and there was a lot of suffering that I kind of created for myself, unknowingly, innocently.
I’m located in Argentina, and in Argentina, we all go to therapy, for some reason, like in Buenos Aires at least. And I have like lot of therapy, psychoanalysis, gestalt, like whatever, since 18 to, I don’t know, many, many, many years with different people. All of that was helpful, helpful if the expected result was that I was able to fit in in society and function, like, okay, I’m broken, but I can function in different ways so I’m not having more issues.
Every time my mind was fluctuating between, okay, I’m not enough. If I was a better daughter, a better human being, then maybe they would have behaved differently, or they are terrible parents, they are the ones to blame and I’m just a poor, innocent thing.
None of those positions was healthy or they really complete. When I found the principles…not exactly when I found it. When I found it, I started like exploring, listening, trying to understand.
You know how it is at the beginning, you kind of not really understand, but something inside of you tells you, yeah, it’s there.
And then, I had an experience with my daughter. It was challenging for me to become a mom because I had a lot of thinking about what if, I don’t know, something in my mind goes crazy and after acting crazy, and I were like, oof. But with the help of the therapist that I had at the time, he helped me to see that that was just a fantasy. That I was able to like be a mom.
But when Amber, my daughter was around 2 years, something like that, one day she misbehaved. I don’t remember exactly what she did, but I got really angry, you know, I got really angry. So, like, I started saying to her, “Hey, you shouldn’t do this, this, and that.”
I had to stop myself because I could see how after each word, there was a terrible word after that, it was like a road of violence, not physical violence. But everything I heard just came there and I was going to just unload it on her, and I stop at myself. But I saw it was like seeing a dark tunnel, like taking me or calling me, and I just saw that and dropped it.
And then a few days after that, she created a mess. This one I remember, a mess in the bathroom. Like she used some towels, and blocked some parts of the bathroom. And she opened the running water. And then she came and said, “Mommy, there’s water everywhere.” The bathroom was completely flooded and water was like everywhere.
I was in a very good mood at the moment. And I was like, “Okay, honey, don’t worry. You shouldn’t do that. Let’s clean everything up.” And we were laughing and she was looking at me like, this was like to be in trouble. Like, why aren’t you angry at me? But she didn’t say a thing.
And then a few hours after that, during the night, I think that was my first deep insight.
I saw that the experience I had the first time I got angry at her was like seeing a train of thought that was just waiting for me and where that train was going to take me.
And I decided not to jump in, but I saw, oh my God, this is what’s happening with my family. Now my mother has been very worked up in her thinking in this certain train of thought that is really not healthy. She doesn’t have a clue. She’s worked up in this train of thought. She’s not open to see a little bit more. She can’t help it.
I know that sounds very obvious, but for me, it was the first time I saw, oh, wait, so all the experiences I had, they are not related to my value as a human being, like any other child in my circumstances would have been through the same experiences. It wasn’t never about me. And it’s not about her. Her true nature is love as we all are. But she’s very worked up in her thinking.
She couldn’t do anything better with the thinking that she had at that moment.
As easy as it sounds, that changed everything.
I didn’t know it at that moment. I didn’t have any idea of how that will unfold, but then suddenly I saw myself, oh, I’m complete, I’m not broken, I have never been broken. I was like believing the fantasy of the damaged child. And the truth was that I was whole, I was complete, I was able to be a mom.
I didn’t need to be in fear of what kind of reaction can I have. And it wasn’t about me. And knowing that, really knowing that, you are not the one to blame for a traumatic experience, and that the other person is not the one to blame either, just leaving blame out of the equation changes everything, everything. And it’s always available.
Recently when I offered that webinar for the 3PGC, somebody, I think his name is Neo, I mean, his user is Neo. But somebody commented on YouTube, saying something that they heard something they’d never heard before. So I ask him, but what did you hear? Because I always loved that.
He expressed this same thing in such a beautiful way. He said that he just realized it now that he has been trying to fix like a cup of tea that he broke in a dream, and he was spending his awake hours trying to fix something that he was working in a dream.
I think it’s the coolest thing I have ever heard. It’s so brilliant. I see more and more than having insights. It’s just waking up from daydreaming, a daydreaming that is great suffering and confusion. And so, it’s more about being awake.
Sometimes I get distracted and I get worked in my thinking, we all are, we’re human beings. But knowing that it’s just one thought away, going back to who we really are, is the ultimate freedom, from my perspective.
Alexandra: Wow. So powerful. Thank you for sharing that. It brought tears to my eyes when you said the comment from the fellow about the tea cup, that’s really so beautiful. Just lovely.
Has this awareness impacted your relationship with your family?
Azul: Yes and no. In this sense, with my mother, with my biological family, I don’t have a relationship currently. Because they are still engaged in behaviors that are really unhealthy.
What shifted was that, with them, was that now I’m able to feel lots and lots of love towards them. There is no resentment, there is no pain. Although the circumstances didn’t change in this life or in planet earth, let’s say.
But just to show you something, like in the past, I couldn’t see any picture from my mother. I couldn’t…because as soon as I saw a picture from her, I will like get sad, or angry, or whatever. And after that experience, one day I was putting things in order at home, and then, suddenly, I saw one picture of her and I hear myself saying, “Oh my God, she’s so beautiful.”
I was able to see that and to feel all this love coming to her. If at any moment, they approach me from a place of wanting to have a healthy connection, I’m 100% open. But I also learned that boundaries sometimes are needed.
Because that’s a common misunderstanding in this community. Because you experience life through your thinking. So the story I tell myself about something that happened is the way I’m going to experience it, which is true. So I can have somebody abusing me and I can create extra suffering about that.
Or I can address the situation, establish boundaries, and stop creating more suffering for me and stopping the accusations towards them.
Now, what shifted a lot is the relationship with my family, with my daughter, with my husband. Because in the past, it was like I was present but half present because there was still like a gray cloud, poor me, my story, this and that. And now it’s like I’m fully, myself with them. So we have a deeper, richer connection where there is no fear involved.
There is no neediness also. You can be needy towards a daughter also, like you can be extremely attached to your daughter because that’s a family that you have and you don’t have it. And now, I feel she’s my greatest teacher, in any case. But it’s really having a chance of enjoying the experience and feeling like I’m full, I’m complete, and I want to share all of my world with you.
With my husband, with my daughter, it’s not that I need them to complete me, which I felt before. I felt complete because I have them in my life. And now, like, I can just share the love that I feel, and receive the love also, not changing.
Alexandra: What a nice shift generationally that you’re not passing on the trauma to your daughter, which when we’re not aware that we’re caught up in our thinking, we can so innocently do.
Azul: Yes. Sometimes we try to not do that, doing the opposite. And then we create terrible experiences too, but in the opposite side. So this is like moment by moment. But shifted in a big, big, big way after that insight is the way I show up into the world.
Before seeing that about myself and about my family, I would never have the courage of being with you today in a podcast, in a recording. I was living a life where I was working as a school teacher, happy, and that was it. There was no future, because I felt like there was no place for me in the world.
I haven’t been loved or wanted as a child. And I felt I’m just here by mistake. At some point somebody will find out that I’m alive. It was that kind of thinking. So, I was just…instead of having desires and creating stuff, I was just accepting what was coming to me.
That was it, there was a big line that I couldn’t cross, and that shifted. It didn’t shift, like from one day to the next day, it was gradually, gradually when I was able to show up and be myself and support people, because that’s what I love, supporting people.
Alexandra: Do you work with people who have experienced trauma?
Azul: Yes. I have one-on-one clients but they have different range of traumatic experiences, but also with teenagers. And some clients that I have that they are teenagers, it’s kind of different because the traumatic experiences are still happening. It’s not like a grownup that just created a new life. It’s just, she’s still there in the same place.
Sometimes I’m hired by grandmothers or aunts. And I have to work with the whole family. That’s one reason why I’m thankful for my experiences, because I get it the way I could feel.
Alexandra: I’m curious, when someone isn’t aware of the principles, like if they haven’t had any kind of introduction to it, how do you introduce that to them when they’re talking about trauma? Because it could come across like, your trauma doesn’t matter because it’s in your thinking.
How do you address that?
Azul: I had experience of sharing my story with certain coaches or teachers and hearing that, it’s just your thinking. And that feels terrible because it is true that we create our experiences with our thinking, but the human experience is true too.
I am a strong believer in deep listening. When I’m with a client, first I listen, I need to understand their world through their eyes. And while I’m listening, when I’m not distracted, when I’m not paying too much attention to every word, when I’m leaving my thinking to the side, when I’m creating a connection, heart to heart, what usually happens is that…I mean, usually, all the time, is that the other person relaxes and starts reconnecting with their own wisdom, and they start having insights.
And when they see something, then I point them in the direction of seeing more about that and trying to understand how we really work. I just start where they are, because I’m not teaching something that they don’t know. I’m just reminding them something that they know.
With one particular client, she’s 15 years old. She has gone through very traumatic experiences, and she tried to die by suicide. And after that, I was hired. She was sharing many challenging experiences, and I was listening, I’m connected and pointing her in that direction.
And one day she said, “You know what? I noticed that I kind of keep myself depressed.” Like, “Okay, tell me more.” And she was like, “Yeah, because you know, I’m at school and then a thought shows up about what’s happening at home, and instantly I just drop my attention from the class, and I just start thinking about that. And then I play some sad music, and then I run home and watch some sad movies, and that doesn’t help. I have a very hard time. I should stop doing that.”
So, from that, we started having like a full conversation about, “So what are you seeing?” You’re creating the experience, things are happening.
For me, being a coach is more like being a witness of how the other person reconnects with their own wisdom.
I heard Mark Howard recently saying something so clear, he was offering a class for coaching training, and he was asking all of us to remember that when we’re having a conversation with the client, we are sharing what Mind wants us to share, what wisdom wants us to share, God, the universe.
But the client is also sharing from mind and wisdom. It’s an equal relationship. So, my client will guide me to what they need. I will learn lots from my clients, and we will like look in that direction together. It’s just that.
Alexandra: As you said, what an empowering way to work with people.
There’s no power dynamic in play, when you approach it like that.
Azul: And it sometimes happens that certain clients, and I was doing the same in the past, like, oh, my teacher, my coach, they know a lot, you know, like when…that doesn’t really help, because if I encourage that, then the other person thinks, oh, it’s Azul, you know, it’s what she says.
No, it’s you. My work is that you don’t need me. As soon as you can, you know, so you can like keep…or we can work together to create stuff, but not because you need me.
Alexandra: Yeah.
Azul: In my conversations with Mavis Karn, she’s my mentor. I would say, oh my God, Mavis, I didn’t see that, this, and this, and that. And she will always putting back like, it’s you, what you’re seeing, it’s your true nature. It’s nothing about me. And I was like, yeah, yeah.
And then I started seeing that connection with my own wisdom. And of course, it’s extremely helpful that somebody else points you in that direction because we all get caught up. And if we can do it together, why wouldn’t we do it together? Like we don’t need to do it alone.
Alexandra: Exactly.
Speaking of wisdom, you had a post on Facebook that was about leveling up the volume of wisdom. Could you share a little bit about that for us?
Azul: Yes. The way I see it now, is that instead of leveling up the volume of wisdom is more about what we stop doing. It’s more about wisdom is always there, letting us know stuff, small stuff. You’re cold, get a jacket. You’re hungry, get food. This way, not that way.
But where our attention goes defines everything. So, if I have a lot in my mind and I allow my attention to go there, then I’m not really paying attention to what wisdom is sharing with me. So, as soon as I stop paying attention to my thinking, then it feels like wisdom has leveled up.
I think Michael Neill shared one day, one metaphor that I really loved about what happens when you go into, let’s say, a bar and there is a TV, and you are there with some friend that really needs a conversation. And like, oh, it’s true. Like your attention can go to the TV, but very easily, you just forget that the TV’s there and you focus on your friend.
It’s the same thing; my mind will try to distract me with lots of stuff, and I can go there or I can stay here. And the way I can know what I’m doing is the way I feel. Do I feel calm with clarity, or do I feel something else? And how do I want to feel? And then I go back to who I really am. It’s like daydreaming or being awake, same thing.
Alexandra: I talk about it often, that feedback system that we have built into us automatically, and this is something I learned from Mavis, that how we feel is always telling us the state of our thinking in that moment, or what we’re paying attention to.
It’s so natural and built in, and there’s nothing we need to do to make it happen. It’s just always there letting us know.
Azul: For me, that was really impactful, knowing that I can get lost in my thinking, but I will know that because the feeling is going to be not really nice at all. So the feeling is letting me know, this is what you’re doing with you’re thinking, follow me and I’ll take you home.
And just by letting me know this is what you’re doing with your thinking, that’s more than enough. But other times, you can be very caught up and the feeling is strong, but if you just follow that sensation in your body then you’re back, because it’s so easy that it was really…it was challenging for me to really understand it, because it was so easy that all the time I thought, no, it can’t be so easy. Like, it should be more, I don’t know, maybe I need a couple of years to get it or deepening my grounding, and it’s just a way of living really.
Alexandra: Yes. Yeah. So great.
Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share today?
Azul: I can share about what I’m seeing more these days. I’m seeing more about how important it is to include ourselves in our kindness. We are offering a program with Mavis now about that.
It’s so interesting, every time a program is created is because we have been seeing something about that. I have a master degree on being unkind to myself. I’m being very kind with everybody. And I started seeing that it’s not that I have to learn to be loving with myself, it’s just that we have certain habits of thinking.
Something happens and the habit is, oh my God, you’re the problem. They won’t like you, or you’re going to screw it up. And I could easily go there because it’s a habit.
But when I noticed that and I stopped like doing that, engaging that old behavior, then it was a wonderful experience of realizing, oh my God, like all this kindness to myself. It was always present. I can just allow it to be. I can unlearn. I can really close the gap between how would I treat others and how I treat myself.
So I can really unlearn these old habits just by noticing, there’s no effort, it’s just noticing what you do. I think that’s a huge part of being who we really are. There are no babies, there are no small children that are unkind to themselves. Nobody had that experience, because it’s built in us. And that’s connected with our sense of self-esteem, our sense of well-being, our creativity in the world. I’m feeling these days, like it’s kind of the root for everything when we start with ourselves.
Alexandra: Such a good point. I love that you said that about babies and children.
They have to learn how to be unkind to themselves and to others as well, so then if we have to learn it, we can unlearn it as well.
Azul: Yes. And that’s something that in this inside out community, we innocently, I think we all have the experience of, I get caught up again, oh my God, I’m a terrible mess. I will never learn. Or when my grounding is deep enough, then at that moment I will be… And then we stop at like fixing our outside circumstances, and now we’re trying to like fix our grounding.
The truth is that you wouldn’t say that to a friend. Oh my God, you get caught up in your thinking again, oh, you’re terrible, you will never learn. Or when you’re grounding, you will never treat somebody like that at all. You will be loving. You will be kind.
So the invitation for everybody that is listening to this episode is to explore that possibility. Notice how you’re treating yourself and decide to drop that habit and it will show up again and again, and again and again. But the more you stop doing that to yourself, the less it starts appearing and you start feeling more confidence, and you get more comfortable with being who you really are in any situation instead of trying to fit in.
And that releases a huge amount of energy because we really waste a lot of energy trying to be somebody lovable, or somebody that doesn’t screw it up, or somebody that really got the principles. It’s that attitude. So we can really drop it.
Alexandra: Yes. Lovely.
Azul, this has been amazing. Why don’t you let our listeners know where they can find out more about you and your work?
How do you solve problems? I used to get caught in what I now call a ‘knowledge loop’, which very often wasn’t particularly helpful.
In this episode I talk about where we can go for answers to life’s challenges and how to create our own magic portals to the insights that offer those answers.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Dicken Bettinger and his book, co-authored with Natasha Swerdloff, Coming Home
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers and welcome to a Q&A episode of Unbroken. This is episode 17. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
The Magic Portal to Insight
Today I want to talk about the magic portal to insight. I used that phrase recently with some friends when we were on a zoom call. And what I was referring to was the bathroom. I think specifically the shower. But it also happens, I find, on the toilet.
What I’m talking about is those magical moments when we’re in the shower or in the bathroom, or out for a walk or doing something where we’re kind of occupied with something physical or mechanical, and insights come to us. For some reason, the shower seems to be a really popular place for this sort of thing to happen. I wonder if it’s partly because it’s early in the morning, at least for me, that’s when I ship tend to shower is when it’s the beginning of the day.
What I mean by that magic portal to insight is that this is a time and a place when I often find that I’ll get insights. And of course, when we’re looking to solve a problem or a challenge, or find a solution to something in our lives. What we’re learning in this understanding is that it’s it is insight that brings us fresh new thinking, rather than going over the same old things that our minds know that our brains know.
Our Minds Love What They Already Know
I remember years and years ago, a friend who was a life coach, saying to me that she had learned in a class that she was taking that our minds really love what they already know. And over and over again, I find that so to be so true. I’ve got this great quote that
I want to share with you a quote I saw on Dicken Bettinger’s Instagram today. If you haven’t heard of Dicken, or know of him, I definitely recommend you search him out. He has a book called Coming Home, which is about the three principles understanding. And it’s beautiful, co written with Natasha Swerdloff. And he’s just a lovely, lovely human being so wise and gentle.
And so here’s the quote related to our subject today.
The intellect, like a computer, cannot find what lies beyond itself. Beyond the intellect lies a field of creative energy, the unknown, the spiritual. When we align with this energy, we connect with our wholeness.
I love that so much because it speaks to so many things. Those are three sentences, but it just says volumes. And there’s this is the idea that I just wanted to share and talk about today that, that there’s this field, this space of the unknown, like Dicken says, this creative energy, this universal life energy that we are all a part of. And we can be asleep to that. I know I was for years and years.
Getting Caught in Knowledge Loops
What happens is when we’re looking to solve a problem, find a solution to something, we tend to get caught in what I call a knowledge loop. So we keep circling around with our brains, to all the things that we know that could be possible, maybe things that we’ve done in the past to find a solution or to solve a problem. Things that other people have done things that we’ve read about or things that we’ve seen.
Not that there’s anything wrong with those things. But it really is true that our brains, that’s all they have access to. They have access to all that kind of information, which again can be really helpful at times. And then other times there’s another place where we can go for answers. And that getting to that place. Or hearing those answers is is the thing that happens when we experience insight. When we’re in the shower when we’re on the toilet. Sometimes I find cooking is is a place where I discover insight.
Insight can happen anywhere, anytime. But certainly, I would say my average number of insights in the shower is is pretty high.
Creative Solutions in the Unknown
So I just wanted to point this out today that there are these two places we can go when we’re looking for answers. There’s the place that our brain goes, as I say, which is all the things we’ve already done, or seen or read or heard about.
And then there is the infinite place of creativity and the unknown. And we can go there as well. I think one of the best ways to set ourselves up for having insights is simply knowing that that place exists, that that’s a possibility. When we bump into a problem, and we don’t know what to do, and maybe we find ourselves caught in a knowledge loop, that simply knowing Oh, wait, there is the option, that there’s something here that I don’t know, that could potentially be the answer to this situation.
Simply knowing that it exists, that it is an option is really, the magic portal to insight, we could call it the shower. But the first step is actually knowing that it’s there, that it’s waiting for us.
I know for me in the past, anytime I had to solve a problem, I thought that all I had was the solutions that my brain would come up with. I would use different strategies and techniques to try to be clear about the solutions that I could find. So for example, I’m a big journal writer. So I would maybe write in my journal a lot and try to find the answer that way, or get advice from someone else. And again, nothing wrong with those things. I was innocently trying, as hard as I could to find answers to the problems I had.
Now, I notice that I tackle any kind of question that I have a problem or challenge in a very different way. And then fact, the first step that I might do is all those things I just mentioned. So I still continue to write in my journal. And I might write down all the thinking that I’m having about the situation. And I might go to a friend for advice. And I might do a little research about the situation.
The differences now that there’s a step two, and in step two, maybe once I’ve done all that other stuff, then I set it down, because I know that the magic portal to insight exists, that at some point when I’m getting into the shower, or when I’m out for a walk, or whatever it is, an insight will occur to me and it will be something entirely unknown, something creative, maybe something a little mix of a brain solution that I came up with, combined with some entirely fresh thinking that changes the situation entirely.
So that’s the subject of our Q&A episode today. I hope that’s been helpful for you. And if you have a question of your own, please do let me know you can go to alexandraamor.com/question, and fill in the form there and I’ll be happy to answer your questions on an upcoming episode.
I hope you are well. Take care. I’m sending you lots of love. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.
Calming Our Nervous Systems with Stephanie Wood
Jun 01, 2023
Beyond the immediate effects the recent global pandemic had on us (isolation, grief, loss, and illness, to name but a few) what have the long term effects been? Coach Stephanie Wood began asking herself this question when she noticed that some of the unwanted habits she’d picked up during the pandemic had stuck around.
Knowing that she couldn’t be alone in this, Stephanie has created a program to help us settle our nervous systems and aid our recovery from the prolonged trauma that the pandemic caused.
Stephanie Wood’s passion is helping people get unstuck. She is a holistic health practitioner and for more than two decades she’s been helping people reclaim their lives on their journey back to health and wholeness.
She’s helped support hundreds of people in their recovery from depressive and anxious thinking and from the residual effects of having had a traumatic or challenging childhood using modalities like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), Shiatsu, Human Design and others.
Alexandra: I’m thrilled to have you with me here today.
Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got interested in the three principles, and that stuff.
Stephanie: I’ve been an EFT tapping trainer and practitioner for over 20 years. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a mind-body technique that uses tapping on meridian points. I got into that because I suffered from depression for my whole life until I was 35. And now I’ve been 21 years’ depression free. I know these kinds of types of techniques can work.
So where I encountered the three principles, it was through somebody with the tapping. It was another tapping practitioner. And she was telling me about Ann Ross, who was one of the EFT founding masters. And she said she had trained with her. She’s moved on to this thing called the three principles.
And so of course, I love learning about all this stuff. And I just wanted to know more. So of course, I went down the rabbit hole and really ended up training with Annika Hurwitz, Keith Blevins and Velda, and Amanda Jones. And so I just really went down the rabbit hole, and it completely jived with everything I ever saw about life.
And I’m like, this is for me. So now I share it. I incorporated it with the tapping. I had a lot of thinking about how wrong it was to bring in a technique. But over the years, I just realized I love the tapping. It’s fun for me. It feels nice to me. And it was a nice way to gently bring it to a broader audience, though.
Alexandra: Would you be willing to share a little bit more about your depression and how you came to clear that up? What you saw about it?
Stephanie: Yes. So, it was lifelong. I was hospitalized twice, I was a cutter, I tried to commit suicide, and I was a very unhappy camper from childhood on. I was relentlessly seeking help. So from my 20s on every modality you could think of. I had regular Western therapy, Eastern therapy, acupuncture, and I became a shiatsu practitioner. I just tried everything I could.
I knew in my bones that something was going to shift. That’s where I think I just couldn’t stop. I was like, this isn’t right, this isn’t who I am. And so really, it was in my mid-30s. I was 34. I kept pursuing different, practitioners, and it was a combination of two different types of energy medicine type techniques.
I wasn’t EFT. This was before I had even heard about EFT. And I happen to be doing them at the same time. And I was doing them, nothing was happening. And then I stopped, and it just didn’t get better. And six months later, I think it took time for all of the processing to happen.
I woke up in July of that year and I realized it had been a couple of weeks since I had had hateful, self-hatred, thoughts. I could feel that something shifted. And I was like, I don’t hate myself anymore. And when I thought about it, the thought sounded ridiculous. I was like, why would I hate myself? I could see all of my dark and all of my light.
And I was less judgy about it. I just knew it was gone. Because I started looking for it because I’m waiting for all of the thoughts and their circle of friends. The whole city of depression thoughts that would come along with the I hate myself? And they were the train of thoughts were not there.
Now, when I encountered the three principles. I went through that lens, I looked back at everything because I was like, was it a technique that fixed me? What I’ve come to see about my understanding of the three principles is everything is insight. When it appears to be related to a technique, I don’t know if I care anymore.
Insight, like period, it could correspond with climbing Mount Everest, it could correspond with, you’re in the tub, slitting your wrists, and you have an insight. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. So it’s like trusting where I’m being led, and then insights, calm, and that insight was so profound, that it ripped apart the belief that I had that I hated myself.
I don’t know if that makes sense. But it was from now and then it was like I started my life at 35. I’m 56 now so I just haven’t ever been depressed. It doesn’t mean I’m happy all the time. But I’m not in that. I used to fall in the hole like it was the hole of depression. I know depression was ugly.
Alexandra: Wow, that’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. And as you were speaking at that’s was the conclusion that I was coming to as well that everything is insight. And we don’t have control over it.
Insight can be so life-changing. That’s amazing. I love it.
Stephanie: And that’s why I do what I do now. Because when I see people with depression or anxiety, I know it’s possible. I’m not saying that this X, Y, Z will fix that, or X, Y, Z will remove the belief, but I just know that it’s possible.
And that hope of and knowing that it’s all thought, and behind all of that, that we’re deeply okay. We’re whole and complete behind everything. I can’t not see that when I work with people or when I see anybody.
Alexandra: I love that. And it’s such a common story of, I think three principles, practitioners, even just people who are interested in the understanding that we’ve been everywhere, tried everything. And I loved what you said about, you just knew in your bones that depressed person was not who you were.
I had the same experience with overeating. I just knew that there was an answer somewhere.
And that I guess, in a way that I wasn’t broken, that that there was a way to be healthy around food and that thing. So, very similar experience, just in a different arena, for sure.
The reason I wanted to speak to you today was that you recently started a Reset Your Nervous System series of videos, which I signed up for.
Tell us first about what motivated that.
Stephanie: I was starting to notice that so much happened in the during the pandemic, and so much thinking developed, and so many unwanted habits. I knew that I wasn’t alone when I went out and noticed everyone had gained a little weight.
Everyone was complaining about drinking too much. People knew things were happening, they were overspending, all the things were happening. And then as we started to come back to life, to normal life, I was hearing from so many friends and online, that people weren’t able to shake it, and it’s been a while now.
I realized, for me, I also wasn’t able to shake it. I’m still overeating, I’m still over drinking. I’m not liking this behavior. And normally, in the past, it just never was an issue that some of those things weren’t issues. I didn’t have a lot of thinking about it, it didn’t feel compulsive, it didn’t feel like a compulsion to do those things.
And so I started by talking about with my partner, just, I mean, this literally was just a few weeks ago, and we both realized, wow, like, if the science is correct about trauma, and that our if our amygdala gets into these patterns of fight or flight and gets in lockdown, which, quite frankly, when I when we talked about it, I looked back at the beginning of the pandemic, it was scary.
Even though I got a lot of benefits from it. I’m an introvert. I love being at home, and working from home and everything, but nobody knew what was going to happen. And that was for a prolonged period of time. And then the vaccine came and then it was like, is this going to work and I couldn’t see my family for because they live across an international border.
I think I had so much emotion that I noticed I started to have those coping behaviors, while the days were all the same. So five o’clock, I think I want a cocktail, it was just this pattern started to happen. So fast forward to now and I’m trying to shift those patterns and shifting that conversation with my partner.
I’m like, I have mad techniques to get to work with this. Why am I not using them? I know it’s thinking I understand that. And we have a body and I’m also have grappled with the three principles and body how that interacts. That’s been a deep thought deep exploration that I’ve done with myself. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know.
If I have a sore muscle I’m going to stretch it, or go to the massage therapist, I can ponder about it all day about, wow, where are the thoughts coming from, but at the end of the day, I need to go stretch that muscle. And I know three principles is not prescriptive, it’s descriptive. I fall back to that understanding of it.
So I just thought, I’m going to put together these fun techniques. I know they are helpful for calming.
Body calming, and acupressure terms are energy, I can see energy sometimes. And so I’ve witnessed it, I’ve experienced it, let’s put them together.
I was so inspired. I thought I’m just going to create an outline. And I’m going to put this together for myself, and I’m going to do it. And then I thought, I am not alone. I’m going to share this, why don’t I just create 10 videos, and walk everybody through it? So I just basically did a very loose outline.
And I did it all ad hoc. I just turned on the camera, and I led through these exercises. And that’s what that’s where it came from. I thought I need to share this. So far, the reception has been amazing. And now it’s been long enough that people have finished it.
I’m already getting responses that every so far, every single person who has gotten back to me about it has said, I feel calmer, I’m not so afraid to go back to the office, I’m sleeping better. I’m waking up in a panic.
I’m not saying it can fix everything. But there’s something to be said for when we’re in a chronic state of fight or flight, whether it’s been because of a single trauma, or long-term collective trauma, like the pandemic. Sometimes we need to remind our system when you’re safe now, it’s over, can relax now. And there’s that body connect.
So this is that way of acknowledging the body and the thoughts we have about the body.
Alexandra: Well, that was great. We want to hear about this. I wanted to know more about the genesis of the idea.
I find there is this might be innocent approach in the three principles that we’re we tend to approach everything from the neck up.
What I’ve started to explore recently is that we’re a body and a soul.
A friend of mine pointed out recently that, Syd Banks so often said, and so famously said, “Follow the feeling”, that was one of the things that he went back to again and again. Well, where do we feel things?
We feel them in our bodies? So I personally think we’re missing something when we don’t fold in our bodies when we’re exploring this stuff. I think it’s really, really important. So I love that you’re doing this.
What is the experiment entail? You’ve talked about exercises, but what does that look like specifically?
Stephanie: They are a combination of things I’ve learned over the years. Mostly Eden method. Have you ever heard of Donna Eden?
Donna Eden is this wonderful magical creature who sees energy clearly, and she always has been. She’s getting older. I trained with her years and years ago.
And she works with bodies energies, like the chakras, like the meridians. She sees the systems. So I use some of those things from something called Brain Gym that, again, help the body rebalance the energies. And when I say the energies, I know it sounds so vague, but we are all energy, if the consciousness is energy, so let’s, let’s call it that.
And some pulls from my tapping experience, although I didn’t bring in much tapping other than the first day because tapping can be quite stimulating to the system. And the whole idea of this is to calm the system. So what I did was just bring in tap and breathe, which is in there derived from tapping. So instead of tapping on a point, you hold, you focus in and you take a breath.
So this was a way a calmer way to do this. I also run something called havening, which is a delightful technique that is so calming, and there’s science behind the EFT and the havening. Not this little harder to do science with the Eden work, but it’s mostly those techniques and some stuff that I’ve just created over the years.
I get insights to pull things together, and I go with the feeling. Really, it’s 10 days, and I’ve tried to keep the videos short, so they’re 11 to 15 minutes a day, for 10 days. You can skip days or whatever, but it’s just a 10 day process, and because I didn’t know how long it was going to take, first I was I thought, Oh, I’ll do this for 21 or 30 days, and it’s too much for a lot of people, I thought I’d start with 10.
And then, if people want to do it a second time or third time, just repeat it. And so far, some people are like, I’m good with the 10 days, and other people are like, I think I’m going to do it another time. So it’s really an experiment. I can’t tell you if it’s going to work for you or not. But certainly, so far the results have been happy to report that I’m hearing good things.
Alexandra: That’s great. I think it was in the Facebook group you mentioned one day that you had done one of the exercises in the morning, and then you were planning to do it in the afternoon or the evening again, as well.
There’s no harm in this, as well. What’s the worst that could happen? You feel a little calmer. Great!
Stephanie: So I got up out of my seat, and I did the cross crawl thing. Wow. I moved a little, okay.
Alexandra: Exactly. Cross-crawl. I remember that. I went to a biokinesiologist years ago in Vancouver. And she would get us to do those occasionally.
Stephanie: That’s one of the exercises to do every day is the cross crawl correction. Because when we’ve been either under a lot of stress or trauma, or our system has been shocked, if we’ve had an illness. Donna Eden, who sees the energy, and other practitioners, Prune Harris is another energy practitioner who sees energy.
They see that our energies go into homo lateral mode for survival, meaning they it’s like you’re one side of the body versus the other versus being crossed over. And so I have so many of my clients and friends that I know too, who are practitioners, if they’re if they’ve been having anxious thoughts or feelings, doing the correction, to try and retrain your patterns back to crossing over, is game-changing. It’s such a simple exercise, and it feels really good.
And all sudden, you have access to your brain again. And when I do it, I didn’t realize I needed to do that’s been a game changer for me through this process. I think even that alone was something doing that over several, quite a few days. It’s I’m like, Ah, just it’s like, everything just feels normal again.
Alexandra: I’m going to say something really uninformed here. But I think what my biokinesiologist said when she recommended cross crawling is that, of course, our brains are, I’m not going to use the right word, but cross wired, so that our left eye is controlled by the right side of our brain, for example, and vice versa.
So that somehow ties into what you’re saying, right?
We don’t want our energy to be two parallel lines running. We want them to be crossing over like an X.
Stephanie: Think of an infinity sign. That’s how I like to be like that. So according to that, even medicine and my personal experience. Yes, we’ll try it. I just like try it for yourself. If it feels good.
Alexandra: Yes, exactly.
What have you noticed personally as you’ve been doing the experiment yourself?
Stephanie: Well, it’s funny, because when I made it, I knew that I was making it from the mindset of help doing it for others. And I knew that I would walk through it myself. But I also noticed at the end of videotaping the whole process, I thought to myself, I think that works, because I just started to notice, and now I’ve run through it as well.
And what I’m noticing is it’s not that the behaviors that I’ve wanted to shift just dropped away like that. But I’m starting to for myself, I’m just starting to notice, well, first of all, I feel a lot calmer, just throughout the day, that surprised me a bit. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t as calm as I thought I was.
And there’s like space between the choice of the behavior and the behavior. So like, oh, whereas before it felt like there’s no space, it’s ongoing. I’m going to hop on the illusion.
We all know when you have that space of okay, it doesn’t feel as scary. It doesn’t feel as compulsive. So that’s just what I’ve noticed. I’m going to run through it again, because I think for me, I had a little hint that I wanted to do it three times.
And that feeling of freedom to choose versus being like, I’m a victim too who felt like a victim of thought and like that, it’s just going to drive me somewhere. So it’s like you get back in the driver’s seat of the bus, which are we really in the driver’s seat, but, feels a little more like that it feels like I’m following my consciousness correctly, or I don’t even know how to explain that. But this feels like there’s more space for choice and to breathe.
Alexandra: Yes, exactly. That’s been my experience with other things as well, that creating that space between thought and behavior, just that tiny little gap, gives us a moment to breathe.
It made me think of mindfulness. It’s created the ability for you to be mindful of what’s actually happening.
Rather than what I know. I can speak for myself personally. So often, I can just be following my thoughts, mindlessly and as though they’re the boss and they know everything. And, so just taking a step back, and, noticing what they’re doing is so helpful.
Stephanie: Without leading with the thought, it’s a yes. Leave to my brain or by the thoughts like, Nah, they maybe they need me to not be in charge here. There’s something in me that knows better.
Alexandra: That’s right. It was interesting that you said that EFT is stimulating. I hadn’t heard that before. I don’t know a ton about EFT.
Are there times then when it’s really helpful, and then in a case like this, where the objective is more calming, that you can back off that a little bit?
Stephanie: It can be in the moment. With tapping, we’re usually addressing where the person is at that moment. So when they’re not calm, you can tap to address the not calm. So you hit that threshold where the calm starts to settle in.
And then, I may choose to tap and breathe. Or I may choose to do one or just stop and let the rest of that flow out. One thing I always recommend for people who are trying to sleep, if you wake up in the middle of the night and are trying to sleep, don’t tap. That’s a classic.
Sounds weird, but you can imagine tapping when you’re in bed, you just can’t sleep and you’re imagining tapping through your points. And it sounds weird that you say that to yourself. But you wake up in the morning, and you’re going, what happened? Wow, is that a lot actually for myself? If I wake up? Tapping can be just stimulating if you’ve been in sleep mode.
Alexandra: Okay, interesting.
Given that the principles tend to focus on our mind and our thinking, do you see a connection between a stressed, nervous system and a busy mind?
Stephanie: Totally. And even from the perspective of when our amygdala is all lit up, and we’re in fight, flight, or freeze, we don’t have access to clarity of mind. Because we’re ready to go, ready to do something, we’re scared. We’re in survival mode.
I think when we get into that survival mode, our bodies react a certain way, our brain goes offline to get out of the way of what we need to do to survive.
And sometimes, that can look like overeating or shopping, it can be this is what I need to do to cope because this is too hard. I need to zone out. And so when are when we can get that amygdala to relax, okay, we’re not more safe. The whole nervous system can just get operating in a more appropriate manner.
And then our thoughts can come back online, in and the space between the thoughts to have that clarity of choice. It just allows that they just don’t go together clarity and clear, clear thinking and full-on survival mode. Like just they just don’t go well together. So that’s my take on that.
Alexandra: Absolutely. And, it occurs to me we often talk about I mean, insight can happen at any time. And I think it is a little my experience is a little easier to access when I’m a little calmer when there’s more space within me, and it’s I’m not in full-on crisis mode.
The experiment you’ve created strikes me as a way to get to that quiet place where insight is available, about what to do next or whatever.
Stephanie: To get more availability for yourself.
Alexandra: Exactly.
Is there anything about the experiment that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share? Or anything else?
Stephanie: There’s something else going to talk about. I’m just wondering things and this is a little sidetrack is the one you’re talking about. I’m not going to go to another realm, just to put a little pin in that for some other conversation. But have you heard of human design?
Alexandra: The name sounds familiar, but I don’t know why.
Stephanie: So I actually got introduced to it by two three principles people: Marsha Madigan and Christian McNeil. They were exploring three principles in something called Human Design, which is basically it’s hard to explain what it is, but it looks at your chakra system and your meridians and your time of birth.
It’s this combo of astrology and eaching. It’s a download that this fellow had in the 80s. I’ve since become certified in that just because I was fascinated, and I think you are, too. We love these, like, how can I help myself and other people that have more clarity and insight and awareness?
And what was funny was when I learned about my chart, my body graph, the only places that I’m defined with who I am, is my head and my throat. That’s it. So I didn’t actually have anything going on other than conditioning. So it’s all about every place else was conditioned deeply.
So, the reason I bring this up here is because it’s about understanding what’s correct for you. And understanding, I listened to your q & a about where we can access wisdom. I love that. And what was interesting, what occurred to me and why I’m mentioning this now is because for different people, it comes in different ways.
And so to understand what is correct for you, in the next moment to moment, which may be I only need to do this for three days, or this doesn’t resonate with me, or whatever the next thing is, and Dr. Bill Pettit is that he says, I remember listening to a talk from him where and has, I love this so much.
He talked about how he was impacted by the principles in that he felt like, I don’t need to be thinking about that, that I just wait for the next index card for the next action to appear in front of me. I was like, Mike drop.. That’s the way it works, and, and I’ve embraced that.
And so with the human design, understanding, it’s about following your correct thing for you, which may be that it’s an inside you check in with yourself deep inside your body. For me, because in my chart, I don’t have anything inside, I have to speak to see what I believe and understand and decide is correct for me.
So it’s different for everybody. And I just wanted to just note that and even with this exercise and what is correct for people in that next moment, everyone’s method may be a little different. And our conditioning will tell us something else; our conditioning will be like, Oh, no, you have to do it this way.
I learned that you just have to go do this and go meditate. Well, is always in my mind and will never be that quiet mind because it’s fine. So when I learned that Marsha Madigan was the same way, she’s like, Oh, my mind is defined, I will never have a quiet mind.
Whereas other people who meditate they like, I just had no thoughts, and I’m never going to get there. And then when I realized, no, that’s okay. That’s how I’m built. It was a game changer for me, if it’s a game changer 50,000 times, but it really was, it was. I was like, Oh, that’s not who I am.
And that’s okay. And again, it goes back to that wholeness and okayness of who are we personally in this avatar in the game? That this is the Stephanie bundle.
But that was just the extra little piece I wanted to add on about learning what is understanding what is correct for you without all the conditioning so that you can trust the next index card that comes in front of you about what’s your appropriate for you next.
Alexandra: Yes, totally makes sense. I love that you’re pointing toward, everybody has their own way of navigating their life. There’s not one right way for everybody. That’s so important to point out.
When you talked about did you say that when you have that, the way that what to do next is because you verbalize it? Is that what you’re okay with?
How do you do that? Is that through talking to your partner? Or do you talk out loud to yourself? What does that look like?
Stephanie: Yes, all of the above. Before I encountered human design, I realized one day that even though I thought something about a situation, there was a decision I needed to make, I noticed that as I was talking to people, something else was coming out of my mouth completely. It was shocking to me.
But I realized that is what is correct for me. And it was, and this is, even before I encountered human design, I thought I need to watch what I say. That’s my truth. What pops out of my head is not all of its truth. But that’s where I will discern the truth for me.
And that’s what, this type that I am is, a smaller part of the population. Most people can go inside and ask yes, no questions to their inner being. That’s the bulk of it, but most people can do that. Some people need to sleep on it. Some people need to listen to their little tiny voice from moment to moment. So it’s different for everyone.
There are quite a few different ways of accessing your knowing that when you start to play with that gets really fun because you start to hear it more.
Alexandra: When we know where to access wisdom for ourselves, then that becomes such a powerful tool to have in our toolbox, for just stumbling around not knowing where to look for that. For me, it’s usually journaling.
Journaling gets ideas out and lubricates things. And then if I leave something alone, like if I’m trying to make a decision, then it becomes very much a body-centric answer. That’s how it happens to me.
I love that you’re pointing out that it’s different for people.
Stephanie: When you journal, do you notice that does that feel like it’s your head thoughts coming out? Or does that feel like it’s just everything coming out? Or does that feel more like your wisdom coming out?
Alexandra: It’s a bit of both, I can feel very often that my mind is really busy. And I’m writing down all that busy thought, it’s like going through layers. And once that’s out of me onto the page, then I get a little quieter.
I noticed that then I start to spend more time staring off into the distance rather than actually writing. But then what I’m writing becomes just clear; it’s definitely more centered. Sometimes I have insights right on the page, but I think that more often I’ll set it aside and go on with my day.
And then, at some point, then or days later, something will occur to me. That’s the truth for me. I love it. It’s good to have that awareness of ourselves. It really is for sure.
So we’ve talked about the reset your nervous system experiments. And it’s free, we should point out.
Where can people learn more about that and sign up for it?
Stephanie: You could just go to my website, it’s innerpeaceandflow.com. And there’s just a link right under the main picture.
Alexandra: Great. I will put links in the show notes, so people can find it. So it’s inner peace and flow.com Is your website and if people go there they can find out also about your work with clients and that thing.
Tell us a little bit more about what you offer for people.
Stephanie: I do tapping. I’ve done tapping for all these years. I also teach people how to tap. But over the years, after I encountered the three principles, I realized my whole practice changed because I stopped dealing with the path as regular EFT practitioners go diving into the past. You go memory, and I just was I It occurred to me, well, that’s not needed.
So basically now my practice is more about using bring it’s like a three-principles session. So because it’s so different from the other, I had to rename it. So I came up with the name Ultra EFT, which stands for understanding life through realization and awareness EFT because it’s different than regular EFT.
And then we’re starting to get results faster, less tears, less I’m really going to deep dive into all the painful memories. It’s made my practice so much easier. And people just have access to their own wisdom more easily. So anyway, that’s, so I work with people one on one, I’m going to be doing some stuff with human design, I’m going to be I work a lot with money.
With people’s money issues. I used to deal mostly with depression, anxiety, trauma in my early years. And I just feel like I’ve shifted to working with people with business, and money has been an ongoing fun thing that I always am passionate about, but my partner’s an economics instructor and was a stockbroker. All we do is dissect the economy every morning.
People need help with money issues because, just like anything else, food issues, money issues. It’s not that it doesn’t matter what the topic is. It’s about addressing all the thinking we have blocking us from correct action for ourselves. That doesn’t matter what the thing is. It really doesn’t matter. That’s what I’m doing now.
Alexandra: Very cool. Well, thank you, Stephanie. This has been lovely. It’s been great connecting with you again. And, I really appreciate it. Thanks for being on the show.
Q&A 16 – If reality is created from Thought, how do we create boundaries?
May 29, 2023
How can we draw clear boundaries with people in our lives if everything we’re seeing and experiencing comes via the gift of Thought? Today we explore the difference between circumstances and experiences and how this awareness can inform us and help us to understand when a healthy boundary might be appropriate.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Transcript of episode
Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode 16 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
And today I wanted to examine the question:
If our reality is created by thought, then how do we deal with boundaries?
So this really has to do with relationships and situations in our life where we’re dealing with and interacting with other human beings. And I’m specifically thinking about personal, intimate relationships, partnerships, that kind of thing.
When I first started exploring this understanding, I noticed a lot of confusion and I still do occasionally from people. When we start to understand that our life is an inside out experience and that thought is being created through us, coming through us from the formless into the form. And the idea that what we experience is based on that thinking rather than based on the actual events that are going on outside ourselves.
The concise way to say that is we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances.
Occasionally I see people exploring this, and then we get to the place where we realize that or we start to question how does that apply to intimate relationships? So, for example, if someone is feeling like they’re in a relationship that is unhealthy, that is whatever shade of that it that it could be, like, manipulative, or they’re dealing with a narcissist, or someone who’s maybe abusive, that kind of thing, verbally or otherwise.
The question becomes, if I’m creating that experience via thought, or, in other words, if I’m having that experience, and my understanding of it is always through thought, then how do I draw boundaries? And I see people ask, should they even draw boundaries in a situation like that? And it’s such a valid question. And it’s so important.
When I was in Portland a couple of months ago with Michael Neal and Barbara Patterson, Michael drew this diagram on the whiteboard at the front of the room. And he wasn’t talking about relationships at all. But I came away realizing this was the perfect way to explain this conundrum that people get into when they’re exploring this understanding.
The diagram looked like this:
His point was that in our lives, there are always these two different things going on. There’s the circumstance that’s happening. And I’ll give some examples in a second. And then there’s the experience that we have of that circumstance. The experience is our thinking, that’s where Thought comes into play.
Let’s say you had a circumstance where you stubbed your toe.
That’s just a hard fact. You ran into the foot of the couch, and stubbed your toe. That’s the circumstance.
The experience, then, is how you experience that circumstance, via your thinking. So let’s say you’re in a rush to get to work, you might have a lot of thinking about how you’re going to be late. And this is going to screw up your day. And maybe you’re going to miss an important meeting, and all that kind of stuff, you’re going to have thinking of course about how painful it is.
Or maybe you’re someone who’s kind of hard on yourself, you might have a lot of thinking about how that stubbed toe is just a sign of your clumsiness, or the fact that you weren’t paying attention, that kind of thing.
You can see that all that thinking is variable. It depends on the person who’s encountering the circumstance. But the circumstance stays the same. You’ve stubbed your toe, that’s the fact.
Now we can drill into intimate relationships and dealing with difficult people.
It’s exactly the same situation. So the circumstance could be that you’re having an argument with your spouse, or perhaps you feel like maybe your spouse is being verbally abusive, that could be the circumstance. And then your experience of that is going to be all the thinking that you have that’s related to that circumstance.
I had Phil Goddard on the show a few weeks ago, and he talked about the different the number of people that are in a relationship, it’s not just two. There’s my experience of me, there’s the other person’s experience of them. There’s the other person’s experience of me, there’s my experience of them. It goes on and on. It’s like one of those halls of mirrors.
When we encounter a difficult person, or a difficult situation, naturally, I mean, it just the way it works, we are going to have our own thinking about that situation. That’s the experience. That’s the thought that’s going through us. Additionally, what’s going on is the circumstance. And this is the place where we can draw boundaries.
I think it’s really important to see this with clarity.
Because I think what happens sometimes is that people hear that we’re living our lives from the inside out, we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances. And what they hear from that is that whatever’s happening in our lives, whatever’s going on, it’s because or what’s the right way to put it, it’s, we’re experiencing it through thought, which is absolutely true. And what happens, then, I think, is that there’s some confusion about the idea that circumstances can actually happen.
So in other words, if you’re in a relationship with somebody who is perhaps being verbally abusive, there is your thought based experience of that. But there’s also the circumstance that has occurred. If you’re in a relationship with somebody who does things like maybe locks you out of the house, when they get mad, or something like that, that’s a circumstance that is very real. And, yes, you’re going to have your own thinking about it. And that thinking might be, could be anything from feeling sorry for yourself to feeling angry, what all all of those feelings on the spectrum and you might encounter any of them.
It’s okay to see that there is a circumstance happening that is not appropriate, that is damaging to you, or to the people around you.
I wanted to bring this up, because it was so clear to me that this was the answer. When people have questions about relationships, and get a bit confused about how thought plays a role in our relationships with other people. So I hope that brings a little bit of clarity, if you’ve ever had that question about where to draw boundaries with people and how that looks when we are experiencing life via thought.
Both those things are true and like people say, these days, two things can be true at the same time. You can be living in the world of your thinking, which we all are in a given relationship and the circumstances of the relationship, maybe are not healthy.
So yeah, I just wanted to bring that up. It’s been on my mind for a little while. I hope that’s clear. If not, please let me know. Please send me your question. You can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/question.
Thank you for listening. I hope you found that helpful. And I look forward to talking to you again next week. Bye.
Like so many of my guests, Paola Royal has long been interested in health and well-being. She has worked as a physiotherapist, studied Emotional Freedom Technique, among other modalities, but knew that there was a piece missing when it came to helping others heal.
Then, her mentor Ann Ross introduced her to the Three Principles. Now she is an author, podcaster and coach who leads the Living Lighter holistic weight loss programme.
Paola Royal worked in the medical sector from the age of 18. Her fascination with our human – being, and the interconnectivity of the physical body and universal mind led her to the work she is doing today.
She continued her studies training for 3 years in the scientific approach of nutrition with the BSY. She studied as a teacher for the Emotional Freedom Technique before she started an extensive training in the Three Principles as a paradigm, which is a pre-existing logic that describes and points to how our moment-to-moment experience of life is created. She has been a facilitator for 8 years and brings a wealth of experience to her work with clients.
Paola is the author of The Inner Game of Food & Diet.
Paola: Thank you so much for inviting me, Alexandra.
Alexandra: My pleasure.
Why don’t you let us tell us a bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles?
Paola: I love that question. My background is working with clients since the age of 18. I worked as a physiotherapist I started to work more and more holistic. I was running my own practice in Switzerland before I came the third time to the UK, in 2010, to study there in the scientific approach of nutrition for three years.
And afterward, there was one piece of the puzzle to the human, to support my clients in the best way, the mind was still missing. And so I trained in EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. And just when I finished I came to the three principles understanding because my mentor, Ann Ross, she started to train in the three principles.
I don’t know if you came across her. And she trained with, with various teachers, and so I thought, What the heck is the three principles? So I went online, and I came across some YouTube videos of Rudy and Jenny when they were still a couple, that was in I think, 2015- 2014, something like that. I get caught up with time quite a while ago.
And I immediately heard truth, it really hit home. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, I want to find out more about that. And so I joined and was running some meetups here in Exeter, and Devon, where I live. And so I did that. And there were different teachers coming down like Elsie Spittle, and Keith Blevins, and Rudy Kennard, and so on.
I did different courses went to London as well to give different courses. And I really wanted to be able to share to facilitate that. Because, for me, there was just nothing else anymore. It is really, since then, I don’t find the need to go anywhere else to look anywhere else. Because for me, every everything feeds into that.
And it’s a fundamental logic of how our moment is created. We have these three principles of mind, thought and consciousness, and depending how we use these principles that is creating the reality we live in.
Alexandra: Very simple.
Paola: Very simple. And it fits for me into absolutely everything. So like I said, I used to be a body worker with energy, psychology, and so on, and so on. And for me, that felt fed really nicely into that too. And to support people to live a healthier lifestyle. It was a much easier approach in a much more plausible approach in with my clients.
And since then, I support people to improve the health to lose weight. People with overwhelm anxiety and people who have problems with sleep issues, and pain management.
Alexandra: When did you start folding that into the work you were doing with clients? And how did you find that?
Paola: I straightaway started to feed it in with my clients. I run groups and I work with people all over the world, one to one, and I wrote a book as well later on, but it took me one other step and that was when I heard then about autophagy I’d
Have you ever heard about autophagy? It is our self-healing mechanism on a physical level.
So when our insulin levels have really, really low for a long period of time, then our cells can start to regenerate. So they clean themselves up of all unwanted protein, virus, bacteria, funguses. And knowing from the principles that when I can see what’s going on for me and I can get out of my own way, then my mind gets quiet.
And I feel well and the same was also on a pure physical level, I mean, we say in the three principles, we experienced the body over the power of thought. But when we look we still are human beings, and we still have the physical being, which supports us day in and day out. And there is also the self-healing mechanism, which is, we are part of that oneness part of nature parts part of the intelligence behind life.
And nature, when you look out into nature, it is always recovering, constantly recovering. So for example, when you look at old factories, disguised factories, after a while, nature is taking over again and the birds start nesting in the ruins of the building, it’s beautiful to watch. And that is with our physical body the same way when we are able to get out of our own way, so to speak, when our insulin levels can really low for a longer period of time.
So that means every time when we eat, it doesn’t matter if it’s healthy or unhealthy. Every time when you eat, your insulin levels are slightly rising. So it always goes up and down, up and down and up and down. And when we can get out of our own way, then our cell system starts to recover as well and starts to heal itself to.
Alexandra: Interesting. And one of the questions that I wanted to ask you today does tie into that.
Where do you think our unwanted eating habits come from?
Paola: Well, it is all about habits recreated since when we look back since the day you’re born, you’re living in the neutral power or life is guiding you through the neutral power. And then we take on board what our parents said, our relative said or teacher said, and we believe that to be true, and through that we creating also our habits, our eating habits.
So, a certain way our family used to eat. And then when we grow up the lifestyle we having what fits into our lifestyle and that is innocently creating the habits and that we carry through life. But all this happens when I can see I am the one who is innocently creating this constructs about my life, my habits, the beliefs about my life, when I can see it for what it is that it is God created innocently very innocently. When I understand that, then I’m able for I’m open for change.
Alexandra: Insight.
Paola: Absolutely, it only works over insight. Because if I don’t have the insight that believe is a belief which are innocently created over time and space then when I don’t see that I keep judging myself that I don’t do what I want to do. I’m not treating myself with love and kindness.
And then it’s difficult. But when I can see that it’s all really innocently created. I see it’s all the innocence and I can see that and I’m more open I’m no how shall I say, then I can feel the love for my innocence. And then I can let it go. Only that I’m able to change and grow out of my limiting beliefs into something new.
Alexandra: That’s so beautiful. The love for my innocence. That’s gorgeous. I love that.
Do your clients, I guess sometimes, struggle with their eating. Is that correct?
Paola: Yes.
Alexandra: When you begin exploring this understanding, like if someone listening was struggling with that, where would you begin with them?
Paola: I run a six months’ program. I first of all work really, really practically. Because what I find is a lot of clients of mine, they have been on all kinds of weight loss programs. Already everything to change the eating habits, but then never succeed. And what I find is, it is very much down to education, as your patient fundamental understanding of the food you’re eating, and the effect it has on your physical wellbeing.
And then it all goes into the mindset side of things. That’s where we start then talking about the understanding, and it goes very quickly into that, but I first start really with very practical advice. The first two, three times, and then we see it automatically feeds into the mindset side of things.
Alexandra: And the understanding of how thought works.
Paola: Straightaway mean, yes. So, it’s for my clients, I like them to see that their physical body is not something separate. It’s all one. And that is really important for me that they see that because the clients who come to me they see themselves somehow or their physical being somehow separate.
And when they understand that, actually, the food they are eating is affecting them on a cellular level. And they start to see that insightful that they’re actually innocently not supporting themselves. That’s already the start. And then it all goes into the principles after. Okay. No problem.
Alexandra: It’s such a good point about our body being such a big part of our lives. I say we’re walking around like we’re just a head, completely disconnected from our bodies and how wise they are, and how they’re always on our side, even with our cravings, trying to get our attention and wake us up to the brilliance of our bodies and of the way that we work. So, I completely understand.
That’s a great place to start.
Paola: What I found is when what I see with my clients and people around me, in the understanding is when my mind is quiet and I have a better understanding about my life. And the life I’m living and the thought created reality I’m living in moment to moment to moment, I start to be more loving and kind with myself start to be more loving and kind with myself. I am getting less and less interested in to feed myself in a non-supportive way.
Alexandra: Right. When we connect with that innate well-being.
Paola: Because what we do a lot is or what people do a lot is compensating as well. In the moment when they don’t see that they experience is coming from thought, but they’re thinking it is coming from people, circumstances, events, then there is for me something to do to change my experience, right?
And then I want to compensate, I need to have a glass of wine to make me feel better. I need that chocolate to feel better. When I have a takeaway on the weekend, then that’s really satisfying for me. All of that feeds into that.
Alexandra: Exactly. I totally get it. One of the questions that I had sent you in advance was, was connected to this to the miraculous nature of the body and how it can help us when we’re trying to eat better.
So I’m glad that we came to that organically, that was really nice.
What changes do you see with your clients once they begin to put the pieces of this all together? The elements of thought and the body?
Paola: It’s very interesting. So they come to me because of weight loss, for example. They’re normally in their 40s, 50s, 60s and they want to live a healthier lifestyle. And, first of all, for me, it’s not really about weight loss, but it is living a healthier lifestyle.
And then weight loss is actually just falling in effortlessly. And what I find it really quickly, it leads us into the understanding into the three principles. And then it goes into completely different areas of their life. So, for example, one client of mine I’m having at the moment, we talked about her husband.
He is quite supportive, very active. And he does intermittent fasting, and she could never get it done for herself. She had all these beliefs about herself, and she cannot do it. And she’s just not good enough, everyone else can do it. And I’m obese, and I just cannot do that, right? And then we started to talk about the, for her to understand her true nature. And through that, it’s folded into all different kinds of different parts of her life.
So, for example, she texted me one Sunday and said, you wouldn’t believe what I just did. I just drove with my son 105 miles to a theme park, which I never would have done before. Because I never trusted myself to drive alone to somewhere where I never have been before. So you see something completely different, but it all interlinked. It all comes together.
And so that’s one example. And then coming into the part just about the eating. I had one client, she came in our second meeting. She came to me and said, Oh, my God. I always thought when I have a packet of biscuits, I need to eat them all. I can’t just have one or two and then put the packet to the side. But she said I bought a packet of biscuits for my class. She was running a course herself, and she always gives us biscuits.
And she said I only had one and I didn’t have the feeling I needed to have more because she could see that her graving was also thought created. And when I can see II passing thought for what it is, I don’t need to bite into it anymore. I don’t need to act on passing thought, then I can sit there and say, okay. And it’s going to pass, I don’t need to act.
It’s like when you sit on the sofa in the evening and you thinking, oh, I need some chocolate. Now, when you watch something. And sometimes, well, sometimes, it works. Sometimes it doesn’t work. But also when it doesn’t work. You don’t beat yourself up for it anymore.
And that’s a big a biggie, as well, when, because a lot of people who have ongoing issues with losing weight or living a healthier lifestyle, they have loads of expectations on themselves, and then they don’t add up to the expectations. And then there’s a lot, a lot of judgment. And then they stop it and say, right, you see, I’m the one who cannot do this.
Everyone else can do that. And why are they so great in doing this, but I cannot succeed that you see, and there’s a lot of thinking going on. But when they can see thought for what it is, then there’s no need any more to act on it.
Alexandra: And stop adding more and more layers of thinking to what’s already there.
Paola: Exactly. And then their mind gets quiet. There is no judgment. They start to be more loving and kind with themselves, more understanding. And then they continue again with the next meal. They may be pigged out, but then they say, Okay, fine. I did pig out. That’s okay. And then they continue again with the next man.
Alexandra: You have written a book called The Inner Game of Food and Diet about this exact subject.
What motivated you to write that book?
Paola: When I came to the understanding, and then heard about our physical being, how we innocently get in our own way. And that everything is interconnected that we are nature, we are part of nature, we are part of this. intelligence behind life, whatever you want to call it, we are it.
And when I saw that, I thought there is no book out there which is really talking about that. I hadn’t seen your books in that time. I didn’t see any book really talking about that. And so I was interested, I was curious.
And because of this autophagy effect in our cells, I got curious about fasting and fasting triggers autophagy. And through that, I was really interested in feeding that all together, and that’s why I wrote my book.
Alexandra: Okay, so combining the principles with autophagy.
Paola: So it is talking about what we have going for us, and it’s all researched. It’s scientifically proven, then coming in from the three principles. And then I also got plant-based recipes in the end. So I also got some effects, what I see very practically about proteins, carbohydrates, and so and so on.
I wanted to write a very simplistic book for people to have a guide to live a healthier lifestyle. And for me, without the principles that’s just simply not possible. It’s all thought created. And to see that makes it far easier for us.
Alexandra: Wow. Absolutely, for sure.
I wrote a memoir about an experience I had occult in the 1990s, and one of the things that was great about writing that book was that I learned a lot because having to explain it to somebody else, explain it to the reader in a logical way, and make it make sense and all that stuff brought to light some things for me.
Was there anything that you learned while you were writing your book?
Paola: When I was writing my book, I was constantly learning, but when I wrote my book, not like you, I will say that I learned a lot when I researched what was going in the book, but it is mainly things I didn’t know beforehand which I wanted to put into paper and pass on the knowledge to people to live a healthier life so to be able to do that in an easier way.
Alexandra: That’s great. When you were working earlier within bodywork and EFT and those kinds of things, and you said that it felt like there was something missing.
It must be so much more satisfying now to have all the pieces in place, essentially.
Paola: Oh, god. But it starts with yourself. So it starts with me because my life changed, and my life is so much more quiet these days and more loving and kind. I’m more interested with the essence to connect with the essence of people than the constructs they’re holding. And through that, oh, my relationship changed, and I have a completely different relationship to my clients today.
And it’s like you’re very different, like 3P classes. When you see the client so you see what’s going on for them I very quickly see what is holding them back to live the life they want to live
It’s a very interesting one. It’s feeding into it because the thing is thought manifests itself. It can manifest itself in our physical being. It’s an information so our brain is an organ and thought is coming in and gives us some info can give us some information.
I think Bill Pettit said once every pain you’re holding is a love letter from your body letting us know where we are. It’s really beautiful. That’s exactly what is happening. And when I can see it, then I have a very quick and easy way to unravel it all.
Alexandra: With your clients. Exactly. Oh, that’s so great. Well, it’s been lovely chatting with you today.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share with the listeners?
Paola: No not really, I just would like to share one thing which I find always important is what I said in the beginning as well, your body is not separate from you. Your cells, they have one main function, and that is to constantly support your healing journey.
And whatever food we are putting in it can help this amazing system to do its work in the best way. Or it can start to create problems. And when you see that as more nutrients there are in the Earth is healthier plants. They’re growing. And we have receptors in us to take up all these nutrients from these plants, so it’s like a natural circle we are part of.
So when I understand how my moment experience is created, and I’m able to get out of my own way, my mind starts to be more quiet, then I want to be more loving and kind with myself, and I can feed myself better. And I want to look out at what food I’m actually consuming. That’s it. That is a start for everyone who’s listening.
Alexandra: Nice That’s a beautiful start. Thank you.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Paola: My website is called HealthyLivingwithPaolaRoyal.co.uk. You find my book, The Inner Game of Food and Diet on Amazon. And I also have a podcast, The Inner Game of Food, Diet, and Life on Spotify. You can also find it on my website, on Apple and Google.
And, I have my own radio show as well in Exeter, and that’s on Mix cloud as well. I look forward to hear from each and every one.
Alexandra: Well, that’s a lot. That’s great. Thank you so much. So I will, as ever, put links in the show notes at UnbrokenPodcast.com so people can find out more about that and follow you on in all the all the places that they can do so.
Thank you, Paula. It’s been just lovely talking to you.
Paola: It was really lovely talking to you. Thank you for writing me.
Alexandra: You’re more than welcome. Take care. Bye.
Q&A 15 – How is a quiet mind related to weight loss?
May 22, 2023
A busy, insecure mind can cause all kinds of problems in our lives: misunderstandings with friends or family, unnecessary worry and anxiety, a lack of clarity about decisions and much more.
A busy, insecure mind can also contribute to creating or maintaining an unwanted habit. In this podcast episode, I explore why that is and how to choose an alternative approach.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Transcript of episode
Hello, explorers, welcome to Q&A Episode 15 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
I’m here today with the question:
How does a quiet mind relate to weight loss?
This was something I was thinking about a week or so ago, and came up with the metaphor of a clock and the gears inside a clock. If you found this episode via social media posts, you’ll see that in the sharing image, I use an image of those metal gears that are inside a mechanical clock. And here’s why I did that.
It seems to me that very often, our minds can innocently feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders.
We have these busy problem solving brains that are really smart, really adapted to our lives as human beings, and very often working super hard to make sure that our lives are organized and safe, primarily. And that we are more often in a situation where we know what’s going to happen. Our minds always like what they know versus what they don’t know. So there can just be a lot of really super busy activity going on in there.
And the way I saw it, and the reason I use the image of the gears in the clock is that our mind, our brains are really one of the tiny little gears that are inside a mechanical clock. And if you’ve ever seen inside a clock, it’s quite surprising actually, the first time I saw it, there’s so much going on. Gears of all different sizes. And so if you can imagine that our mind it feels like the burden of responsibility very often can feel like it’s on our mind, and that it has to do all the heavy lifting, or all the hard work of keeping the gears of life moving. And the gears of the world and the gears of the people around us and the universe and all that kind of stuff.
When we begin to see that our brain is just a tiny little gear in the greater picture of the greater landscape of that mechanical operation of the inside of the clock. And that actually, the gear, the small gear isn’t doing any of the moving of any of the other gears. It’s being turned because of the greater mechanical things that are going on, because the clock maker has wound up the clock, and therefore, our brains are actually responsible for so much less than we think they are.
That brings us to the topic of weight loss and an unwanted overeating habit.
Speaking for myself, personally, what I know is that when I felt like the burden of the world was entirely on me, and when my brain was assuming that it was the thing, keeping the universe running, keeping my life on track, that felt like a lot of pressure. It really felt like honestly too much pressure. And that kind of strain and stress can then be what leads to unwanted habits.
We very naturally reach for substances that are going to soothe and comfort us and give us some relief from all the busyness and the chatter and the noise and the weight pun intended of all that responsibility. Feeling like we’re responsible for keeping everything moving for keeping the clock in motion.
When we begin to explore this understanding and see that our lives and the experiences within them are flowing through us, rather than being controlled by us, then the strain a lot of the strain and stress and pressure that we’ve been feeling fall away. And when that happens, then naturally there’s less need for us to reach for our unwanted habit. So that’s how a quiet mind is related to weight loss.
I know in the beginning of my exploration of this understanding, I almost Well, I was going to say almost, but I added more thinking to what was going on in my head innocently. Thinking that learning about this understanding, I guess, trying to get my head around it my brain around it was, it was more complex than it actually is. And the longer I explore the Inside Out understanding, the more I see how simple it is, and the more I see how much I can relax into the wisdom of the universe, that’s already there.
So in other words, I can just carry on with my life, doing my little cog in the wheel things, and the greater mechanism of the clock is going to keep my life running. And, in fact, there’s very little that I need to do or to and to think about, in order to make that happen.
The more I can just let my mind naturally settle, then the more flowy my life becomes.
The more I rely on this idea that there’s a greater mechanism at play, that there’s something greater than myself that is flowing through and living my life, the more I can relax and settle down, and have less need for my previously unwanted habits.
I hope that’s not too clunky. I liked the metaphor when I thought of it. And I just hope it’s helpful for you to kind of visualize the gears in a clock, if you picture a big grandfather clock or something, and imagine that, yes, you are in there, you are working as a tiny little cog. But there’s something greater at play, and you can rely on the fact that that is happening, and maybe even begin to relax a little bit yourself about how you’re living your life.
I hope that’s been helpful. And as ever, if you have a question, please go to AlexandraAmor.com/question, and fill out the form there and I’ll be happy to answer.
Living From Wisdom with Sheela Masand
May 18, 2023
Coach and author Sheela Masand received the idea to interview those who had learned directly from Sydney Banks about the three principles that describe how we experience human life. That idea became Inside Out Transformation: A Revolutionary Guide for Coaches, Therapists, and Counsellors, which has been described by reviewers at ‘extraordinary’, ‘powerful, engaging and inspiring’ and ‘brilliantly lucid’.
If you’re curious about what the three principles are and how they apply to your life, and to easing your suffering, Sheela’s book is a great place to start.
In 2010 Sheela Masand was introduced to a psycho-spiritual understanding called The Three Principles discovered by Sydney Banks, also referred to as the inside-out understanding. She didn’t know it then, but her life was to be infused with its unique and undeniable transformative magic. Her coaching business slowly transformed in the same way – she couldn’t help but share the Principles in all her work.
Sheela: Thank you. Good to be here. It’s lovely to have you here.
Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to find the three principles?
Sheela: I don’t know how far back in time we need to go. But just to say that I live in Spain. I am British. And I’ve lived in Spain since 1986, which was a long time ago.
I was married and had two beautiful daughters. And along the way, I got divorced. That’s one thing. But along the way, I became self-employed. It’s one of those things I always knew. In the back of my mind, my dad was very entrepreneurial.
I always had this sense that I would, one day, have my own business. I didn’t set out career-wise to do that. But it serendipitously and landed in my lap to join up with somebody become in partnership and open a British food and drink import business here in Spain, which I never thought I would do that.
And it was very successful, like, super successful in the sense that we ended up with 20 employees in a warehouse. And, it was very, very, very successful in its day. And then, unfortunately, my business partner died at a very young age. He was only 48, and very unexpectedly left me with this business.
A few years have gone by, and I was already exploring other things that I wanted to do, I’d become vegetarian. So importing bacon and sausages and pork pies from the UK wasn’t really sitting very well with me anymore. I was weighing I need to be doing something, and I wanted to do something alternative in the helping field. And come across coaching. And I was exploring different modalities.
We’d already decided I was going to become a silent partner in this business that we had that was flourishing. But then, as I say, he died. And I ended up with this business I didn’t really want because legally, I had to take it up, take it on, while I didn’t have to. But I chose to because there were all these people rely on me, telling me they have mortgages to pay, etc.
And then the recession hit, hard times hit, and things didn’t go so well. So I ended up with a lot of debt. And the reason I’m sharing the backstory because this is how I came into the three principles. In my journey of looking for what was my next step in terms of my career or business, I bumped into an NLP coaching course out here in Spain, and I did that I love it. I really enjoyed it.
I ended up joining Jaime Smarts’ email list because he was one of the best NLP around at the time. And little did I know at that point in time that he’d started to change paths, change courses, because he had come across the three principles. But I didn’t know that, and neither did anybody else on this email list. So this email drops into my inbox saying – and bear in mind that I was in financial distress at this point in time, lots of lots of debt, and didn’t know how I was going to get out of it.
So this email lands in my inbox saying if the secret is so great, show me the money. He’s a very clever man in terms of wording and NLP and things as well. But if people don’t know The Secret, it’s all about the law of attraction, it’s a book and a movie. And I had lots of debt so I looked in that direction as well, and nothing had worked for me. So I was curious, I thought, okay, he’s gonna teach me what he was doing.
He was selling a DVD set he recorded a two-day event in the UK that it did in London and sold that the recording. So I send off for the DVD set and sit down in my living room with my then-partner, we start watching, and I’m expecting him to show me how to create loads of money, and I there’s some magic way of creating money.
However, there wasn’t anything in there much like that. It was much it was all about pointing in the direction of the three principles, which actually was far more of far more value to me, far more value.
But in retrospect, I can see that’s what happened on an intellectual level. What I heard really clearly that was like, I’ve never seen that before was when he talked about life only working one way, 100% of the time, we’re creating our own experience. 100% of the time. It wasn’t that through personal development stuff that I’ve done in the NLP, and the coaching and coaching courses that I knew that money didn’t bring me happiness, I got that.
But this idea that it’s 100% always that way. And never another way, really piqued my curiosity and at the end of the two days, he left us with, don’t take my word for it, go into your own life, look, test it out, see if it’s true, that’s what I suggest you do. So I did be the good girl that I am did my homework.
And started it started really looking like, seriously, am I creating my own experience? At the time, I had a partner who would very often leave his socks on the floor wherever they were taken off, and I’ve noticed that I’m bringing this up because it’s women always laugh about. It’s, like, a common husband problem, right? Like, they just drop clothes wherever they are.
Is it the socks that are creating my upset?
Is the socks on the floor? I didn’t feel like that every day. Sometimes I would just dismiss it. I wouldn’t even think twice about it. Other times, I’ve just smiled. And other days, I was really annoyed.
So it was like, well, the fact that it wasn’t always the same reaction told me very clearly that this is really an inside out world. We are creating our own experience 100% of the time. And so here in this two-day event, Jamie had said, I’m going to put on another few of these in the next year, I can’t remember he said three or four more.
I remember turning to my partner and saying I’m going there. So when I say I was touched, it was like it was really like I’m going, and I went over to London, I think it was three times in a row. Every time he did one of those events, I just wanted to be back in the room.
And the really curious thing about that is that it didn’t say anything too much different. Every time I went, it was always pointing, talking about the principles in different ways. But that was a message, I just see that my heart kept drawing me and taking me back, thinking that there was something for me. I was so taken. And by this time, I’ve got some coaching clients.
I didn’t know how to share it with them. The story could go on and on and on about how I’m doing what where I am today. But I’ll stop there because I think you might have something else to ask me.
Alexandra: A couple of follow-up questions. One of the things that I always find so interesting when I’m interviewing people is that so very often, and myself included, we try all kinds of different things on the route to finding their principles, and that was certainly the case for you with NLP and some other things. Was it hypnotherapy?
Sheela: I became a Louise Hay teacher.
Alexandra: I always wonder if you can describe what’s different about all those different modalities and the three principles. And then maybe a follow-up question would be, when you were doing those other things, were there any feelings in you that it was they weren’t quite hitting the mark at the time? Or was it only when you came to this that you saw that?
Sheela: Well for me, what really struck me when I came across the principles and started delving deeper was, this is the basis. So this is the building block, these are the building blocks of life.
These three principles are a description of how life works, how we work psychologically, and who we truly are in our true nature, which is not which is formless, the formless and the form, and I just I suppose I came when I say I came at it intellectually, in the psychology route.
Like I said, that’s what I heard first was we’re creating it’s an inside out, well, we’re creating that spirit. And then, along the way, I started really dropping into this idea, or this truth now as I see it, that our true nature is essence is unbreakable.
We are definitely unbreakable.
And so, what I started seeing was the techniques, let’s call them the modalities, like the hypnotherapy, or the NLP, those techniques, there’s nothing wrong with techniques.
But for me, the principles felt like, and still do, if we can just see the truth, how we work, if we understand how we work. And we understand that insight is the thing that shifts the needle. And that was one of the major things I saw as well. It’s like when a person has a true insight, that’s when things completely change. That’s when transformation happens.
Whereas a lot of a lot of things that so, for example, the Louise Hay work, and I’m not again, nothing against any of these, these things have helped me tremendously. And they do help lots of people.
But for example, with the affirmations with Louise Hay, I would be helping people create their affirmations I was using affirmations.
But at the same time, I wasn’t really believing it something to say something decided something, hoping it would change. But it wasn’t coming from wisdom, as we talked about, and it wasn’t coming from a place for me. It was something that somebody else had taught me to do.
It wasn’t from me, and it wasn’t serving me because it was something that somebody else had come across, I really see Louise Hay obviously had major insights, major shifts in her life, major transformation, and then went on to help other people. But what I did see is it didn’t work for everybody.
I would run the workshops, and people would have a lovely time. But it didn’t seem to stick. It didn’t continue with affirmations. They kept coming back for more and coming back for more. I get that because they came back for the nice feeling. And we do beautiful things like affirmation baths, which are gorgeous somebody standard people stand around you and just say beautiful things to you, so literally that.
That’s in the moment, but it didn’t stick.
Alexandra: The other question was at the time did you notice if anything was missing.
Sheela:x Why is it such hard work? I think that was it.
Does it really have to be this hard? That was really, everybody’s saying all this stuff? And it also felt as well with NLP. For example, blasting limiting beliefs was one of busting limiting beliefs. And so but limiting beliefs, if you like, are forever, like the never-ending. It’s like you find another one.
And now you find another one. So it did feel like a never-ending job in a way that there would always be more that surfaced. And coming across the principles for me was the it’s more upstream than that is like, just seeing that it’s all thought, and you don’t have to believe any of it.
And none of it means anything. It means nothing unless you get to assign a meaning to it. Just knowing that none of it. I’m not my thinking, I am the container of it, the space within which all that arises. That was huge. For me. It was huge for me, and it just, it simplified things. I think it’s really simplified things, which I love. I love simplicity.
Alexandra: Me too. And I can really relate to that hard work piece, especially having been on a similar journey myself. And sadly, the conclusion that I always came to was I must be doing this wrong.
There must be something wrong with me that I can’t get this thing to work.
Sheela: I don’t actually see any of it wasted. I think it’s no, really see now that life is working for us. And we just get presented with more opportunities and more nudges and look in this direction. That’s where I’m at now.
And just to say, and I think with a lot of the teachings that I was listening to before, and I was following before, it may just have been the way I heard it. But it was like negative emotion, bad; positive emotion, good. Positive thinking, and obviously the affirmations, it was all about turning the negative into a positive.
And now I see, it’s all welcome. There’s all there’s room for it all. And that has been really helpful to me.
Alexandra: One of the things you offer is coaching for heart-centered business owners. I love that phrase that you use on your website.
What do you find is a hurdle that that group of people tends to commonly face in their business ownership?
Sheela: There’s more than one hurdle. But the very common one is, I don’t like marketing. I don’t like selling myself. I don’t want to talk about money, and I don’t like sales. Can you tell me how to do it without doing that?
That would be the major hurdle is most heart-centered business owners they’re in the business of healing and helping and service. But you don’t like the idea of up sales or yucky marketing? It’s all feels very sleazy.
That’s part of my process when I’m working with people, is to help them get past that to see that it doesn’t have to be like that. And you don’t have to do all the things that you’re being told you have to do. I mean, there are so many.
There’s a lot of noise out there in sales and marketing. And there are lots of experts that tell you their thing is the best thing. Here’s the magic formula. This is the one, this is the only thing you need. And you will have your 100,000 whatever. And that’s just not true.
Alexandra: I heard someone say the other day, and I just love this so much that hundreds of years ago, heart-centered business owners would have been shamans, the shamans of the tribe, or the group or the community, and the community would have supported that person in exchange for the healing and everything that they provided.
Our culture and our society just isn’t set up that way anymore. So now it’s on us to do both things, to bring healing to the people that we encounter, and to feed ourselves and keep a roof over our heads.
I just thought that was such a beautiful way to illustrate the change that’s happened for that type of business owner and what’s in their lap or on their plate.
Sheela: That’s really interesting. In religion, it still works that way, doesn’t it? I mean, even government supports churches. Here in Spain, I don’t know what it’s like another but it was quite a revelation to me when I did my tax return.
And if you don’t choose to give to another social enterprise, it automatically goes to the Catholic Church as part of your tax returns. So it’s this you have to decide which box to tick. And that’s it. So it’s like pretty they get a good chunk of money from our taxes.
Alexandra: Let’s talk about your most recent book, which is called Inside Out Transformation.
Tell us about the book, because it’s a really interesting structure, and I loved learning about it. And what inspired you to write it?
Sheela: Well, thank you for saying ‘my most recent book’ as it is my one and only. But, a big achievement for me, because I always had this sense that I would be self-employed and have some business but I never felt like one day I’d write a book. It’s interesting because I don’t think I was inspired.
Apart from I had an inspired idea. I guess that’s how it happened. So I had this idea that came in, it was literally interview Syd’s [Sydney Banks’] direct students, the first generation. That’s the whole idea was that just interview them and create a book around it. And it was one of those ideas that just kept coming back, and it kept coming back, and I didn’t do anything about it, and kept coming back.
In the end, Jack Pransky is a friend and I’ve arranged organized retreats and trainings for him here in Spain many, many times over the years. And he’s an author authored many books. So one time he was here, I said, Jack, I’ve had this idea for a book. So I told him, and he said, I think it’s a brilliant idea, Sheela, go for it. So that was my confirmation. I was like, okay, I’ve tested the water, he thinks it’s a great idea.
And he’s one of the direct students. He’s one of the people that I actually did interview in the end and he was very helpful, because he gave me the list of I don’t know all the names of since direct students. So he gave me a list, a comprehensive list. And basically, that’s how it happened. And it was, like, one foot in front of the other.
Okay, well, what’s the next step? The next step is to write to these people. because if they didn’t say, Yes, I didn’t have a book, it was like, okay, ask them. And, of course, lots of them answered. And lots of them said yes. Great idea. And so it was literally just them coming up with some questions and interviewing them.
Then on Zoom, like we are now and the audio and the video and, and then I transcribed and edited, and so it went on. So, it was published. It took me a long time, though. I remember Jack saying at the beginning, it takes me, he said, three years or four years now, three years or four years to write a book.
And I was like, Really, but it took me four years to get from start to finish, at least I think. Out of actually reaching out to somebody and saying, will you be part of the book? Because, because he said, I remember him saying to me as well, you need to make it a full project. And that’s exactly what I had to do.
Because it was always something that came at the end of the I was running, running my business and doing all the admin. And that would be when I’ve got time, I’ll get to the book when I get tired. And then there was never time. So, in the end, I had to make it a project that was like, Okay, I’ve got to get this done. I really wanted to get it done. As I sit on some really good material, people love to read. So, that’s how it came about.
Alexandra: What was it about? Maybe this is an obvious question, but let’s go there anyway.
What was it about interviewing those people that had been directly taught by Sydney Banks that appealed to you?
Sheela: Again, I don’t know, it’s just the idea. Literally, it wasn’t me that thought that up. It really felt like this is as like, okay. And then I could tell you. That’s a good idea. But it literally was this idea came in, I was like, okay, and now I can justify it in lots of ways.
But one of them being, well, they’re not going to be around forever other and the three principles are not going anywhere. And in years to come, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, people will want to hear from these people. So I can see in retrospect, what a great idea that to capture something and have it in a book in book form.
And especially, it’s directed at coaches, and counselors and therapists. So the practitioners in the field. I think it’s been interesting reading for people who are not in that field to know they’ve picked up a lot.
Alexandra: Absolutely. And it seems to me that there’s something about the linear lineage and keeping that alive. And Syd, of course, passed away. And so the next best thing is, talking to those people who were there and knew him and really absorbed what he had to say firsthand because the rest of us can’t anymore.
Other than through his talks and recorded things and books and that things. So you had been following the principles for a while, at that point, obviously, when you had this idea. I’d love to hear about what you learned through the process. What you saw.
Was there any anything that really came to light for you, while you were recording the interviews?
Sheela: I think for me being a coach myself, I was curious to hear. I had, for example, again, Jack being here. I’ve been through his coach training many times. So I knew his point of view. I knew how he works and how he taught and how he works with clients.
I’d heard a little bit about it from George and Linda [Pransky] but the others I hadn’t not so much. So I was really very curious myself as a coach to see if I was doing it right. And what came to light very quickly for me, and maybe it was because I was looking through that lens of the right way to do this.
And these people that were with him and they must have picked up on that or the ways of feeling with people.
What became very clear was there is no right way to do this.
For me, there’s just no, there isn’t one way. It’s like, you can’t say, this is how you coach on the three principles perspective, this is how you have therapy sessions with these people when you’re wanting to teach them the three principles or coach form the three principles. It just became really, really clear that there isn’t any right way to do this.
A lot of commonalities, lots and lots of common threads in the way that they all work. pointing people back to their own wisdom, listening, always rapport is really important. And always coming back to that, but they’re not all doing this thing called coaching or therapy or counseling in the same way. They’re just not and that was very reassuring. And it has been for people that I’ve spoken to him, for people that I’ve read the book. It’s about creating your own art of coaching.
Alexandra: Well, that makes me feel relieved. I love hearing, that’s really great. I’m glad to hear that. And so I just want to do a follow-up then.
Was there anything else that you saw or learned during that process? And it could be about what the process of writing a book taught you maybe about yourself.
Sheela: I was gonna say that I’m slow. It took me so long. It looks easier than it is, that’s for sure. And there’s a lot more to writing a book and formatting a book and editing a book and proofreading a book, and getting a cover done.
There is a lot more to a book than meets the eye. I have a lot of admiration for people who write books now and get them out some self-published and get them out to market, I’ve got a deep, much deeper appreciation of book writing, that’s for sure. And in the also, I think the again, well again, but these people that I interviewed, the leaders that I interviewed, just how generous they were with their time, and help was I wasn’t surprised, because that’s been my experience.
But they were some of them wanted to get, I edited and sent back and had them obviously all approved their chapters before it went, they went to print. And some of them really went through them with a fine tooth comb and kept changing with them do later just want to change this line and really dedicated and committed to having the best that they could, or there’s not so much I’m not they just said yet great job. I’m happy with that.
So it was interesting as well to see the different ways of being, but I was just all of them just so grateful that they gave me their time. And they were willing to go over it at the end as well and give me their approval for the final cut and, then interviewing them or pretty much all of them, giving me more time, and they were very supportive.
Alexandra: That’s nice, must have been so lovely to talk to all those people. I get so much out of these interviews. I always feel like it’s such a treat for me every week to talk to somebody. So, must have been incredible.
Sheela: Same for me when I was I was doing those interviews with when I launched the book almost a year ago now.
Alexandra: Do you feel like it’s affected your coaching practice at all? In other words, is it helpful to have a book?
Sheela: As in, more clients for me? Do you mean? Well, it will vary in shape. I was just going to say, I’m not sure but actually, what happened and I had being a bring out what I call myself a business coach, holistic business coach.
I knew when I was writing this book, I knew that the traditional way of seeing a book as a big business card, that’s why people write books a lot of the time to get business and all the things that I read around it when you write nonfiction, it’s all about how you can use that as a platform. This was such a different as I say, the idea is popped in.
It wasn’t me trying to do anything creative strategy around creating clients or anything like that. I thought well, if something just bubbles up and somebody comes again if I have an inspired idea or follow it.
I was writing a book, nothing published nothing. And then I get a message from a woman called Chana Studley, who has authored a couple of her own books, and she actually wrote me a really nice review for the book.
And the review, she actually said something like, I felt like I went through a coaching course while reading this book. And she dropped this note and said, Sheela, I know you’ve probably thought about this already. She said, but what do you think about doing a book club around your book? And it had that that floated around. It seemed like an obvious thing to do.
But I hadn’t really inspired me, so I haven’t done anything about it. And I said, well, and I thought I was curious as one of the ways you wrote into me about that as my book thing. What is it? What, why? And she said, Because I wrote back to her. She said, Well, I’ve done a book club around my books. She’s got two books out by that time called Painless.
She just did a book. But she said, Well, actually, I learned that other people were doing book clubs around my book, and I thought, well, if they’re doing it and I could do. And I thought, well, she’s got a bit of experience. Let me have a chat with them.
So we started chatting, and what came out of that thought was actually it would, it was there was so much more on offer than a book club. And what we did was we created a coaching course between inside that transformation coaching course was born.
And we actually ran that by the end of last year in November, January, December, January, February, I think it was huge, so it was amazing. Now I never in a million years honestly thought that I would be teaching a coaching course. But it went really well. It filled it up pretty much and it was online, and people had really good experiences. We had some lovely testimonials from it. So yes, in that respect, yes. I almost forgot about that.
Alexandra: How great that it just came about so organically.
Sheela: I love it. I’m really leaning into that now in life is really a wisdom lead these things, these this is the way out. This is the way I’m in my intention is to live from that space. Not that I don’t get it right all the time. But I’m finding that I’m having a lot more.
Alexandra: Me too. Absolutely. Trying to live from that space. I always describe it as the other way of forcing things.
I tend to be very proud project-driven, and it was like pushing rocks up a river. Really hard work. And now it’s so much less work and so much more joy I experience.
Sheela: 100% for that.
Alexandra: You something else that you’re doing that you’ve done is you’ve co-founded the Viva event, which is coaching, would you call it like a retreat or workshop?
Sheela: No, I do organize retreats. But actually, the Viva event is a hybrid. I just think of it as a hybrid between a conference and a party. It’s more for conferences, or you sit, and you listen and ask questions or whatever might happen. But there’s an element of fun and aliveness.
And where I live in the world, I live in a beautiful part of the world. And we run the Viva event, specifically at the beginning of November, when in Europe, the weather is not great in most of Europe, Northern Europe, so people really appreciate coming. So where I live it we have the World Health Organization’s as is one of the healthiest climates in the world, where I live, we have something like 320 or 30 days of sunshine a year.
So it’s not incredibly hot in the winter, but it’s sunny and bright. And people really appreciate that when they live in Northern Europe. Dark. So that’s one aspect of it, and it’s up by the sea on the Mediterranean. And we’ve got mountains as well so people will go trekking so there’s a bit of everything for people. It is a holiday town, but it’s not a really busy holiday town.
There’s lots of beautiful cafes and restaurants. So people come and it’s all about connection as well connection, joy and relaxation. So we have and we have some wonderful speakers. Now when we first started soon. I think it was 2015 was the first one. So we’ve had a break because of COVID. We did five tilts 1415, 1515 We started.
And it came about because we saw we saw, I don’t know, well, we wanted to create something in Europe, where we would bring European speakers in. Because we thought that the London conference which had been going and there was seem to be bringing mainly American speakers and Canadian speakers over. And we saw a gap, if you like, why don’t we have some European speakers?
So that’s how it started. It’s not quite, it’s not where we are right now because we do bring in American speakers. Because but we didn’t choose to do that. And that’s what I love about my journey with Viva has been, again, very organic, very wisdom led, like, the first I think the first one that asked us if they could come was Elsie Spittle. So from Canada, and she’d heard about the Viva event, I think it was year three.
And she contacted us and said she was going to be in Europe. And would it be would we she was going to come over? She was writing a book. So we’re going to be in Spain on a writing retreat. And could she come visit as Eva? Do we like? Yes. That started the trickle of Americans wanting to come over and as inviting as well. But we are, so we have a mixture of well-known practitioners.
So first-generation SIDS, Derrick students, and more unknown because just because they’re not well known, doesn’t mean they’re not great facilitators. And so, and again, we wanted to include your European. I want to be very inclusive and this year, I think we’ve got a great lineup of device, diverse speakers.
And we want to be, so very inclusive. So we’re very excited. And it’s, we have keynote speakers, who are in the stage in the main room, then we have three breakout rooms, breakout sessions, we’ll go on in there. And then we’re what we love, what I love, particularly other surprises. So on the program that we give them as they walk through the door, there’ll be surprises and then nobody knows what’s going to happen.
And we love that element of surprise. So it can be anything from a singer or some dancing or some games or some whatever. we just we don’t like to let on obviously people come back year after year to viva. I have lots of returners. Some of them, I’ve seen some of the things that they got an idea of what’s going to happen, but we’ve got loads of new people come in this year that have never been so very excited to meet all these new people.
Alexandra: Nice. And so we’re recording this in May 2023. And the so vivo happens in early November.
Sheela: November, before this year, is the fourth, fifth, and sixth is always before the first weekend in November in November.
Alexandra: Okay. And so while we’re on the subject, where can people go to learn about that?
Sheela: We have a website called TheVivaevent.com. We’ve only got 30 tickets left. And then people have missed it so much because of the pandemic. Like we just want to get back in the room. So, we’ve only got a few tickets left.
Alexandra: I will put a link in the show notes to that. And maybe, people can snatch up the last few tickets. So, we’re just about out of time.
I want to ask you if there’s anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on today?
Sheela: Well, first of all, just to say, Joe Bailey, I think you’ve had him, you’re going to have him on one of your podcasts. Joe Bailey is one of our speakers at Viva and just before the Viva event at the end of October, I’ve organized for him to run a five-day retreat. It’s called Uncovering the Extraordinary Coach Within; it’s a five-day coaching course retreat.
I’m really excited about that. So that’s one thing. But the other, so I think the main thing. Well, it probably ties in it sounds like I’m promoting all my wins. But Jack Pransky has been such a huge advocate and mentor in my life. And he introduced me to deep listening, and I just feel that deep listening is so it’s underrated.
I think it’s totally underrated and not just as a coach or a helper practitioner but just in general in our life generally that we were not listening to each other. Is such a there’s so much value in really giving people space to be heard, with no judgment. is nothing on our minds. That’s what deep listening, to me, means that we’re listening and not taking notice of the noise in our heads.
But really just taking in what’s happening in the space that’s created between us and listening for what wants to be heard, versus what we think wants to be heard, right, really wants to be heard., and I’m a huge advocate for that. I really am.
So got a retreat in a couple of weeks, actually, on the 20th, to the 22nd of May, Jack and I are going to be teaching the three principles, which is called is called Perfecting Deep Listening.
Now, Jack wanted the perfecting piece in there. I’m just like, okay, Jack, let’s see how we get on with the perfecting name. There’s only one place left on that, and the power of it is it’s transformational. Absolutely transformational, where people can just sit back. It’s like people sit back and relax and just be with you.
They have their transformation in them. It’s so healing in itself, just that on its own. I could talk for ages, which I probably will be sharing quite a bit at the retreat. So wanted to say the power, of deep listening. The point that Jack in my book, the first chapter is Jack, and he shares quite a bit about deep listening. And actually, people go to my website, which you probably were going to ask me anyway.
Alexandra: Yes.
Sheela: SheelaMasand.com. You can actually sign up there for the first chapter for free. So you could get Jack’s chapter for free if you just go to my website.
Alexandra: Right. Well, that’s a fantastic segue, and I’ll put links in the show notes to that as well. And the Viva retreat and stuff. Sorry, event.
Okay, great. Well, Sheela, this has been so lovely. Thank you so much for talking to me today.
Sheela: You’re very welcome. It’s been a pleasure to hang out. Thank you.
Q&A 14 – Searching for Happiness is BS. (And some follow-ups.)
May 15, 2023
Is happiness something we need to create in our lives? Or does it occur naturally? And does searching for it actually get it the way of experiencing it?
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
A status update on my low mood (‘depression light’)
Experiencing the inside-out nature of life due to a challenging situation
Letting wisdom lead the way out of difficulty
How our feelings, even scary ones, pass through us and move on
Why happiness is not something we need to chase or create
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode number 14 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host Alexandra Amor.
I’m here today to talk about happiness.
The first thing I want to do actually is do a couple of follow ups quickly on a couple of previous episodes.
A couple of q&a episodes ago, I talked about the low mood that I was in. And the experiences that I’ve had in the past with low moods being a precursor to some sort of shift or insight or transformation, that kind of thing.
My low mood is still around, I can definitely feel it.
I’ve been a little bit distracted by some life things that have been going on. But today, I’m very settled, and I can definitely tell it’s still there. In fact, I’m recording this episode on the day that it’s supposed to go out on, the Monday. And that’s really unlike me. I tend to do things in advance, but it was a bit of…I don’t want to say a chore. But it was a bit of an effort to get myself into the chair today and record this episode. To me, that’s an indicator that my mood is low.
I’ve been describing it to myself as ‘depression light’. On the scale of depression with 10 being the worst, it’s really definitely very low on that scale, like a one or a two. But I do notice it. So like I said in the previous episode, I’ll just carry on and take everything as it comes.
As ever, with these situations, it changes.
I was planting flowers on the weekend, it’s spring here now. And I went to the garden center, got some flowers came home, put them all on their little pots, so that I could put them out on my balcony. And, for example, during that experience, I was really content and really happy and distracted, I think, from my low mood. So I just wanted to point that out as well. We’re having a very changeable experience, which is something I’m going to talk about in just a second as well related to happiness.
Then the second thing I wanted to follow up on was I mentioned that there’s this uncertainty going on with my living situation.
And what’s been really interesting to note is that though it can be really scary I can really see my experience coming from the inside out. Sometimes I’m worried about what might happen in the future. Sometimes it’s not on my mind at all, and I’m very content or peaceful or just not thinking about it. And to me, that just points to the nature of our experience and how we think that our circumstances is our what create our experience of life.
When we take a moment to just observe our own lives, and what’s going on with ourselves – and I encourage you to do this for yourself, just test it, try it out, see what you notice – that I really noticed that, that this, what would I say difficult maybe or challenging situation with housing is, like I say, it’s not on my mind all the time. If my experience was outside in, then I would be bothered by that all the time, because it’s still unresolved.
It’s been over a month this has been going on. And there still aren’t any clear answers, and I don’t know what the future holds. And yet, at some moments, I’m just perfectly at peace with the whole thing.
I will say to that I was writing in my journal on the weekend and one of the things I said that I would like to do is to really ask that my mind takes a step back from this situation.
What I mean by that, is that my normal modus operandi would be to really use my brain and figure out solutions and really get in there start calling people start making plans. And not that there’s anything wrong with that at any given time. But where I felt my wisdom in this moment was guiding me for lack of a better word was to really take a step back and just see what the universe comes up with.
The universe is a lot smarter than me.
That goes without saying. And so I’m almost posing it like a challenge to myself, how peaceful and calm and quiet can I be? And how little can I interfere with whatever wants to unfold? How much can I listen to my wisdom? And go where it shows me might be the next best step to take. Following that, rather than following my mind, which tends to be quite fearful and nervous and wants everything to be squared away, and under control, and all that kind of stuff. So that’s what I’m trying to do.
And here’s what’s interesting. So on the weekend, as I was planting my flowers, someone approached me about the housing situation and suggested a possible solution. I hadn’t done anything. I didn’t look for answers at all, I was just out there, working on my deck. And this couple came up, and then we started chatting, and they provided a potential solution.
That to me was really interesting because, like I say, I had stayed out of the way as much as possible. And then this thing came up with this couple. I still don’t know what’s going to happen. Or if that’s what they suggested was even an answer. That’s going to be a good one for me. But I’m loving just letting it unfold.
Even now actually, I do feel anxious about it sometimes. I noticed now talking about it has made me feel a little anxious, my brain is starting to go Oh, and thought about this in a while. And now you’re bringing it up and what’s going to happen? So that’s really funny and really interesting. Anyway, so I’ll keep you posted on that. But yeah, like I say, the the big lesson, that’s not quite the right word, the big stretch goal for me, it’s just this idea of staying out of the way and seeing what happens, seeing what the universe can organize. And yeah, so we’ll just see what happens.
The title of this q&a episode is that searching for happiness is BS.
And that’s kind of a click bait-y title. But here’s why I titled that. I was listening to a podcast last week sometime and the guest was, and this was not a three principles, or inside out podcast, it was just an interview show. And the guest was a woman who has written lots of books about happiness. And she’s quite famous for this subject. She’s written more than one book about happiness and how to find it, and how to have more of it in our lives and that kind of thing.
I haven’t read the book, but I went and looked at the description on a bookstore. And she talks about how she had this sort of dark moment in her life. And she realized that time was passing. She wanted to make sure she was making the most of her time in the world, which is a great thing to think and do. And so she spent a year studying the scientific research about happiness, and how to create more of it in our lives.
She found that novelty and change are what scientists figure creates more happiness in our lives. That money does help, it can help to buy us happiness in certain situations. And that outer order creates inner calm.
So I was thinking about that and thinking about how logical and sensible that approach is until we see that life works in an inside out way. And when we see that, and what I really wanted to point out today, is that what ends up happening when we’re chasing something like happiness or searching for it or trying to create more of it is that paradoxically, I think what it can do is creating us a hypervigilance for when we’re not happy.
The thing about a feeling like happiness is that it’s part of the human experience.
And it comes to life like all the other feelings and human experiences that we have. So it comes to life, the same way that joy does, or sadness, or loneliness, or contentment, or anger, all of these things are part of the river of life that is flowing through us and coming to life, in every moment, moment to moment.
When we don’t see that, when we believe innocently that life is outside-in and that we need to create certain conditions, in order to create that feeling that we’re wanting to have more of happiness, joy, whatever it is, like I said, I, in my experience, what that does is in the past, if I’ve tried things like that, what it’s made me do is be hyper vigilant. I become hyper vigilant about that feeling that I’m trying to create. And then I just become completely focused on the fact that when it’s not happening. And for me, that could create things like a real feeling of failure.
This is what the self help industry, the effect that it really had on me, when I was looking at things from an outside-in way, was that when I couldn’t create that, say, for example, if I had read this lady’s book, when I couldn’t create greater happiness in my life, when all I started noticing was the days and the moments when I was unhappy. Or when it came to overeating, when all I could notice was my cravings, because I was trying to control and curb and eliminate those. That’s what caused me greater suffering.
So that’s the point I wanted to bring up today: once we begin to notice that the inside-out nature of life and the way that it’s flowing through us, we don’t need to be attached to the feelings of unhappiness that we have. And they will just float by.
One feeling that very often makes me uncomfortable is loneliness.
That’s a feeling that I noticed when I start to feel it I almost get I almost get scared of the feeling. It’s like, oh, no, this is happening. And what if it swamps me? What if it overwhelms me, and I can’t deal with it? It feels like that. A fear of being swamped, being completely taken over, and almost destroyed by that feeling.
In the last few years, after a minute or two, I realized this is just a feeling, and the attendant thoughts that come with it. I don’t need to brace myself against it, or talk myself out of it, or try to make it go away. I don’t need to make a list of 10 reasons why I’m not lonely.
And sure enough, it passes by. It’s not something that is going to stay permanently with me because nothing does. Life is coming to life on a moment to moment basis. And as I’ve said before, the way to make an uncomfortable feeling sticky is to resist it. And knowing that in any given moment, another experience is going to come to life very shortly, gives us a lot of freedom and allowance for the experience of life that is that is coming through us that is coming to life.
So, I just wanted to point that out because this lovely woman, this author that I was listening to on the podcast – I could tell her intention is of course to help people to create more happiness in their lives. And it was just that what I see is that when we allow whatever wants to come to life within us, then there’s less suffering.
Really, that’s what it boils down to. That’s all it is.
We suffer when we resist our experiences, and when we try to control what’s happening with the feelings that are coming alive within us.
I hope that’s helpful for you and that you’ve found it somewhat uplifting today. I will be back next Monday with another q&a episode.
Remember, if you want to submit a question, please do that. You can go to AlexandraAmor.com/question, and I’ll be happy to answer your question.
Thriving in Difficult Times with Joseph Bailey
May 11, 2023
Joe Bailey knows that life can be difficult. In addition to life’s ‘regular’ challenges, he’s had personal experiences with illness, including Lyme disease (more than once), and the effects of mould.
He also knows that all human beings are in possession of an innate and trustworthy ‘compass of wisdom’. Our thoughts can be noisy but our innate wisdom and resilience is the eye at the centre of life’s hurricane that can guide us and smooth out the bumps on the sometimes rough road of life.
Joseph Bailey, M.A., L.P. is a licensed psychologist, an author, seminar leader, consultant to organizations, public speaker, and psychotherapist.
His work has included co-founding The Minneapolis Institute of Mental Health, developing programs for health care provider wellness at the University of Minnesota Inner Life of Healers Program and numerous hospitals including North Memorial Hospital, Minneapolis, East Lansing Health System and Mayo Clinic Arizona (The Resilient Physician Program). He has also worked extensively in treatment centers for addictions—Gulf Breeze Recovery, Meridian Systems and Farnum Center, and numerous social service agencies.
Joseph is the author of six books with over a half million copies in print including the best seller, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life with Dr. Richard Carlson and The Serenity Principle.
Alexandra: Oh, thank you., I was so pleased when I thought of that. So it’s so great to have you here today, Joe.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with the three principles.
Joe: Sure. And thanks for having me. So a little bit of background, I guess, to go way back, I discovered when I was 16 that when I was an exchange student in Guatemala, I had an opportunity. My aunt was a Catholic nun working in Central America with the poor and involved in lots of social justice issues.
I lived there for a summer, and it opened me up to my vocation really, to want to help people, alleviate suffering in the world and being raised Catholic, after high school that I went into seminary, thinking I’d be a priest. I had some amazing experiences for that one year I was in the seminary, got to work with Martin Luther King’s organization, and my prefect, the counselor that for our unit, was one of Martin Luther King’s best friends.
So we got to learn a lot about all of that. And with that was a big influence on my life. But it led to me leaving the seminary after a year and deciding to continue my vocation by helping people. So I became a clinical psychologist and went to grad school and all that. And the more I got into psychology, the more I thought, is this the right fit for me because there is no spirituality in psychology was very agnostic.
I did yoga and meditated and all did all these other things, because I always felt that was part of the whole person was to help people not just with their mind, but their whole essence or spiritual nature. And that wasn’t really to be found in psychology until I met Sydney Banks.
About 10 years later, from the beginning of grad school till I was about 32. I met Syd at the recommendation of Keith Blevins, Dr. Keith Blevins, who was my best friend at grad school. And actually, he urged me to listen to Syd’s tapes over the years. But I was cynical at that point.
There was so many trips going on in psychology that I thought it was just another fad. And I was tired of that. So I just was not very open. Until one day, Syd was going to speak in Miami, at the University of Miami medical school. And Keith invited me, and his wife Elda also said, By the way, my best friend, Michael, she is coming too, and we’d love for you to meet, and I was available.
And so I thought, Okay, well, that’ll be fun. I went to Miami, and that first day I met my wife, Michael. She’s a woman, but she has a man’s name. Because she was born on the feast of St. Michael the archangel, and she was going to be a boy.
I fell in love with her first sight. And four hours later, I met Sydney Banks.
Alexandra: What a day!
Joe: It was stars aligned or something. So but when I heard Syd, I had a mixed reaction, part of me is just curious because I’d heard so much about him. But he was unlike any person I’ve ever met. And when he spoke, everything he said was felt absolutely true if my truth meter went yes!
But my brain went ARGH because it went against everything I had been learned. Learning in psychology and family therapy, and all these people that I studied with, was all about going back in the past and healing from past trauma, reliving emotions, and getting in touch with your feelings.
Healing, forgiving, it was a very long, arduous therapeutic process, and my clients would stay in therapy for years. So as a good economic model, you didn’t have to have a lot of people to make a living. But people never really got, well, they just coped better.
But they also started to identify with their labels and their diagnoses and start to think of themselves as an alcoholic, as a person with depression, as a person with anxiety disorder. And so it kept it put a cap on their full transformation or their ability to be free of the past and free of their symptoms.
And what Syd promised was from for me, as a spiritual, psychological person, it was like it transcended the dichotomy between spirituality and psychology. And it showed that the root of the word psychology is psyche, which in Greek means mind, soul, or spirit.
What’s revolutionary about Syd’s experience and his psychology, the three principles psychology is for me the hope that psychology becomes can become a true science that includes this primary dimension of human beings that is essentially spiritual or formless, which is what Mind is.
And the principles are formless energy that we’re all part of. So my work, a lot of my work, was involved in prevention. I was the director of prevention for the state of Texas for addiction when I was 26, and I had no idea what it was doing and had no idea how to prevent alcoholism. But I got paid to do it. So I did it.
And a lot of my work accidentally got me into the alcoholism and addiction field, just because I was assigned to it when I worked at the mental health center, and nobody knew about alcoholism, including me, but I was assigned to be the head of the alcoholism and drug addiction program.
So when I heard this said, I realized that this would transform the addiction field and the field of psychotherapy because it really helped people not just cope or identify with their habits but to identify with their innate resilience or their innate health and to let that blossom and grow and evolve through a deepening understanding of the principles of how we create our day to day, moment by moment experience, through mind, thought and consciousness.
So that was the beginning of, to me, my real career began when I met Syd Banks because I finally had a way to actually help people.
But at first, I didn’t know how to do it because there’s no techniques. Syd didn’t know about my world that much. Although he had this incredible realization. And so when I went back to my practice after hearing him, I was clueless.
How the heck do you do this?
But I would just share a little bit about my own realizations I was having just as a human being. And I just toss those out and the clients would go, wow, why didn’t you tell me that before? That is so helpful.
And I say, what did I say? So I just reached my way along in the beginning because I didn’t have a language for it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just flying by the seat of my pants.
And yet my clients were not only getting over their symptoms, they were achieving mental health and true love in their marriages. They were healing from the past that was and so pretty soon, my clients quit coming because they got better, which was not a good economic model.
But it was great as far as satisfaction as a therapist, but then they would tell their friends, and pretty soon my practice grew so much I had to train other people in the principles.
Chris Heath and I started what was called the Minneapolis Institute of Mental Health, which was a licensed treatment center for outpatient mental health and addictions.
Chris left and went to Hawaii about halfway through that. But I ran that for about 10 years; we treated 1000s and 1000s of patients, helped so many people, and did research. And it was an amazing experience. But it created a real ripple effect in the community because everybody wanted to go to that clinic, a lot of people, and it was a big threat.
That’s what happens when you have a paradigm shift that threatens the status quo.
Anyway, that’s the backdrop, or how I met Syd and began my journey with the principles.
Alexandra: It’s such a fascinating story. I love hearing about the dovetailing of your own interest in spirituality and your desire to help people and how those two things came together when you met Syd.
It always surprises me that this understanding isn’t more widely known, especially in the world of psychology.
Do you think it’s that element of spirituality, that affects the growth somehow?
Joe: I don’t know really why, to be honest. I would have thought by now, although, in some ways, it has exploded all over the world. It’s all of Syd’s books and tapes. And there are practitioners and communities of three principals in Iceland, and Italy, and France, and Spain, and Germany and the United States and, the United Kingdom, and Ireland and Asian countries, that’s all over my books are in 68 countries and 26 languages.
So I know it’s getting out there, but the field of psychology, it’s all evidence-based treatment modalities. But the field is still growing into recognizing thought as the primary focus of therapy in the cognitive revolution in psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, they both and then mindfulness based treatment, and modalities are really exploding.
Psychology is evolving because this is what people want. They want a deeper, more spiritual psychology. And so they’re combining Eastern thought mindfulness practices. But they’ve done a lot of good research on that. And so they show the results. We, in the three principles, haven’t done such a great job of documenting this in terms of getting into recognized journals and all that.
Some of that’s happened but not enough to create a critical mass. So that’s one part of it.
The other part of it is that it’s a threat to a lot of people who have I created their practices from a school of thought, and then to introduce something that makes that obsolete is a threat to their identity and to their practice.
Anytime you find anything really true that comes into the world, it’s always thought, that’s how it’s really true because it’s really threatening to the way we collectively perceive reality.
In this isn’t an intellectual model; it’s not something you can figure out analytically. It’s something that has to impact you. And when you change from within. You see the world differently. It’s not a technique you do.
Current psychology is all based on techniques and doings. This [the three principles] is based on raising the level of consciousness through insight and understanding of how we’re creating a reality moment by moment.
In the addiction field, I’ve done a lot of work with treatment centers, training their whole staff. I’ve done a lot of work in healthcare. I’ve worked with many hospital systems. The University of Minnesota helped create a program called The Inner Life of Healers. We worked with physicians and nurses, and allied health professionals to teach burnout prevention and resilience.
I also worked for eight years at Mayo Clinic, training their physicians and leaders in the principles because it lowered burnout dramatically. So it’s gone out more in the business world, the healthcare world. Psychology is like the holdout.
It’s threatening to the existing paradigm that is based primarily on biology and the past instead of a spiritual essence that’s already mentally healthy. It’s already resilient. And so it puts you out of business in a way, but not really, with change. But anyway, that’s probably a long answer to a short question.
Alexandra: No, I’m really fascinated by this subject. So, thank you for sharing that with us. Speaking of resilience, your most recent book is called Thriving in the Eye of the Hurricane. I’d love to talk about that a little bit today.
Tell us about that metaphor, the eye of the hurricane, and why it matters.
Joe: Well, I don’t know if you have hurricanes in Canada.
Alexandra: Not on Vancouver Island.
Joe: In the United States, we have a lot of hurricanes, especially on the coast of Florida and the Panhandle, in that area. And so hurricanes are often on the news. But they’re a very powerful storm. The winds on the outside of a hurricane are like 274 miles per hour. So when a hurricane comes in, it devastates and decimates everything.
Nothing can withstand that. But it also is torrential rain. And it’s just a very destructive force. But climatologists who study hurricanes fly airplanes in the middle of hurricanes in what’s called the eye because once you break through the wall of the hurricane, it’s totally quiet, in the center of it. And they call it the eye of the hurricane.
Birds fly around in there, and most of the hurricane is like 110 miles across in the eye. It’s just the outer perimeter that’s destructive. It’s like the ego versus the true self. The ego is what creates all the damage.
Our thoughts and our wisdom, which is at the eye, is what is resilient, which is where we get insight into healing transformation. So to me, it was a perfect metaphor for not only climate change, because I talk a lot to climate scientists, and about this, because they get burned out a lot too, and climate activists, but it’s the perfect metaphor, because in the eye of us as human beings, our innate mental health is this source of ability to bounce back from whatever. And ability to think creatively under pressure in a business.
I’ve done a lot of work with police and first responders, military, people who are really on the front lines, how to stay calm in that crisis, in that moment where your life is truly threatened. And oftentimes, in the news, you’ll see interviews with people who were in a hurricane or a tornado, or a flood or a bombing, or in nowadays have a massive gun shooting, with AK 40 sevens and in our crazy country we have here and how someone will become a hero in the middle of that and just respond and save lots of lives.
And afterward, they’re interviewed by the press, and they say, Well, how did you do that? They just go. I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I just did it.
I went into that burning building, and I saved that child, or I covered the body of that person that I didn’t want to get killed. They shot me instead. And I survived. Or people who did like the guy who landed the airplane. On the Hudson River. I can’t remember his name right now. They made a movie about him. Sully. And they’ve made this movie about him because he was such a hero.
When you interview him, he says, I just did what anybody would do. I wasn’t anything special, I just seemed like the right thing to do. And that’s when you’re not bogged down by fear and insecurity. Those thoughts, your natural resilience or wisdom, respond appropriately to falling in love like I did with my wife or to solving a crisis.
It that’s life and death, or when I work with healthcare professionals, how to be in the midst of the emergency room or a surgical procedure, but be light-hearted and loving and caring that loose feeling. You’re so present. And you’re so responsive. And with all of the training you’ve had, you get just whatever you need from that training library at that moment to use you.
I just thought about an article that I read about this. Let me look at that. That’s the solution. I found leaders or healthcare professionals say, I’m in the same stressful situation. But I’m more responsive to the needs of the patient. I’m a better listener. I’m the calm influence in the room, rather than getting frenetic and scared like everybody else, even professionals.
When I’m operating from that eye, that resilience, I’m a calming influence.
There’s a story that I love in my book from Mahima Shrestha. She actually just did a thing for one of Syd’s books or talks on forgiveness. She was in charge of emergency preparedness for the country of Nepal.
And so she tells the story, and I’ll just read it here because it’s really powerful. And you can also watch this on a video on my website because I did a podcast with a lot of people who were interviewed toward thriving in the eye of the hurricane.
Their stories that are in this book are also their stories on the podcast. So anyway, so she’s tells the story.
“There was this destruction and devastation all around us after the first earthquake struck. 9000 people were killed, and 1000s more were injured or left homeless. We were overwhelmed with grief and fear.
As we watched this beautiful country pounded into a pile of rubble. My family and I were huddled together in my home. With each tremor, we were filled with terror, anticipating the next earthquake, between tremors.
We would wait in fear and imagine what might happen next. In contrast, my three year old niece would go back to playing between tremors and seem to be enjoying having her whole family together in one place.
Her laughter and play relieved and distracted us momentarily from our own panicky feelings. At one point, she looked at all of us and proclaimed, it’s over. Can’t you see it’s over? Her childlike innocence and lightheartedness in the face of our stress hit me like another earthquake, a psychological one. She was being resilient in the face of danger, while the rest of us were being feeling traumatized.
The dormant thought that had been resting in my head for many months suddenly burst forth.
We are always living in the feeling of our thinking each moment.
By witnessing my niece’s resilience in the face of real danger, I realized what the three principal psychology was all about.
With this insight, my mind and my body became calm. From that moment on, my stress diminished, in my resilience returned. I realized that the earthquake and the tremors didn’t create my stress and fears.
My thinking did. Since that profound moment, I felt more energy and more clarity of thinking, and I’m better able to respond to real and present dangers. Every did everybody did what they could to bring solace and help restore resilience in their communities in the weeks following the earthquake.
I hosted webinars with international experts in the crisis response field and invited trainers from the UK to introduce these three principles in Nepal to help earthquake survivors source their own resilience more effectively.
Many organizations, groups, and institutions, such as schools, chambers of commerce, insurance companies, community hospitals, young women’s leadership programs, and more, have since benefited from this teaching.”
She also won an international award for Women of the Year for her work with the sex trade between China and India. She’s just an amazing human being. But she really is primarily a three principles teacher now.
Alexandra: Wow. That’s beautiful. Thanks for sharing that with us. I’ll put links in the show notes to your website, where the interviews are, and also to your book as well. So people can find those if they’re looking.
One of the things I love about the eye of the hurricane metaphor is that the outer wall of all are stirred up thinking and can be so distracting that sometimes it’s hard to get into the center. And I said to you, in some of the notes that I sent you, that it felt has felt to me like understanding this has been a really distinct two-stage process.
The first stage is even knowing that the eye, the quiet eye is there.
And then the second part has been coming to trust it, that I can rely on it, no matter what.
I loved your book for just its emphasis on that, on the eye, the quiet resilience center of all of us. It’s been really great to learn that.
Joe: For me, too, for sure. Because I still get caught up in my thinking on a regular basis. We all are, Syd did, I don’t know anybody who didn’t get caught up in their thinking. But when you have an understanding of where feelings come from, you can’t have a feeling without thought.
Connecting to your consciousness to create that feeling, that perception in the moment. So if you’re panicking, it looks like you’re in a really dangerous place, and you can’t see a solution. If you recognize that in the moment like you’re a firefighter, or a police officer, or a politician or teacher, whatever your role is new, you catch it because it feels this discomfort.
And you see that it’s not what I’m thinking about. But how I’m thinking about what I’m thinking about. That’s creating my experience. So it’d be you see that it’s coming from the inside out your human experience, rather than outside in, in the proof is that if you look at people watching a movie, being in a real crisis, all of them respond in a totally different way on a bell curve, something completely traumatized, immobilized to people who hardly even notice they just go right to work.
They don’t even think about themselves to somewhere in between them. So depending on your thinking in the moment.
You’re going to have a different emotion and a different experience. But with an understanding of the principles. You’re able to tap into that eye, that resilience because your feelings become a barometer, like a barometer for the storms. We have a cabin in Canada, and it’s in a really remote area. So we have a barometer because there’s no weather forecasts.
We can see when that barometer drops; we’re gonna get a storm long before you see the clouds, the barometer is dropping. Looks like there’s no problem coming. But when you see that barometer dropping, prepare, get your raincoat, and your umbrella, and come on inside. And so when your feelings of anger or anxiety come up, it triggers your awareness that you’re creating a thought, perceptual experience from the inSyde.
And when you’re attuned to that, it helps you get perspective maybe to value a calm mind, rather than an overreacting, fearful mind. The more you value a calm mind, you begin to see in that eye, you get a lot of insights that you wouldn’t have otherwise, you are able to have more sticktoitiveness, which is another term for resilience,
You’re able to have more energy, you sleep better, you’re more responsive, you have more empathy, you have more connection to others. So there are many beautiful human traits that are built into this innate resilience or innate mental health that you can witness in any child.
Little children who haven’t yet learned to be fearful, or to be self-conscious, or to be resentful. They get over things very quickly. If they are upset, they’re naturally extremely curious. And their learning curve is like this. Whereas when you become fearful, you’re learning curve becomes like this.
So young children are little sponges; they learned so much in the first few years of life because they haven’t yet learned to be afraid. They haven’t yet learned to worry; they haven’t yet learned to hold a grudge or be prejudiced, or judge. Those are all learned things that create a feeling.
And when you use that feeling as a barrage, better, it helps you, oh, don’t go there, Joe. Because I can still do that. This last year of our lives, my wife and I would both 75 and suddenly, having things happen with our bodies and our brains it didn’t happen before. We’re starting to experience aging. And some pretty, fairly serious health issues happened this year for us. All due to the fact that our house had mould, and we didn’t know. It was insidious. You can’t see it.
But our doctor suspected it and had us tested for a variety of toxic chemicals. Because I lost a lot of weight. I didn’t have any energy, and my brain was foggy. And so I took these micro toxin tests, as did my wife. And actually, we were on our way to British Columbia when we got the news, the mould levels in your body are 500 points over normal.
You can never live in that house again. You must move out, and you will not survive if you go back in that house. We have to demolish our home and rebuild. We’re in our early semi-retirement phase. And all of sudden, there goes about a third of our net worth right down the drain, and the insurance covers none of it.
So it was you could imagine, economically and physically, a huge disruption in our life. And it’s been a year of that. It’s just been like one thing.
My wife wrote this poem last week. Can I read it?
Alexandra: Yes, please do.
Joe: It’s tongue in cheek.
I’ve had so much bad luck, it’s good luck.
What is bad luck, but an opportunity to sharpen our skills. The skills we were born with the talents we didn’t know we have. What is bad luck but the uncomfortable handle on the door to success covered with mold tarnished but recognizable by the finest jeweler?
The minor of gold reaches past the disgusting to discover what’s inside. The door opens, and the day is saved. Sight from within penetrates the surface of all disasters. It uncovers the wholeness of salvation that exists inside this room of peace—the architect of design lives in this hidden world, the eye.
Wherein lies all resource to create from the universe of knowing. Answering any questions needed to build a foundation from the only existence that is true, universal love.
By opening the door of bad luck and finding peace inside, we move aside the barriers we’ve created and rebuild our life from the inside. The lens of destruction is no longer feared when we rest in the state of knowing that the power of life bends to bring forth a new universe every hour of every day; residing an eternal knowing can be misunderstood and mixed with fear of seeing the truth. We have the freedom to understand that the comfort of not knowing is a state of recognition of what is to become known.
A recognition of this powerful ingredient called Love transforms what is not known into the treasure of assurance that we are here to create and be known as the power that arises from within, to change our world and the world with a passion of persistence that never ends.
Rely on this eternal force to give you the passion, the love, and the knowing to resurrect from within the heart and the soul of you. The Universal Consciousness leave behind the limited thoughts, releasing their unformed energy to float free, disengaging from misunderstanding. I will not falter in my one desire to be one in the peace of universal creation.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s beautiful.
Joe: Isn’t that amazing? My wife’s passion comes through her art. She’s an artist. They just come out of her all whole like this. She didn’t have to edit. It’s just amazing. But we all have that in a different form.
What you’re doing in your podcasts is a form of it. I’m sure there are many others. I never thought I would ever be a writer. I was told not to go to college because of my poor language skills.
And Syd said oh, you’re going to write books, and they’ll be all over the world. You’ll teach at universities, and I said, “Me? You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Alexandra: Wow. That’s amazing. Well, thank you for sharing that poem with us. That’s beautiful.
I wrote down a couple of things. The ‘architect of the design’ was one of the phrases that I loved from there.
And also the idea that there’s a new universe, she said, in every hour, but it’s like, in every moment, so lovely.
We’re just about coming up to running out of time. But I wanted to come back to the phrase that you use in the book, the compass of wisdom.
And this touches on everything we’ve talked about so far today.
If you were to recommend for listeners how they could find this still point, this eye at the center of their hurricane, how would you recommend they do that?
Joe: Well, I think the first step is a leap of faith. God doesn’t create any bad things. There’s no mistakes in creation. And we’re no exception. We have this human potential, this essence that is wise. So considering the possibility that that’s true even for you.
Even though you might have doubted that or thought you weren’t smart enough, or that you were damaged goods, or that you were too insecure. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a chronic alcoholic or suffered from mental illness or had a horrible marriage or anything.
Every human being that’s still alive has the possibility of transformation and change through insight. And so, first of all, it’s just, for me in the beginning, it was really just hearing that, and it felt true.
But I didn’t think it was true for me. I realized it, but it sounded true. And then I started getting eyes for it. So when I would have a thought come into my mind, that was like one of those head-shakers when you go, what does that mean?
That sounds really true, but I don’t understand it. That I would listen to that more, and sometimes that would be from just writing. When I was troubled or this still, small voice some would call it, and if you look back on your life in hindsight, you can see something told me not to do this, but I did it anyway.
I should have listened to myself. I wasn’t listening. So in hindsight, you can see I can’t believe that I took that risk to ask her out. It was unlike me. But something was so compelling to me. I couldn’t help but do it. That was the compass. Something told me to go to hear Syd Banks, against all of my misgivings.
It was like a magnet that pull me like the magnet and a compass. And so, for me, I could look back on my life. And I can see that that still, small voice was always guiding me even when I ignored it. And I could see, I knew that was the wrong decision. But I did it anyway.
And so when you start to have experiences of insight, and this wisdom, you’ll have flashbacks and see how it was always there. And that’ll give you more confidence to trust it. Because when you’re going into the unknown, the future, you don’t know what’s going to happen. But if you get quiet, and you listen, is this the right thing for me to take this job, or to call that person or, and if you listen inside, you’ll start to recognize that feeling of truth.
And the compass of truth has a feeling built into it. It’s called a knowing you got like a knowing without knowing why. Just knowing. And the book I’m writing. Now, I didn’t think I’d ever write another book. I was like, Okay, I’m done. This is the last one. But then I had a dream a few months ago, I had this whole book come to me in the dream.
I woke up and I thought, Oh, my God, what was that? It was like a whole life review. I’m dying. I thought, what’s going on here? But it was like my whole life path before me. And I realized how that compass had been guiding me all along.
The book I’m writing, which I haven’t started writing yet, but it’s called up My Magic Carpet Ride. Because it’s like a magic carpet. There’s no steering wheel on it. You just go wherever it takes you. And that’s the compass. The more I understood what Syd was saying about the principles, the more I didn’t have to steer; it’s like a kid’s go-cart.
You think it’s connected to the wheels, but it’s really your imagination that you’re turning the car. It’s just an illusion. But when you trust the carpet, opportunities open up for you that you never would have dreamt up.
I never thought I’d ever write a book. I never thought I teach at universities or travel around the world like I do. This just one story after another story; I got healed from major illnesses, through the power of the mind, with Lyme disease, and knock on wood with the mold coming out of my system now, so it’s just, it’s always there for us.
And the more we understand, through insight, the principles, the more trust we have in faith and hope as we go through life that life is guiding us. This divine intelligence is guiding us each step of the way. Whether we know it or not
Alexandra: I love that magic carpet analogy. That’s such a great one.
Joe: I couldn’t remember anything of my dream. So then my wife and I, we went off skiing this winter. And we’re there in a Best Western hotel in the middle of Nebraska somewhere. I woke up in the middle of the night and I’d had the same dream again.
With another download. I thought I could write this down. I’ll never remember this. And then the next thought was, you’ll remember as you write, yes. So that’s the compass, you don’t have to try to write things down. Remember, your wisdom will always be there. Your compass will always be with you. guide you into the unknown
That’s what we need in these dark times. Just last night, I was watching TV. And there was a story about how there’s so many mass killings in our country, there’s more than one per day now in America, with ak47s. It’s just horrible violence happening.
So now what’s happening? They showed this basketball game where someone thought they heard a gun go off, and it spread like panic. And everybody ran out of the room.
There was no, no gunman, nothing, but just the thought of it could happen here. So people are living in this fear. And if people could understand that, their common sense and wisdom is always going to be with them to protect them and to know the right thing to do. And in the meantime, enjoy your life. Be with your friends. Don’t live in fear.
It’s all self-generated. You don’t have to do that. And that’s the other book I wrote was Fear Proof Your Life after 9/11. Because we become so addicted to fear. As a culture, we still are. The Canadians, not so much. I don’t think I don’t know.
Alexandra: Hard to say depends who you talk to you, I guess.
Joe: I guess it’s individual by individual, that’s right.
Alexandra: We’ve covered a lot of ground here, Joe; it’s been just great.
Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to share before we wrap up?
Joe: Let me see. Maybe one more story. I could tell a story about healing physically, myself, or a story of a nurse and how this helped her. Or Mavis, who worked with gangs.
Alexandra: I’d love to hear the story about healing yourself.
Joe: Me?
Alexandra: Yep.
Joe: This happened. The summer of 2017. I was at my cabin in Canada. And I started experiencing extreme back pain. Sweating, just excruciating pain in my body. And I’d never experienced that before.
I thought do I have cancer? What’s going on with me? I was all alone, I was writing another book in the middle of nowhere, and I’m struck with this, and it just wouldn’t go away. And day after day, I was just in this excruciating pain.
It felt like Lyme disease because I’d had it before, but I didn’t see any bite. And then my wife says, Well, look in the mirror. Do you see anything behind you? And I looked in the mirror, and I could see there’s a big red target on the back of my knee. I got Lyme disease again.
So I came home, and I went to took that doxycycline with the doctors recommended, but I had all this mental fog and sleeping difficulties. And all this, I went to a specialist was referred to a specialist that worked with Lyme. And the first thing she said to me 90% of this is in the mind. Your mind is so important in your healing.
I said that I’m a psychologist so I agree. Totally. She said, here’s supplements you should take and avoid being around areas where you can get a tick, always check yourself or a bar, don’t get it again, and take the supplements, etc. And I never really got well; I just felt like I was always sick. Low energy instead of high energy. Not as clear mentally.
So when my wife was going to Malaysia to study Kung Fu with a grandmaster, she said there was going to be a course on Qigong healing there. You should come along, and I said, Sure. I’d love to travel. I’ll go. So we went there.
There was a guy there who was a gifted Qigong healer from Switzerland. I thought maybe I’d get an appointment with him and maybe he can help me. So Michael said that during her kung fu course she said, Andrew is going to be with us. Once you join us for lunch, you can ask him so I went to Chinatown, where they were going; I caught up with them.
And I saw Andrew, and she said, why don’t you ask Andrew? So I was hoping to meet Andrew, who was a teacher of Qigong and a well-known healer from Switzerland. As luck would have it, I caught up with Andrew on the busy streets of Penang.
Could I set up a time to meet with you for a session regarding my illness? I said, let’s just do it right now. I said now, here on the busy streets of Chinatown, why not? I reluctantly agree. So what’s the problem?
Well, last summer, I got Lyme disease. Stop right there. He said, Don’t ever say you have Lyme disease if you ever want to be completely well.
Puzzled, I tried to correct him and telling him, but I have the symptoms long before I realized I had Lyme with absolute sense of knowing he repeated what he said earlier, I understand the power of mind in healing and its relationship to heal illness and mental health. I said I’ve written several books on this topic. I believe in what you’re saying. No, you don’t you just think you do.
Every time you say I’m sick with Lyme, you send all the beliefs and thoughts that you have about the illness to every cell of your body. Your body and mind are one. Well, I know that, but you don’t believe me? Or no, he says, do you believe me? Yes, I do. I think I do.
No, you don’t. I can see it in your face. If you don’t change your thinking about your illness, your body’s natural capacity to heal will be interrupted by your sending signals of being sick to the by. You don’t believe me except intellectually.
I knew he was right. And I felt humbled by his result and certainty. He wasn’t lead going to lead me off the hook at that moment. I saw it for the first time.
He smiled. Now you believe me.
How do you know that? I can see it in your face.
I felt something live from my whole body. All the invisible worry and thinking were falling away. My mind squirrels as it had when I first met Syd Banks; I knew Andrew was right. But my brain kept trying to understand what it just happened. So should we set up a session, I said?
Why? he said. We just had it.
That was it. But we only talked for a few minutes at most. You’re on the busy, noisy streets of Chinatown. You got it. You’re done. Well, can I pay your fee? That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.
The next day I woke up early, feeling totally awake. In a way, I hadn’t in many months, perhaps years. My head was clear, and I had all this energy. I decided to go down to the gym and work out and then go for a swim. I doubled my weight from the previous day with ease.
I went for a swim and felt like I could swim forever. I didn’t know what had happened. But I was grateful. When I walked into my friend’s apartment, she stared. What happened to you? You look 10 years younger. I told her about my conversation with Andrew the day before.
Blake and I have been so worried about you chill. You had you at an age so much not like before; you’d always seem so youthful for your age. You were our inspiration. Andrew, the healer, had never heard of the principles of mind-thought consciousness, as discovered by Syd Banks. But he obviously had a deep understanding of the mind.
Alexandra: Wow. That’s incredible.
Since then, have you had any symptoms at all?
Joe: I’ve not had any symptoms since.
Alexandra: Wow. Thank you for sharing that with us. Well, thank you for your interviews.
Joe: Great to meet you. Alexandra. Lovely to meet you as well.
Alexandra: Why don’t you tell the listeners where they can find out more about you and your work and your books.
Joe: So my books are on Amazon. You can order them they’re in Kindle and book form or audio. Some of them are on Audible. This book is on Audible. And then, if you go to my website, JoeBaileyandassociates.com, you can see all the interviews and podcasts of my past podcasts about the book and the people in the book.
Lots of other resources, we have lots of other good three principals, teachers and programs, and other books that have been written about since wonderful discovery of the three principles.
Alexandra: I will put a link to those things as well in the show notes. So thanks again, Joe. It’s just been a delight to chat with you.
Hello, explorers, and welcome back to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Today the question is:
Where can I go for guidance?
I love this question so much. And I’m going to use a personal story that’s going on for me this week to illustrate what I mean by this. And then I’m going to move into a brilliant thing that I heard from my friend Tania Elfersy the other day that really ties in well.
So the personal story is that I live in a condo, apartment, and I’m renting it. And additionally, I live in a town where it’s really hard to find housing. Now I lucked out when I moved here, five and a half years ago, in that this was the first apartment I looked at, it was perfect. For me, it was the perfect price, perfect size, the building is nicely maintained, all that stuff. So I was thrilled, beyond thrilled and snatched it up right away.
Housing in this town where I live is really, really an issue to the point that the vacancy rate is well below zero, I would say. People live in camper vans, in the summer there’s lots of tourists around, and many of them live on the back roads, in vans, but in addition to that, there’s people who actually live here and work here and have jobs who do the same thing, because there just aren’t a lot of places to rent.
There’s a variety of reasons for that and I won’t get into it all, because that’s not the point of this podcast. So you’ll just have to believe me, it’s tough to find a place to rent, when you live in the little town where I live.
It came about recently that my landlord was thinking of selling the condo that I’m renting.
She had a buyer lined up. In the last week or so I guess I would say there’s been a lot of upheaval around here with inspectors coming and going and that kind of thing.
When I first heard the news that the place might be sold, I was really really quite stirred up and anxious. And not the least of which, because we’re coming into the high season. I’m recording this in early May. And between May and October if it’s hard to find housing in the winter, then it’s basically impossible in the summer. This is not the ideal time for me to be having to look for a new place to live.
So when I got that news, my stomach was really churned up. I could feel my thinking go into overdrive, and just having lots and lots of busy thoughts about what I should do.
My mind was trying to solve the problem, which is what minds do.
They’re always trying to protect us and help us and keep us safe. And that’s their job. And they take it very seriously. So definitely my mind got to work trying to fix this problem. And make it go away, essentially.
What I knew, thankfully, when all this was happening was that all that busy thinking and all that all those butterflies in my stomach, those weren’t the places to look for guidance about this issue about what I should do, if anything, who I should talk to, any actions that I should take, any investigation that I should make all that stuff. Thankfully, because of the three principles, understanding, I knew enough to just let that happen.
The busy mind and the butterflies in my stomach, knowing that it would settle down after a period of time, I didn’t know how long that would be. And also knowing that that as I said, that was not the place to go to look for answers. And so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve really just been sitting with my feelings just letting them happen.
At some moments, I feel really churned up and anxious. And other moments I don’t. I’m very much at peace and just going about my day and reminding myself that in the grand scheme of things having to move is a pretty small problem. But that logic, that’s a logical thought. And our emotions don’t always respond to those kinds of things.
What I’ve been doing is waiting for wisdom and insight when they’re ready to speak about any action that I need to be taking.
And I should say, too, that things are still a bit up in the air. If the people who are interested in buying this apartment do that, the date of final sale wouldn’t be for about 10 days from as the day that I’m recording this. So logically to there isn’t a lot for me to do right now. It’s all unresolved and there’s still more information that needs to be conveyed.
As this was happening, I had a zoom call with my friend Tania. As I mentioned on the top of the call, Tania is the author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Perimenopause. She’s been on Unbroken, I believe she was episode four. And she works with women who are in midlife, and who are experiencing symptoms of menopause, and perimenopause, and just is a beautiful soul. I’m so grateful for her friendship. She’s so wise.
So I was sharing what was happening with her a few days ago. And we were talking about this lovely, amazing resource that we have, being able to rely on wisdom and insight, and not have to operate at the whim of our busy, fearful thinking. And she just had this lovely rhetorical question that she said that she tends to ask herself.
The question is this: where does the truth live?
And at first, I didn’t quite know what she was referring to. And then she expanded on it a little bit. And she said, the truth lies in the calm, quiet, wise center of ourselves. That’s where we can go when we need answers to something. Always. We can always rely on that. And that’s where we can go to receive wisdom or to wait for wisdom, because it doesn’t always come on our schedule.
She pointed out to that the truth doesn’t lie in fear. I really loved that. She said that as well. So fear was all all those butterflies that were in my stomach and my busy, busy thinking, that panicking about what should I do? What’s going to happen? Where am I going to end up? What if I have to move out of town? All that thinking.
The truth doesn’t live there. There’s such a distinct difference between that feeling and the calm, quiet place where the truth lies. And when we know this, it’s so powerful and reassuring. And so I wanted to, to share those two questions that that Tanya rhetorically posed to me the other day, because when we can remember to ask these questions of ourselves when we’re in a situation that is bothering us or making us upset.
This week, I’ve been asking myself those questions. It’s really been helping to calm me down, but even when I don’t feel calm, there’s a part of me that that just knows Oh, right.
I have this resource that I can rely on.
That’s number one. Number two, I don’t need to listen to the fearful, anxious thoughts and feelings that are going on inside me. Those butterflies in my stomach, were simply a reflection of the state of my mind in that moment. So that fearful thinking right away, creates feedback. It creates butterflies in my stomach, which is really uncomfortable. It’s not a feeling I’ve ever enjoyed. And when I feel that and then I remember Oh, right. Yes. Okay. My thinking is really stirred up and fearful. And the butterflies are telling me that so I don’t need to go there. I don’t need to look in that place for answers to my problems.
What I can instead do is remember that the truth lives where I’m feeling really calm and settled. I find that the answers that come from that really calm, wise place that exists within all of us are clear. They are very easily distinguished from the fearful thinking that I have. And they do just have this essence of calmness to them. I don’t know what other word to use. This essence of calm and clarity and wisdom for lack of any other better words to use.
So those are the questions that I wanted to share with you today. Where does the truth live? It lives in that calm, clear place, and is the truth in in the fearful, anxious stirred up feelings we have? No, it’s never there never. Even though those fearful, anxious feelings are so compelling.
I can just speak personally and say that, until I learned about this understanding, I always acted out of that place. Or almost always I guess, I should say. I took that fearful information that really stirred up crazy frightened thinking as the truth and acted more often than not out of that place, which inevitably just ended up creating more problems for me then, than I needed.
What Tania and I discussed the other day was that instead, when we listen, and wait for the answers from that very calm place, things work themselves out, it’s a much smoother journey.
I’ll just give you a quick example.
I recently bought a new sofa. And so I had the old sofa in my house, and I needed to get rid of it, I didn’t want both of them in here wanted to find a place for the old one.
My brain came up with a bunch of answers about how to do that. And they were useful things to do. Like I posted a picture of the sofa and description of it on the local buy, sell, trade, barter Facebook group. I was just giving it away so I posted it on there. And I mentioned it to a couple of people. Somebody suggested check in with the fire chief in this town, because he often has new recruits coming in and they don’t have any furniture, wherever they’re staying. So I did that. I sent this guy an email.
But at the same time, I really had this sense in that calm, quiet place inside myself, that the problem would work itself out.
The new sofa arrived and I put that in place. I still didn’t have a home for the old one. So I just put it in the dining room, which was a little bit awkward. And for a couple days, I was walking around it all the time and was thinking about other actions that I should take to try to get rid of this thing. Maybe I should hire somebody to drive it to a different town. Maybe I should contact a woman’s shelter. Maybe there’s somebody who needed it there. And those are great ideas.
Again, I’m not saying these are these are not good ideas. But additionally, just the wisdom within myself was having me wait.
Just wait and and something will turn up.
So a day or two went by a neighbor came up she wanted to see the new sofa. And as she came into my apartment she noticed, of course, the old sofa in the middle of the dining room. And she said, Well, what are you going to do with this? And I said, I don’t know. I’m looking for a new home for it. And she said oh put it in our community room.
You know how sometimes in condo buildings, there’s a room that you can rent or sign out out? Ours has a little kitchen setup. So fridge, stove, counter. It’s got tables and chairs and windows that look out onto the back of the building. And it’s a place where we have potluck dinners there for example. So she said put it in there because we whenever we have a little social gathering there’s never anywhere for anybody to sit, other than the dining table. So that’s what we did.
I recruited a couple of big, strong strapping neighbors, and they carried it down the walkway, and now the old sofa is in the community room where hopefully it can be of service to some other people.
That might seem like a silly example but I really liked it because of the way that I kept checking back in with wisdom, with the place where truth exists, just to see if I had got an answer and, and continue to wait until something that felt right came up. And like I said, I could have taken lots of other actions. And that would have been fine, too. I mean, really, it’s just an old sofa.
It taught me something important about how connected we all are to wisdom, and how we can rely on it.
And more and more, I’m just wanting to experiment with that, and make a point of not acting out of the place of fear, and panic and insecure thinking. And it doesn’t mean that those feelings don’t come up; they certainly do. And that’s fine. I can notice them and not react to them. I can notice how fearful I am and concerned about a given situation like now, this housing situation. And then just wait.
I know for sure that answers will come from the wise place, the calm, quiet place.
And they won’t necessarily be magical answers about the complete end result of this situation. In other words, it’s not like someone’s just going to come and bang on my door and say, Hey, I’ve got an apartment, would you like to rent it? But what I know wisdom will do is show up and with an idea about a next step that I could take. I don’t know what that will be at this point. And I don’t know how it will show up. But what I do know is that it will. And I will, at some point, find some truth.
The truth lives in that calm, quiet place. Something will come to me, that will enable me to take a next step in this housing situation, if necessary. Like I say, it’s still a bit up in the air. And we’ll just see how things unfold.
I wanted to share that with you today. It’s been one of the most powerful things that I’ve learned about the three principles understanding is this idea that I can rely on the wisdom within me. It’s entirely 100% reliable, it never lets us down and the universe is so much wiser than my little brain.
I love my brain, it’s a great problem solver. And the universe is just a whole lot smarter than that. That universal life energy that is flowing through all of us at all times is the thing that I am learning to be more reliant on when I’m trying to solve problems, or think of things to do or take a new direction or anything like that.
So I hope that’s helpful for you. That’s always the objective here on these Q&A episodes.
I hope you were doing well and I am sending you lots of love and just a reminder, if you want to submit a question about your life, about your overeating habit or any unwanted habit, please do so.
Understanding Overthinking with Anne Gleeson
May 04, 2023
Our brains are designed to think and to solve problems. However, we ignore other innate tools available to us at our peril; things like our access to wisdom and peace of mind.
Poet and coach Anne Gleeson went through an exceptionally difficult time in 2020, which included a cancer diagnosis. A lifelong explorer, she happened upon the Three Principles at that time and found that an understanding of how our thinking works helped her navigate these turbulent waters. Now she assists others who want to do the same.
Anne Gleeson is a poet, a certified Change coach, and is deeply interested in helping each of us create an experience of life that is joy-filled and open to possibility.
She has worked as a teacher and leader in schools and universities, Adult Learning Centres, and in Tonga, as an Australian Volunteer Abroad. She began her professional speaking career when she returned from teaching in the Pacific and started working with Freedom from Hunger. For the past 15 years, she has worked in the Funeral Industry providing grief support as a Celebrant and Funeral Director.
Anne: Thanks, Alexandra. Lovely to talk to you from the other side of the world.
Alexandra: I think you’re my first Australian guest. This is very exciting.
Anne: I feel honored.
Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the principles?
Anne: I grew up in a very traditional farming family in some ways; it was all about the way that the world worked. And then, in 2017, my mother was dying, and I was caring for her. And then there was a creative workshop in the town I lived.
And that was so surprising to me because I didn’t think of things like that, like, generally it was agricultural meetings, and that thing. But anyway, I couldn’t do it then because of the circumstances. But a year later, I joined that group. And it was run by somebody called Robin Emerson, who was a really beautiful creator.
She also was so interested in these ways of operating in the world. And she loaned me lots of books. And I just ran with it, and then enrolled in the next time that the Little School of Big Change course, came up with Amy Johnson.
And it was very liberating for me. I think I realized how caught up in my thinking I was and how much of my own annoyance or sadness or whatever was to do with the way I was creating an experience. So that was how I got involved in the beginning. I joined and made connections with people. And that was really lovely.
Alexandra: Were the Three Principles involved in the books Robin loaned you?
Anne: Yes, they were. Amy Johnson’s books. But also other books like Michael Singer, and the person I cottoned on to it wasn’t actually a book, it was Barb Patterson’s podcast. Because I was in business, it was very interesting to me looking at it from that point of view. So it was a whole range of things. And I was hungry. So I gobbled up a whole lot of things.
Alexandra: Were you always interested in this exploration?
Anne: I think, like, a lot; I’ve had this experience a few times thinking, yup. And I already knew that when I was 15, or whatever, knowing and but, this, I suppose, was giving me a bit of a language. And that’s not to say that I went with that in any way; I didn’t. But even at uni, I went from this country kid going off to Monash uni and Melbourne.
And that was so exciting for me, and I’d race around and go to all different courses and talks at anything that was my mind, was just being expanded in so many ways or my heart or whatever. So, yes, I think I was a seeker always.
Alexandra: Okay. Interesting. And so then one of the things that mention on your website is that you’re a funeral celebrant, as well as part of your work.
Do you think that work has been influenced at all by the principles?
Anne: Has the funeral work been influenced? Yes, every single part of my life has. And I’ve worked in the area of bereavement care and, more, the whole funeral industry for probably 15 years or so. Now, I’m not formally part of the funeral industry, but I work still as a celebrant making the ceremonies.
But I work two days a week with aged care people, people at the end stage of life, and in palliative care. So people who are very close to the end of their life here. So most definitely.
I’ve described the place I work, even though it’s a happy place in many ways, as a reservoir of grief because so many people carry such heavy loads. And certainly, I’m not formally a coach in that setting, but that’s why I was employed because of my coaching work.
Alexandra: Interesting.
Anne: I think it’s a little bit of the politics around counseling, coaching, that thing. But I was lucky to have the combination of the funeral work, the bereavement work, and the celebrant work. I just love the work, sitting there with people who have lived a lot longer than me.
Alexandra: And you mentioned the reservoir of grief there too. Do you think this understanding has helped you personally with feelings of grief? Or how?
How do you understand grief now?
Anne: Well, I understand it as being, we are really, in when we’re in real grief struck, we’re really caught up in that moment of the horror, the worst of it. And I suppose two things.
One is, that I’ve learned, not just with grief, but with other things, to really lean into that experience, rather than resisting it.
So that’s something that I will bring to people, not just in that coaching, but in general coaching as well. And I suppose, too it’s the fluctuating, the old cloud analogy, that sometimes it’s terrible, and it can’t bear to go on living another day without that person.
And then, another time you’re out in the garden, being reminded of their joyful presence, and I think, too, that lots of us have questions about how life works. I’ve become really interested in lots of the discussions lately on non-duality and thinking about the world differently, environmentally, because of that.
Alexandra: So, like you said, it’s really affected every area of your life.
Anne: Most definitely, yes. My other coaching is very practical kinds of things. People have come because I had quite an academic background. So sometimes it’s people doing academic studies and not being unsure about that or not confident. And other times it’s people exploring their creativity or more, hesitation about taking on a new position, or all different things like that. So I like the mix that I’m doing at the moment.
Alexandra: One thing your website mentioned, too, was you experienced a cancer diagnosis in 2020.
Could you talk about that and how that affected your understanding of thought, if at all?
Anne: I find this so interesting because I’m not a person who goes around saying thanks like ‘the gift of cancer’. But it was a horrible time. But it wasn’t what I just said about grief, it actually was a really special time.
My cancer diagnosis coincided with a complete breakdown of a fairly awful marriage and the loss of a business.
Some other things that were going on that were hard to deal with. So it was really, on the surface, but it wasn’t in another way. I just felt so drawn into nature; it was just me. I knew that’s what my body needed to be healed. And so I would go out, and just walk and, leaning against the trees and that thing.
So, just felt very in touch with being just a little part of the world. And then, I went through the treatment in 2020. And, of course, the state I live in had the most severe restrictions in the world in terms of COVID. So the experience of being in that meant that I was by myself a lot of the time. And that was okay.
I had actually thought before COVID or before cancer, I’m going to have 2020 as a dwelling year, just being I didn’t know quite how, but I’d be dwelling. But anyway, that was what happened. But then I think the most interesting thing of all was, towards the end, I received an invitation, as did many people asking if I would like to be a Change Coach. And this was with Dr. Amy Johnson. I spoke to her on Zoom.
And we talked about it, and I said, Look, I’m not really wanting to be a coach. I just want more understanding. And she said, Well, that’s fine, people do the coaching and don’t do more. But I think when you get the cancer diagnosis, it sounds so dramatic, and you don’t know if you’re going to be alive in three months’ time or three years’ time, or 33 years’ time.
And I just had this hunger again; I was thinking, well, if I have only a shorter time to live, then I really want to know more about this because just living in the moment and not resisting cancer and the treatment, and, some of the harder bits had been so helpful to me.
And so I thought, well, if I have just a little bit of time, I want to be really living fully, with this, not resisting anything and just going with dying early. Well, that didn’t happen, who I am. But anyway, I started the change coach training. And I think I was only like, the two lessons in or something. And of course, it’s a practical component.
We’re all coaching. And even the first person I coached, I just loved it and felt it felt very natural to me. So although I’d said to Amy I’m not remotely interested in coaching, I pretty quickly was very interested.
Alexandra: Can you pinpoint what it was about it that you really loved?
Anne: I think I actually felt useful. I could see things that were hold-ups for people or whatever. I’ve always loved listening to people and loved people’s stories. I think it was that real connection with people on a deeper level that I really liked. But feeling useful is good, too.
Alexandra: I agree, it’s a good feeling to feel useful.
Anne: Was I resisted the fearful approach to the whole medical thing and just went with it? And really gotten such a strong connection with nature. I mean, I think I’ve always had that. But it was intensified immensely.
Alexandra: During your cancer treatments and that time, you talked about how you didn’t try to resist what was happening.
Can you share a little bit about what that lack of resistance like?
Anne: So just thinking that death could be part of my experience, and not even really planning too much about it, just taking that on, that, Oh, well, maybe I do just have a short time to live. And then other things would be, well, some of the treatment is quite painful, physically painful.
I’ve joked about this with the group that I’m on the other side of Australia, and I remember Amy talking about pain as being pressure or heat. But when you’re actually here, on the other side of the world, with all the people in their white coats, trying to remember that it doesn’t ring quite as true.
But in a way, that was it, that I wasn’t just thinking, Well, it is just pain. I had quite a reaction to some of the treatments. And well, that’s what’s happening, but also a little bit still connected with the nature thinking, well, in this organism, that’s what’s going on. And like looking at the different formations of trees and how the lichen grows on some trees and not on others.
So, and just, again, taking opportunities, like, as I said, it was during COVID. And now, just, for example, the radiation was one of the things that I had this extraordinary reaction to, and rather than focusing on the pain and the burn and whatnot, focusing on these delightful young women who were there, the radiologists and just trying to enjoy this story a little bit, because, of course, everyone was eager for a chat, given the circumstances that we weren’t allowed to be together.
Alexandra: I imagine there is a lot of thinking and emotions that go along with that cancer diagnosis you touched on. It gave you a bit of a perspective about your life in that larger way.
In smaller ways, I imagine it must have helped you with the thinking that went on, day to day, moment to moment. Is that true?
Anne: Yes. I just became lighter, which is quite bizarre. And I also came out with a very clear resolution, and you’ll think I’m the biggest hypocrite on earth if I tell you because I thought if I only can achieve one thing now, it’s to write the story of my sister. My sister lives with multiple disabilities. And I have to say, well, that’s still my resolution. It’s it hasn’t been accomplished.
Alexandra: Well, you’ve got time now, though. I guess that’s the nice thing. And it must have been such a, well, I was going to say isolating experience to be going through COVID and to be going through cancer at the same time.
It sounds like it didn’t really strike you that way.
Anne: That’s correct. And the more isolating experience was, the more personal things were the end of the marriage and business and everything., that was awful. But no, I couldn’t say that, I can’t say I had the same experience as many people who speak of the lockdowns here.
Because it wasn’t like that for me, it was okay to be on my own and do what I needed to. I wasn’t completely on my own. I had all these medical stuff companies. And my children got permission to come and be with me for a bit of help after the surgery and whatnot.
Alexandra: Good. That’s very good.
When we had our little email exchange, we talked a bit about overeating habits. And so, I tend to focus on talking about overeating. But we can really use that word ‘overing’ to talk about any unwanted habit.
Do you work with clients on ‘overing’?
Anne: Yes. So some of those things I mentioned, for example, people starting in a new position are very anxious about it, so the thinking, and me, I had that experience this year, where I was starting something new, and I could pick myself up on that overthinking, or, I, making up stories in my head about things I was, making as might be problems, for example. And so, so those kinds of things.
And sometimes, just getting listening to people. And, hearing where their hold-ups are, I suppose, one of the things, and I think almost everybody that I’ve worked with, the overthinking is a problem for all of us, we have a project we create all sorts of scenarios. So, yes.
Alexandra: If someone’s not familiar with the Inside-Out understanding, where would you begin with them if they overthink things?
Anne: If they weren’t calm and said, I’m overthinking. They’ll come and say, I’ve got this project that I want to start, and I can’t make myself start. So, then I have been here and, try and get them to see what’s actually stopping them.
And then, a bit of an explanation of how the mind might be busy protecting them from starting something new and an adventurer, that, might have a bit of risk, and whatever, I’m trying to keep them in the safe territory of not doing what they want to do. So that might be where I go with something like that.
Alexandra: Do you find people catch on quite quickly?
Anne: I think sometimes it’s surprising. So I do a coaching session, and then I send out an email to them, maybe a week later or so. And, although I feel that I’ve said what I’ve said in the email, sometimes they’ll come back to me and say, that was so amazing to read that, so it might be the second time, or might be that then we have another follow-up session.
And they’ll catch on to something that’s been said the first time. So, that can often happen. And I suppose too, like, I’m not overtly starting off with the three principles, although I’m operating from that understanding. I’m not coming in heavy with that. And I think I mean, I am immediately bringing it in. But I’m not using those terms.
Alexandra: Right. that’s such a good way to say it.
Anne: I don’t have a lot of people. So I have the two days where I’m working with older people. There were the people in care. And then some of those are in palliative care, so they’re very close to the end of their life. And then the other people I’m working with, I try and have five ongoing seeing clients, and, over time you build up such an extraordinary relationship.
So I can’t see how people do so many. But people do it very well. I mean, obviously, I’ve been the recipient of people who have a lot more and have coached me and been very successful. So I’m not at all making judgments. I’m just saying, for me, this works, having five ongoing clients, and then that allows other people to come in, just for, a single or package of three or whatever.
But I think, in that time, when you have an ongoing relationship, and you’re operating at this depth, and you’re exploring together, you do become so close. It’s just really special.
Alexandra: There’s that soul connection that happens.
Anne: And I think, for me, Alexandra, I don’t know if it’s the same for you, I am a bit isolated in that there are far fewer people down this end of the world talking about this, but I have maintained connections with some of the people in America that I studied with initially. And that’s been very special. And then last year, I went over to the conference in the middle of the year.
And that was, like, I think, me just wanting to be in the environment with people. It wasn’t thinking I’m going to learn a huge amount or anything like that. But it was really wanting to have that connection at that level. And interesting. Robin, the person who introduced me in the very first place, now lives in the States. We live a long way away apart from each other.
But every phone call we have, which is not often, but every few months or so. That’s inevitably what we talked about.
Alexandra: I was in Portland a few weeks ago with Michael Neill and Barbara Patterson. They had a little weekend workshop. I never know what to call it. Was it a retreat? Was it a workshop? I don’t know. Anyway, it was the first ever three principles thing I had gone to in person.
It was extraordinary to meet other people and have those conversations in person. It was really lovely. So I can see the attraction of doing that for sure.
Now, you mentioned your sister and her disabilities. It occurred to me that, that it’s one thing to be dealing with are the all our own challenges in our lives, like you talked about your cancer diagnosis, and the breakdown of your marriage and the end of the business, those are things that are happening to us personally.
With someone in your life who is experiencing struggles, what’s it been like for you, being with her? And has that changed since you’ve come across this understanding?
Anne: Yes, so hugely; I’ve probably always been the one who’s been her big sister, like, as kids, we shared a room. And interestingly, one of the things that got me to actually sign up on the Little School of Big Change, or one of the issues that I had when I came, was to do with her. She had overdosed, and she lives in a care-supported accommodation.
And she had been given someone else’s drugs on top of her own. And so arrested, and a staff member and I did CPR, and she lived, but for a whole weekend, she stopped breathing. And that was on and off. So a very critical situation.
I was consumed with anger, not because of the mistake, I make mistakes, but I was consumed anger because I perceived the carelessness of the organization in having this happen, the circumstances are not so relevant, but there were circumstances that should not have been the case, that I was just, I couldn’t get out of this.
I was traumatized. Obviously, that was a physical reaction, and from the time, I couldn’t let it go. Whereas over time, I came to think quite compassionately about these people who are in jobs that were aspects beyond them and who haven’t been in a job where aspects are beyond me. And also, I thought, they just don’t have local how ridiculous like expecting them to do what they can’t do.
And then one thing, this was actually something that Amy talked about that really resonated, and I know a lot of us found it quite jarring because we were thinking of very confronting situations. But she was saying if you were that person, you would do the same.
That’s very confronting when you think of some of the things that people do to other people. And so, I softened and thought, Well, it would be pretty awful working in a job where you don’t actually have the capacity to do all the things that are required.
And they just accepted well that they were doing their best. But of course, there’s another heart level where my sister almost died because of the way things were being done. That’s an example of where I’ve changed. And I think, too, I grew up super protective of her. We all did in our family, and we were very protective.
I remember back to when people use pretty ordinary terms to describe someone like Denise and we were defensive, her siblings. But I think in more recent years, I was able to step have been able to step back a little bit, in that I knew I needed to move out of that situation, we were living in the same town.
I knew that for my health, I needed to not be in the situation with the previous marriage, their business, etc., that I was now not a part of. But that meant leaving my sister, and it was agonizing. I felt very torn about that. But, so a bit of trust, I suppose. I’m not the only one other. People don’t have a system. Not everyone has this. So, I’ve moved in that way, too. But I’m not pretending I find it easy.
Alexandra: No. And then, in terms of her suffering, which I don’t know if she experienced his suffering, but has the way you see that, if it exists, changed?
I’m asking because that’s something I struggle with; seeing other people suffering and really getting a lot of thinking about it.
Anne: I’m not so sure. I think the understanding has certainly made me more compassionate about a lot of things that I might not have had a connection with. But I think I’ve always had that very strong connection with Denise, my sister, and work pretty hard in with the organization that’s often very difficult and challenging in a whole lot of ways.
Because I want things to be better for her, but I guess I’ve expanded a bit because I, it’s not just her. I want things to be better for all people with intellectual disabilities. I listened to a very powerful interview. It was Changeable. So again, it was Amy Johnson’s podcast with a woman called Malene [Colotla].
And I can’t remember her surname, but it was on the interconnectedness of all species. And it just had such a powerful effect on me, when something there’s just a standout one, sometimes that will really trigger me, and that did have such an effect on me.
Even in the way I treat my dogs, I was suddenly thinking, Well, why should I have a more comfortable situation than them and that think that, she’s made more dramatic changes in her life than I have? But, it was something that really affected me in the way she spoke about the interconnectedness of species.
Alexandra: Oh, cool. Well, thank you for mentioning that. I will find that episode and put it in the show notes for sure. So people can see it.
So as we’re coming to the end of our time here, I wanted to ask:
Is there anything else that you would like to share that we haven’t touched on yet today?
Anne: Well, probably one of the most important things in my life is my writing. So, I’ve written three books of poetry. And it’s interesting to me. It comes back to your first question; I think there are things that I’ve written about that based on the three principles, like a concept in a poem that I wasn’t aware of. I know too in my writing that I have changed, that it’s a different lens as everything has changed.
My poetry is such a joy and satisfaction to me, and it connects me with a whole other community. So I think that’s something where I can see the change. But I can also think, Oh, that’s interesting that I could write that back then when I didn’t have that understanding in a formal way.
Alexandra: Oh, fascinating. To me, that points to the truthfulness of these principles and this understanding or the universality.
Anne: And also our own connection with it. That it’s part of us, it’s not out there. It’s us.
Alexandra: Oh, really well said.
Where can we find out more about you and your work? And?
Anne: I have two websites. stormtosky.com. Okay, I have a business to do with coaching and funeral work.
And eagleason.com.au is my writing website.
Alexandra: All right. I’ll put links to both of those as well in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com.
Anne: Thanks, Alexandra. I love hearing from people, so it’s alright if people just want to send through an email or whatever.
Alexandra: Okay, great. Fantastic. Well, this has been a real treat. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
My mood sucks today. It took everything I had to get to my desk and record this episode. But I hope that by sharing what I see about low moods, it will help you when you encounter one.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.
Show Notes
How we’re not responsible for our low moods
How resisting what’s happening (like a low mood) seems to make it sticky
Are low moods a precursor to insight or a new creative idea?
Hello, Explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode number 12 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. And I’m really happy to have you here with me today.
Today the question we’re going to explore is what does my low mood mean?
I’m doing this one specifically today, because my mood is really low today. And I thought what better way to expand on this topic, explore it a little bit. And then I was originally going to post a different q&a episode next week, number 13. But I think what I’m going to do is a follow up episode to this one. In a few days, I’ll record that and just let you know how things are going.
For me right now, my mood is is really low today, like really low. All I want to do is just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling. And it’s kind of been going downhill for a couple of days, I’ve noticed that. What I wanted to talk about was a few different things.
The first thing I want to say is, it’s so easy for us to take these things personally.
Until I learned about this understanding, that’s exactly what I did. And before I started exploring this understanding, I would have heaped blame on myself for this low mood. And that would have looked like a lot of chatter in my head about how can I get out of this mood? How can I change it? What’s wrong with me? What have I done to create this? How can I fix it. A lot of taking responsibility for it innocently.
And maybe talking to myself about being lazy or unmaotivated, anything in that kind of realm. And, again, yeah, that was an innocent reaction to what was happening. I see this kind of situation, this kind of low mood very differently now.
One of the things I wanted to say is that when we have a lot of that chatter about our responsibility for our moods, and blaming ourselves and shaming ourselves for that, that is resistance. So any kind of any kind of chatter like that is really us resisting what is happening. And again, we do this innocently. I certainly did it for years and decades.
The way that I see it so differently now is that instead of it’s instead of thinking that it’s me, somehow magically creating this mood, and I’m somehow responsible for what’s happening. What I see now is that this is universal life energy moving through me, and this is just what’s happening today. And when I see this low mood from that perspective, what that means is that I don’t take it personally at all.
There’s a little bit of background chatter, I guess, about how I don’t like what’s going on. But what’s really nice is that I’m not taking responsibility for it, like I said. It’s something that’s moving through me at this moment. It came in when it wanted to come in, and it’ll leave when it wants to leave. I really see it, that these kinds of things, even when we don’t like them, they have the same kind of wisdom, as the weather and fighting them is just as useless as fighting or complaining about the weather.
So that was the first thing I wanted to say:
It’s the taking of our moods personally, that that really makes them sticky.
And it’s that resistance, or that is resistance and it that just tends to make the situation worse rather than better.
In the past, I think I would have noticed too that because of all the resistance that I would have been doing the moods that I didn’t like lasted way longer, and were much more extreme and were much more painful for me. So yeah, there was just a lot more suffering. because of what I believed was happening because of the responsibility that I believed that I had for that mood.
It seems to me, and this is why I wanted to post this today, record this today and then record a follow up for next week, after a few days, it seems to me that there is always wisdom in these low moods, that’s at least been my experience.
If you go back to Q&A episode 9, that one’s about depression and it ties in really nicely with this episode. And what I saw, and you can listen to the full episode there, but what I saw with the periods of depression that I experienced, was that there was some wisdom to them. The way that I describe it is the tide had gone way out. So, everything got really quiet. And the ocean seemed quite far away.
And if we didn’t know any better, of course, we wouldn’t know that the tide, of course, it always comes back in. So what I’ve been exploring today and what I wanted to share is, what if I just really lean into the wisdom that’s here in this low mood?
What could it be that it’s trying to tell me? Will there be any insights for me about what’s happening?
Now, I think, and I could really explore this in a lot more depth. But one thing that I’m noticing is that sometimes these things happen, and they are just like the weather, they’re just moving through. That’s just what they are. And they finish when they finish and we carry on with our lives.
And then other times, there can be at least my experience has been there can be an insight that comes from, from a situation like a low mood like this. And I don’t know what the difference is. I don’t know why it is that sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe sometimes I just don’t notice the wisdom that comes with the low mood, I’m not sure. But what I want to explore this week with myself is just observing the low mood and whether or not there’s something to be gleaned from it, I’m really not attaching a lot of heaviness or significance to that question.
I’m holding it super lightly.
I can say that in the past the last few months, anytime I enter a low mood, what usually ends up happening, and I think I talked about this on the episode with Jonelle Sims, what usually ends up happening is that as I come out of the low mood, there’s kind of a shift, something creative happens. I have a new idea about something I want to explore here on the podcast or in a piece of writing or whatever it is.
So it is like the tide going out. And then when the tide comes back in, it brings new information. But again, I’m not too attached to that. This may just be a storm moving through, and there’s nothing I need to do about it. And when it’s done, it’ll be done.
So that’s what I wanted to share today. That’s not a very coherent, I don’t think exploration. So I apologize for that. It took everything I had to just show up at my desk here today. But as I say, what I’m really interested to do is to record another episode for next week. So that’ll be episode 13. And that’ll be a follow up to this one about low moods.
So that’s what I wanted to share with you today. Just the ideas of not taking our low moods to personally, not resisting them, which really I think helps them to move through much more quickly.
And then the bonus thing on top of that the icing is being open to the idea that low moods might be a precursor to some sort of shift or insight or idea, or creative impulse or thing that I want to do.
I hope that’s been helpful for you. Thank you so much for listening. I certainly look forward to what’s going to happen next week on episode 13.
Innocently, we can fall into a habit of resisting the experiences our lives bring us. We resist the challenges, the heartache, the struggle. But what if that’s where the juicy stuff is?
Author and coach Phil Goddard joins me to talk about embracing all that life has to offer, even when it’s painful or challenging, and the wisdom and delight that can arise as a result.
Phil Goddard brings a uniquely compassionate understanding of being human into his work as an executive trusted advisor, leadership mentor, and relationship coach, to help organisations develop teams in which people love to work, love to lead, and love to create.
Phil’s work centres around transforming relationships and leadership through developing a deeply grounded understanding of the principles behind our human experience and the nature of how our experience of life is created
He has worked with Hollywood actors, international models, journalists, artists, authors, film directors, corporate executives, and numerous business owners, leaders and entrepreneurs. A prolific writer, ghostwriter, and author of 5 books, he is also the host of the award winning Coaching Life Podcast, and The Loving Being Human Podcast.
Phil: My gosh, thank you for inviting me. Delighted to be here. Thank you.
Alexandra: And from such a long way away. You’re the second person this week that I’ve spoken to from the southern hemisphere. So thank you. Thank you for beaming your way all the way to Canada.
Phil: Only just the southern hemisphere, I think. We’re pretty close to the equator here. And yes, almost the opposite side of the world, I think.
Alexandra: Like if you put a pencil through the globe?
Phil: The American East Coast is pretty much, I know, from the time difference, that’s 12 hours, right? And I think ours is something like 15 or whatever says. This is what you’re saying to record. I record I’m essentially on the next day, and I recommend it. Today’s a good day.
Alexandra: Isn’t that a funny thing that we’re here we are in the present moment, and yet you’re on Wednesday and I’m on Tuesday.
Phil: Some deeply profound lesson in there somewhere? Sure, we can find it. Yes
Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles?
Phil: So probably, like many who even listen or have come across the principles I searched, didn’t know what I was searching for. For most of my life, I’ve got a background in electronics and technology. And my first career was very much in technology. I spent 26 years in total in corporate, a lot of leadership positions.
I loved those. I had my first team leader role will be part of a small team of four or five people in 1991. And I just loved that I had some responsibility, as we all have anyway, of course, but some influence as we all have as well over other people. This was a formal responsibility. So it’s really like from there that I really got, I guess, aware of my interest and curiosity in people.
And, I was doing all that stuff about reading leadership books, personal development books and stuff, but it really kicked off in 1998. A spiritual exploration kicked off then when my first marriage broke down. And my brother-in-law at the time handed me M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled.
It’s a beautiful book because he opened the book with the line, “Life is difficult” and then spends the rest of the book explaining how once we can truly accept with grace, that actually becomes a little bit easier. So in answer to your question, I was on holiday in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt in March 2004.
So 19 years ago, I was reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And I haven’t gone back to this line for many years. So I might have even been quoting it incorrectly. But it doesn’t matter. Because it’s a line in the book, which says something like between stimulus and response is a gap. And in that gap lies your ultimate freedom.
I dropped the book, and I’ve referred to that as my drop the book moment, like I was actually shocked, because I just in that moment, I am creating my experience I just saw in that moment, I’m creating my experience gives me goosebumps, just even relaying that story.
Well, that really started me looking in that direction, like who else has seen this? Who else is teaching this? I came across Michael Neill started listening to his Hay House Radio Show in 2007. And which I think is about the time that he’d come across the principles.
So I didn’t come across the principles. Then, when I came across the principles via Michael Neill, it was like, okay, what a beautiful way to articulate this understanding that I felt I had seen something. It’s a very concise, simple way of describing how we experience life, how we create our experience of life, and essentially who we are.
So, that was my journey into the principles. And of course, I think, I feel like I’ve gone full circle, I’ve had a number of times, which I will call insights, where it’s like, Oh, my God, I’ve seen something deeper since there was something so when was that? I say 2007-2008 coming across the actual principles, but even nearly 10 years after that, I had a conversation with Dicken Bettinger in 2017.
So I’ve been around, I felt I’d been around this understanding a long time. And I really got a holy moly moment, then of just seeing something deeper. And even since then, it’s like nuances to it. So, it feels like it’s been a long time. And also like, it’s only really recently because of the subtleties that we can see.
I used to chuckle at people as well that really come on. It’s just that simple. Okay, how can you suddenly see something deeper in it? Like the best insights or when you see something for me, it looks like the best insights, or you see something new. But there aren’t any new words was like, Well, if I told you what I’m seeing, I’m going to be saying exactly what I said 10 years ago, but it’s like, wow. Yes, that’s my story and summary principles.
Alexandra: I love that you connected your enjoyment of working with people in the tech world. And of course, now you’re a coach. I think that’s just such an interesting journey.
One wouldn’t normally maybe, put those two things together. But clearly, you were on a spectrum. If that’s the right way to describe it.
Phil: For sure. And It was only a couple of years ago that somebody who was coaching me helped me to see that I had been coaching a lot longer than I thought I had. Because right from the off, I wanted to be the best leader, and I wanted people to love me, which actually they did.
I would have either weekly or monthly, just very regular one on one meetings with people in my teams, and I did that alter my leadership career. And looking back, I can see, that was definitely coaching, I would encourage people to bring whatever they have going on.
And in fact, I think there was a time when I was a much better coach, whatever that means. But I was definitely a more present coach with these people. At times, then some of the times during my coaching and training. And a lot of coaching training in the US when I was trying to be somebody I was trying to, I thought I had to be a certain coach.
So, I can see oh, my gosh, I have been coaching for over 30 years, because definitely have regular conversations like that, some will be very intimate, but some beautiful conversations. But it hadn’t occurred to me that what I was doing, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was just one on ones where people just brought whatever they had going on. Well, that just definitely sounds like coaching to me.
Alexandra: Absolutely. Yes, for sure. I mentioned to you that I’ve been reading your book Tasting Mangoes recently, which I just loved. And so I’m going to go to a couple of things that I found in the book now that I found really interesting.
One of the things you say is that often personal development and spiritual teachings are actually asking us to transcend the human experience, but that it’s in the human experience that we find so much treasure, as it were. You didn’t use that word, I’m using that word. I so agree with that.
Could you just expand on that a little bit for us?
Phil: I’ve had this vision, this dream that we arrive at the metaphorical pearly gates, and if it’s St. Peter they’re like checking off his list and whatever. I think for certainly the first 40 years of my life 54 now but definitely, for the first 40 odd years I think I might get reprimanded.
“What the hell were you doing? You went there to be there. You didn’t go there to try and escape. You went there to experience everything that it is to be human.”
Having said that, I can also see that this urge, this desire to want to transcend whatever will perhaps we mean by that maybe I’ll come back to that. It’s also very natural.
It’s also very natural. And I think for me I’ve fallen in love again with being human hence part of my brand I guess you would say is loving being human that pretty much summarizes what I help people with so where is the magic oh my gosh an overused analogy.
Okay, maybe you want to edit it this bit out. It’s so overused, but it’s also so perfect like the wave in the ocean. The magic’s also in the waves, isn’t it right the magic’s in those in those waves.
I love where I live now in Bali actually is there’s the calmest ocean probably on the island. I love floating in there. But there are people out there surfing it in the distance and stuff like the magic of that. And, I think I might even say that there’s some magic even in the suffering. Gosh, I could talk about this a lot. I’m just trying to think well, what waterway I want to summarize because generally, I will be talking about this for a year in conversation with people, right?
So what can I summarize in a 30 or 40-minute conversation around this, I’ve come to see. And again, it’s funny how it comes right back to that very first spiritual book that I read. I come to see that once I stopped resisting aspects of being human, including suffering, in the absence of resistance, love arose.
Love arises in the absence of resistance. And there’s magic in that. And I think even that desire to transcend really is coming from a feeling that well, this should or could be different. I don’t know if this is right or wrong, maybe I’ve got completely the wrong way around.
And now when I get to those pearly gates, Peter says, you had it nailed on, you spent 40 years trying your best, I thought you’re gonna make it. And then you gave up?
Alexandra: Exactly. I love that, and I think you’re so right about it just being human nature, to try to avoid suffering, and I really understand why we do that.
If we just lean in a little more, I think there is so much beauty to be found there and less suffering when there’s less resistance for sure.
Phil: I think whatever we have going on resistance acts as a suffering multiplier, and that’s fine. Because I guess if I was to have any gripe about how the three principles are taught, I see them being taught as a means to reduce our suffering. Whereas as far as I can tell, and I’ve listened to a lot of Syd Banks talks was all really descriptive rather than prescriptive.
So the teaching of the principles was often used as learn this, and then you will suffer less. And I think that has come from a place that’s not the most helpful because this reducing in suffering, and quite frankly, it’s not like the disappearing of all suffering, it really is this, there’s something that eases around it.
And it’s like a contradiction that the suffering just becomes easier through understanding, as I haven’t done anything. I’ve not even tried to suffer less. I heard Aaron Turner speaking on a podcast a year or two ago. And he said, he can always tell when somebody is relatively new to the understanding because he’ll talk to them about the principles and they’ll say something like, it’s been beautiful. It’s been it had a beautiful impact on my life.
However, I still notice that I’m experiencing sadness, anger, anxiety, or whatever. Whereas he says that people who have been in the understanding for a while come to see that. Yes, that’s it. And the phrase he used, which I loved, and that I’ve stolen many times since his, we can’t escape the system. Like this is this is all part of the gig, which is the language I use, like, this is it, the heartbreak and whatever that’s all part of. That’s part of the gig.
Alexandra: It’s part of the game. I truly agree. I was going to say there was something I used to think about, which was that it’s like we’re trying to rig the game if we try to avoid the things that are naturally happening within it. And that defeats the purpose as it were.
I’m going to go back to Tasting Mangoes and ask you. There is this lovely quote, so I’m going to quote you to yourself if that’s okay.
“You just might find what you were looking for, when you notice how your search is the very thing that is obscuring your view of it.”
I’d love for you to talk about that a little bit and maybe relate it to trying to let go have an unwanted habit because that’s what we talk about here a lot on Unbroken.
Phil: I’m glad you’ve added the second part, actually, because that definitely will help in my explanation. So here’s the thing: If I search for something, my premise is I don’t have it, or I can’t yet see it, or maybe it’s detached from me in some way.
There’s a guy, William White Cloud, and I continue to credit him because the phrase that I heard it’s just had such a profound impact where, he says, was it four or five words? Compensating strategy for perceived inadequacies.
We employ, throughout life, various compensating strategies for perceived inadequacies.
I can see how anytime that I employ a compensating strategy, my perceived inadequacy or the perception of that inadequacy get strengthened by the action that I’m actually taking. And that’s happening at pretty deep levels, like that’s the message to my subconscious, because you’re inadequate in this way you need to do this, it’s really strengthening that.
So even if we are searching for love that’s how we had a deep psychological impact in us that we don’t have love. And that can apply as well to peace. Like if I’m searching for peace, that means I don’t have it, and that’s why I continue to search. And yet, because I’m searching, I strengthen the belief that I don’t have it done.
So that also strengthens my experience of it. So that’s really what I’m pointing to in that quote. I think habits, like overeating and stuff, I think there’s very often more to them than just that because there’s gosh, okay, so I know that I’ve had at various times not the most healthy relationship with food, sometimes I think I have it nailed.
And then I can catch myself using food as something other than nourishment, I guess. But it might be a moment, I might use it for emotional nourishment. In fact, side note here, I think we could wipe out obesity in a generation, as parents, if we stopped using food as a reward mechanism.
There’s a side note, but the thing is, food becomes quite complex because we have an emotional relationship with food, other than it being food, fuel, and nourishment for our bodies. So I think that whole overeating thing, generally. In my experience, when I’ve delved into this, both in my own experience and with clients is never really actually about overeating, right? That’s a byproduct.
That’s a coping strategy. Overeating becomes a coping strategy. So we want to look at, well, what’s the perceived inadequacy, the perceived absence? What is it? And it can be? For sure, like, Oh, I’m lonely, so I’m eating well, okay, so feeling lonely, completely natural.
What is it? So is there a perceived inadequacy that I can’t deal with the loneliness? So there can be many different things to look at there. But the overriding thing is not really it. It’s really what’s behind that.
Alexandra: Thank you for saying that. The title of my most recent book is It’s Not About the Food. I totally agree.
Shifting gears slightly, one of the things you come back to a couple of different times is your relationship with your dad and how getting curious about him was a big moment for you.
I wondered if you could share a little bit about that because I thought it was so impactful for any relationship, not just with a parent.
Phil: Gosh, I’m just noticing as well; even the emotion in me is quite alive with this one. Because, so I didn’t like my dad for all of my childhood and the vast majority of my adult life. It wasn’t until I was 48 that I had this moment, which is funny because I thought I’d done some work before then.
I was like, I’ve forgiven him. I remember a girlfriend I had years ago said, there’s still more for you to see here. It’s like she could see so you could say, okay, it looks like that to you that she was actually spot on. Well, I think the emotion, by the way, is because I just came back in Bali in February. I’ve been back to England for a few months and in Greece as well.
And so I say goodbye again, once again, to my dad, who’s now 88, like my plan and has proved to be valid for a year. So, there’s this thinking there, and it’s like, okay, well, I didn’t enjoy my dad. And in fact that he got really bad press in my first book, Musings On Love and I even used the term abuse. I had this moment of I’ve seen more and more and more and more and more the role of my stories in life.
You’ve probably heard Byron Katie says no two people have ever met. And what she basically pointing to is that we only experience the story of the other person. A client of mine recently when I said, there are six people in your marriage, there’s you and your husband, then there’s your husband’s story of you and your story of your husband.
And, then, there’s your story of you and your husband’s story of him. Like, there’s like this six people.
So I realized in a moment, I thought, I call this stuff going on, I won’t use a word that you might have to bleep out. Anyway, I had done all this stuff going on about my dad, and who knows where the thought came from. What’s it like to really be him, though? We had been talking about my book and stuff.
And I just realized I don’t really know what it’s like to be him. I can imagine what it was like being me in his situation. And I imagined what it was like for the story. That’s my story of my dad in that situation. And it was laced with lots of should and musts, and what have you. And I just noticed him. I never spoke to him about it.
I never asked him how did you feel when you got home from a long day at work, as four of us children, you got home and I said, I remember you getting home and having your dinner, separate from us because it was too late for us. And he would have his dinner and put his headphones on. And for 30-odd years since then, I’ve been saying, God, how out of order was he to just block out his family, right? That was my story.
He admitted, he found it tough. He found it hard being a provider, being really tired, and then expected to be there for his children. I have to say, I do chuckle at people who say who’ve never I’ve never been a parent yet. And then they’ve they’re about to be in that like, no, we get it.
So I just asked what was that like for you? In essence, what I was getting to know, we’re what we’re here; I could see his coping strategies for life and for how he was feeling. And realize, I mean, this is a phrase that’s used very much, and the principle is the innocence of that and just doing what makes sense.
And that leads on to something else about forgiveness, because it’s like, where I was coming from before was like, oh, what he did was wrong. But in my understanding, in my moral high ground, I can understand that made sense to him. So yes, I forgive him. However, when you have a real depth of understanding, I can see that he was innocent.
And therefore the condemnation, no, it was the condemnation, was unnecessary. And without condemnation forgiveness is unnecessary. It was like it just made sense to me. I just started to really get to know well, this is yet another layer, but I started to get to know who my dad thought he was. Because all I got up to that point was who I thought my dad was and who I thought my dad should be. When I started to get just to get to know who he thought he was.
Alexandra: Wow. And I’m so curious. Your dad is obviously British. So pretty stiff upper lip, I’m imagining.
Was he open to your curiosity?
Phil: I remember being amazed by it because I can probably summarize. We never had any deep and meaningful talks. We never had any conversations really about feelings. In fact, leading up to this breakthrough moment, I’d had what I found a very painful breakup with somebody.
And at the same time, just looping back to what I said earlier is like, I was utterly heartbroken at this breakup. And yet, at the same time, I could see this is cool. This is fine. Let it be, even the sobbing in the fetal position in my lounge. There was still in a level of awareness that this is all-natural, let that be.
Anyway, I got to a point I was around him one day. And he just said, Well, how are you doing? And I just burst out crying. I was a 40-odd-year-old man. And he said, Oh, come on. Now come on. Now, let’s not be having that here because that is that whole, like stiff, stiff upper lip attitude. And we never had any conversations about feelings; there wasn’t that affection there.
And there’s a bit of me I’m chuckling about that. I remember at the time, and things have developed since then, I don’t even know if he’s aware of this or shared that I’ve shared this before in other interviews and what have you. But since, like these conversations, I used to go to his house.
And I would sit on the sofa. And he would sit at a chair which is at right angles. When I go around now, and probably nine times out of 10. He comes and sits on the sofa with me. I bet he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing that.
Alexandra: That’s lovely. Wow. that’s beautiful. I think I resonate with that a lot because I can really relate. When my dad came home from work, he didn’t put headphones on, he drank. It’s the same impulse. We do what occurs to us in the moment in order to cope with whatever’s going on in our thinking and all that stuff.
So, I can completely relate to that. And the reason I asked that question about whether he was open to your curiosity or not – my dad has passed away now, and he would never have answered a question like that if I had asked.
It’s lovely that your dad has moved on to the couch with you.
Phil: I don’t think he was comfortable about it because it was uncharted territory for him and but he accepted that book with such grace when I offered it to him. I was excited about my first book, and I forewarned him. I’d written stuff in the book my first book first couple of books really were stuff that I’d written over a period of years, and I forewarned him that there’s this stuff that I have written in there and published which I would probably write differently today and after reading it.
He was so excited to read it. He took on board advanced warning of course and afterward he said I’d like to talk to you about some of the things in the book because he actually was something that I think stirred in him and this is what I see in all of us like we all do want to be known. We want to be seen heard understood and indeed validated.
And like, oh my god, how much personal development relationship coaching do we see that says we should transcend that overcome that deal with that? It’s like, no, this is we’re not designed to just live alone. And it’s like this is again part of the gig is to be relating with each other with nature and having those innate needs.
I’ve given up on trying to transcend hundreds of 1000s of years of human evolution. I have a need to be validated. I have a need to be seen, heard, understood, as did my dad so he would have never used those words.
But, I really honor him, and I’m so grateful to him for honoring that desire to want to have that dialogue because, up till then, it does need some time since he’s very stubborn. I am, too. I can see like there’s stuff I get from him. I don’t know if it’s generic or conditioning, but like I can be really stubborn too. He doesn’t like to be wrong.
That’s probably my favorite thing altogether out of the Stephen Covey book has habit three I don’t know four. “Seek first to understand, then be understood.” And if you want to know how to transform any relationship, professional or personal, if you take that, seek first to understand, then be understood. That’s that whole curiosity thing as well.
So, at that moment, so grateful because it totally transformed my relationship with him. We hug each other, and I have to say we’re so different. It’s not like, oh, he’s a best buddy that I love hanging out with like we’re so different.
He’s not someone that I wouldn’t be choosing just to hang out with, but what again, instead of me resisting how he is and entertaining all of my stories, right in the absence once again of that resistance, there is this very natural novelette the guy’s my dad and once we start on the thought train so once I started really appreciating oh my god, how hard it was for him or what a wonderful provider he was? Of course, he is.
There’s lots of things he did, like he disowned me for ten years, right? I cannot imagine doing that to my son and yet we discussed that he is talking about how it was with his second wife, the woman he left my mother for. Oh my gosh, that sounds like an impossible situation like he’s having to choose between his wife and his son.
Anyway, yes, I think we digressed a little bit. I’m just super, super grateful for that. I don’t know for sure, but I have seen it many times since that if I am curious.
There’s something in that, like, I can always go first when I’m coaching somebody around, they’re relating. If I want more intimacy, the number one requirement of intimacy is safety. So am I providing safety for intimacy? Am I curious about the other person?
Am I willing to go first? Will I be the change that I wish to see in how I’m relating? So classic, isn’t it, and it all fits together? So, just super, super grateful that everything led up to that moment? And indeed, what blossoms.
Alexandra: Oh, gorgeous. We’ve mentioned your books a few times. And one of the things I wanted to ask about was the writing process. You mentioned there that some of them were writing over a long period of time. Tell us about it, just tell us about that.
What you enjoy about writing? What motivates you that thing to share what you see
Phil: whatever’s alive, energy, I can be inspired by BS. In fact, I’ve written about being inspired by BS. It’s lonely, like really, whatever is alive. And there are some things I published a book, just poetry. I had this moment one day.
It was, I think it was, about 3:30 In the afternoon when I thought to myself, I wonder if I’ve got enough poetry to publish a poetry book. And so I then started getting stuff together. And by the following morning, that was published on Amazon. I’d just put it all together, put a cover, and whatever.
I can talk about that, like, with my clients who say, Oh, I’d love to publish a book, but it would take too long. Okay, we can do it in less than 24 hours if we want to, so that some of that poetry has just I can read it. In fact, Facebook’s memory sometimes just reminds me I can read stuff that I’ve read.
Oh, wow. And I can even see stuff in it deeper that I didn’t see when I was writing. It says that cliché thing about writing this stuff that can come through us like the genius, the true self, spirit, whatever names we want to use, there’s that there’s some writing that I’m really opinionated.
Just like my dad, I’m really opinionated about stuff. The difference that’s happened is I have a very casual, very light, humorous, amusing relationship with my opinions.
Because I can see that they’re not they’re not correct. That’s all they are. They’re just my opinions. But their stuff, I can feel energized about that. I will right and can be in a bit of a rant, I did something quite recently, actually, about some aspects of the coaching profession. So that was genuine.
And here’s the thing writing becomes just really the vehicle of expression. I noticed that there are times when I tried to write never worked out very well. I can, and in fact, a friend of mine reflected back to me exactly that it’s some of your writing is just like mind-blowing. And then I can hear saying, I can tell occasionally I see something your yours. I think you’ve tried with the hammer. You tried to drive to make a point.
So there isn’t a single reason why, right? It just happens. And in a way, I feel five my books a bit of a cheat because I say Well, I haven’t written any books. I’ve written stuff and the stuff that’s in those books I published elsewhere, predominantly on social media, and sometimes I written for online magazines a few times, and then I’ve just, like, collated stuff, put it together, and put it in a book. Interesting.
I’m noticing now there are two books that I do have in progress. And I’m like determined not to publish that stuff. I’m going to write a book, and it’s not going as well, and not finding that so easy. So I have to like to ease up on that and just let the writing flow. So writing is not really something I do. It’s something I allow
Alexandra: Lovely. That’s well said.
I was in Portland, Oregon, recently with Michael Neill and Barbara Patterson. And Michael has just published Mavis Karn’s first book. And so he told a little story there. He said he went to her and said, Mavis, I’d love for you to write a book and share your wisdom and that thing. And she said, I don’t know how to write a book; there’s no way.
And he said, no, but you know how to write letters. And so that’s was referring, of course, with her most famous letter to the children, the boys in prison. And that’s a collection of her letters, it’s lovely. It’s a really nice and really nice book. So we’re just about running out of time here.
I do want to ask you about Bali, and what drew you there, and what keeps you there?
Phil: I moved into an apartment in Ipswich in England. I woke up one day and realized I didn’t want to be in my marriage anymore. I’ve been divorced twice. And I was just so clear. So I moved into an apartment. I had what would look like the dream life, be a huge house, fast cars, eating at restaurants, and whatever.
And I had enough of it, I didn’t even want a garden. So it’s like there was this, I went from this huge life to this small move into this apartment, just for six months until I work out what I want to do with the rest of my life. And I was there for nine and a half years. It became a bit of a joke. Anyway, so Bali came up in a conversation with a friend. There were a few things that happened.
And again, there’s not a single answer to this. The predominant thing was that actually, there’s two aspects to moving to Bali; there’s a moving away from England, there was some friendships that had evolved to this or perhaps should come to completion would be much the most kind way of saying. These are long-term friendships to 20 odd years, 30 odd years.
We change, right? We evolve. And it just became really clear, okay, these friendships are complete. And so what was keeping me in England, other than family, and what have you? There was less of that. And, there was this thing in me that I’d always talked about it moving to somewhere warmer.
And then, I had a friendship with my partner. For a number of years, actually, we met in a Facebook group. It might have even been a Michael Neill group, by the way, so we’ve been friends for a while. And then, in early 2019, this friendship, we just became more in that we were sharing more, talking more.
And then we bumped into this point of like, well, we don’t know if we want to cross this particular line. It was never any, like, flirtatious stuff, but there was a lot of love and affection there. I just felt like there’s more to explore.
So I came to Bali predominantly to get away from perhaps some sadness, quite frankly, of things that had completed in England, and to meet this beautiful young lady who I am now in this life partnership with. I mean, that’s been very, very bumpy. But, there are the reasons really twofold the away from and the towards.
Alexandra: Wow, so interesting. And there is a section in Tasting Mangoes where you talk about the, for lack of a better way to put the pros and cons of Bali. The mosquitoes versus the nice warm evenings, the water versus the weather, the fresh fruit. So I guess that goes with anywhere we live.
Phil: I did that like, again, looking for a place that I could pour called Paradise. And I’m not really convinced it exists. But I definitely see that there’s a state of mind that that feels like paradise. But like all states of mind. It’s not permanent and is transient. Right?
Alexandra: As we wrap up, is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet?
Phil: I think we have touched on it. But I do want to labor the point because I invite people to really look at just how much time we are spending resisting what really are very natural aspects of being human. And what might happen, what might be available to us, what experience of life might be available to us.
If we just let up on some resistance. So here’s the thing. I know she won’t mind me sharing with you. It’s anonymous, but somebody I know has experienced what we would call a betrayal. And so she was telling me on a call, I hate him. I feel like I hate him. And I don’t want to.
And I simply said, Well, to me, under those circumstances, it feels like having those feelings of hatred is perfectly natural. And, yet, by then telling yourself while resisting that, it’s like you’re torturing yourself twice. How about you allow yourself to hate him to the best of your ability to feel that hatred to the best of your ability? We both laughed at this.
But, like, that’s the same, really, with any feeling that we have. How about if we really allow that, if we really allow us to feel that to the best of our ability, like none of our feelings really need a coping strategy? They all really do pass.
So, that’s what I just really invite people to look at to see what’s it like to stop resisting being human. And once again, love arises in the absence of resistance. I just invite people to consider what it’d be like to love being human.
Alexandra: Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Phil: I’m mostly active on Facebook. And people can find my profile, I set up a domain, which will just take you to my profile. FBPhil.com can just take you to my Facebook profile, you can just follow me, I’m getting close to a Facebook friends list.
So I might not accept a friend request. But you can certainly follow me and engage there. My very out-of-date website, there’s my podcasts on there. PhilG.com. And my email address is on my website.
I’m always delighted to hear from people if they’ve read something of mine that’s touched them or even if they don’t, if they don’t like it. I’m also happy to hear from them.
Alexandra: That’s generous of you. Thank you so much, Phil, for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Phil: Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. I’ve liked being this side of the whole podcast set up, so thank you very much. Thank you. Good.
Alexandra: Oh, you’re very welcome. Take care. Bye.
If you experience anxiety this podcast episode will help clarify where it comes from, what it is, and how simply knowing these two things will change your anxiety for the better.
You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources, and a full transcript are below.
Hello explorers, and welcome back to a Q&A episode of Unbroken. This is Q&A Episode 11 and I’m so happy to have you here. My name is Alexandra Amor and these are the episodes of the podcast where I answer your questions.
So just a reminder, you can submit a question that you’ve got about unwanted habits, anything like that, to alexandraamor.com/question. There’s a form there you can fill out and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future episode.
Today the question is, “What is anxiety?”
This is a topic close to my heart, because I’ve got a funny story about my own personal experience with anxiety that I’ll get to in just a second.
Very simply, anxiety is our body’s way of letting us know that we’re caught up in some insecure thinking.
That’s all it is. It’s very simple. It’s actually the opposite of what it can look like to us, which I think is what makes it such an interesting topic. It’s not a problem. And we’ll talk about why that is in just a second. It’s not something we need to manage or control.
Very similarly to cravings that we have when we have an unwanted habit, anxiety is information from the wisdom and the the universal life energy that’s within all of us. So we’ll talk about that a bit more in just a second. Right now, I want to share my personal experience, just so you know, that I know whereof I speak.
For years, I experienced a form of anxiety that I would describe as urgency.
The really funny thing about it is I didn’t know that that’s what it was. Put a pin in that, because it’s really interesting that we misunderstand the messages that are coming from our body and our wisdom. And that was absolutely true for me.
For as long as I could remember, I felt a sense of urgency. I wouldn’t say of course, I can’t say 100% of the time, but a lot of the time, especially around work, and also around things like running errands, for example. So that was one that was really puzzling for me. If I had a list of, let’s say, four errands that I needed to run, I would be out doing them and I would get to the second one, and start to feel this sense of urgency like I just needed the errands to be finished.
Inevitably, probably nine times out of 10, maybe more, I would just say “Oh, forget it” about the last two errands on the list. And I would go home. That was because that information that was going on in my body, that feeling of urgency, felt like information to me that was pertinent to the situation that I was in.
It was only much later once I began to explore this inside out understanding that I realized that that wasn’t what it was. And the funny thing is, I never would have described myself as an anxious person. Like I said, it was very specifically a sense of urgency that I felt.
And then I was listening to Nicola Bird’s podcast, A Little Peace of Mind, probably back in 2018 and she had a guest on and I don’t remember who the guests was. But as they were having their conversation, the guest just happened to mention that urgency was the same as anxiety, it was just in a different form. I was really struck by that. It really turned my world upside down. It was one of those moments. I just thought wait, what, wait a second.
Until then I had been really attracted to her podcast. I listened to it every week. And I really enjoyed it. And the funny thing was, if I had thought about it logically, I didn’t understand why that was that I was really enjoying it. And then when this guest said that thing I realized oh okay, I now I get it, I can really relate to what was going on when her guests would talk about anxiety because like the guest said, urgency is just another form of anxiety.
So once I saw that I was absolutely thrilled. I’m going to go on and explain a little bit more about anxiety and that kind of thing. But the nice thing is about exploring this understanding was that what I noticed was that gradually, without really do without doing anything, really, the anxiety or the urgency that I felt, just started to fall away. I still experienced it occasionally. And I’ll talk about that in a minute, too. It just, it was so interesting to me that simply by looking in this direction, by learning more about how we work from the inside out, how thought, is this river of energy moving through us. And our experiences and our circumstances are two separate things, even though we often conflate them.
So just by being an explorer in this understanding, that sense of urgency has fallen away from me, for the most part, and when it does crop up now I don’t really get too bothered by it. And I certainly don’t listen to it the way I used to.
Okay, so let’s dive into a bit of what that feeling is, whether it’s a feeling of urgency or anxiety.
What’s really going on is that we are always feeling our thinking.
We are divinely designed. And in our bodies, we are always feeling the quality of the thinking that’s going on in our minds. And those two things are always happening simultaneously, which is entirely normal and natural.
It’s actually helpful when we feel feelings of anxiety, that’s actually a really helpful tool that we have, as we operate in the world and navigate our lives. Because what it’s telling us is that the quality of our thinking is not so great, that our thinking has really sped up, it’s become quite insecure, quite busy. And that feeling of anxiety is is what is going to tell us that because it’s going to get our attention.
Anxiety is information.
It’s just not the information that we tend to interpret it as. For example, the misunderstanding we tend to have is that anxiety is information about the outside world. When we innocently believe that the world works in an outside-in kind of way, then when we feel anxiety or urgency like I did, we think that that’s information about what’s going on outside of us.
For example, if someone has anxiety about being in a car, then they feel like that anxiety is about the car, it’s about being in the car, it’s about being nervous about traffic. If someone feels anxious when they go more than 25 minutes from their home, which is a specific example from Nicola Bird, then, when that happens when they get 24 minutes away from their house, they feel that that anxiety that they’re feeling is information that they should pay attention to, and then return to their home.
If someone feels anxiety about bridges, they think that the anxiety that they feel is actually about the bridges that are on the outside of themselves. But again, that’s not what anxiety is. Anxiety is simply information, letting us know the quality of our thinking. And we’re constantly getting that information from our bodies. There’s this perfect feedback system that exists within us or it is what we are.
So, when we start to get those butterflies in our stomach, or sweaty palms or those panicky feelings about the situation that we think our anxiety is about. What that’s really about is, is that we have a lot of just like I said, sped up insecure thinking about a given situation, or person or bridge, or whatever it is.
What we can do when we feel that kind of anxiety is simply notice that it’s there.
And notice that it’s making a comment on the quality of our thinking. It has nothing to do with bridges, or traffic, or cars, or anything like that. And unfortunately, what can often happen with anxiety is once we feel the initial feeling, and misunderstand it, thinking it’s about the bridge or the traffic, then we innocently layer a whole bunch more thinking on top of that. So this is what happens when we create our lives so that we avoid situations that are that we think, are making us anxious.
If someone is anxious about bridges, they might arrange their world and go from A to B making sure that they don’t have to drive over a bridge. And the more that we assign that anxiety to things that are going on outside of us to bridges, to traffic to cars, whatever it is, the smaller our world becomes. And this is really sad and unfortunate.
When we misinterpret these signals from our body, what we naturally tend to do is try to avoid the situation that we believe is creating the anxiety. So circling back to my urgency situation in my running errands thing, I was doing the best I could in that moment by not doing the last couple of errands that were on my list. That was my innocent response to that feeling of urgency.
The feeling of urgency is there. I think it’s giving me information about these errands that I’m running. And in order to make that feeling go away, naturally, because I misunderstand where it’s coming from, I think to myself, Okay, I’m just going to forget those last two errands and go home. And that’s what I did for probably three decades. And to a certain degree it worked.
The only problem is that then I wasn’t living the life that I wanted to lead. I was living my life at times, at the mercy of that feeling of urgency, because I misunderstood what it was telling me. And that’s really unfortunate. In my case, that was a pretty minor example. I would say it the urgency affected me in a lot of different ways in my life. But that’s kind of the most concrete example. And even so if that’s not that serious.
We’ve all heard of and maybe you are someone who has become frightened of leaving their house, because the the way that they feel they can avoid the feelings of anxiety that they feel, is by not doing the things that bring up the anxiety, or that they misunderstand are bringing up the anxiety. And again, that’s exactly what I did. I thought the errands were the thing that were giving me the anxiety. So I just stopped doing them and went home.
What can we do about about this when we start to feel feelings of anxiety?
if you’re someone who experiences them a little or a lot. And as with all the exploring that we’re doing about the inside-out nature of life, there are two things that are really important. One is simply continuing your exploration, and I’ve got a resource that I’m going to give you at the end of this episode. So listening to podcasts like mine and others Nicola Bird’s, is specifically about anxiety.
What’s what’s really important to notice is that no matter what anyone who’s exploring this understanding is sharing they’re all pointing in the same direction. So even if you’re listening to one of my podcast episodes, for example, about cravings or overeating or any kind of overing habit, because we’re talking about principles of how being human works, those principles apply to every aspect of life. So they apply to our overing habits or unwanted habits. And they apply to anxiety as well.
When we begin to understand that, when we begin to see how it is our human system is designed, and that the design is always trying to help us not hinder us at all, I can just go back to my personal experiences, then my feelings of urgency and anxiety just started to fall away on their own because I understood what was happening.
Even now, I still do experience urgency.
It does come up from time to time, and it’s just as uncomfortable as it was back when I didn’t understand what it was. The difference now is that, first of all, I know that, because that feeling is part of my design, divine design, I don’t need to be afraid of it.
The second thing is, I know that it’s going to pass by. I know that that feeling is part of the river of Thought with a capital T that is flowing through me, and that it will move on. I’ll get distracted, something will change. If I’m anxious about let’s say, anytime I’ve given a public talk, or I’ve been a guest on a webinar, or a podcast or anything like that, I know for sure that once I start talking, the anxiety tends to disappear, because now my mind is focused on something else.
The other thing I know is that as my mind quiets down, those feelings of urgency or anxiety will go away. So it’s important to know those things.
I think the second most important thing is to, I was gonna say, catch yourself, notice what’s happening when you’re feeling anxious. And the thing is that very often, we can be asleep to that. So it can be happening, and we can have some sort of an automatic response.
For me, it might be, to go back to the errand example, automatically coming home and saying, forget it about a couple of my errands. I might have done that when I was first beginning to understand this. And that’s okay. When we fall asleep to this understanding, that’s fine. You might catch it the next time.
When you do, it’s enough to to notice and just try to remember Oh, right, this is my wisdom, my kind design, and it’s letting me know that my thinking is really stirred up. And that’s all it is.
It’s not information about the future.
It’s not information about bridges, or traffic or anything like that. And I think it’s important not to necessarily force yourself to change, to have that situation change, to try to force your anxiety to disappear. It’s really enough, as I said earlier, to just simply continue to explore this understanding. And as you begin to realize, and have your own personal insights, about how we are designed and how these things work, then the anxiety is going to fall away all on its own.
And then a third thing I will recommend is Nicola Bird’s book, A Little Peace of Mind. So if you’re watching on YouTube, I’m holding up the cover. It’s a great book. She used to teach workshops and that kind of thing, she doesn’t do that anymore. Bt previously she really placed a focus on helping people with anxiety because she experienced it so much in her own personal life.
And it really, it really had an adverse effect. She talks about not being able to go on trips with her children and only being able to go 25 minutes away from her house, because then her anxiety would flare up and tell her she had to get home.
She had a really profound change once she came upon this understanding. So that’s a great resource.
You can ask for the book at your local public library. It’s available in paperback ebook and audiobook and Nicola herself recorded the audiobook. You can ask for the paperback at your local independent bookstore. And then it’s also available in the online stores as well. I highly recommend that.
That’s it for today’s Q&A episode. Thank you so much for joining me.
Again, if you have any questions about that, or about unwanted habits, let me know: alexandraamor.com/question.
Thanks again so much for being here, and I’ll see you next time.
Sensitivity to Our Thinking with Jonelle Simms
Apr 20, 2023
When we are struggling with an overeating habit, does that mean that we’re extra sensitive to the thinking that’s going on within us?
This is the question I posed to my friend Jonelle Simms. We go deep into the source of our thinking, if we can in fact be ‘too’ sensitive to it, where our moods come from, how little control we have over them, and much more.
After having a significant insight that fundamentally changed her understanding life, Jonelle left her career as a corporate trainer, curriculum developer, coach, and organizational development specialist to work in support of those in her community facing the challenges of poverty, homelessness, illness, addiction, and marginalization.
She created the ProcrastinationPublications.com website in 2013 simply as a resource for herself and those interested in the Three Principles. No new resources have been added since 2018, but she keeps the site live for anyone to access. Her occasional blogs can be found on the website, with the more recent ones posted regularly on her 3P Services page on Facebook.
Alexandra: Today is going to be a little bit different. I’ll just explain to the listeners that it’s going to be less of an interview and more of a conversation since you and I are friends. And I had this subject come up that I was interested in.
So before we jump into that, why don’t you tell us about your background, how you got interested in the principles.
Jonelle: I’m somewhat retired right now. But my background was in training and people development. And for a long time, I spent learning how to fix myself and other people through self-help. But I still suffered a little bit from ongoing depression.
At some point, I just eventually gave up because I got fed up with trying to fix myself. And at that time, when I came across the three principles, and I think there’s some significance in that, although who knows, they say, once you surrender, then you all of a sudden, you see things that you didn’t see before, so or when the student’s ready, the teacher appears.
But I wasn’t looking so I stopped reading books, I stopped doing all of that stuff. And I just happened to come across a blog of a former manager that I used to work for. And she mentioned working with someone else that I knew. And they were working with these people called the Pranskys.
I knew everything about self-help but I’d never heard of Pransky before. So I just googled their name. And I came across this thing called the Three Principles movie site, which doesn’t exist anymore, it’s stored on another website. Anyway, I just watched a couple of the videos, Syd Banks and George Pransky, Linda Pransky, and then Jack Pransky.
And it was about an hour in probably watching them and thinking how unprofessional the videos were like, they’re just, these people having these conversations. I just was snickering, or they’re laughing at the time and are being amused by it. And at some point, I just heard Jack Pransky say:
“How can we take ourselves seriously in light of the fact that we’re making it up?”
I’d never heard anything like the before. I had a huge physical change from one moment before I was fully in the heaviness of my experience of life in thought. And the next moment, I was just free of it all. I realized how all my suffering had been self-created through my thinking unknowingly and innocently.
And I just experienced a spiritual awakening; I felt this experience of impersonal unconditional love. And I realized, this is what God is. This is what all the ways have been pointing to throughout time. So the experience lasted about three days. And then I slowly started getting back to, how I felt before.
But since then, I’ve always had that as a North Star for me, there’s a truth in that for me that I can keep on leaning back into. And I’ve just been unwrapping that for the last 10 years since but it’s slowly realizing the next layer of personal crazy of thinking that I added to my existence that makes me suffer. So much smell I came across the principles.
Alexandra: What effect do you think this understanding has had on your life?
Jonelle: It’s odd because it doesn’t feel like it’s changed anything and yet it also at the same time feels profoundly significant. It’s like all the outer world around me hasn’t changed. I’m still in the same body. I still have the same house and the same friends.
I was working the same job, so none of that really changed immediately. But over time, at the same time, I saw everything differently. I was different. It was like I was looking through different eyes. I was experiencing everything differently. I wasn’t getting as triggered or upset by things I wasn’t.
I just knew that there was this other truth. And even if I did get upset, which I still did lots, I still do, I come out of it quicker. I have some sense of I know what’s going on. So I don’t have to dig into it as deeply as I did before.
So I don’t feel like a lot of people really haven’t said that. I’ve changed at all. But I certainly feel like there’s a Jonelle before, there was a clear Jonelle before that experience and a Jonelle after. Right.
Alexandra: And you talked about, and we’ve touched on this before about the self-help exploration and dealing with depression.
What’s your experience of depression since then?
Jonelle: I still have it. I’m still in and out of it. But I see it entirely differently. And I just have a different experience of it. In some cases, it can feel even worse than it did before. The feelings can be even stronger in some ways. But there’s this part of me that knows what’s going on.
And it’s like, well, this is the latest thing that my thinking is up to and, and I’m more accepting of it or understanding of it. I know what’s happening in a way. I don’t know how it’s happening or why it’s happening. And sometimes I want to know how and why.
But I’m just aware that there’s almost like, the whole thing created a separation between me and my experience of life, so now there’s this little me, Jonelle, the little girl who I’ve been all along. And before I was attached to all the experiences outside of me and within me, and now it’s like I get to be more of I still have the pain I still have suffering still has challenges.
But I’m more of a watcher because I’m aware that in between me and the experience is this flow of thinking that’s creating in me that experience, regardless of what’s going on outside of me or inside of me.
Alexandra: That makes sense. Very well said. Thank you.
I approached you and said that I’d had this experience and wanted to talk about it. So for the for the listeners, I’ll just explain.
I was in Portland a few weeks ago with Michael Neill and Barbara Patterson at a little weekend retreat.
Michael had explained the difference between experience and circumstances and how there’s an impermeable line between those two things. And we innocently, before we come across this understanding, think that they’re the same. We think that we have a circumstance that’s going on and that our experience is, is a reaction to that circumstance.
And so we had been having that discussion for a little while. So that was a way of explaining the nature of thought that it comes from the inside out. It doesn’t come from the outside in, even though we often think it looks that way.
There was this woman who was asking a question, and one of the things that she was explaining was that she felt like she was a sensitive person to the people around her.
So her mom was actually there at the retreat with her, and they’re very close. And, she said, she often, feel could feel upset or whatever if her mom was going through something. And so, what she was pointing to was what she was trying to say to Michael was, it’s not that way, it doesn’t come from the inside out. It comes from the outside in.
And what he actually said in response to her was, well, you’re not actually sensitive to what’s going on the outside. You’re sensitive to your thinking. And it really rocked my world. I got so much out of the weekend, and I learned a lot and connected with so many nice people.
But that sentence was the thing I really walked away with and haven’t been contemplating ever since.
When you hear that we are sensitive to our thinking, what comes up for you?
Jonelle: I’ve been reflecting on it too, since you shared it with me. Because I have all sorts of ideas that can come up about it, but I’m curious.
First, what was it that you got out of it? Why do you think it shook you up a little bit or rocked your world a little bit?
Alexandra: Great question. I’ve been in this understanding for several years now. So I knew, and I know that our experience comes from the inside out. But it was that word sensitive. That was the thing that really struck me.
And I guess what occurred to me was that, I guess where I was wondering if, since on this podcast, I often talk about dealing with unwanted habits.
So I started to wonder if people with unwanted habits are a little more sensitive to their thinking than others. And if that’s part of what’s going on, so there was that aspect to it.
The other part was that it just really reinforced this idea that our experience is coming from the inside out, it’s not coming from the outside in. And there’s some other stuff in there too. But I’ll stop there for now.
Jonelle: I love that. I like, as you were talking about the sensitivity, I had been reflecting on that, too. And I was thinking that, in a way, we’re all very sensitive, every human being is sensitive. I think what it is, it’s just what we’re sensitive to, it’s that whatever track of our thinking that attracts our attention the most.
So, for me, I call it my personal crazy, it’s the habitual stuff that keeps coming back that I tend to focus on. So for example, right now, I was sick a lot when I was a little kid, and being sick was a theme of mine for a variety of reasons. And so I already have a lot of thinking about it.
And lately, over the last year and longer, I’ve been getting more and more symptoms that are bothering me. And I have noticed that when I wake up in the morning, that’s the first thing I’m doing with my mind is checking my body for all the different parts that are then I was curious about that, like, why don’t I just wake up happy and ready to start the day?
Why am I already going through this inventory of what’s bothering me?
And that’s just what I am sensitive to, that’s what I’ve had a habit of paying more attention to. And I have other things that I pay attention to. But there are other things that, over the last ten years, I told you, I’ve been unpacking this. I’m beginning to become more aware of the things that I wasn’t aware of before, and noticing how I can just see one thing, and then all of a sudden all notice something else.
So one example is I go for these neighborhood walks. And probably lots of people go for neighborhood walks and don’t really pay much attention to their surroundings. But I have this sensitivity to noticing all the quirky weird stuff in people’s yards and their houses or the cat peeking out the window or things that appear funny to me.
I saw this sculpture that someone had made, and then they put these four wheels and bicycle parts on a fence. And I just thought that’s really weird looking and cool. I took a picture of it. And I didn’t think much more about it. And also what was interesting was there was a path up to the bicycle.
I thought that’s great, there’s a path through the snow that I can get to take a better picture of it because I’ve only got my cell phone with me. So I was happy about that. And so I walk away with my picture, and I take it home.
And this often happens, I look at the picture, and I see more in it than I did when I was standing right next to it. So before, it was just four wheels, and there were bicycle parts. But then when I looked at it a couple more times again, I noticed, oh, my goodness, all the wheels are attached. And what the person has done is there’s a pedal crank in the middle.
And if you crank the pedal in the middle, then all four wheels will spin. So it’s like I had a sensitivity to noticing something that other people might not have noticed in this sculpture. But I didn’t have a sensitivity that other people have probably noticed because there was a path right up to that bike that impelled them to go up and crank. They noticed the crank right away.
And I didn’t until later. So I think there’s that stuff. That we can begin to see how we’re sensitive to things like that when we’re not sensitive to others and sensitive just being another word for me where my habit of focus goes.
Alexandra: That’s such a great way to look at it. I love that. And I, as you’re saying that, I think you’re exactly right. And, I was, as just before we started our call, I was sitting here thinking about the times when I feel sensitive to stuff, and there are certain areas of life where I do and where things feel high stakes is the way I wrote it down.
And then there’s other stuff. And I can just notice if I’m with someone else or in a situation where the other person is feeling very sensitive to something, and it might not have even occurred to me to notice whatever that thing was that was going on.
So, another example would be say, if someone is frightened of dogs, and you’re out for a walk, and I might not even notice that there’s a dog coming towards me. But the person who’s worried about that would.
Jonelle: That makes total sense to me too. Because if I’m always sensitive to or paying attention to what I think is going on in other people’s minds, then I’m going to think that I’m experiencing their experience, and I have some sensitivity to that, too. I’ve been around some people who I know who are angry.
And so I walk a little bit on eggshells around them, so in those because of, I know, of a particular habit of experience, or frequency of experience, I’m sensitive in a different way with that person, that I wouldn’t be with another person who I don’t pay attention to their mood at all, because they don’t freak out. So there’s also that where those kinds of things will happen.
Alexandra: Exactly. And one of the things that occurred to me as well, while I was thinking about this was Mavis Karn has this great quote:
You can’t slip a thought past the body.
What occurred to me is that one of the reasons that we might feel like we’re sensitive to things is because we’re noticing the reaction of our body when we have certain thoughts about certain things.
So this young woman, going back to the example at the workshop, one of her examples was really about her mom, and she was really connected to her mom and felt like when her mum was upset, it really affected her. So what occurred to me was that those thoughts that were occurring about her mom, if her mom was upset, do have some resonance in her body, she does feel that.
Somebody else might have a relationship with their mom where they don’t have that going on.
Jonelle: I would guess there’d be some dynamic that she doesn’t want her mother to be upset. And so she’s sensitive to that, and though it’s always on guard or and paying attention to that. So, because internally, she’s got lots of thinking about that, and it does something to her within. One of the things that came to mind, when you were talking about that was an example of when you see a movie or a video of a guy who gets hit in the groin.
I don’t have what men do, but when it happens, I do get a visceral sensation to it, like, I can feel my body go into a fetal position. I can feel my stomach tighten up right away, and I can feel a focus on the groin area like he can, and I don’t even have, but it’s really powerful. That feeling when I see that happen, I can feel it in me right away. Now, nothing has happened to me. I’m just watching something on a screen.
And I’m interpreting what I see with my own thinking. And as I’m interpreting it, somehow, my body is not only giving me thoughts about it, but feelings about it at the same time, even though I don’t have the same equipment, it’s a very convincing feeling that and it happens instantaneously. Like, that’s the other thing, too, with thought.
There’s no discernible time between my experiences happening outside of me or within me, whatever the experiences or circumstances and my experience of them, even though there is this interpretation system going on, I don’t notice the interpretation system. It happens immediately.
Alexandra: Such a good point. It’s so instantaneous that, of course, we would assume that it that we’re responding to the outside.
Jonelle: Exactly. And it’s interesting that we don’t see that because we do know how movies affect us, you can just see something come up on the screen, and you’ll start tearing up right away because what’s going to happen in a commercial or story or whatever. And or have any reaction, whatever it is, my husband and I will watch some of our favorite funny movies.
And we’re already looking at each other and laughing in preparation for the next thing that’s coming up, it hasn’t even happened yet. Because we know it so well. So there, there is this thing about it happening instantaneously. But for me, since I had that experience. I don’t have any questions of where my experience is coming from.
It always appears to me, I shouldn’t say it always appears to me. I know the truth of it at some level all the time, but I forget it all the time, it really does feel to me like my anger or frustration or laughter or whatever it is being created entirely by whatever in the world is bumping into me in that moment.
But I realize, it’s almost like there is something where light comes into a crystal, and but it’s like its light will come into the crystal. And so it clearly comes into the crystal and comes out of the crystal, but it comes in as a solid beam of white light, and that refracts into 1000s of colors of other lights. And it’s like to a certain extent, that’s what my thought is, is it’s like a crystal.
So these things happen. But they come through my thought system. And then, somehow, my thought system chooses one of those beams of light in how to experience it. And that’s where my sensitivity is, I’m more sensitive to the green light that comes out rather than the blue light or the yellow light, or in that particular situation.
Maybe I’m not so sensitive to the green light. I’m more sensitive to the yellow light because just because I’m more aware of it or protecting myself in some way. It’s a habit that we learn to pay attention to.
Alexandra: If someone has a certain area in their life like you mentioned, angry people, that’s a bit of a sensitivity for me I don’t deal with, when people are really angry, I tend to freak out a little bit because I was raised by very angry people.
So if we have a situation like that, where we’re feeling sensitive to it, what do you think, if anything, we can do about that sensitivity?
Jonelle: I mean, always, my first reaction is that I can’t know what anyone else should do. I can only know how to potentially navigate myself. And the only thing I know is that I can be aware of it or not. So sometimes, the experience will happen, and I’ll get maybe anxious. And I won’t realize that I’m in my anxiousness.
And I will do stuff to protect myself because of that anxiousness, not even realizing what I’m doing. But sometimes, when anxiousness arises that I’ll always, I always feel it in my body, just it’s whether I noticed it or not. And so sometimes I’ll notice it.
And sometimes that noticing is enough to give me some distance from my automatic reaction to it. It’s like a space between the action and the reaction. Now, it doesn’t mean that I still won’t go into my crazy thinking, because I just never know what’s going to happen in the moment. It’s almost like there is a wave of up and down the level of consciousness or whatever you want to put it.
If I tend to be in a better mood, or I’m feeling pretty good. When an anxious thought appears, I will just happen to be less likely to glom on to it. Whereas if I’m already in a bad mood and anxiousness arises, then it’ll be stickier. And I have not noticed in 10 years anyway, have changed, it still happens.
But I have a very strong sense that because I do see things differently than I did before and know, at some level, there’s a part of me that’s always remembering, oh, that anxiousness isn’t coming from an actual problem I have to deal with out there. That anxiousness is coming from a lot of habitual thinking that I’ve carrying and I’m just sensitive to.
And that’s where the problem is. If we even call that a problem, it’s not a problem. It’s just me becoming more and more aware of that and not feeling bad that I get stuck in that because I can go down that route to why I know the principles. Why can I get out of this thought storm? And that’s just sensitivity to feeling bad about myself for not being able to do something I want to do?
Alexandra: Exactly. And I think one thing that occurs to me too is that I’ve really settled down in those situations because I have finally learned from people like you and from Mavis Karn and all the other teachers that our design will always tell us about the experience that we’re having.
And maybe we can be a bit sensitive to that as well. But the point is, that it’s never going to not tell us what’s going on. We’re never going to be in the dark about what our thinking is doing in us, for lack of a better way to say it. And so, just that, being aware that we are always aware of what’s going on is a real comfort to me.
Now, that doesn’t change. Like if I’m in a really a situation where I’m feeling a lot of anxious thinking, and I’m really feeling sensitive to whatever’s going on, it might not, and it probably doesn’t usually make that experience go away in that very moment.
But even as you said, right off the top, even just knowing a little bit more about what’s happening creates this tiny little gap or space between the observer me, the observer and the experience that I’m having.
So there’s an element of trust here, I guess, is what I wanted to point out that we can trust ourselves; we can trust our design. And then it’s also, like you said, it’s not really it’s not a problem. It’s just a thing that’s happening. That, we’re noticing.
We can trust ourselves; we can trust our design.
Jonelle: It’s something I still keep on learning over and over and over again. And, I’m also seeing more and more about it that this life isn’t about me personally. There’s this nature that’s flowing through me and creating my experience. And I don’t know how it works. And I don’t know why it does the things that it does.
I can find correlations between things and past experiences and why habits might be there. But I think every time I go there, I make this much smaller, then is helpful for me. I think if I keep on going back to maybe what you refer to as trust, but just that there’s more going on here. I don’t need to understand it to function because I have this very simple thing that’s going on.
Like you said, my body is always telling me where I am on that scale between my personal crazy, fearful, insecure, anxious, and depressed, or if I’m light hearted, clear, content, peaceful, and happy, I’m always on that scale somewhere. It’s never to me got anything to do with what’s going on outside circumstances other than I have habits of sensitivity to certain things.
But because of that, my thinking will go in the direction of more tense, the more tense and heavy, and disturbing thinking. And when I’m not paying attention to that stuff, it’s very light. I’ve had all sorts of examples of where I’ve been in very difficult situations. And it’s been not a problem at all, being in a car accident and having an experience of just time slowing down.
I had no fear at all. And it felt like I had five minutes to figure out what to do, when there was no figuring out there was just doing and it was easy.
I had another one where I was held up at knifepoint. And it was the exact same experience where I just knew what to do. I immediately had this idea in my mind of all the things that could possibly happen and what I was going to do based on each scenario, and it was easy, and it was clear.
And yet I’ve had another experience where someone was breaking into the house, and I went into total freak-out mode. I couldn’t even think of the simple thing which was okay, if there are breaking in the one door, you can run out the other door, but that didn’t come to me, there were no scenarios coming to me.
I was just in freak-out mode, not knowing what to do. And that didn’t have anything to do with any of those experiences. Those experiences did create, when there was an action and a reaction by me like there is stuff going on here. But my reaction is has been totally informed by whatever my thinking was doing in that moment.
And sometimes it’s really peaceful and clear, and just I don’t have to think it just does it. And other times I’m just in it, then fearful, and when I’m in that state. I’m just not clear, and I just can’t come up with ideas and I’m scared. And my emotions get really heightened in that way. And for me, there’s nothing I can do about it.
Because the more I tried to change from one to the other, the more I’m resisting what naturally wants to happen through me. And I’m beginning to understand that the thought system doesn’t want resistance to it. So if I don’t engage in it, if I’d happen to notice it, and if I somehow not engage in it, or just allow it to happen, that’s what allows it to do what it needs to do.
And there’s also even a part about where I’m beginning to see it’s okay, more and more, to feel shitty. It’s not something that I don’t have to be in anymore. I’m learning to appreciate that more and more.
I think there’s a beautiful like, it seems like a really beautiful thing to me to be able to sit in any experience, and to just be in it, and do whatever you do within that experience to manage it or not manage it, or to allow it or allow or not allow it and to be okay with that. No matter what
Alexandra: Absolutely. And so that, makes me think of the sensitivity that we have to our moods. I had just very connected to that had experience this morning as I was getting ready. So the last couple of days, I’ve been in a low mood.
And yesterday, I was a bit caught up in what to do about that, how I could fix it, how I could change it, what did it mean about me or about my business, or whatever it was.
Then today, I woke up again, same low mood, and I was in the shower, and I just had this thought that, what if I just let it be, and those words are so easy to say, but it came with such a nice energy.
It was like some weight lifted off my shoulders. And the example I thought it was it’s really bucketing down rain here today, where I live. And it’s the same thing if I decide to be upset about what the weather is doing. It’s that old metaphor that creates a lot of tension in me, but once I just let it be what it was this low mood, I just felt myself relax.
It was such a nice feeling. I think your point about not being able to control this stuff, too, though, is such a good one. Because I didn’t want to be caught up yesterday in the feeling, that was just what was happening. And, I don’t think it was me personally that had the intelligence to not be so serious about that low mood this morning.
I think that it came from somewhere else as well. The life force, whatever it is.
That came from the Universal Intelligence that’s flowing through us.
Jonelle: I don’t know how that happens. And I don’t know what it is. I’ve had all sorts of teachers, including the three principals and others in the spiritual world that my eyes got opened up to after that experience that I’ve enjoyed watching and listening to and they all have explanations, and a lot of it makes sense to me when it probably wouldn’t have made sense before.
But from my own direct experience, I really do often feel like I just don’t know what’s going on. All I know, all I can say like, if you ask me, what can I say for sure? I can say for sure that when I’m in a lower mood, I tend to take things more seriously. And when I’m in a better mood, I tend to take things more lightheartedly and easier, and I’m my mind is clearer. And I navigate life with much more grace.
And when I’m in a lower mood, quite often, I do want to be in a better mood. And my efforts at trying to change I’ve noticed don’t seem to help me get into a better mood. But I’ll still do the effort. I still do the effort, when I do it, even without knowing that I’m trying to do it. And, but there’s just this constant up and down all the time. And from moment to moment, from day to day from period to period.
I’m not feeling too bad today. But some other days, I’m totally consumed like crazy. There’s just a growing appreciation for being okay with all of it. And I can’t even tell anybody how to do that. It’s just an ongoing awareness, isn’t it? It’s like, just like you said when you were in the shower, and no, just let it be, let it go. You’re right. It didn’t come from an efforting. It just came.
Somehow it was allowed to come. I don’t know. That happens, other than this idea of surrender, and but I’ve tried to intentionally surrender. So it’s a mystery. It’s a mystery. It’s a total mystery. But it sure is nice to have some sense of what is going on.
For most of my life, I had no idea that my thinking was creating my experience.
I thought there was just experience and I was experiencing, I had no idea, no sense that there was some stream of personal thought-feeling.
That was actually creating my experience of what happened. And wow, I think that’s a gift. Because it means that that’s the only place. Well, I want to say that it means that the only thing I have to look at then is my thought and feeling. But I don’t want to do that. Because then I go into my crazy, it just means that I don’t have to look at the rest of the world.
I don’t have to fix the rest of the world. I don’t have to change other people’s behavior. I don’t have to have to avoid busy traffic. I don’t have to manage my life in such a way anymore. I can just live my life have these experiences and know that for the most part, I’m getting more aware of being aware of my thinking, and what and how powerful it is.
Alexandra: Well said, I like that very much.
This has been great, Jonelle, it’s just so lovely to chat to you about this stuff. It’s always so fun to explore these things. I just love it.
As we’re wrapping up, why don’t you let people know where they can find out more about you if they’d like to do that?
Jonelle: When I was doing more intentional work of sharing the three principles and just collecting information for myself about the three principles and other stuff that just interested me. I created a website about 10 years ago, and it’s called procrastinationpublications.com.
And it means nothing to most people, but it means something to me because it’s just part of my sense of humor, where I used to write a newsletter for my family. It was always late when I sent it out. And so it was called procrastination. It was published by procrastination publications.
So on that website, it’s got information if anyone wanted to reach out to me for any reason to come contact me as well as tons of 3P resources. The site’s not in the best shape at the moment. But the resources are there. I haven’t added any to them since about 2018. Because by then, the principles were getting so big I couldn’t keep up with everything.
So I just stopped. But everything I got before that is still there, links to all sorts of websites, interesting articles and videos, and things like that. So there’s that website, and I write a blog.
Whenever I’m inspired, sometimes I’ll write three or four months, sometimes none. But they appear on my regular face, my personal Facebook page, as well as on my I have 3P Services Facebook page.
Alexandra: Okay, great. I’ll put links as ever, in the show notes at unbrokenpodcast.com so people can follow up on that.
I think I told you, your website was like the second one that I found when I started? The SEO was really good. Whatever the search terms I was using it found you right away.
Jonelle: Yes. That’s funny. Well, there’s, I have no SEO on there. It’s like the most basic site in the entire world. There’s nothing like it’s I got the cheapest software I could find and the easiest to use that had like, a very limited template on what you could do.
And so I’m not sure but it just it definitely has collected lots of people seeing it because I was getting about I don’t know about anywhere from 1200 to 2000 hits on it a week. So, I had no idea. There’s no way of tracking any of that stuff. And I’m not interested in that. It’s just I guess, nice to know that people use it other than me.
Alexandra: Yes. Well, it was great I loved it. It was a fantastic resource when I was at the beginning of my journey.
Jonelle: You’re very welcome. My pleasure.
Alexandra: Lovely chatting with you today. Jonelle take care.
Jonelle: Lovely to see you too, Alexandra, and thanks for having me in for visit.
Q&A 10 – What does the present moment have to do with resolving an unwanted habit?
Apr 17, 2023
The present moment fascinates me. In the past I’ve been afraid of it. Or, at the very least, cautious about it. I’ve taken training with horses as my teachers to try to be more connected to it.
Gradually, I’m beginning to see that there is nothing to fear in the present moment and that, in fact, it might hold many answers to my questions, especially about unwanted habits.
Transcript of episode
Hello Explorers, and welcome back to another Q&A episode of Unbroken.
Today’s question is: what does the present moment have to do with ending an unwanted habit?
I wanted to talk about this because I’ve been exploring the present moment a little bit more lately, and really enjoying that exploration and also have a bit of a history with being uncomfortable with the present moment. I’ll talk about that as well, toward the end of the episode.
The first thing I guess I want to say about the importance of the present moment when it comes to resolving an unwanted habit, like overeating, is:
It is in the present moment that we can even just begin to notice what’s happening.
When we’re really caught up in our thinking, and which is like jumping onto a train and just getting carried along, and we can be 1000s of miles away, without even realizing what’s going on, down that train of thought. So the first thing about the present moment that’s really helpful is that it just helps us to notice just what’s happening at a very basic level. We can notice that we’re feeling the drive to overeat, we will notice that there’s some tension within us around food and eating, we will notice those sensations in our body, or we’re much more likely to notice them, when we, remember, or just simply have a moment of dropping into the present moment.
The second reason the present moment is important when it comes to ending unwanted habits, is that it’s really going to help us noticing what’s going on with our thinking.
First of all, we’re going to notice that we’re thinking, and that’s really helpful, because noticing that we’re thinking, enables us to see that there’s us, the observer, the intelligence of the universe that is flowing through this person. And then there is the thinking that occurs in our brains, in our brain boxes. That kind of observation is really helpful because it creates a little bit of a gap between ourselves and our thinking.
It’s so easy to get caught up in our thinking and believe everything that our brains are saying to us. And that’s just the human condition, there’s nothing wrong when we do that. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about or to feel like we’re getting it wrong, as it were. That’s just the human condition.
When we’re able to recall that there is a present moment also happening, and I’m saying it that way, because I don’t want it to seem like it needs to be a practice or that this is a prescription at all, because the present moment is always there. It’s not something we need to create. It’s not something we need to manage or manufacture. It’s there with us at every moment.
If we can simply remember to fall into it every once in a while, that will begin to build our awareness of how powerful it is and how helpful it can be for us. Especially when it comes to noticing the difference between the fact that we are thinking and the fact that we’re able to observe that that’s happening.
The third reason that the present moment is so important to resolving an unwanted habit is that the present moment is really where wisdom, insight, fresh thinking and deeper understanding exist.
So, our problem solving brains tend to live either in the future or in the past. When they’re in the future, they are innocently problem solving, anticipating problems, imagining scenarios that might happen, and then trying to figure out solutions to those scenarios, even though they don’t exist yet.
How often have you had an argument with someone in your head? I do it less often now but I used to do it all the time; my brain trying to anticipate what might happen, and then create my response to that thing, even though the thing hasn’t happened yet, just as a way, and then again, innocently, our minds are just simply trying to protect us and keep us safe. So they’re very often off in the future, fearful and anxious and worried and concerned about things that haven’t even happened yet, or they’re very often in the past and thinking about how we could have done things differently, or feeling feelings that that are coming up, because of something that happened in the past.
If and when we can remember to just drop into the present moment, as I said, that’s where fresh insight, fresh thinking, wisdom, all those kinds of things exist, and are available to us. And so it’s a very different quiet space, there in the present moment where those things are available to us.
Now, it’s not that insight can’t occur when we’re caught up in our thinking, when there’s a lot going on in our minds.
But it does seem as though insight is is more available to us when we’re in that calm, quiet state of mind. When we’re really caught up in our thinking, and I can really speak to this personally, it feels like finding the answers to any kind of problem, whether it’s resolving an unwanted habit or resolving an argument with a friend or figuring out what to do next in your business it can feel like the responsibility for all of that rests right on our shoulders. That it’s up to me to figure this thing out, it’s up to me to create this business or solve this problem or fix this situation.
Whereas when we can get a little bit quieter, and remember that the present moment always exists, and we can rest in it, then that, as I say, that space of insight and fresh thinking is there. Therefore, it’s not all on us. It’s not all on my shoulders to fix this situation, or manage whatever’s going on that there is that innate wisdom and creativity and insight that is available to us always.
Dropping into that space, remembering that it’s there, lifts some of that pressure off of us. And so I’ll say again, too, that this isn’t a prescription for trying to be in the present moment, as much as as possible. Insights about unwanted habits can happen, like I said, at any time.
I’m offering this as something for you to explore, something for you to consider that. That space of quietness, in our minds, does have all this wisdom, and creative potential within it.
I also wanted to address why it can sometimes seem difficult to get into the present moment.
And this was a real tripping point for me. I didn’t really understand it for a long time. Whenever I remembered that I could try to be in the present moment, just try to be a little bit quieter, I always felt this anxiety come up or resistance to it. It almost felt like a panicky kind of feeling. And for a long time, I thought, oh, that means something. If I’m feeling panicky and anxious about being in the present moment, then I shouldn’t go there. Of course, that was a natural response that I had.
But as I’ve explored it a little bit more, what I think is going on is there’s two different things happening.
The first is that we’re simply not used to being in the present moment. That’s not how our culture our society is oriented. We’re very much an intellectual, problem solving, brain based culture. And it can seem, I think, unnatural then to want to go quiet, and just be in the present moment.
It’s kind of like If a wheel is spinning really fast, which is what our minds are doing all the time and then it’s almost like slamming on a brake or trying to get that wheel to stop really quickly, there’s going to be some, some resistance to that. It’s actually probably safer to let the wheel slow down at a slower pace.
When we slam on the brakes, when we’re in the car, all the stuff goes in, that’s in your car goes shooting forward. I remember once driving with my little dog in the front seat, and I had to slam on the brakes. This was before the days when you put your dog in a with a seatbelt, and she went sliding down and onto the floor of the passenger seat.
We’re not used to being calm and quiet and reaching for the present moment, and the intelligent that intelligence that exists within it.
So there’s that kind of adjustment that’s going on. And then I also think that we’re just culturally, we’re not a society that values these kinds of things or that values the present moment, that values quiet, and calm. And that even we’re not a culture that values insight and wisdom. We do tend to think that all our problems and all the things that we need to do, and the problems we need to solve are on our shoulders. It’s kind of antithetical to who we are, to think, I’ve got this situation or this problem, and then I would love some answers to it. So I’m just going to let it go and sit quietly, and wait for insight. That’s just not something we’re used to.
I remember hearing people talk about this, when I first started to explore this understanding and thinking to myself, “What on earth? How could you possibly, run a business that way?” Now, I see it completely differently. Now I see that taking the pressure off myself and trying to spend more time in the present is really the place where creativity and fresh new ideas does exist.
One of my favorite expressions is when when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So I think culturally, in our society, we have a lot of tools that are available to us for navigating life. And we really do tend to focus on one: we tend to really just put, all our energy into our problem solving brain.
When we do that, then naturally everything looks like a problem. And then our brain wants to find solutions for that problem. So that’s part of the reason why I think it can seem difficult for us to get into the present moment are a couple of reasons why.
I hope that’s helpful for you. I hope this exploration has maybe bring some fresh insight to you or gives you an idea about how you could maybe just explore what the present moment feels like for you.
Please remember that if you’d like to submit a question about resolving an unwanted habit, you can do that at alexandraamor.com/question, and I’ll be happy to answer your question in an upcoming episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next time.
When it comes to resolving unwanted habits, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have become the most popular and widespread approach.
In this conversation, Greg Suchy shares some of his experience with AA and how he transitioned to the 3 Principles approach for dealing with unwanted habits and addictions.
Greg Suchy spent years in the Alcoholics Anonymous program before he found the 3 Principles. Now, he helps others to find the peace of mind that is innate within them that makes addiction unnecessary.
Dr. Amy Johnson’s book: The Little Book of Big Change
Transcript of interview with Greg Suchy
Alexandra: Greg Suchy, welcome to Unbroken.
Greg: Thank you, Alexandra. Good to be here.
Alexandra: It’s really nice to see you again.
Why don’t you tell us about your background and how you found the three principles?
Greg: I found myself in recovery for alcohol and other addiction issues back in 2012. And through that whole process of just seeking answers, that didn’t seem to be very easily accessible at the time, I ended up finding a group at a church that I was checking out at the time, a Unity chapel. Unity is more of an open-minded metaphysical church.
And, so it drew my attention, and I’m checking things out. And they had this new meeting. They just had three principles, didn’t even explain what it was. I felt drawn to it and showed up. This wonderful couple, Bob and Marty, that just seeing a lot of the webinars and whatnot, they just took me in and Bob especially just he pulled me aside and just like dumped all this information on me about how the three principles and how they apply to addiction and all this stuff.
And I’m sitting here thinking this is way too simple. There has to be more to it. Where are the steps, where are the requirements of how to do this and stuff. It was just so foreign to me the idea that maybe I’m already okay, that was such a foreign idea. Because, in 12 Step programs, it’s all about your disease, you’re always going to be sick, you’ll always be fighting this.
So this was, at first, it wasn’t much of a relief, just because I was thinking, this is BS. Can’t be that easy, yet simple, but in a very short amount of time, it really started just sinking in of like, a lot of the stuff I’ve experienced at times, when things were going well, and I wasn’t really reaching out to escape.
I’m like, Well, what’s that about? Why is if I’m truly addicted to this thing, and it’s this disease, and something that I’ll always have to fight, then why is it there are times I don’t have to fight it? And it’s not because I wanted to not fight it if it would just happen naturally, just like when you’re driving, and maybe you’re a little frustrated or running late or something, but you come out of some trees, and suddenly there’s this gorgeous sunset.
And everything just falls away, though you just return to that place of well-being that we all have. It was just the three principals really helped put words to what I already felt. What I already knew inside but didn’t know that. I knew if that makes sense. It was there. Just how do I how do we put this into words?
Alexandra: And you had been in the 12-step community for a little while before this meeting, right?
Greg: Close to four years at that point.
So the whole time I was feeling like there was something more, there was something else that was missing from that puzzle, there was a couple of pieces that somebody left down at some point.
Alexandra: And I remember, the last time we spoke you had a mystical experience before, while you were in the 12-step program? But before you found the three principles, is that right?
Greg: I did. It was I was actually exactly five months into recovery. I had gone to a meeting for Thanksgiving Day, it was just a gratitude meeting. And it was, 200 some people in a school gymnasium and everybody got 30 seconds to say what they were grateful for. And then it moved on to the next person.
It lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, hour and a half of just all these beautiful feelings and it was wonderful sharing and the energy that gratitude brings is so intense and so incredible. And when we ended the meeting and all joined hands to say our prayer as soon as I touched the people I wasn’t there in physical form anymore.
I saw the energy behind life. I saw the way that everything was one and that it’s the same energy presented itself at different vibrations. Whether it be you are the chair you’re sitting in, or the air around us, you even that is energy moving, we forget that fish don’t think they’re in water until they’re out of water. We don’t realize that air is fluid, scientifically speaking to it is actually a fluid.
So we are fish in water. And it’s just this energy flow around everything. And it was such a beautiful experience. And that was when my really deep desire to escape reality left, and I was left in this place in the 12-step programs where it’s like, I felt like I was okay now.
Like, I don’t feel like I have a disease. I don’t feel like there’s any more fight to it, but if that answer wasn’t coming from the rooms of, the 12-step programs that I was checking out, it wasn’t just an I tried a bunch of thinking maybe this one, I’ll have more of an answer maybe now.
But anytime you’re coming from the misunderstanding of having a disease, you can’t possibly point somebody in the right direction of being well, there’s always just going to be another technique, another step to work another, one more thing to keep doing just to keep from getting high or drunk or whatever.
And after that experience, I just didn’t feel like that was there. But, like I said earlier, I didn’t have the words for it, I didn’t have any way to express it. Except that I just knew that things had changed. I knew that I could never be the same. It’s not that once you wake up you can always go back to sleep again. But you never totally forget.
There’s never a total dream state after that. There’s always that slight part of you that’s now the observer. And will we see that, even if I’m still going through some of the paces of like my own habits or something, there’s still going to be a part of me that’s looking at those habits going that’s not me.
That’s just something I’m experiencing right now. It’s a symptom of something deeper. That’s really what addiction habits are. They’re symptom-showing. It’s like our internal GPS system telling us we’re doing something that we shouldn’t be doing or we’re heading in the wrong direction, mentally and emotionally, and spiritually. And it’s manifesting physically as this habit or as this addiction.
Alexandra: For my own curiosity, so after you had that experience, were you searching for people to talk to about that? I’m asking, because sometimes when I’ve heard people say they have an experience like that, then it can be quite lonely afterward.
Was there anybody you could share that with?
Greg: I definitely experienced that loneliness. Because it, I spent about another three years in the rooms after having that experience. And at first, I tried talking to a bunch of people that I’d already met there and felt comfortable with talking about that thing with, and the general response that I would get was along the lines of, “I don’t know what happened to you, but it’s probably dangerous and get you killed.”
Because I felt like it wasn’t a disease, it wasn’t a problem anymore that doesn’t fit into a program that is built entirely around a disease model, which was not what Bill Wilson talked about, at all. If anybody’s read the Big Book, he specifically says in there that the problem of the alcoholic is not in the alcohol, it’s in the mind.
That’s right in there, it’s that’s the truth. And Bill Wilson, I really would love to have met him. I have a feeling the reason why AA was so effective in the beginning was simply because anytime you were in the presence of somebody who is awake, not woken up this new world culture, whatever, but actually awake, aware, you automatically feel better just being in their presence.
You benefit from that end energy just because, it’s the whole idea, when we heal ourselves, we heal everyone around us too. So if you have this healed being walking around, exuding healing energy, you’re bound to heal if you’re open. So, those first 100 men and women, they were very open to it.
And at that time, it wasn’t looked at as you’ve got an addiction issue. I’m so sorry, let’s give you some help. It was no, you are a moral leper, you are a horrible person, and you should just get your stuff together, you should get your act together. It was very different back then. So these people were desperate.
That’s why they’re meeting in houses in secret. To start out, but as that fellowship grew, and as the program grew, you had less people having direct contact with Bill Wilson. And therefore not necessarily getting the initial benefit of being in that energy field.
Although energy does travel. But it’s not like Bill Wilson was necessarily aware of that, and sitting down and intentionally sending on energy to the alcoholics in Spain. That it wasn’t something that he was aware of at the time.
And that’s just from my own research and reading his letters and whatnot. So as the fellowship grew, you get people having direct contact with Bill Wilson’s, and now they’re relying specifically on the 12 steps, which, by the way, is the only suggested thing in that book, then that became the thing.
And Bill Wilson was not all about the steps he initially created, and just to have some framework to try to get, help people to have that experience that he had. But Bill Wilson was really big on what he called healthy experimentation. He wanted people to try other ways of recovering.
Because he knew that one of two things would happen, either think, fail, and end up coming back to the 12 steps, or AA or whatever, anyway, and coming back to the fellowship, or they’d succeed, and AA should adopt their principles. That’s directly from Bill and I am paraphrasing, but that’s from Bill Wilson himself.
He’s talking about this healthy experimentation. And that really got me looking at I tried running a couple of three principles-based meetings. At least being in Akron, Ohio, where it was all started. That’s not there’s no open-mindedness around that thing here. So but it was an interesting experience.
It was a fun couple of years just trying to be there with it.
Alexandra: As I understand it, Bill W had a spiritual experience himself, and then tried to reverse engineer what had happened to him to help other people. Is that true?
Greg: He even experimented with psychedelics trying to duplicate that experience, so he could give it to other people because he was that passionate about helping others have that experience. Not realizing that each person has to have their own experience.
I know he’s going to have his experience of it, and, and I do have some experience with psychedelics, and I feel like in when they’re used in the right settings, and with the right guidance, they’re very helpful and very useful for uncovering subconscious patterns.
Because that’s really a lot of what psychedelics are accomplishing for us is that they’re breaking down that barrier between the conscious and the subconscious mind for that period of time.
And that’s why you hear people saying that they had a bad trip. No, you didn’t have a bad trip, it’s just something from your past showed up that you didn’t want to deal with. So that’s why I say it should be done in the right setting and with the right guidance and everything to help people work through those things that may come up.
But, Bill Wilson did a lot of experimentation, a lot of trying different ways to help people wake up and see the truth. And he didn’t have the verbiage to simplify how to talk about it. But he did his best to talk about it anyway, whatever way it came out.
Alexandra: One thing about AA – and I talked about this on a previous episode with Christian MacNeil – is that it’s really known worldwide now. It really spread very quickly really.
And, there’s something about just the 12 steps themselves the fact that that’s like a framework or an outline, and somebody who’s suffering can get their head around that. And, if you just do these 12 things, then everything will be better.
Whereas the three principles approach, is different than that. We’re pointing in a direction, there isn’t really that framework or guideline. And it is really an exploration at least that’s been my experience.
I don’t have a question for you at all.
I’m wondering out loud if that’s why the principles haven’t spread the way that something like AA has.
Greg: Absolutely. Because people in general like the idea of being diagnosed with something, Because then it’s not their fault. They don’t have to take responsibility for it, they can say, it’s just my bipolar disorder, it’s just my manic depressive disorder, it’s whatever.
Then when those things come up, instead of having to look at it and deal with it and work through it, they can push it aside. Again, it’s no different than using a drug. Because there is no such thing as actual mental illness. We get off track, and, in AA, they have, the 12 steps to get somewhere.
Whereas in the three principles, we’re saying if you stop doing all the stuff that’s taking you away from it, you just naturally return there. And that’s a difficult concept to grasp if you haven’t experienced it in some way in your life that you can recognize.
So it makes it intellectually and egoicly very difficult. Because it’s too simple, like I said when I first met Bob and Marty about, I mean, it was like 20 minutes, and I got 20 years of three principles.
I was sitting there, my brain’s going this is too simple. Where are the steps? There should be 112 main points in this thing. Where do we get to that part like this? Okay, you’re getting the in the door, but then he’s gonna sell me some package, right?
Like, there’s something else I have to do. It’s like, No, you just have to be. And a big part of the reason why 12 Step programs work when they work is simply because people are trading addictions, trading habits, they’re going from getting drunk and high to going to meetings and working the steps over and over again.
I must have worked through the steps more than a dozen times in the almost four years that I was in there. Thinking I got it wrong, I must have done it wrong, that was what you were told to. It was like if you hadn’t found your peace of mind yet it’s because you didn’t work the steps thoroughly enough.
I’m sitting down each time and I’m trying to go through my inventory. And like, it got to a point where the last sponsor I had, I told him afterward he laughed.
He thought it was funny. Because like, I had to make stuff up to put in my, to put on my list. Because at that point, I work through all that stuff. And I’m like this, isn’t it? The reason why I don’t feel peace in my heart has nothing to do with what I feel I’ve done wrong in the past or people have done wrong.
It is just simply a misunderstanding of where peace comes from, and I love Joe Bailey’s book, The Serenity Principle. His was the first three principles book I read, because he was the only one out addiction at the time. And Amy Johnson’s book, The Little Book of Big Change was huge, too.
I’m reading through and one line really stuck out to me. Joe said:
“Serenity is our natural state of being when we stop doing the things that take us away from it.”
I just dropped the book, right? And I’m like, are you kidding me? Like, it just made sense. It just felt right.
It was like, Oh, that explains why you get lost in a sunset and you’re told you’re no longer worried about anything. You’re just in that present moment. Just enjoying what is and that’s what all the sages throughout time have been telling us is to be present to be here now.
But society tells us to worry about the future, you have to plan for every catastrophe that could come, and you have to plan for this magical thing called retirement that nobody ever seems to really actually reach.
We go through life with all these societal standards and beliefs given to us. And we just go with it, because that’s what everyone else is doing. So it must be correct, right? The war on drugs is going to end drugs, isn’t it?
Hasn’t yet. No matter how much money they put into it, no matter how many people they throw in prison, it hasn’t changed anything. Because the mindset is still there, people are still worried about the future people are still not present.
And that really is the key. And that’s what Syd was really talking about is just being with what is rather than being with what appears to be the illusion is pretty convincing sometimes. Oh, really, it really can be, that’s those are the times, but that’s like in every major fate. That’s where they talk about having faith.
To trust in those moments, it’s easy. When you’re having a great time and you’re sitting rough friends, it’s easy to be in a good space. But when you’re already running late for work, and you’re not only got one flat tire, now you have two and you only have one spare. What do you do when life really tests your belief, when life really tests your faith, that’s when it really actually matters.
We should be practicing the other times just to understand how things work. When I say practice, I don’t mean like doing there’s just a notice. And observing. That’s really what the practice of the three principles are really.
Honestly, any major philosophy that ever comes along throughout human history is always pointed back to that same thing. But just like Bill Wilson and the 12 steps and the whole fellowship, you’ve got Jesus came along and had his message regardless of how you believe he came to be whatever.
I feel like he was a human being just like us who woke up and saw something and tried to share it. And then you look at the fellowship that grew from that and how far off track the message has gotten. And now it’s all about judgment and all this like negative stuff and stress.
It’s that’s really what it’s creating for a lot of people. And yes, they feel relief from that stress when they go to church. And they hear the preacher preaching or, they’re listening to Christian music, and they hear a good message in the song and it reminds them of that particular path.
But what about in between? What about when your job disappears? Are you going to remember who your true employer is?
Are you going to fall for the illusion that this company was your employer? Now the universe is our employer, God is our employer, whatever word you want to use for that mind, whatever, it’s we’re all connected to this energy. And there’s abundance for all of us. And I’ve really experimented with it quite a bit.
And it’s a fascinating thing to I started concentrating on pennies quite a few years ago. Okay, these pens are easy. There’s no negative attachment to it. There’s nothing like I will never find a penny.
You start out with a million dollars. You’ve got something in the back of your mind saying I’m not going to get a million dollars. So there’s no firm belief in that but I know I’m gonna find a penny right?
And at first, I’m like, whatever. It’s a penny on the sidewalk. It’s a penny in the parking lot. It’s no big deal, but then Penny started showing up like in my laundry, and I don’t put change in my pockets.
So there’s no way for pennies to be getting into the laundry and it wasn’t pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters it was paid and actually set a reminder in my phone it went off three times a day and all it said was pennies.
It was just simply just to get my mind back on pennies. Then things started showing up and then I graduated after I did that for a few weeks and really just saw like, Okay, this is me doing this is me attracting this, the pennies are already there.
But I’m just opening myself up to acceptance. And then I moved on to coffee, free cups of coffee showing up all over the place. Really? Wow, I’m not up to the million dollars yet. There’s still something in there that says it’s not going to happen.
But that’s the beauty of this whole process. None of us has to be perfect. And honestly, if you talk to somebody accused, if he’s presenting that to you, as if they’ve got this, walk away, just walk away, find somebody who’s willing to admit that they’re still human too because it’s no different than, we all have some basic understanding of gravity.
But we still trip and fall, sometimes we still drop things and break them. Understanding how gravity works doesn’t mean we’re outside of the laws of gravity. So understanding that we live in this illusion and this projected reality doesn’t stop us from falling for that illusion.
Because we still sometimes believe that our eyes are working like cameras, but they’re actually working like projectors.
All of our beliefs and ideals are being projected onto the things that we’re seeing around us and we’re not seeing anything for what it truly is. We’re just seeing it for what we believe it is. And that’s evident.
Everywhere you go. In every circumstance, every situation, if you’ve got 100 people at the same event, you’ll have 100 different stories of what happened., how do you explain that?
Did the event change for each person now? It was the exact same event. But as each of those people went in with their own preconceived ideas, their own illusion, their own belief system. And guess what? They found things that matched their belief system.
And if I believe I’m always going to be poor and addicted and struggle through life, and guess what, I’m always going to be poor and addicted and struggle for my life. But the moment that belief changes, my life will change to match.
That’s the key. We keep running around. I watch it in society, school shootings, and who’s paying in which bathroom and who wants to be called he, she, they whatever. I love everyone. We’re all here to do what we want to do.
But it’s like we get so caught up in those things and putting out the little fires that the embers that are popping up everywhere. Meanwhile, we’re ignoring the big bonfire in the middle that’s throwing all those embers. And if we would just put that fire out, all those embers would stop.
So if we could get together and build a society where people feel valued and appreciated. Hold that stuff would go away. If you take away guns, guess what? Someone’s gonna get really good with knives and shop at a school and probably kill even more people with knives.
When are you going to ban knives, get banned knives, they start building violence, or we, the Oklahoma City bombing, you can go out and get fertilizer and stuff and make bombs to take down entire buildings.
The problem is not what appears to be the problem. It’s a much deeper seated issue, which is that we’ve created a worldwide Society of separation. We took on the Darwinian theory of competition rather than cooperation. That’s where society really went wrong. was going with that competition mindset.
There’s so much abundance. It’s just being hoarded by a few people because of that type of mindset. Versus at that point in history, we’d all decide what, no, we’re gonna go with this cooperative society.
We’re going to continue because that’s how things were. There was a transition period in between but you look at like, like native cultures to any native area, not even just birth America, but any of the native cultures. Those tribes work together.
And there were some spats between tribes, but for the most part, the tribes would cooperate to know, and if something happened, and there was something happened, one tribe lost all their food, and the neighboring tribe would put them out. So there was this cooperation built in.
But when the European Westerner mindset started spreading, by the way later, Americans had a term for what Tico, w e t IC O. And they, they said it was the most contagious mental illness that existed, that it caused greed and aggression and separation with people.
And it did spread. That’s how we are where we are now, and then the unfortunate thing is that the Western world ended up with a lot of technology fairly quickly, at one point, just started really moving forward with that.
And, yes, it makes life easier in some ways. So I could understand why the rest of the world and look at it and be like, oh, we need to be more like America. We want the American way of life.
But now we look, decades later, where did that lead us? A failing economy, with the whole competition mindset with it, is always going to end in failure, always.
Because the universe is abundant, and anything we do to act outside of that is just going to cause us problems.
Until we all get together and look at cooperation as being how things naturally are not just the way we need to be, but like we already are cooperative components in this thing. We just need to stop believing we’re not.
That’s it. That’s why the three principles haven’t spread. In a big part. It’s just simply because there’s nothing to do. And it’s very hard to believe that all I have to do is just stop hitting myself with the hammer, and the pain will go away.
Right? It’s really that simple. But it’s hard to see when you’ve been hitting yourself with a hammer for 30, 40, 50 years. And the whole time, you’ve been told, Oh, no, you’re bipolar. That hammer is not your fault. It makes it very difficult to switch that mindset.
It is not impossible at all by any means. I’ve seen some pretty miraculous turnarounds with people who, quite honestly, a lot of people thought were, waving on hope. Like they’re just gone.
But then, in an instant, they just see something different. Even look at said how, at least from what I gathered from his writings, and when he talked about it, he wasn’t a happy person before he discovered the principles.
He was a pretty miserable person, like many people living nowadays. But in an instant, he saw things differently.
And he didn’t do anything to make it happen. It was just at that moment he became willing to drop what was in exchange for what is.
Alexandra: I want to circle back to something you said a little earlier about, and it was about where habits come from, or addictions.
You touched on the fact that addictions are a spiritual sign that we’re headed in the wrong direction. Can you say a bit more about that?
Greg: This is all like my gathering experience. My take on it. But I see it as a movie. So like, we were just talking about, we’re in this society where there’s separation, and there’s competition and we go by the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest, which he stole from somebody else.
And it was originally the elimination of the weakest, which is a very different concept than the survival of the fittest. Because of the elimination of the weakest, you saw cooperation, and you can still help the weakest.
But when it’s survival of the fittest, it’s no. I need to be the best; otherwise, I’m gone. So there’s a big difference between those two mindsets, so we live in this society of if I’m not the best, then I’m gone.
So how many of us are the best? Go only be one or 2%? I mean, that’s kind of the way numbers work. So that means the rest of us are junk. We’re not necessarily directly told that. But if we’re not the wealthiest one or 2% in the world, we know where we stand.
So people live with this. And it’s a subconscious thing. We’re not walking around thinking I’m a horrible person because I didn’t make $10 million last year, but it’s there. It’s there, things like that.
And even as young children, we have those kinds of thoughts, especially getting into our teenage years, when our brains are developing a little more, and we’re becoming more sentient beings within society, we start to feel really out of place, a lot of us, there’s discomfort, there’s feelings we don’t like there’s ways that retreated by other people that we really don’t care for.
And for many of us, we reach out for that drink, that drug, that cookie, that cake or whatever. And we get that moment of relief. There’s this subconscious thing that happens, or brains are really incredible machines, what we can justly focus on turns into subconscious thought patterns. And that’s really all addiction is.
There is a conscious focusing becoming a subconscious pattern, then that sounds like it’s like the scary thing that’s out of our control or whatever, but it’s absolutely 100% within our control. So let’s say I’m 13 or 14 years old, and I’m sneaking my first drinks; I think I was like 12.
But so I drank three beers, and the first time, guess what, when you’re tall, you don’t need three beers. I was gone. I was really drunk. But I felt great. As bad as I felt from the alcohol. I felt amazing because of the relief from my thinking.
Because I was no longer worried about what people thought of me, even though now I’m acting a fool, and definitely, people are thinking about me at that point, chances are before they weren’t, but it created something, subconsciously, where my brain says, okay, anytime I feel that way, I don’t like to feel this is something that helps me feel better.
It doesn’t matter what that thing is, whatever your habit is, whatever your addiction is, it doesn’t matter.
It’s just something that, at some point, helped you. And this is actually it’s the exact same thing for what we call mental illness, where there’s a coping mechanism that was useful at some point in time. And it became a habit, and then we continued using it after the situation is gone. So it’s no different. It’s, it’s a thought pattern.
It’s a subconscious thought pattern. And it is the approach that society generally takes on that is that you need to attack that pattern. And it goes back to, like I was talking about earlier, stomping on the embers rather than putting up fire.
So you should go to a 12-step program, okay? Well, I put down the drink or the drug, but now I have to go to these meetings in order to feel okay. And for a lot of people, it doesn’t really work because, quite honestly, most of the meetings are pretty boring.
And it’s a lot of people complaining. So, that’s why a lot of people are in and out of the 12-step programs, because it’s not an addiction that appeals to them. The other one’s much more effective.
And that’s a key thing when looking at healing, addiction, and mental illness is that you cannot directly heal that symptom.
You have to put out a fire. You have to stop the bonfire that’s throwing those embers out in the first place. Otherwise, you’ll spend your whole life running around, stopping, and never getting anywhere. And you’ll wonder why man, I haven’t had a drink in 20 years, but I still want to put a bullet in my head.
And I saw that day, a soul monitor that people have been in for a long time were miserable. They could speak well at meetings, and you have these great messages, but it’s like you’d see them outside of a meeting. You could just tell it’s like they’re not happy.
Living their true full potential. And the reason, like I said earlier, one of the reasons why a 12-step program works is that since we can’t get rid of the habit directly, what we have to do is replace it with a new one.
That’s the main key is establishing a new habit in its place. nature abhors a vacuum. So you can’t just, I’m not going to shop anymore. I’m done. That’s it; it might work for a few days. You get there on willpower for a while, you certainly can.
But if you haven’t replaced it with something else to fill that void, it’s gonna come right back. And another thing to remember is science has proven this, and Amy Johnson actually talked about it in her book,
The neuroscience behind it; when you use a neural pathway over and over, it actually becomes larger, and it becomes easier for information to travel on. So when I liken that to accent, you like to be outside, so like trails through the woods, a well-traveled trail is clear.
You’re not going through the briars and the thicket and all that stuff. It’s just clear traveling. But what happens if you decide you don’t want to travel that one anymore and you want to start a new trial?
So it’s not clear. It’s much harder at first. Because now you’ve got these downed trees to clear out, you’ve got the thicket to get through, and you get obstacles in your way in order to establish this new path. But once you do and continue using it over and over again, the other one overgrows, right?
Just like in the woods, it’s the same thing is happening in our brains. The more we use the new habit, the more though the old one just starts fading away. But in between, we have this wonderful thing that we’ve decided to label as relaxed. And all that really is you’re on your new path.
And now you come up on this fallen tree that’s 40 feet high and 1000 feet in every direction. And it just looks so unsurpassable the right in that moment, that old path that is still open. Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? It doesn’t men, the new path is gone. It doesn’t mean we’re always going to use the old path.
That’s where that was one of the things I didn’t really like about the 12-step programs is the shame that is put on somebody who relapses rather than saying, oh, cool, did you learn from it? Awesome. Let’s just move forward. It’s this shameful thing. And you have to, least around here. And I think it’s a fairly common thing.
But, like, you’d have to reintroduce yourself at meetings. Even if you had, 15 years, and went out have one drink. Now suddenly, you have zero days. And it is such a blow. And it’s not true it means that you’ve got 15 years of establishing that new trail. So what if you stepped on the old one for a little while?
As long as you get back on the new one, it doesn’t matter. It’s not an indicator of anything. It is simply an old path, and it’s easier to follow. That’s it; there’s nothing more to it. Get back to it; eventually, you’ll chat through that 40-foot-tall log that’s laying in your way.
And that’s the some of the stuff that comes up that people don’t like to deal with, like I was talking about earlier with psychedelics when people say they have a bad trip. Like no, that was just one of your subconscious things that came up and became conscious, which is beautiful, because when it’s conscious, you can deal with it.
When it’s subconscious, we’re not aware of it, and it’s just happening automatically. That’s the beauty of the subconscious mind. But it’s totally within our control to program that subconscious mind. And that’s really what this all comes down to our own programming. And I had the fact a couple years ago, I had this really incredible experience of becoming nothing.
I literally had to drop everything in my life because I suddenly wasn’t true what was real. And I had to question everything. And I’m not just I’m not really talking about like the physical world because I know that’s not actually real. I already knew that but as far as like, what beliefs Am I holding that aren’t mine? What was given to me by my parents, my friends, my teachers and old boss, whatever.
What am I carrying? That isn’t serving me. That isn’t mine? Then a lot of those answers came really clear to simply by typing everything and seeing what came back, what was what was going to stick, what was actually going to come around. And every time one of those things would come back, I would look at it and observe it in question; it is this mind that I literally stopped in the middle of my day when I had a thought.
And I’ll stop, and I’ll go, is that really mine? And the funny thing is, when you actually stop and genuinely ask yourself, you just know. And it was helpful for me. A few, quite a few years ago, I was told to start recording myself when things like that happened. And just talk to myself about it. This is what’s going on; this is what I’m feeling.
And then listen to it with, with earbuds in or something. So, you really get the full sound of your own voice. And you can call yourself out on your BS so easily that way. It’s just like when you hear somebody else say something, and you’re like, No, like, that just doesn’t seem right.
When you hear yourself saying it, just know whether or not you decide to keep moving forward, and facing it is another thing. But, that’s the important thing. Because that means it’s no longer completely subconscious is no longer outside of our awareness circle. Now I’m aware of it; even if it’s the tiniest bit, that’s all it takes.
Just that little weak, that little hole in the illusion where I can see through and I can peek through and be like, wait a minute, there’s something else there. There’s another way of looking at this.
Alexandra: I had a very similar experience when I left cult I was in in the early 2000s. And very similar to just taking every belief that we had, and I describe it like having a house made of bricks and pulling down every brick and deciding, did I come up with this? Or was I indoctrinated to believe this? Absolutely, it was a very valuable exercise.
Greg: We’re all part of the biggest cult in history called society. The biggest cult that, that’s ever existed. So it is important, I believe, for people to stop and question those things, not to the point where you’re driving yourself crazy with it, but just genuinely stop and consider.
Am I really upset about this? Because it’s something that upsets me. Or am I being a carrot? For lack of a better term at this point in time, but I think everybody understands what that means. It’s like, am I just following the newest trend of things we’re supposed to be upset about?
Am I getting on the bandwagon of who’s peeing in which bathroom, which you don’t hear about anymore? It was the biggest thing like, big corporations are changing their policies around their bathrooms and stuff. And it was this huge thing. And then suddenly, it was going because there was another thing to focus on.
And there will always be another thing to focus on. If we don’t put out the fire. It’s always going to be another Ember, another flame starting somewhere. Yes, we just run around in this big cult going; everything’s fine. As long as we just make sure people are paying in the right bathrooms.
And some people get upset with me because I do view things differently. But I see it as humorous. Because, in all reality, none of that matters. I really don’t see the problem of somebody going into whichever bathroom they feel comfortable, and they’re not harming anybody else.
And that’s just an example. It’s not, and everybody should be allowed to find their own path in life. Everybody should be allowed to explore what their interests are not following. Oh, my dad was a lawyer, so I have to be a lawyer.
My dad went to this school to be a lawyer to have to go to that school. would be a lawyer. That’s like, how much does that happen? And, with me growing up, it was put in my head that you had to go to college, but I really didn’t want to. I hated school. I didn’t like the way they taught, and I still don’t.
It’s too cookie-cutter. And it’s like, I don’t learn that way. I would rather learn other ways. It may be an unofficial avenue that I’m taking to learn this thing.
But, and that’s another thing is we put too much emphasis on the certifications and stuff that people have. Well, who was the first doctor that came up with? What it would require to become a doctor?
Who certified them? Are we questioning this? No, we’re not questioning it. We just go with it and be like, well, they’re certified as a doctor.
But how? Who decided that’s what makes somebody a doctor? And who decided that, this, this woman who grows 500 different herbs in her garden and comes up with tinctures, the cure all kinds of stuff for her friends. She’s not a doctor. She’s healing more people than these doctors. But she’s not official, so she can’t be a doctor. Like, those are the things we should be questioning. Is this really true?
Alexandra: Well, this is this has been really nice. Greg. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. We’re running out of time.
Do you have a website or anywhere where people can find out more about you and your work?
Greg: Best way, honestly, at this point, is just through Facebook,
Alexandra: Facebook, okay.
Greg: If they just looked me up on Facebook, my email is Greg suchy @ gmail.com. I keep things simple. So I mean, okay, maybe wants to get a hold of me. If they’re not on Facebook. I’d love to hear from people. Always happy to connect.
Alexandra: I know you are, and I really appreciate you being here to let people know a little bit about you and the things that are important to you. So thank you so much for being here with me today.
Beginning with the understanding of our innate wellness
Alexandra’s personal experience of depression
How depression can be like sailing the ocean
Why resisting any experience, including depression, only increases our suffering
Can depression be seen as a safety mechanism?
What is caterpillar soup and how does it relate to depression?
On how the drive to overeat and depression are related
Transcript of episode
Welcome back, Explorers, to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today the question is: what is depression?
It’s going to sound like initially that it doesn’t really have anything to do with resolving an unwanted habit. But the two really are tied together. And I’ll bring that together toward the end of the episode.
So the first thing I need to say is I’m not a doctor. This is not a prescription, this is not a diagnosis.
What I’m really going to do today is explore what depression looks like, to me based on my own personal experience. And I always, always, always want to encourage you, dear listener, to go to your own wisdom. It’s great to listen to, and to get information from, other people, of course. That’s how we learn. And then I always feel like the second step should be that we bring that home to ourselves, and see how it fits with us and see how it fits based on our own experience, and explore it with the aid of our own personal wisdom. And find out if what you’re hearing is true for you or not, it might be completely different. So I encourage that, as you’re listening to this episode.
The second thing I want to say before we jump in is just that I’m talking about depression, specifically not about sadness, or grief, which I experience as being very different from depression. So that’s just something to keep in mind.
We’re beginning with the premise, or understanding, that we are all being lived by a Universal Intelligence.
I need to begin there because that understanding is really important to the rest of what I’m going to explore. So the same way the planets are being spun and the grass is being grown and the flowers are being bloomed, that same universal intelligence or energy is flowing through all of us.
It’s innate, meaning you don’t have to create it, it’s not something you have to search for, or manage in any way. It’s just there within all of us. And that’s another important point that it’s within everyone, every single human, every single creature, I think, and living being on the planet is imbued with that Universal Intelligence.
We wouldn’t say that some trees are part of nature, and some aren’t. It just doesn’t work that way. So if you think you might be the exception to that rule, that is definitely not the case. So that’s the foundation for what we’re going to explore today.
And what that really looks like is that we are whole and well, always, that this wellness, that is the innate essence of who we are. So even when we’re ill, even when there’s illness within our bodies, we are still innately whole, no matter what’s going on with us physically.
So given that, very often, though, depression can feel like a problem. As though something has gone wrong with us as though, there’s sand in our gas tank, that there’s something that’s broken there that needs to be fixed, especially I think, when people struggle with depression chronically.
What if depression is also part of the innate Universal Intelligence that is living through all of us?
So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. I’m going to share a little bit of my personal experience now, and I’m going to do that because that’s going to shine a light on what I see to be true about depression. And of course, I feel like if I hadn’t experienced depression I wouldn’t be able to talk about this. I always feel like I need to experience something personally in order to reflect on it and see if there’s any fresh thinking there about it.
For example, I’ve never been a mother. I’ve never given birth. So I would never presume to speak very specifically about the experience of childbirth. But depression is something I can speak to, because I have experienced it. And I really reflected on what was happening as it was happening, because I was already learning about the three principles understanding.
I experienced my first really serious bout of depression in 2021.
I’ve never experienced depression before this. Of course, I’ve experienced sadness and grief like everybody else. But this was something different, I really felt like it came out of nowhere. First of all, I felt like my personality had been surgically removed. Like, it was just, it’s just the strangest feeling, I just didn’t care about anything.
My baseline of emotions was sort of it was normally at a seven, or eight. And it just dropped down to about a one or a two. I just wasn’t interested in anything, I didn’t care about anything. Like I say, it’s this really interesting feeling of just that my entire personality had been removed. I really just had to grind through every day, doing my best to make sure I did the things to kind of keep my life on the rails. But it certainly was very effortful while that was going on. And really just not a whole lot of fun.
What I likened it to at the time was – I’m not a sailor, but I know I’ve read books where sailors talk about how you can get into a situation when you’re sailing across a large body of water, like the Pacific Ocean, that’s called the doldrums. It’s also called being be calmed.
The sailboat will just get into this place where there’s absolutely no wind. And, of course, the Pacific Ocean is so huge, I’m thinking of a specific book I read years ago, that you can’t turn on your engine, because you’ll just run out of gas before you get to wherever you’re going, Hawaii or whatever. You really just have to ride it out.
And so the boat is just essentially sitting there on the water, and not moving at all except for the little bit of drift that the current is providing. And you’re really at the mercy of the wind and the weather at that point. The sailors I gather, just have to ride it out and let it happen. And then eventually, it will change of course, like everything does.
So this first bout of depression that I experienced lasted, I want to say, and I didn’t track it exactly, but I want to say for about three or four months. And one of the things that was really challenging about it was it was hard to not fight it or resist it.
There was a lot of chatter in my head about how much I disliked what was happening. And, some days, that was easy to fall into listening to that and really paying attention to it and believing it, really kind of being attached to that thinking. And other days, it was a little easier not to do that. Although I will say that, throughout the whole thing. I really just didn’t enjoy the experience. I mean, it’s like having the flu, nobody likes it.
We tend to resist it a little bit and are we’re glad when it’s over. So that’s what it was like for me when I experienced that bout of depression.
And then what happened was a ways into it several weeks into it, maybe six or so weeks in. I remember it vividly, I was just walking across the living room floor. And I had an insight and I realized, “Oh, I’m burned out. That’s why this depression is here in this moment.”
There’s a really good metaphor that Michael Neill uses about depression in this way. He talks about how when you’re using a hairdryer, if the hairdryer gets too hot, it shuts off. You can be there, it can be plugged in, you can be drying your hair, and wind is going and everything, and then it’ll just stop. And the reason for that is it’s a safety mechanism.
It’s the hairdryer has become overheated. And so it’s turning itself off so that it won’t, so that it won’t burst into flames. So when I had that insight about being burned out, I realized, okay, this is the, this is the hairdryer that’s turned off, this is a safety mechanism.
And one of the reasons now looking back that I can see that I was really burned out, was that I’d been working two jobs for about 10 or 12 years at that point. And really, really working hard. My mind was really revved up all the time. The reason I was working two jobs was that the job that I earned an income from was a home based business. And then I was also writing books on the side and I was also hosting a podcast for other mystery authors.
And then I had tried to start adding a little bit of three principles teaching on top of all of that stuff. I hadn’t had a holiday in goodness knows how long or a break. Sometimes I would take a few days off at Christmas, but that was all. So I was really burned out, really, really burned out.
My reflex or default position is always to work harder if things aren’t working well. If things feel like I need to move them in a direction, then I just need to double down and work really, really hard. And what my body, I realized now, was saying to me was, that’s not the answer. That’s not the direction that you want to be going in.
The innate intelligence that is within me got that message through to me via depression.
And then after that, later that year, and I think into 2022, I had to shorter bouts of depression. Same experience; I felt like my personality had been removed. And, I really struggled to get through every day. And they were, probably two or three weeks, each separated by six weeks or something or two months.
During those two bouts, I didn’t have any insights about it the way that I did with the first experience. And that was a little confusing to me. But I’m sharing this because it was another good example of still the intelligence of life, that Universal Intelligence that flows through us being in play within me.
What I came to understand about those two bouts of depression came later. It came after they had occurred. Late in 2022, I was able to look back and see that I was going through a really big transition period.
There’s that metaphor about change, and how change can be like going from the caterpillar to the butterfly. And when a caterpillar goes into its cocoon, it doesn’t just sort of reform as a butterfly. What happens is it literally melts down into just a gooey substance, like a real goo. And then from the goo, the butterfly is formed. Sometimes people refer to this as Caterpillar soup, which I just love.
So looking back, what I realized was afterwards, that’s what was happening. I was caterpillar soup, and was going through a big change a big transition. I wasn’t even consciously aware of what that change would be. But it did show up later.
And so, again, I just want to point to the fact that those two bouts of depression, they weren’t a mistake. They weren’t something that was broken about me at all. They were intelligence at play.
And again, I didn’t like them. In fact, I really really didn’t like them. They were very unpleasant and I did at times feel like there must be something wrong. There must be something broken about me. But there were also moments when I was able to just relax into it. Again, just like having the flu.
The suffering that we create within ourselves, usually most of it tends to happen, because we’re resisting what’s happening. And so I tried to do that as little as possible. I tried to resist what was going on and not beat myself up about it. Or get really down on myself. Those kinds of things just tried to, to be with what was happening without being really hard on myself.
So that’s one thing that’s important to remember that our suffering is so often caused by our resistance to whatever’s going on.
And then the second thing that I really reflected on about these three periods of depression, is it everything is temporary.
Everything always is temporary, nothing lasts forever.
And when we’re in the middle of something like that, it can really feel like it’s going to last forever. I did have days and moments where I just thought, oh, no, this is the rest of my life. This is awful. And, of course, that wasn’t true. Of course, everything shifts and moves.
And I’m sure when the caterpillar is caterpillar soup, it could reflect and say, Oh, no, this is it. What if I never turn into a butterfly? What if I’m just Caterpillar soup forever?
I just tried to remember that everything is temporary, everything is always moving, and shifting and changing, even if it doesn’t feel like it. And that was true, definitely, for those periods of depression.
So as I said, at the beginning, this, this is not a diagnosis about depression at all. And I’m not saying that everybody’s experience of depression is going to be the same. If you’re dealing with it your experience is going to be unique. But what I really encourage is a couple of things.
If you can be gentle with yourself and hold the experience lightly, that will certainly ease your suffering of it.
And then in that gentle way, look for the intelligence that might be within that depression. I think that insight, or fresh thinking that you might have about depression, if you’re experiencing it comes about more easily when we’re not caught up in resisting what’s happening.
I’ve got an episode actually coming up next week, a q&a episode, about being in the present moment. That is the place where wisdom and creativity and fresh thinking do come into play in our lives. So if you experienced depression, and have some quite heavy thinking about it maybe there’s just an opportunity here for you to explore:
What if there was something different going on than you being broken or unwell? What if that depression was a perfect part of your divine design?
And even if we don’t like what’s happening, it can still be a perfect part of our design. So I’m thinking of when we break an arm or a bone, and it has to be set. There’s a while, weeks very often, where we can’t use that arm the same way we normally do and we need to be gentle with it and tender with it and keep it still.
And that stillness is necessary, even though we don’t like having that experience. What’s going on underneath that is that the intelligence of our bodies are knitting the bones together. So there’s the part that we can play, which is keeping the limb still and being tender with it. And then there’s the part that is the intelligence of our body and our being plays, which is healing the bone. So I hope that’s not too sloppy a metaphor.
So that’s about everything that I wanted to discuss today. If you have any questions about depression, if it’s something that you experience yourself, I’d love to hear that and answer that question on a future episode. This is something that I’m interested in, because it happened to me quite recently. And also, because I was just able to see it from a completely different perspective than I ever had before.
You can always submit your questions at alexandraamor.com/question. And I’ll be really help happy to answer.
And then, oh, I said that I was going to tie this back into unwanted habits, didn’t I?
Okay, so the way that this is tied into resolving unwanted habits, is that we can see, or what I see is that cravings, that drive to overeat, is similar to depression in that they are something that we don’t like, they are something that we tend to fight. Culturally, societally, nobody has taught us that they are actually a part of the wisdom of our design.
I see this in so much of what it means to be human, that we’re always just trying to overpower and control and manage and eliminate the things about ourselves that we don’t like, when really what those things you’re trying to do is communicate with us. So the perfect example is the first bout of depression that I talked about that was trying to get me to slow down.
If I had been unwilling to listen to that message, I might have continued doubling down on the work I was doing and just burning myself out even further and then being a service to absolutely nobody. Least of all myself.
So quieting down, and being able to see that wisdom was really helpful for me. This exact same thing applies to the drive to overeat, when we experience cravings and that compulsive feeling of wanting to overeat, what we try to do is manage that feeling and control it and eliminate it, instead of looking at the intelligence that that it’s actually reflecting the fact that it’s trying to wake us up to the fact that we have misunderstood our true nature that were caught up in a lot of busy thinking, and have I always want to say forgotten, but we may not even have ever known that we are filled with this innate intelligence that we are well and whole.
At our core, we are made of peace, and well-being and creativity and love and all those things. And those cravings, that drive to overeat is simply trying to remind us of that.
So these two things are really similar in that they’re trying to wake us up. That’s what they’re doing. They’re not a problem in and of themselves. They’re not a sign that we are broken at all. And that’s a great note to end on, because the podcast is called Unbroken.
I hope that’s been helpful for you. And again, if you have any questions, please let me know. alexandraamor.com/question.
Thanks again for being here and I will talk to you next week. Bye!
Healing Anxiety and Binge Eating with Clare Assante
Apr 06, 2023
Clare Assante knows whereof she speaks. For years she struggled with anxiety, which also created a binge eating habit. And like so many of us, she tried All. The. Things. to try to manage, control, and eliminate those struggles. Thankfully, Clare discovery the 3 Principles, which not only helped her with the anxiety and binge eating, they softened the blow when she received a potentially devastating health diagnosis.
Clare Assante suffered with anxiety for 25 years; it made her world very small and she was doing less and less. She had tried many things but nothing helped long term until she came across an understanding of how the mind works that helped her to navigate life without getting caught up in all the drama.
Clare is now a certified Change Coach and works with those struggling with anxiety, depression, unwanted habits, health anxiety or anything that’s making life feel like hard work.
Tell us about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.
Clare: I was a very worried child who spent my whole childhood just worrying about things and not really knowing that was what it was. And as I got a bit older, it took hold as anxiety, really. And then, I struggled with severe anxiety for about 25 years. And it just got worse and worse.
I literally tried every single possible thing that I could find and threw a lot of money at it. And, even these weird and wonderful things that you think, maybe this is the one. I did find a lot of them, a lot of the things, temporarily did the trick. I thought, “I found it found it last”, and then it was just, I think, where it just didn’t shift enough, nothing shifted enough.
So then I would end up back to square one again. And then eventually, I found the three principles, which were just something completely different.
Alexandra: Can you describe the difference between the two approaches that you saw?
Clare: I think the main thing that I would probably describe it as is the fact that with all the other things, you’re basically trying to fix the behavior. So it felt like white-knuckling, and you’re just not really getting anywhere with that.
Whereas with three principles, you are changing something so deep within you that once it’s changed, there’s no going back. I always say it’s like when someone shows you a magic trick, and you’re completely fooled by it, and then they show you how it’s done. And then you’re like, Well, I can’t even believe in that again.
And that’s what three principles gave me. It was like having an instruction manual, to my mind, my feelings, my emotion, everything where I couldn’t look at it at the same in the same way again, it just looked completely different. And I think that’s what like, almost like a soul shift is, isn’t it? Where it’s so deep you can’t ever go back again.
Alexandra: That’s such a great metaphor or analogy, that magic trick one. I love that. I haven’t heard that before. That’s awesome.
Your website is called Blindsided by Thought. Tell us why you came to choose that name.
Clare: So about six years ago, I was diagnosed with an eye disease. And it is something that takes hold of the cones inside of the back of the eye. I don’t know exactly how it works. But at some point, it will take my vision. Part of it, I’m not sure.
I went for just a routine eye test. They obviously saw something and sent me to the hospital. And the doctor didn’t even really tell me what it was. It’s like, oh, you’ve got this thing called retinitis pigmentosa. So that’s a bit of a mouthful and must Google that when I get home. I googled it.
And it had like blind, and I was like, that can’t be right. Surely they would have made a bit more of a facile or given me a leaflet or website to look at. But that’s what it was. So then I was thrown into this work world of the complete unknown where everything I looked at, there was no specific time scale.
Nobody could tell me when or how, or everybody that you looked at was completely different. So there was no nailing it down of, it’s almost like, in five years, you will go blind, you almost feel like you could maybe cope with that because you know what’s coming, but it’s that real. Who knows.
And luckily, I’d already come across the three principles. So much as I had that panic of, oh, goodness, it was a completely different experience to what I would have had before I came across the three principles. Because I know that if I hadn’t come across three principles, I would have basically started living like a blind person, living in that fear of all this is going to happen that forward-thinking of your mind or how am I going to cope.
But actually, I was able to ground myself back to Okay, well, what’s true now today I can see. And weirdly I’ve sought to start up my coaching business and what can I do for a name? What can I use and just typical was out for a walk one day I was like, oh! blindsided by thought. I was like, wow, that’s a good one.
Alexandra: Exactly. Well, it has so many meanings, doesn’t it? So, you’ve embedded the word blind in there because of your situation. And then it points to the way that thought just can hijack us when we don’t understand it completely.
Clare: I mean; it takes the wind out of you. Sometimes you’re thinking, doesn’t it?
Alexandra: I love hearing that you say that you had already found the principles, because I imagine with the experience you had with anxiety in the past, and then if you layered something like that, your eyes situation onto it.
I can’t even imagine how much suffering that would cause without this understanding.
Clare: And I find, if I ever coach people around health anxiety, that’s exactly what it is. Whether the fear of what’s going to happen takes over. And even with a diagnosis, and, not taking anything away from the fact that people do have some horrible diagnosis.
It’s a different feeling when you can deal with it one moment at a time, to cloud yourself with that fear of what’s going to happen. I live in the country. So not being able to drive for me is quite a big deal. So much as obviously, I have given it thought, because that’s what humans do.
But, it would mean moving and, changing everything really, and, being in a town, which I’m not used to and, all those things, but again, that that didn’t take hold, it was just, again, kept saying what’s true. Now today.
Alexandra: Right, and I just find it so fascinating that we so innocently, can take that thinking, that anxious, nervous thinking, and view it as information, rather than just the fact that it’s pointing to our state of mind at the moment.
Seeing that differentiation has been so big for me.
Clare: That hanging on to, you do go down that road of like a line of thinking, don’t you? And sometimes you don’t know how you’ve been dragged so deeply into it. How did that happen?
Yes, conversations that you plan to have with someone, like if you think oh, I’m going to see that teacher in a minute. I’m going to go and talk to them about my child, and you play it out in your head as though that’s helpful. And we don’t know what’s going to be said to
Alexandra: Exactly, I do that on this podcast, sometimes.
Clare: She’ll say that, and then I’ll say that, I’ll say this.
Alexandra: Exactly.
You went through training with Dr. Amy Johnson. And she does focus on anxiety but also on food-related issues.
Did you see any shift in your own eating habits when you were going through that training? Or when you were learning about the principles?
Clare: I did. And that’s how I found Amy because although I originally found the principles through Nicola Bird, I was struggling with an eating disorder as well. So I was basically binging to comfort, my anxiety, really, and obviously, now I can see it for what it is, but at the time, when you’re in it, it’s really scary and horrible.
I can even pinpoint where I picked up my habitual thinking. I used to be a synchronized swimmer. And I did that for like, years and years. I qualified for the Olympics, so it was quite a big part of my life. And I started that when I was eight years old.
When we got into that more serious training, we would train for sometimes three, four, or five hours at a time. So we were in the pool training, and part of our routine was that said, at certain times, we would get out of the swimming pool, and we would all eat a bar of chocolate.
So it was ingrained in my mind that chocolate equals energy and rest. It was giving me that positive thinking. So I did that for years. I was swimming till I was in my 20s. So that was in my mind of something that would help if I was feeling a bit tired or, low or whatever.
And then, obviously, because our minds are just machines, my mind just picked up something that would help me. So every time from there and then on and that carried on, when I gave up swimming, even if I was just having a low day, it would give me that information: go and get a bunch of food and just eat it.
And then that took on a life of its own, basically. And then I felt like I was really in trouble, and then that feeling of food just not being a pleasure anymore. It was horrible. I hated it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I felt like I had no control; it felt like there was something wrong with me.
And then I came across the principles and then found Amy, and as you said, she very much focuses on the habitual ways that our mind works. And I don’t binge now because I can see. And, it still gives me that information.
Sometimes, if I’m having a bad day, it will say, well go buy a massive bar of chocolate and just stuff that in and that will make you feel better. But I’m on to you. I don’t fall for that one anymore. That’s very different. I enjoy food now. I’m not scared of it anymore.
Alexandra: I think it’s so interesting that these two things existed together, the anxiety and the binge eating, because what I noticed very often is that our eating habits can quiet down our thinking a little bit. So, I always used to think of it as soothing myself or comforting myself.
And that was true. But what I see now, too, is that, it just got my mind to quiet down a little bit. And that was one reason for reaching for it.
If you were experiencing anxiety, I can imagine that would compound that.
Clare: My mind was also giving me the story that when I was hungry, I felt more anxious. But again, it was just a story around it. But you’re right. When I was eating the food, I would feel peaceful. But not for the whole time.
Obviously, the peace left after a while once it became a bit of a problem. And then it just felt horrible. But originally, definitely. And then, of course, you’re chasing that feeling again, aren’t you?
Alexandra: Exactly. I mean, that’s the crazy-making thing about it, isn’t it? It does quiet your mind down initially. And then, your mind revs up again because now we’re beating ourselves up about having done the thing that we said we wouldn’t do again or whatever. Don’t want to be doing.
Clare: When you look at, when I coach anybody, everybody has some coping mechanism, and they’re all different, but they give them the exact same result, don’t they? Where, even if it’s something like self-harming, for that set a split second, they feel peace, and that’s what they’re looking for. And then, obviously, it becomes a problem because it’s not a healthy thing to do. Right.
Alexandra: Yes, exactly. So true. And so leading on from that, I mean, we’ve touched on this already, but one of the questions I had shared with you that I thought I could ask was what is it about thought, that keeps us trapped in these behaviors that, that we unwanted habits.
I think we’ve touched a little bit on that it, they quiet our minds down temporarily at least.
Do you see anything else around that around this? The service that they’re providing?
Clare: I think I’ve really seen a lot around the machine part of it like it’s just like our computer. So that takes the power out of it where it’s like an algorithm where it’s just giving you the same information because you’ve thought it several times before. It becomes quite interesting, then done.
It’s like, Oh, I thought that one yesterday. Isn’t that interesting that that’s programmed into my mind? And again, we don’t have any control over what we soak up It’s programmed in, and then it goes on repeat. I think that’s probably been the biggest part for me where it is made it not about me; it’s just made it so that my mind machine gives me the same information.
And it is just mind noise. It’s not personal. It’s nothing to do with me feels personal. Because obviously, it’s from my experiences that I’ve picked it up. But it’s not doing it on purpose. It’s not doing it to be mean.
In fact, it’s doing it because it, loves us and wants to give us a wallet, what we think, what it thinks that we need. And that’s why we get dragged around by our hair because it feels like it’s about us, and it feels like it’s important.
Alexandra: Responding to those whims of the chatter that’s going on inside.
You have a post on your website about living in the unknown and you touched on this a little bit when you talked about your diagnosis.
Could you share a little bit more about that? And the value of living happily in the unknown?
Clare: I think, as you said, my diagnosis has definitely kicked me into that living in the unknown. And has probably made me much more comfortable with it. Even things like even you and I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next five minutes.
Someone might knock on the door, or, but that’s the way we live. But we don’t know that we live like that. COVID was a perfect example, wasn’t it? And every second of every day, none of us know, but we think we do.
I love the fact that our mind wants to nail everything down. It wants to tell you how this is going to go and how that’s going to go. And it’s 3d special effects, all singing, all dancing. So it’s very, very, very convincing.
And I think, before, this, obviously, you think you’ve got a bit of control over it, I think I mean, I thought that I was paving my way to be, you have it in your head that you’re going to do something and I felt like I was the one doing it. But again, it’s allowing yourself to live in the unknown.
I do find when I think about my eyes situation if I’m having a low day where I’m maybe not feeling quite so clear, I do tend to want to know what’s going to happen. And that might be when I’m googling stuff and trying to research and find out, or how’s this going to go?
Whereas when my mind is a lot clearer, I’m completely happy to be in the unknown and go with the flow and see, see what turns up.
Alexandra: When you find you’re a little more caught up about your diagnosis if you’re Googling, is there anything that you do to stop yourself from doing that? Or do you just let it happen? What happens then?
Clare: I suppose with being in this understanding for quite a long time now, I’m on to what’s going on, I suppose. And that’s probably got easier over time. I do just allow myself to get caught up. Sometimes it’s quite fun to be in a bad mood, isn’t it, and be like, if I’m in it, I’m going to be in it.
But, I think it’s a bit like quicksand, isn’t it? If you are trying to get out of a bad mood or a low state of mind or wherever you just sink deeper if you try and get out of it. I’m not saying I’m always that gracious with it. But I try not to fight my way out, because I know it will only make it worse. And eventually, it does pass doesn’t it? We come in and out.
Alexandra: It always shifts. So we can count on that. For sure.
Is there was anything else about your work or about what you’ve seen around this understanding that you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on?
Clare: I’ve been doing a lot of work with teenagers. I’m not sure I’ve had a chance to put much about that on my website, but I’m going into a school and coaching some people there, and I’ve been doing a lot more with teenagers because I think I feel like they are a good group to teach this to because they’re not quite as conditioned.
They’re a lot closer to their source than adults are because adults seem to have layers and layers to peel back. But, teenagers don’t. They haven’t been on this earth working quite as long.
So, they’re really fun to work with. And unfortunately, they’re struggling a bit. So that’s what I’ve really, really enjoyed that.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s amazing. And I think it’s such a good point, too, about teenagers. Compared to adults, when we’re adults, I just get a greater sense of we feel like, well, I know what’s happening. I’m going to defend my position, and this is how it is.
Is there a little bit less of that, I’m guessing, with teenagers?
Clare: They seem to be a lot more open to things because you almost think that they’re not going to be. But no, they really are. I think if you can teach a teenager about the role of thought, you’re onto something big.
When I look back, I think if I knew this when I was a teenager, what a difference. I like to think that if we work with enough children and teenagers, we won’t have to ever coach adults again.
Alexandra: So true.
Just before we started recording, you mentioned you have children. Do you bring this to them as well?
Clare: I really do. I suppose because I live this way, it’s unavoidable. Because they see it, they hear it. Even things like if I’m really caught up in my thinking, I can tell them it’s not you, then you haven’t done anything wrong.
I’m just in a really low mood, and I’m seeing the world through a filter of distortion. Might not put it like that. So they might not understand. But what I mean is it’s where they know that their moods are not necessarily to be taken too seriously. And also pointing out things like we all always have, like a place that we go, when we’re in a low mood like mine is quite often, I might look around the house, and I see them all on screens or something and then freak out because I’m like, well, you’re always on screens, which they’re not.
But, when I’m in a low mood, it looks like they are or, and they all have their own individual places that they go. So I try and talk about that a bit. And help them to just notice it. Really, I think it’s all about noticing, isn’t it?
Alexandra: Yes, exactly. And I imagine that when we’re kids, I mean, I guess I should speak for myself, but I responded less well when people told me what to do or how things were, but when an adult was open and vulnerable about what they were going through that really affected me.
So I imagined by sharing with your kids, I’m in a low mood. This is just what’s going on with me right now that that would have such an impact on them.
You’re not pointing to them and saying do it differently. You’re just sharing what’s going on with you.
Clare: That’s it. And sometimes they will even say to me, you’re just in a low mood. It’s not me. And I’m like, well, it feels like it’s you.
Alexandra: Turning the tables. That’s great. I love hearing that.
How did your work in the schools come about? I’m just curious about the teenagers.
Clare: So it’s a school that my children have gone to. I’ve got two teenagers and one younger one as well. So I just emailed them. And it’s voluntary. I just said, if you want someone to go in and coach one day a week, or more, then I’m available.
I’m so amazed by them that they’re open to this because a lot of schools have to jump through so many hoops. And they’re a bit like, oh, no, we’ll stick to the very normal way we do it. I think they’ve just really impressed me.
So I emailed them and then sent them some testimonials. And some of the students that I’ve already helped from the same school, emailed them as well and just said, it’s really, really helpful. And it’s something a bit different. So, good for them.
Alexandra: I’m encouraged too that the teenagers will step forward and say I’d like to talk to you or I’d like some help with whatever it is. That’s really great.
Clare: Because I think the route through the doctors and things like that, I think they’re on like an 18-month waiting list. People can’t wait that long. Some people can’t wait that long. Some people can’t afford private coaching.
So at least if it’s available, and maybe we’ll do like six-week slots for them. So they know that every week they turn up and they have a session. Hopefully, I can do something there.
Alexandra: Oh, that’s lovely. That makes my heart so happy. That’s really nice. Well, this has been amazing, Clare. Thank you so much for talking to me.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Clare: I’ve got a website, which is BlindsidedByThought.com. I have a YouTube channel, which is, I think, under blindsided by thought as well. I also have a Facebook group called parenting teens more gracefully, which I’ve really enjoyed doing. I interview someone once a month, and some come from this understanding.
I try and choose a topic that maybe a teenager would struggle with, that somebody’s come through, that they’ve come through the other side, thanks to this understanding. So that’s really fun, and lots of resources on there. And I do mainly one-to-one coaching. But obviously, struggling with my own anxiety and eating disorders there are lots of topics there that we can cover.
Alexandra: Great. I will put links to all of that in the show notes. And if I put a link to the Facebook group, will that like, it’s not a private group, I guess, is what I’m asking if I put a link in and go there.
Clare: Yes, I think so. I think to join; they have to just answer a couple of questions. It is on there as one of the lists of parenting groups.
Alexandra: Okay. Thank you so much for talking to me, Clare. I appreciate it.
Hello, explorers and welcome back to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m really happy you’re here.
Today I want to talk about the question: Will I be happy when I stop overeating?
I wanted to explore this a little bit because yesterday I was doing a bunch of house cleaning, and I was listening to an older episode of Armchair Expert. That’s a podcast hosted by an actor and director from the United States called Dax Shepard. And the episode I happened to choose was an older one and his guest was Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran, if you don’t know, is a musician from the UK.
They started to talk about this really interesting thing that I wanted to share, because it ties in so beautifully with what we’re learning about the Inside-Out understanding. So at some point in the interview, Ed was sharing a story about how his biggest goal as he was growing up and learning to be a musician was to have a sold out show at Wembley Stadium. And that was a North Star that kept him going. It was very specific. It wasn’t a sold out show at any other stadium. It was specifically a sold out show at Wembley Stadium. And he talked about how that happened eventually to him when he became really popular, and he had that actual experience.
What he shared was that when it happened, and the show was over, and he walked off stage, he didn’t feel the big feeling of euphoria and a feeling of having reached the peak of the mountain, that he’d made it, that everything was great and all those things that we think that we’ll experience when we reach a very specific goal like that of his.
And then Dax Shepard shared that he had had a similar experience. And his was around money; he thought that if he earned a certain amount of money, that he would feel all those feelings of euphoria and happiness and peak of the mountain stuff. And he didn’t say it on that particular episode, but I’ve heard him talk about it before.
So I’m going to add a couple of extra things in here, that he had, in his mind a very specific amount of money. When he was raised they didn’t have a lot of money. He was raised by a single mom. And they were, it sounds like, it a little bit poor. His Northstar was that if he had a million dollars in the bank then he would be happy, that would be the thing that would fix all his problems and create that sense of that peak of the mountain feeling for him.
I’ve heard him tell this story a couple of different times around this subject. He was flying from somewhere to somewhere else. And I should say DAX is a self-professed recovering alcoholic and drug addict. But at the time of this story, he was actively drinking.
He had time before his flight, so he went to the airport bar and had as many drinks as he could get into himself, before he had to go to his gate. And then he had an epiphany.
He realized that there he sat – I believe the story is he was he had been at one acting job, and he was flying to go to another one, so his dream of being a working actor had come true, and he literally had a million dollars in the bank. He had worked enough that that was the amount that was in his bank account. And he realized he was more miserable than he had ever been.
So I reflected on this, after listening to that episode, and was thinking about it last night, and I realized these stories are such a good example of the things that I talk about and that we explore here on this podcast.
There’s a few different things I want to reflect on and point to as well.
The first is that what both of stories point to really accurately is that our experience doesn’t come from the outside-in, it comes from the inside-out.
You’ve probably got examples where you’ve heard famous people or rich people say the exact same thing: they have a goal of owning a big house or owning a certain number of hobby cars, or going on certain vacations, being able to do certain things. And they realize that when they do that, it doesn’t make a difference to their good feelings about themselves, just like Dax and Ed said. And so I just really love it that those examples and all the other ones we hear really do point to the fact that our experience comes from the inside-out.
If it came from the outside-in, then in both those cases, Dax and Ed would have had all the really great feelings that they anticipated that they would have. The reason I bring this up is because I’m going to circle back around now to the exploration of overeating that we’re doing.
My own experience has been that the more that I look toward exploring this understanding, and seeing that my experience, a) that it’s changeable, that it’s a river of energy that’s coming to life within us moment to moment, and b) that there’s nothing that I need to do to control that experience, which is what I was trying to do with food, trying to elevate my mood, if I was feeling down, that there’s no need for that.
Our human system is designed to settle back down to equilibrium all by itself. And if I just leave it alone, take my hands off the wheel, it will do that it will do it naturally. And it will do it far more quickly than if I get all tangled up in trying to manage that experience and manage my feelings.
Then the other I guess the other big part of this is that Ed and Dax both in their examples pointed out how they thought they would have this pivotal experience of happiness when they reached these goals that they both had that were both very specific. And what that highlights as well is the variability of our experience, the fact that it comes from the inside out.
We can’t predict at any given time, what we’re going to be feeling in any given circumstance.
So when we ask the question, will I be happy when I stop overeating, the answer is tied to these things. Of course, that’s why I’ve brought it up. And I also wanted to say that definitely, I can speak from personal experience that my suffering has eased off since I stopped struggling with an overeating habit. That’s definitely true.
If we dig down a little bit, the kernel of truth within that is that it really isn’t about the food. Just like I say in my book. It’s about the understanding, like I said a couple of minutes ago, of where our experience is coming from and how we are designed that decreases our suffering.
And the one reason I can point to that is for those of you who are in the Freedom From Overeating course that I offer, you know that there are some lessons in there about a wine habit than I’m working to let go of at the moment. What I noticed is that when we have less on our mind, about the habit that we’re concerned about that that’s the thing that creates peace within us and happiness and calm.
So we can have a situation that might look like it’s something that in the past would have really troubled us, like my wine habit. But now that I understand where my experience is coming from, that’s not the case. I’m simply exploring it with a very light touch knowing that insight is going to guide me toward letting go of that habit the same way it did with my overeating habit.
And the other thing I noticed that I wanted to say is that drinking wine makes it more difficult to lose weight. So even though my eating habits have really shifted, and I’m not overeating anymore, my weight isn’t dropping quite as quickly as I might like. And the reason for that is that I have a couple of glasses of wine every night with supper.
One would think then that I would be frustrated, because here I am, I’ve done all this work. I’ve seen all these things that I’ve seen, and my eating habits are better than they’ve ever been my entire adult life. So one would think that I would be unhappy with the fact that I’m not losing weight. And the truth is, that’s not the case.
The reason is, I think, because I do recognize where my experience comes from. I do know that any sense of contentment that I have, or joy, or peace or happiness, or any of those kinds of good feelings come from within me. And they won’t come from the circumstance of losing weight. And they don’t even come from the circumstance of not overeating. They come because of an awareness of, like I said, where my experience comes from, and how I’m designed and how you’re designed.
So the moral of the story is, or the point of this episode is that so often, it just seems to be such a human thing that we do. We look for happiness outside ourselves. And we even look for it from things that we think that we could do differently, to make our lives better, or to be prouder of ourselves or whatever it is. I’m thinking specifically of letting go of an overeating habit in that instance. But really, that’s not where contentment comes from. And it’s such an easy thing to say.
The reason I wanted to bring this up today was just to point out that it really is true, and that even when we don’t have any awareness of the Inside-Out understanding, like I don’t think Dax Shepard and Ed Sheeran do, they still can see that their peace of mind and their contentment didn’t come from those huge peak experiences that they had.
So the answer to the question, if I stop overeating, will I be happy, is yes. Sometimes. And no, sometimes.
Your experience will be variable and changeable. But the thing that’s going to ease your suffering is that you’ll know that’s the case. And you’ll know when you’re not feeling great that your mind will settle down all on its own and that the peace and innate wisdom that flows through you, you’ll get in touch with it again once the overthinking that you’re going through about traffic or bills to pay or whatever it is, will return.
I hope you’ve found that helpful. I always like to reflect on examples that I see out in the world and I thought this was such a good one. Not to mention that I did really enjoy the interview with Ed Sheeran because I love hearing creative people talk about what goes on behind the scenes. That’s one of my very favorite things.
If you have a question about an overeating habit or any other kind of habit, I would love to hear from you. You can go to alexandraamor.com/question and there’s a form there and you can use to submit your question and I will be happy to answer it on a future episode of Unbroken.
I hope you’re doing well I’m sending you lots of love. I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
Being Friends With Our Bodies with Becs Steele
Mar 30, 2023
When it comes to resolving a relationship with food, there are two factors involved: our bodies and our thoughts. These two brilliant systems work together and getting to know them both more intimately can help us find peace with unwanted habits.
Becs Steel is both a registered nutritional therapist and a rewilding guide so we dive deep into this subject and explore how both our thoughts and the feelings in our bodies affect our ability to eat well.
Becs Steele works with her clients to empower them to regain confidence and vitality through diet and coaching. Her areas of interest are mental health, anxiety, depression, hormones & weight loss. She is a registered nutritional therapist and a coach.
Alexandra: Becs Steele, welcome to Unbroken. I’m really happy to be talking to you today.
Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and how you got interested in the three principles?
Becs: It was probably about ten years ago now. I had my daughter, and I was working. And I thought, actually, I just really want to retrain in something that I’m passionate about.
So I studied nutrition. And that took four years because I had babies in between and things.
And I then thought, as I started practicing nutrition, there’s more to it than just nutrition. There’s more than just giving people the perfect diet and sending them on their way and seeing them maybe once and then in six weeks’ time. And it was around that time that I found the principles I was in quite a similar understanding, actually, with a couple in America that I was listening to.
Then somehow I stumbled across Amy Johnson’s podcast, Changeable. And I listened to an episode on that. And suddenly, I just saw things so differently, even though I’d been in a very similar understanding for a very long time and had quite deep experiences.
This was like, wow, I’ve seen something on a whole new level around our thinking, and how everything is thoughts and how our world is created through our thinking. And, then I thought, I actually really want to combine nutrition with that.
But I didn’t feel ready because I felt like I wasn’t entrenched enough in the three principles. And then, about two years ago, did Rohini’s Rewilding Guides program. And that for me was like that gave me the confidence to then bring it into my practice.
Alexandra: Oh, nice.
What does rewilding mean to you? Maybe you could explain that to us, what that word means, and how it affects the work you do?
Becs: I loved Rohini’s program because it was like embracing all of us, all parts of us, the hidden parts that we’d kept small or hidden away because they were not okay, the parts of us that maybe weren’t allowed to be expressed as we were children or anger.
I never saw myself as angry, being able to be angry or express it in a healthy way. Even though it would rise up in me it was like that wasn’t okay or being sensitive. The parts that we say are not okay, I found that on the training it was like, well, actually, all of my experience is okay. And I can start to express these parts of me that I have suppressed for so long. So that was really eye-opening for me, that program.
And then I started to bring that understanding into my practice, to see how people really do keep these parts of themselves under wraps, really, and how they can affect all their areas of their life. But they’re not aware of how they are.
So for my practice, it’s really about bringing people much more aware of their bodies, because I think what happens is that we disconnect from our bodies. A lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people disconnect. And that’s through even as a child have not being able to express your emotions, being told to be quiet or have this biscuit. This will calm you down.
Go and play outside or distract, ignore. So, these are subtle ways we are not allowed to express ourselves. And maybe disconnect from the body because there’s the things that going on in us these feelings and emotions and sensations, that we’re not allowed to feel, we’re not allowed to express it in a healthy way.
And actually, over time, people start to just disconnect from their emotions and feelings and lose connection with their bodies. So that’s one way.
I think another way that people through dieting through the dieting culture through like their body is not okay. As it is through the dieting industry, this crazy diet that has actually no health benefits whatsoever. Eat very few calories, and you’ll end up like a stick.
But you’re overriding what your body needs and your body becomes an enemy. So it’s like, well, this is something that I need to control. And it’s not serving its purpose.
I think a lot of women that are entrenched in that dieting world who’ve done it for years on that yo-yo dieting journey, have completely lost connection to their bodies, and learned to hate their bodies.
So that’s another thing. And I also think, if you’re very, say, you’re in your mind the whole time, you’re very intellectual, you read a lot, you study a lot, I think that’s another way people can disconnect as well from their bodies. So it really is about realizing, okay, we know we’ve got a body, but it’s like, oh, what’s actually going on?
It’s this perfect feedback system that’s happening all the time. It’s talking to us in signs and symptoms and signals, and there’s that direct correlation with we’re having anxious thinking we can feel it in, in our chest or in our stomachs. Long-term, stressful thinking stressful thoughts can cause a disconnect with the body, but also disease and our immunity might start not to be so good.
Digestion might not work so well. And, this is like long-term stress, which can have a big impact on the body. So, this is the area I’m most interested in.
Alexandra: When you’re working with people who are disconnected from their bodies, and you talked about the body being becoming the enemy, I saw that in two ways. One being we begin to hate the way we look.
But then the second is, we don’t like the signals that we’re receiving from our bodies. So that’s deeply unfortunate.
When you start to work with people, how do you get them back in touch with their bodies and make friends with their bodies?
Becs: So firstly, I think it’s, well like the three principles and rewilding point to you: we’re not our bodies, our bodies aren’t who we are, at the essential core that isn’t us. We’re way more than how we look. We are way more than our weight.
We’re weighing up more than our appearance, and yet, we’ve become so hyper-focused on this one area. And it’s the filter that we see everything through. So, you might not want to go out for the evening just because you can’t fit into the dress that you fitted into two weeks ago or something, and everything becomes the filter through how you see yourself through this very narrow prism.
But actually, when we’re connected to our true nature, when we are aware that we’re not our thoughts, we’re not our beliefs, we’re not our patterns of thinking or conditioned patterns of thinking that keep us very small. It’s like, well, we have freedom. And there’s freedom within that to connect to our body in a much more fluid way.
But it’s also about tuning into the sensations in the body, tuning into the thing, but slowly because people don’t often want to feel things straightaway because it could feel overwhelming. So for me, I think I just wrote something on this today, which was that I was a very sensitive child, and I was always told I was too sensitive. So I used to have to force in tears and not let them come out.
And over time, people would then say, Oh, you’re so tough. You’re emotionally so tough because you can’t you don’t cry, and you go through these experiences. And you deal with it so well. And I think that actually, when I allowed myself to actually start a feeling again, was like, Oh, wow, I’ve kept a lot in that.
Alexandra: What was like, for you? Was that scary at first?
Becs: I think I thought that it would come out in a certain way. But I’d have a huge emotional release. And everything that I’ve been bottling up for so many years. It wasn’t like that.
It was more just now I’m just much more able to when things come up to me in the moment, it just arises. And there are tears. I let them flow. And I could probably say I cried nearly every other day now. It was like once every six months to a year. So Something definitely happened.
Alexandra: What I get from that is that you trust your experience.
Becs: Yes, I think that’s it. That’s the key. If things are meant to come up, they’re meant they’re coming up for a reason. We don’t have to talk our way out of them. We don’t have to say it’s all our thinking. We just allow it to be there. And I was always trying to control that before.
Alexandra Amor: I can really relate to that too.
As a child, being sensitive, and then being told not to cry, I developed a habit of feeling like any time I felt an emotion, I was being unreasonable.
Becs: Why are you so sensitive? We need that we now see it as a real gift to be that sensitive to work with other people to be empathetic. And it is a gift.
Alexandra: Oh, absolutely. And I love that you touched on the idea that we don’t need to be afraid of our experience. And that, and it does take some time it has for me as well, to welcome that.
Whatever it is, know that you’re safe. No matter what’s happening.
Becs: Because we are the safe space. So whatever is arising within us is safe, but we weren’t told that, were we? But because our caregivers didn’t know that either. How were they meant to take teach us that?
Alexandra Amor: Exactly. You can’t teach what you don’t understand for sure. We’ve talked a little bit about the mind-body connection.
Is there anything you can share about our behaviors around eating and nutrition since you came to this understanding?
Becs: I think that’s often an emotional component to it. But firstly, why I love working with food is because there’s so much we can do around cravings and needing to eat. Because actually, a huge part of that is eating a diet that is balanced in protein, carbs, slow-releasing carbohydrates, and fresh fruit and veg.
And when it’s very simple for me, it’s like when people balance their blood sugar, so they’re not on the high carbohydrate, high sugar, high white, refined carbohydrates, so white rice, white pasta, white bread, all of that, it’s not to say we don’t ever have it, because that restriction doesn’t work.
But once we’re off the blood sugar rollercoaster, 80%, I’d say have those cravings go. And then we’re left with the emotional stuff. And there’s work that we can really go into because I just ran a course recently. And we, the first week, most people said a lot. 90, so much, so many of their cravings had gone.
Whereas before, they always felt like it was an emotional thing. And actually, a lot of it was actually just craving carbs, and sugar, because they’re addictive. It’s just pure addiction. So some people you need to go slower with that most people seem to get that straight away that, once they understand the principles of that they’re okay with that.
And then the emotional component really is it’s that driving me to tune in much more to the feelings and sensations of this moment. It’s very difficult to do that sometimes, like your head’s in the fridge before you can feel it, or so if you’re in a heightened state of stress, there’s much more emotional eating going on.
So it’s very difficult to almost control it. So it is about coming back to the body and feeling whatever is going on in the body. And noticing the thinking that might be happening, what is the tools driving? That is it. I’ve had a really stressful day. I need this; I deserve this. The only thing that is going to make me feel better.
Oh, what’s the point, I might as well give up, there are all these thoughts that drive their behavior. And there’s always an emotional component to it. But sometimes, it’s the only thing we can do. So if there’s like, if there is an emotional situation going on, and it’s so intense, and that’s the self-soothing, that needs to be in place, then we can let that go.
But if it’s always there, and if it’s like driving us to the alcohol or driving us to the sugary biscuits all the time, and then there’s a lot that can be done to be to sit with what’s going on, start to recognize the patterns of behavior that are driving that, but also these things can go really deep and quite far back.
These things might have been put in place for, like we say, the child that wasn’t allowed to feel that felt unsafe in their environment. So a biscuit was the thing that calmed them down. I’m guilty of that when I had young children, I used to give them food to help them. And then I realized that that’s not the best thing.
Alexandra: That’s lovely. And so you’ve touched on this already.
What we’re doing when we’re overeating and very often with high carb, high sugar stuff is it’s a solution, not a problem. We’re using that to deal with stress.
And as you said, and maybe with some emotional habits that we’ve developed from the past of ways to deal with our emotions and the feelings that are coming up in our body. When you’re working with people, and you’ve shifted their nutrition a bit, and then they’re starting to get in touch with their feelings.
Do you notice any commonalities among people and what they experience as they go through that?
Becs: I think everyone has their own stuff, don’t they? It’s their own journey. But if the end result is doing the comfort eating, but the way the reasons why are very different. But I do think that the common theme is people actually not recognizing that there is an emotion. They know that they emotionally eat, but it’s like, Oh, I really didn’t see that.
Okay, maybe this is just loneliness at this point in time. I’m on my own, I live on my own, and I work on my own. And just going and getting something from the cupboard makes me feel comforted. In that moment or a ritual around, making a nice drink.
Hot chocolate with biscuits reminds me of my parents growing up and the love they gave me. And so everyone has these different reasons. But the ultimate thing is to sue them to comfort. And then we can put things around that which aren’t just food.
So we can put things around like walking in nature, going to a yoga class, or doing things that feel good, but that isn’t just food.
But also, the more we unravel in ourselves, the more we’re seeing into these behaviors, the more and also that the body is this amazing vessel that we’re here too, for this life, it carries us through life. So when we can put in the best, the nicest food, the ones that it’s going to feel that there’s going to give us the best variety of vitamins and minerals, that’s going to keep our energy sustained.
That generally is healthy and comes from good quality sources. Then we’re giving ourselves the most supportive lifeforce energy. And actually when you can start to see that you’re taking away from your body when you’re putting in like chips, pizza, donuts, alcohol, the body has to go through a lot of processes, processes to eliminate.
It’s almost like toxic toxins in a way. But it’s not to say that we don’t have those things occasionally. So I always say to my clients, once a week, go out and have whatever you want, or even twice a week, go out and have whatever you want.
When we can start to switch in our minds that what we’re putting in is life-giving. I think that’s a really, it’s not forced, it’s not saying this food bad, or this feels good, or, but it’s giving me everything I need to support myself. And then we don’t always we don’t have to be perfect because perfection just backfires, doesn’t it?
Alexandra: It does, absolutely. One of the things that really that I saw early on in this exploration was this idea, and the metaphor people often use is we’re the sky and our feelings and thoughts are weather or clouds moving through the sky.
That was such a huge game changer for me in terms of eating. Because I think what had happened was the only way I knew how to deal with what was moving through was by eating something. And one of the big things I didn’t realize was that I could just leave it alone and it would move on all by itself.
I’m wondering if that’s something that lands for your clients?
Becs: Yes, I think. I’m just thinking back to the course I ran. I think within the first week, like I said, the diet side is underpinning that much more. But I think once people are aware that their thoughts are giving them the feeling, there’s a direct correlation there.
They don’t have to buy into that. And they can let it relax within them. Or feel the emotion that needs to be felt. That clears up very quickly.
Alexandra: So that, for me, was really a linchpin and bit of understanding. And, I was really grateful once I started to learn that.
You’ve mentioned you have children.
I’m really curious about whether or not or how, if you bring the three principles, understanding to them. What ages, are they first of all.
Becs: I’ve got a 12-year-old and a five-year-old. It’s hilarious because I suppose my parenting style began within the first safe five years of my daughter, so she’s now 12. I still had a very basic understanding of this understanding.
I was very much in that she was the cause of my annoyance. And that she needs to learn to behave. I think that probably that style of parenting meant until she was about seven or eight.
Actually, it was Angus and Rohini. I had some sessions with them quite a few years ago now. But before that, I’d had a turnaround in that she was just acting out of her innocence as a child. She’s learning. She’s fine.
There was a stage where I thought she wasn’t fine. What’s she going to be like? How is she gonna turn out as an adult? She had dyslexia, so she had lots of anger and things like that. And I thought I needed to squash that in her because that’s the style of parenting that I grew up with.
I wasn’t perfect. Well, I’m not a perfect parent, but I bring it now. I just see, even in her worst moods, I always see who she is. And I think we do recover very quickly if we ever do have something because I will always apologize if I’ve shouted at her in the wrong way or something.
It’s never that she’s the child. I’m an adult, and you listen to me, so there’s that and but when I tried to talk to her about stuff, she says, Oh, life doesn’t work like that. You’re lovely where everything’s so positive and your nice world.
The world isn’t like that, let me tell you, I think she just thinks I spell out all this nice sounding stuff. But I think she gets it on one level. And my son, who is five is just such a wonderful being.
I think even from day one, knowing that is such a gift to have for your children, just knowing that because I know that when I was a baby, I was called it. And that’s what my mom referred to my children as when they were born. Oh, it needs feeding; it’s crying.
Alexandra: Goodness. It sounds like maybe in your parenting, the big shift is on your side of the equation.
Not so much about indoctrinating your children about the principles, but it’s really about you can see their resilience and their resourcefulness, and their innate well-being.
And I imagine, I’m not a parent, I have never been a parent, but I’ve noticed the settling down in me in my relationships in life.
As a parent, does part of what happens to you is that you really settle down and relax?
Becs: Yes, I think that’s it because they can trigger you a lot. Yes, they’re pushing all the buttons of what you need to see in yourself. I saw that very clearly.
It was like, oh, that my daughter is a mirror to what’s going on in me. And that was very helpful. I worked through quite a lot of stuff when I saw that.
And then and then with Max, so my youngest, he’s five, the other day. We were meant to go somewhere and I said we’d get the train. And then, actually, it turns out the train was really expensive. So I had to drive. And he hated the fact that we had to drive. So he had a tantrum for about 45 minutes. And I guess the old me would have been like, snap out of this.
Don’t be like this. Go to your room. But now I just see that he needs to go through his emotions. In the end he said I’m sorry, Mummy. So is a different feeling towards it.
Alexandra: Yes. Letting that little storm pass through him. Knowing it would come to an end eventually.
Becs: And also recognizing I know you’re angry. I know you’re really angry. I know you’re disappointed. I know you’re frustrated.
I can do my bit, but my husband is not into this understanding. So I think he learns a bit by osmosis. But he’s not really interested. That he has his way, so they’re gonna get a bit of whatever.
Alexandra Amor: Right? Well, And I guess that’s the other challenge to being in a relationship and co-parenting, it’s not just you. There’s somebody else involved.
Becs: Exactly.
Alexandra: This has been great, Becs. I’ve so enjoyed talking to you.
Is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on?
Becs: The Sydney Banks quote, which, I’m really bad at actually getting quotes, right, but if we weren’t afraid of our experience, that alone would change the world. For me, that is now becoming more and more prevalent and present in my life. It’s like whatever is coming, will come up to me.
And life is a game that we can play. And we don’t need to take it as seriously as we did. And there will be days when we take it very seriously. And even that’s part of the game, and I love the sky and the analogy of the cloud. But I heard it the other day that we are the sky.
We are the sky, but we’re also the clouds. I love that because all of its okay. All of us. So when we can start to see that everything is us, and it’s all happening in our present moment. It can only be happening now. I think there’s even more spaciousness around that.
Alexandra: That’s a great word, spaciousness. Nice. Thank you.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Becs: My website is b. Well, nutrition, so letter B, not B E. So, letter B and then well nutrition.co.uk, I do offer an initial consultation for free if you want to.
Alexandra: Great. Okay. I will put links in the show notes to your websites; people can always find those. And thank you again for being with me here today.
Hello, explorers, and welcome to a Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. And I’m super excited today because I have my very first question from someone other than myself. So I’ll get to that in just a second.
If you would like to submit a question about resolving unwanted habits, you can do that just like this person did today at alexandraamor.com/question, and I would love to hear from you.
Today’s question is from Carmen. And here’s what she says:
After 7 to 10 days of eating reasonably and being conscious, I always have three to four days of falling back into my old behavior. Even though I’m aware that it is just my thinking, and that I am thinking, I still prefer to eat all the sugary foods and overeat. Why is this? I am completely conscious, and still put eating too much and the wrong things over losing weight and eating healthy.
I know that this is not bad. And I try not to judge myself. But I just think it would be better and much easier to stick to good eating instead of de motivating myself over and over again. After all, I want to eat healthier because of an insight. So how can I forget about that every so often.
And then she sent a couple of little points of clarification about her eating. So she said:
I don’t restrict myself, I try to eat less than before, by only eating sugar every second day. But I still eat enough. I don’t skip meals, and I eat bread, pasta, etc, whatever I feel like.
And she also says:
Even when I am completely at peace, and at my home base and connected to myself, it can still happen that I go and buy chocolate or cookies, and then eat until they are all gone.
Thank you so much Carmen for your question. I really, really appreciate it.
I want to address a couple of really, really juicy topics that are here in your question. This is such a great question. And I love it so much. So let’s jump in.
The first thing I want to address is in the early part of your email here actually, in the first paragraph, one of the really interesting things you say is, “…even though I am aware that it is just my thinking.”
This brings us to a really important point about the difference between understanding and insight.
You do mention that you have had an insight later in the email. But I want to start here with this clarification.
We would say you’ve got under some understanding, which is fantastic. And I really feel like you’re really headed in the right direction. That you’re experiencing your thinking. So that’s really great. And I’m thrilled.
What you need now is more insight.
You said you’ve had at least one insight about food or about your eating habits. But what that question that you put forward points to is that you need more insights.
I want to talk about that and about the difference between understanding and insight.
The example that I thought of is learning to drive. I remember that when I was learning to drive what they had us do first of all, before we even got in the car, was I had to read kind of a an education book about driving. I also had to go to a class, it might have been more than one day. And I had to take a written test at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or whatever it was called at the time I was in Alberta, and do that written test. And if I passed that, then I could have my learner’s permit, and I could start to actually get behind the wheel of a car.
When that happened, when the second part of that happened, and I did get behind the wheel of the car, that was a completely different experience to the learning and the understanding that I had about driving before I actually got in the driver’s seat. So it’s the same subject, but two very different experiences that I had.
When I got behind that driver’s seat, suddenly it was it was just very real. There I was, I could press the gas, the car would go, I could press the brake, it would stop. There were other cars whizzing by all that kind of stuff.
What I’m pointing to in that example, is the difference between understanding and insight. So, that example it’s a little clunky because insight isn’t always mechanical. We’re not doing something physically physical. But it gives you a good idea, I hope anyway, about how it really feels in our body when we understand something logically, and clinically, versus when we have an insight, and suddenly, everything just becomes clearer.
Every time I have an insight, small or large, or whatever they are, it’s the difference between fumbling around in the dark in a room, and sort of knowing where the furniture is and navigating it, versus having all the lights come on. I can even feel the shift in my body.
So that’s what you’re looking for, Carmen, you’re looking for insight, as all of us are, who are dealing with unwanted habits.
And I want to say to while we’re on this part of the question, that this aspect, this having lots of understanding is something that those of us who have been dealing with an unwanted habit, for years or for decades, we really have a ton of understanding.
We are up to our eyeballs and understanding, right?
All the things we’ve tried and all the books we’ve read, and all the messages we’ve received, about just putting our fork down and counting our points and all that stuff. All that is a tremendous amount of understanding.
I don’t know about you, but for me, that did nothing to circumvent my habit. And so that’s the reason that I place such an emphasis on the fact that we’re looking for insight, we’re looking for something quite different than understanding. Understanding is great. And it’s the first step. But then the piece that’s missing from the old paradigm, or the old way that we’ve learned to deal with habits is insight. And it’s a really important piece. That’s why we’re exploring it here.
I’m going to come back to this point about insight in a second. But now right now, I want to address the second part of your question. And what I highlighted was this.
“Even when I am completely at peace, and at my home base.” Carmen talks about when she’s even when she’s feeling that way, she’s still reaching for cookies and chocolate.
This is the second part of my answer.
I want to say that that drive that you’re feeling to reach for the cookies and the chocolate is perfectly healthy.
It actually is a really great sign because it means that you are working in perfect order. It’s very healthy, and it means you’re working perfectly.
The example or the metaphor I want to use is that that drive to reach for the cookies or the chocolate or whatever our “weakness” is, it’s like the valve on a pressure cooker. I have a pressure cooker now and my grandma used to use them years ago, but now they’ve been branded again. I use mine all the time; it’s called an Instant Pot. And it’s got that valve on the top.
Part of what you do, or what I do when I’m cooking with it, depending on how long the food has been in the cooker, sometimes it asks you to release the pressure by moving that valve and then all this steam and air and moisture. It whooshes out of there, and you can hear it and you can see it too, you can see the steam in the air.
Our habits, our drives to overeat, are just like that valve.
They’re entirely necessary. If that valve at the top of the pressure cooker wasn’t there, the pressure cooker might explode. And we definitely don’t want that to happen when it comes to us, that’s for sure.
What’s inside the pressure cooker?
To continue this metaphor, what’s inside is some insecure thinking or busy thoughts. Busy thoughts and insecure thinking is the same. It’s essentially the same thing. So your perfect human design is coming to the rescue actually, and it’s helping you to let off some of the steam from that busy, insecure thinking, by having your reach for your habit.
Because if you notice, what happens when we use our habit when we do our habit is that our thinking really calms down and quiet for a moment. That’s the service that the habit is bringing to you. And it’s actually a few different things. But that’s one of them is that it’s letting you let off some steam from your insecure thinking.
And then the second thing that it’s doing is, it’s like a check engine light. So whenever we feel that urge that drive, that simply lets us know that we are feeling our thinking. It might not even be conscious thoughts about a certain subject ora certain thing that’s going on in our lives. But that, that urge, that drive to over eat or participate in our habit is letting us know that there’s a lot of thinking going on within us, and that we’re innocently focused, even if it’s a little bit subconsciously on that thinking, rather than remembering that there’s really nothing to worry about.
We are entirely made of peace and love, and innate resilience, and resourcefulness. And we’ve forgotten. What happens when we forget is that our thinking gets really insecure, it gets really busy. And so that, like I said, that urge to reach for your habit is simply the red flag, the check engine light, whatever metaphor you want to use, that’s letting you knowthat thinking is going on that it’s inside that pressure cooker there.
So that’s my second point is that just a reminder that your habit is not a problem, and you are not a problem. Your habit is actually part of your perfect and very kind human design. We don’t think of it that way. Perhaps until we come across this understanding, but your design, my design, everybody’s design is perfect, and it’s extremely kind, and it’s always trying to help us.
Now I want to go back to the point about insight.
Both parts of my answer so far have been connected to insight. So when we feel the drive to overeat, it’s letting us know that we are that what we are looking for is insight about our insecure thinking. And so the question then becomes, of course, where do we where do we get that?
Where does insight come from?
I just wanted to wrap up by saying a few things about that. First of all, you know now that your habit is kind and that it’s trying to point you toward this idea that insight is available to you. And it will always do that for you and never give up on you in a way.
So you can therefore, at least what’s happened for me, is that I can hold the fact that I have an unwanted habit much, much more lightly, like 96% more lightly than I used to. It used to be something we I could really beat myself up about of course, because it felt like a you know, a willpower failing, it felt like I was broken in some way. And now that I see that it’s trying to work for me, that I was just misinterpreting the message that it had, I can relax about all that. All that extra thinking that I was layering on to the thinking that was already there.
Thinking about beating myself up and you know how maybe I was lazy or was broken in some way. So hopefully you can hold that habit that you’re having, that reaching for the chocolate and the cookies, much more lightly. And that in itself will reduce some of the pressure that’s in the pressure cooker.
And then the other thing I want to point out about insights is there’s an expression in this exploration, which is “stay in the conversation”. I didn’t really get it at first, but now I really see it is that it’s really that simple. Something happens when we simply listen to and explore this understanding with other people. It does encourage insight.
I know that you are doing that. You mentioned that you’ve taken some classes, and you mentioned you’ve read my book. Thank you for that. What I would say is in your…I don’t want to say search, because that sounds kind of desperate, but in your looking for new fresh insight about the thinking that’s inside your pressure cooker, I would suggest use you continue to explore.
Listen to the other podcasts that you enjoy. Read other books by other people who are exploring this understanding. I’ll mention a couple of here for anybody who’s listening, if you haven’t heard of these.
I recommend one called Addiction: One Cause, One Solution by Christian McNeil and Barbara Sarah Smith, that’s a really great one. I’ve interviewed them both on this podcast. So that may sound familiar.
I also recommend Joseph Bailey’s book called The Serenity Principle. Those two books specifically are about unwanted habits. So that’s really helpful.
But really, any book, any podcast, any webinar, about this understanding, it’s all pointing in the same direction. So even if it isn’t something that’s about habits or food, it’s still going to be looking in that direction, and it will be incredibly helpful to you.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to decide when insight shows up. If we did, if we could flip like a switch, turn that on, we all would, of course, because our unwanted habits cause us to suffer. So I’m afraid that the answers that I’ve given about where to look for insight, that’s the best I can do. They don’t come on demand, but they do come.
Here’s the thing, insight and wisdom is innate to us all. It’s all there within us. We don’t have to even create anything within us to make it happen. We don’t have to create an environment to encourage that. It’s all already there. It’s what we’re made of. It’s simply that the more we come to understand that, the more insight we will have, and the less we will need to reach for our unwanted habits.
I hope that’s been helpful for you, Carmen, and for anybody else who’s listening. Again, I love answering your questions about unwanted habits. So please reach out, go to Alexandraamor.com/question, and fill out the little form there and I’ll be incredibly happy to answer your question on a future episode of the show.
Big thanks to Carmen! I’m sending everybody lots of love and I will talk to you next time.
The Reflective Presence of Horses with Cassandra Ogier
Mar 23, 2023
In January 2023 I was delighted to spend two days in the hills above Malibu, California with Cassandra Ogier and three beautiful horses. Those two days were powerful; they taught me about my energetic boundaries, the easily accessible (but often overlooked) quality of presence about my being, and that when it comes to experiencing emotions and other energy in my body, there is nothing to be afraid of.
I am so pleased to have Cassandra on the show this week to share how she weaves the 3 Principles in with her equine guided empowerment work.
Cassandra Ogier is a respected member of the Equine Guided Education & Equine Therapeutic communities. Her experience spans over 15 years as a leader in the development of horse-based personal reflection and educational programs.
She is a Certified Equine Guided Educator and a seasoned mentor and guide. Her approach to Equine Guided Empowerment® through immersion in the living intelligence of horses and nature, breaks new ground in partnering with horses rooted in the concept of free beings, horses and humans, joining together in partnership to achieve awareness, insight and understanding.
Alexandra: I’m so happy to have you here. I should have said your last name as well. It’s Cassandra Ogier.
Why don’t you start by just telling us a bit about your background. And then how you found the principles.
Cassandra: I’m an equine guided educator, which means that I work with horses to help support human development, which I will go into a little bit more. But my background is as a coach in that modality, and also as a registered three principles practitioner, and I run a company called The Reflective Horse. And we can share a little bit more about that the reflection of the horses and our and our true nature.
I also run a teaching program that expands the reflected horse program out to other facilitators being able to also share equine guided empowerment, as I call it. And it is very much an inside out based coaching modality that we thread all the way through the mastery teaching program.
Alexandra:That’s great. And how did you come across the principles? Do you remember?
Cassandra:Yes, I remember really clearly. And when I was just contemplating your questions, and thinking where did it sort of all begin for me, and so the actual point of me, coming to the principles, what I was thinking about sharing was that it was like a developing a presence for me, over years and years.
The horses at the beginning of my life really acted as a very solid presence in my life, when there was a lot of chaos and confusion, and not great things happening in my childhood. I was always able to go to the horses. And what I obviously realized, as I as I grew up, was that they were fully present. I wasn’t that great with humans, around them. And I didn’t like school, and I really was, pushing against all of that. But really, my career ended up being present for humans.
I worked for 10 years, or a little more than 10 years, in the film industry, in England, in the casting department. So putting actors in theater and, and TV and film. It was really about being present for people, and helping them to understand that things weren’t personal, because obviously, in that industry, you’re being judged and you’re being assessed, and all of this thing. And as a creative person who was bringing in the type of person we wanted for a role, within that I just did a lot of, I suppose, coaching in that way of, helping people to understand it’s not about you, this is just the circumstances.
Then I had three sons, and that is all about presence, and bringing up children, and, having that flexibility, and then as my children grew up, I got reunited with horses. And I actually was running a very successful business in equine therapy or equine guided education. I had a little bit of a distorted view of what being in service was at that time. I worked with a lot of rehabilitation centers, again, with this idea that there is health and well-being in everybody, but it was at the expense of myself, and my well-being and me taking care of myself. To the point of where I discovered the principles, and that segue, I was getting burnt out doing what I was doing.
I actually got so burnt out and didn’t listen to my body that I had a cancer diagnosis in 2017. And it was actually a conversation with three principles practitioner, who is health coach, Ellen, and she really started to point in the direction of what would it be like to just allow my feelings to pass through me. And that was the very beginning of going through this chemo and going through something that was so overwhelming, and I felt very hopeless, but I wanted to keep this positive outcome, or outlook.
What I felt was if I wasn’t positive, that I was going to literally drown in these feelings, and she basically allowed me the permission.
“What if you could just be present to those feelings and allow those feelings to flow through you?”
It was in that moment that I had an emotional release, and I was only talking to on the phone. And after that, because I’d been holding on to so much I felt this innate peace, like a deep peace within myself for just having expressed myself and it didn’t last, and it passed through. I started to get this inkling, which made a lot of other things make sense, that I’ve been thinking too hard about in the past. And that was really how it unraveled for me.
I started reading a little bit more of Sydney Banks. I had heard the principles everywhere. And all the books that I’d read, and all of the teachers that are pointing in the same direction, but it always seemed to be something that I was striving for, that I was trying to attain somewhere. And what the principles really showed me was that it’s really not about that.
There is a human experience, and we’re going to go in and out of, pushing feelings down and having them come up and, allowing this flow to happen. So it really made sense to me, in a way that multiple self-development and causes and retreats and God knows what had not really given me this clear understanding of it’s okay to be me, and that it’s okay to go through these ups and downs. And that that is the human experience that we, are illuminated or enlightened in little windows, and then we forget, and then we come out again, we can see more clearly.
It really is a dance like that, where I didn’t have to put myself under the pressure that I’ve been putting myself under before. So it allowed me space within myself just to be way more trusting and accepting of really what was happening. And that it was all okay. And hence forth, it’s really given me such an enormous amount of trust. And that is, self trust, but also trust in the unfolding of everything. I have a plan. But, just to be really open and curious about what happens next, and not trying to drive it forward or make it happen. So there’s that balance of ease, which I feel the principles have allowed me to really integrate more into my everyday life.
Alexandra: I imagine that horses have that way of just letting their feelings about whatever’s going on, just move through them very quickly, and then move on. Is that fair to say?
Cassandra: That’s absolutely true. I’d seen a lot of that and I hadn’t put those two things together really for myself.
You’re absolutely right; they’re continuously allowing energy, any tension to be released straight away. So they might be shaking their heads or kicking out or breathing out that horse breath that we will all know, and yawning and rolling on the ground. They’re literally just releasing tension almost as soon as it’s anything any pressured situation happens.
That is one of the things that the horses show us is just let it go. And the other thing is, none of it’s personal. None of it is personal. And in fact, I had a client who was here on the weekend, and she explained it so beautifully, that the male horse had nipped at the female horse, and she squealed and threw her leg up in the air and bucked. And then they both actually started play kicking out at each other, then they both walked off in different directions.
She shook her head, yawned, and then went back to grazing. And what we were saying was, that is that is our self-regulated place is to go back to grazing. To recognize that we’re taking things personally, notice that that’s happening, but the horses just are not doing that. There’s absolutely no thought around, if she does that again, or if he does this again, or whatever it might be that the stories that we make up and take personally, when it’s really just another person’s experience and perspective that they’re coming from. It’s really nothing to do with us.
Alexandra: That’s such a great example because I imagine that once a horse gets back to a place where it can graze, that means that it has released any energy of tension, like you just said, because grazing is such a relaxed thing to do, and they’re not on high alert at that moment.
Cassandra: Isn’t it great? Yeah, amazing. Because that is that thing about being in high alert, and us not being able to settle in our human experience, and feeling very, like, I always think about it, like the energy goes into the top half of our body when we’ve got any tension, when we’ve got a lot of thinking going on. We really are existing from the waist upwards, or the diaphragm upwards. And that out breath, you know that back to grazing is allowing the energy to settle within us.
I know, personally, that somatic awareness, embodied awareness has really helped me with the principles. Because, I think that grounding for me is about being in my body, and being able to listen to my body, and to self-regulate through really simple practices, which I teach, but I have to remind myself that all the time, to just feel my feet on the ground to relax my butt cheeks to have a relaxed belly.
I can feel it in my body, when I’m talking about it, that it’s like the weight of gravity is going to support my self-regulation. When I look at the horses, they are so solid in that way, they’ve got four feet on the ground, they’ve got this very relaxed belly, they, as you say, they have this beautiful tendency to just keep grazing when they’re when they’re relaxed. It reminds me how much tension we hold in the body and what is stored in the body.
And not to say that my experience is that any attention to the body and releasing is not just releasing in that moment, it’s releasing so many things that we built up over time. And we don’t need to necessarily maybe emotions will arise and feelings and thoughts will arise but we don’t have to really know what it’s about. The horses have definitely showed me that that we make up a story about a past trauma or we want to relate it to anything. “That’s because of this or that.” But ultimately, I feel like just coming back into our body and into presence. And the relaxing and releasing that comes with that is not only helping you in the moment, but it’s also releasing tension that we don’t even know where it came from, or emotion that we might have stuck in the body. And that we can trust that, that we can trust that that can easily just dissipate and move through us without us having to know exactly what or why. Which is what our personal thinking wants to do is to connect it to something.
Alexandra: That’s such a good point. I know for sure I have that tendency, whenever a big feeling comes up, my mind will immediately make a big story about it. It’s connected to this, as you said, and it’s happening now because of such and such.
Cassandra:Yeah, that’s it. Our mind is like a computer in that way. But it’s one thing to make those assessments and feel right and justified, or whatever it might be. Yeah, but you’re completely right, that, just allowing it to be is so freeing.
Ultimately, my entry point into the principles was exactly that. I can’t even remember what I was thinking, thankfully. But it was very hopeless. And whether or not I was going to make it through, but it was just tension that needed to be released from my body. And then I felt completely different.
Moment to moment, just allowing myself to feel whatever that is. I’m sad. Not why am I sad. I’m feeling sad. I did that this morning. I was thinking, I feel sad. okay, I feel sad. I went for a walk. I did a few things I meditated. I don’t feel sad now. But I could go into, oh, that must be this or, it’s probably that and just pulling myself into something that really isn’t necessary.
Alexandra: Yeah. Oh, that’s so well said. I want to ask them, what have you seen in this work?
I just love the combination that you have of the work with horses and, and the principles.
What have you seen about how the body can point us toward that innate well-being that’s already there? Is there anything more you can say about that?
Cassandra: There’s a few things that I can say. One is that I think I want to go back to the body. That it doesn’t mean, we have to sit and meditate. It’s just being okay with stillness. And maybe, nature is very helpful, to know how we’re feeling in our body. Just really checking in that all our muscles are relaxed. It could be as simple as that, just to notice. “Oh, am I holding in my stomach? I’ve got tension in my shoulders when I’m talking to you, and then also being aware of what’s around me.”
In nature that’s so open for so many beautiful things, but just being aware of how we want to assess that, and how our brain wants to categorize everything. And just being in that stillness. I feel like that being in the body in that way, is very, very helpful to know that in this moment, we were okay. There is well-being right in this moment. That is well-being.
I think that we could get caught up in many, many things, but it’s almost like even if it was just a minute or two, that awareness of being present in the body, being aware of your environment, even if you’re inside it, it creates a space where insights and creativity and understanding can come in. And I think that, for many of us, it’s hard to quiet in that mind. But it could be minutes or seconds.
In that time, it’s just trusting that that really is a space that is not void of anything, it’s actually where everything can come in. But if we’ve got so much going on in our heads, and we have so much tension in our bodies, then those insights or that creativity, or whatever it is, doesn’t have room to come in. So we’re taking it on for ourselves. It’s thinking that if we control it, and we think overthink, how am I going to do it? What if this, what if that and we hold this tension in our body, there isn’t really any space for the divine, if you want to call it or God or incite spirit to come in.
Michael Neill, I believe it was Michael Neill that said this, if you have a fan, like a wind fan, and you have it on top speed, and you throw a deck of cards at it, the cards are just going to bounce off, and they’re not going to go anywhere. But if you can slow down the fan, and throw the cards, one or two of those cards are going to get through. I really love that metaphor.
For me, that takes a quietening of my system. To be able to feel like cards can get through it feels like that, in those insights, I’ve got a space to come through. But we’re really used to driving everything and making things happen. And not usually given the opportunity for that deep trust to actually bring something to us.
Alexandra: One of the things that I learned when you and I worked together a couple of months ago, was I felt like I was a walking head a lot of the time. Not very connected to my body. And so I love what you’re saying about that. That space that it creates when we do make that connection.
You mentioned earlier about the energy and how it can be here up high, or then we can let it settle. And I shared with you, when I was with you, that to me, it seemed like there was water in a balloon. And the water, if you squeeze the bottom, it gets squished all up to the top. But you can do it the other way too, and have it go down in the lower parts of yourself. For lack of a better way to say it.
That quietness, when we do that, and that trusting in who we are and our presence. Horses have that presence as well.
Cassandra: With the horses what I’ve come to know is, especially with larger groups of horses, like wild horses, and I’m talking about free roaming horses, not horses that are separated or under the control of a human. When you have them in their natural environment they want every member of that herd to be self-regulated. Because it doesn’t feel in balance when they’re not. So they’re pushing us to self-regulate, in a way. It’s very subtle, because it doesn’t have an agenda behind it. But they’re wanting to know, Who are you? Where do you fit in to this dynamic?
It is just an energy dynamic. But when it feels out of balance, they don’t feel comfortable. So they have tension in their body. If one horse is thinking there’s a mountain lion on the hill, that energy will inspire them to move as a collective. And so when they’re at peace, and they’re grazing, they are self-regulated.
So what happens when we’re around them is that we fall into that self-regulation. And there were all kinds of scientific studies about Heart Math and energy of bigger animals, especially horses that were in an energetic field. And we can feel it. I mean, it’s amazing, people really quiet and down. And there’s that sense of looking into the middle distance, where I was always told that was not a place that you want to be.
Remember in your school you’re just gazing out the window, and you’re in this beautiful world, and they’re like, hey, come back here, pay attention. But what I’ve come to learn, and what I’ve learned from the horses is it’s this beautiful space of presence. You’re not daydreaming, you’re just present.
I learned this very early on in the principles when I sat with Dicken and a couple of other wonderful people; Natasha Swerdloff and Rohini Ross. And we were answering questions at the end of the retreat. I put my hand up, and I said I think this stuff is contagious. Dicken said to me, yeah, it’s a feeling. It’s contagious. And that is the thing with the horses, is many of us probably don’t even know what self-regulated feels like. And as you said, you felt like a lot of your energy was up here and in your head.
It’s almost like the horses teach us, or they help us remember what it was like, because at some points in our lives, we did feel that sense of deep peace itself, sense of regulation. And they just remind us about that. So they almost have us being in that place. And then we remember, and for me, that is where the innate well-being, and the understanding of our innate well-being comes in. Because it’s like, when you’re there, you’re like, Oh, my God. This is it. This is a beautiful feeling. And then that just carries on that feeling doesn’t go away.
That’s because, the way I see it is, it’s a somatic experience. It’s an experience that you’ve had in your body, distinct from your mind, your mind has got nothing to do with it. And so you might want to journal about it or like keep that capture that of course, it’s going to do that. But ultimately, that deep remembering in the body is where I believe we recognize our deep and innate well-being. There’s nothing to fix there. There’s nothing to change, there’s nothing to get right. There’s nothing to achieve, and that that sense of peace is really where everything begins from.
Alexandra: Yeah, oh, that’s lovely. And given you brought Dicken up, one of my all-time favorite quotes is from him. And he said, this was in a webinar or something I was watching several years ago.
Tension reminds me that I have everything I need.
When I first heard that I thought, what does that mean? It just seemed incongruous to me. But now it’s my favorite thing ever. Because it our bodies always let us know, when we’ve forgotten that we are peace, and we are well-being and that’s how I interpret that quote.
Cassandra: Yes. So if I’m understanding you, tension is an indicator of where your mind is. So if you feel tense, and you recognize that in your body, you know that you’re in thinking?
Alexandra: Yes, that’s right. Your body is trying to just remind you remind us that we’ve forgotten momentarily that we that actually we are peace, and we are well-being and that tension that shows up if we notice it can be such an ally, because it lets us know where our thinking is at.
Cassandra: Yes. That’s so true. That’s so great.
Alexandra: We talked about the energy of horses. And one of the things I learned when I was with you, is that they know the difference if a mountain lion is walking on a ridge, and they can see it, they can tell if it’s hunting, or if it’s not, if its belly is full, and it’s just walking by. I don’t really know what my question is about that. I guess it has to do with the fact that we live in an energetic world. And I think we discount that so often.
One of the things that I saw when I was working with you was that horses remind us of that, and are constantly in that. They don’t have a way to not be in that flow of energy awareness. I love that about them.
Cassandra: I think it’s a really, it’s, it’s it? They are reading intention. And that is for the safety of the herd. So they’re able to pick up on the environment, the energetic terrain of the environment. And I think that you’re absolutely right, that we actually have the same ability. And how to allow that to be from a grounded place, and I think that that’s also what the horses show us.
They’re not hyper vigilant, they are aware, but they’re grounded. So they’re very grounded, but they’re awake, and they are 360 awake, but they’re not in hypervigilance. So it’s interesting, isn’t it that, ultimately wouldn’t that would be my optimum, I suppose, is to be grounded and present in my awareness. And also aware of what’s going on around me, not in terms of anything predatory. But just aware of my environment.
And I think that when we work together, the horses, they’re moving and acting in a very much larger energetic field than their actual body is. So their body is five foot long, six foot long. And they are living in a more expanded energetic field. We notice that is very similar to birds or fish, that when they move, they don’t necessarily touch, they’re actually moving, and you can see the space in between them, but they move each other through that energetic field. So they are living in that the whole time.
My experiences as humans is that we’re not fully living in that energetic in our own energetic field, we’ve been very conditioned to shrinking, and acquiescing. And saying, oh, sorry, we don’t want to upset anybody, and we just allow things to happen to us. Because we’re not really aware of that more expanded sense of self. As a culture we’re quite diminished. A lot of expansion is often posturing and ego. But if we were to be just aware of this expanded energetic field, it really reminds me of things like, the word sovereignity, and self-honoring, and, centered in the self. And really beautiful expanded ways of explaining us when we’re feeling really open and a wider field of experience.
The horses really push us into getting really in touch with that energetic field, because they’re going to bump into us if we’re not in it. Basically, if we’re not showing, I have an expanded energetic field and I mean that from not any adversarial or dominant place. It is just like I am an expanded energy field too. And then they really respect that and experience that without any thought or judgment, they are recognizing that expanded energy field and they feel safe.
They feel comfortable when we’re in that space when we’ve actually been able to embody that space. And that, for me is just such an amazing gift that they don’t really respect us when we’re in this very diminished or shrinking position, they actually pay attention and want to be around us and feel comfortable and want to be led by us when we’re more expanded. And we’re aware of that. So that is how herd dynamics work. I think that that’s really how human dynamics work to that when we really are in that sense of self, and it isn’t coming from the ego, that we are safe, and we are comfortable. And we are, a good leader. And ultimately, I feel like the horses like Dicken, or Sydney Banks or a guru, in a way they are teachers in that way. Because they want us to be in that space, they really, they’re really asking us to, to embody that space. And to be who we really are.
Alexandra: Exactly. And I just had a really big insight or sort of an image, it’s that true nature, when we’re at our center is in the middle. And when we don’t know how to do that we seem to swing to one side or the other. So shrinking, as you said, really pulling ourselves in and, and not embodying that. And then the other way we do it is to, as you said, to be really in our egos and sort of aggressive.
And you think of the people who think they’re leaders, or tried to be a leader, but really, they’re just bluster and yelling. Their middle is that really true, centered, grounded place that doesn’t have to show off and doesn’t have to shrink.
Cassandra: Yes, that that is so true. I feel like I really had that experience. I know that that was within me, for sure.
I was working with a young man this weekend, and we talked about that, that there is this place of balance, but what we tend to do if as exactly, as you said. My experience is that I had acquiesced a lot, and let put other people first, and not really been very self-honoring. And then when I wanted to get my needs met, I came at it so aggressively because I didn’t trust that I would be heard because I gone from one and I literally had to go from this one and to the other. And it didn’t get my needs met. I felt so frustrated and so angry.
I would definitely come in super hot with what I wanted. I know that that’s how I approached if I had to do something for myself, and I had to ask for something that I wanted. It was hard. It was hard to do that. And it was almost like I had to gather that energy, which came out as like. I think that that is very, very true that we tend to flip from, one side of the pendulum to the other.
Alexandra: I can see in myself, as you say that. I’ve been exactly that same. Very acquiescent until a moment, when, as you say, I needed something, needed to get a need met. And then yeah, just very aggressive. And dysregulated.
Cassandra: That dysregulation and it’s like that that phrase, the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m sure we pretty much all been there.
The experience with the horses is almost finding that sweet spot, or, somatic experiencing, really it’s experiences in the body where you get to feel where that place is. I do like working with couples, pairs of people, because we can really test that out with each other and give each other incredible feedback when we do some somatic exercises, which really is about feeling into this expanded energetic field.
You get to feel when you might be a little bit too much for the other person. And when you could step it up a little bit and be a bit more assertive. We can really help each other. And I think that happens in relationship where, there’s more balance and more harmony, that ultimately, hopefully, we could be in a place where we could help that other person to feel into that regulated place.
The horses really helped us too, because they aren’t going to move unless they feel that expanded energetic field. They’re just going to be standing there, and they’re going to keep on chewing the grass. So, they’re pushing us to mean that. To be like, this is from a neutral place, and not getting tension in the body about it, but in a relaxed way, just saying no, this is my space. And then they’re like, Okay, yeah, I see that. Yeah, very neutral.
Alexandra: You definitely can’t fake it with a horse. Well, this has been great. I could chat to you forever. Cassandra. It’s just lovely.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about where we can find out more about your work. I know you have a work retreat coming up shortly after this episode comes out, so tell us about that as well.
Cassandra:I’d love to. My website is thereflectivehorse.com. And you can find out about programs and a little bit more about the background of my work.
We have a retreat coming up, which is actually very special. And it’s March the 31st until April 2, 2023 and it’s in San Juan Bautista in California. It’s at a Wild Horse Sanctuary. It’s magnificent. It’s 4000 acres, and 525 wild horses. I’m partnering with a wonderful woman, Natalie Benway, and we are facilitating a three-day retreat, which will go into the somatic practices, and being with the horses.
What’s very interesting about these horses is that most of them, you can’t even touch them, they are wild. So it’s very much about communicating without the normal things that we would do. So making connections and communicating in a nonverbal way, and really honing into our intuition. And we’ve called it Moved by Wonder, Living in Awe because when we’ve gone there, we’re just like, wow, it’s very expansive. So that is coming up.
And there’s a couple of other things coming up in May and June. One of them is an offering with Brad Gallop, who is also three principles practitioner, and he’s also an equine guided educator. So we’re going to do something together. I can’t remember the exact dates, but it’s around about May the sixth and seventh and that’s going to be in Malibu at our way, which is where I’m based at the moment.
Alexandra: Great. I will put links and mentions in the show notes as well, for anyone who’s interested.
Cassandra: Thank youso much. There’s an events page on the website, and there’ll be a few things on there.
Alexandra:Great. Well, thank you so much for being with me here today. I really appreciate it.
Cassandra: Thank you so much, Alexandra. It’s a great pleasure.
Q&A 6 – Why do my cravings feel like life or death?
Mar 20, 2023
The pressure that comes from cravings can feel almost unbearable. It can be so powerful that it distracts us from other areas of our life. Is there a way to handle this?
In this Q&A episode, Alexandra addresses this concern, talks about why it exists and what we can do about it.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers, and welcome to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
A reminder that I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to hear your questions about an overeating habit or another habit that you’re struggling with. You can submit that your you can submit your question to alexandraamor.com/question.
The question today that I’m going to address is this:
When I feel a craving, it feels like life and death. How do I stop that?
So this, again, is a question from my struggle with overeating. And I hope it’s helpful for you to talk about this. When I experienced food cravings, they did really feel like life and death, they felt like I was possessed, it felt overwhelming in my body. Every once in a while, I would bump into someone really unkind who, if I was explaining that feeling, they would say something like, well just put your fork down, like, what’s the big deal? Just stop going to the fridge.
But the driving feeling that I experienced, wasn’t one that obviously was that easy to deal with, to battle to set aside and just pretend that it wasn’t there. Now I know enough to know that that feeling is part of our divine design, and that it was trying so hard to get my attention. And that’s why the feeling felt so strong. And I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for how strong it was. I’m grateful for how persistent it was because it finally did get my attention.
As I began to explore this understanding, the Inside-Out Understanding, and began to see what those cravings were really about that’s when they began to fall away.
Let’s go back to when they feel like life and death, which you may have experienced as well. I’ll just say a little bit more about what that felt like, in the hope that this might resonate with you. It felt like the craving, like it was on my mind and in my attention. If I was sitting watching a TV program and had a craving for potato chips, let’s say, I could think about very little else until I dealt with that, until I went and got the potato chips.
I could try to ignore it. But it did take a lot of energy to do that. And it often felt like the other things that were going on in my life, the volume went down on them, because I was having to pay so much attention to the craving in me and trying to fight with it. And then eventually I would just give up, of course, it was too hard. It took too much energy. It really felt compulsive. And again, that’s for a reason that feeling is trying to get our attention.
So I want to say a couple of things about this.
One is that when we feel that driving need, it’s not a comment on our moral failing, or our lack of willpower, like I talked about in last week’s episode, or our inability to take care of ourselves.
It’s not a comment on those sorts of things. And of course, that’s how we interpret them, right? We’re trying to get rid of the drive to overeat, we’re trying to stop it from coming around. We’re trying to circumvent it with all the tools and strategies that we use. And when we fail at doing that it can be really devastating. I know for sure that I had 30 years of feeling like a failure, feeling like I had this one task that I wanted to do which was just to stop my cravings or overpower them with my will. I failed and I failed again and again and again for all those years. And in one way, failing was a relief, because then I wasn’t using all that energy to fight the craving. But then of course, on the other hand, it felt terrible because I was falling down on this goal that I had set myself.
So yeah, a lot of kind of complex and, and feelings that were in opposition to one another. And we all know that cycle. I’ve even seen it described in some of the old paradigm psychological texts that I studied in relation to trying to heal this problem. That the tension of the craving builds up and up and up. And then there’s relief that comes with giving in to the craving, and then recrimination starts. And that goes up around in the cycle. And then the whole thing starts all over again. I’m very familiar with that. And I suspect you are too.
So that was the first thing that I wanted to say that, that when we can set aside any thoughts and feelings that we have beating ourselves up for fighting cravings and then failing and giving in to them, that can really lighten the load of our thinking. In our culture, it can seem very counterintuitive, but thinking less about this about this “problem” that we have, these cravings that we have, giving it a lot less weight, or holding it much more lightly. Not considering it to be a problem is a really great first step toward healing it.
That was something that took me a long time to grasp, because I was just so used to seeing those cravings as the enemy, they really felt like they were the thing that had to defeat, I had to figure this out. And the longer the battle that went on the worse, of course, I felt.
The other thing is that when we start to explore this inside out understanding, we do recognize that our experience is changeable. And variable. That’s another word that I talked to Christian MacNeil, and Barbara Sarah Smith, about on a couple of earlier interview episodes of the podcast. And seeing this is one of the things that actually really helps us to hold our cravings lighter, and to layer less thinking onto them, quiet our thinking down a little bit, when we realize that our experience comes and goes.
Our experience of life is like a river or like the weather, like the clouds in the sky. It’s shifting and changing all the time. And there’s really nothing we need to do about that. It quiets down on its own, and it speeds up on its own as well. When we begin to see that then a little space develops between us and our thinking and feeling. Because we realize the bottom line is we’re not responsible in a way for the things that are flowing through us. And so that was key for me as well was really seeing that changeable nature of my feelings, and knowing that I didn’t need to do anything about them.
So that’s the big thing very often when we have an overeating habit or another kind of habit that’s unwanted. We’re using the substance, whatever it is to, to control our feelings, to control our mood, to make ourselves feel better, and which is perfectly natural, perfectly innocent. There’s nothing wrong with that. And when we begin to see that we don’t actually have to do that, that if I’m in a bad mood. It’s going to last as long as it lasts, just like a rain storm and then it’s going to settle down again and go away.
This is really key to helping us to heal an unwanted habit. Because suddenly our peace of mind is not dependent on our moods and if we can be at peace, even when things are a bit stormy within us.
So those are the two main points that I wanted to make about that question about why cravings feel so persuasive. And how do we deal with that? I hope that’s been helpful for you.
And again, if you’d like to submit a question, please do. I’d love to hear from you. You can do that at alexandraamor.com/question.
I’m sending you away with lots of love and I will talk to you again next week. Take care. Bye.
Coming Home to Ourselves with Beka Elle
Mar 16, 2023
Innocently, when we are struggling with an overeating or binge eating habit, we can come to believe that peace of mind exists outside ourselves. We can believe that ‘if’ or ‘when’ certain scenarios happen – like, when we stop overeating or binge eating – onlythen we will feel peaceful and begin to love and appreciate ourselves.
Today coach and podcaster Beka Elle is here to share that, actually, peace of mind and feelings of well-being exist within us all the time. We cannot ever be separated from them. And it is when we lean into this idea that we begin to experience lasting change.
Beka Elle helps people come home to themselves. Whether it’s feeling stuck with unwanted habits and anxiety, or feeling a lack of purpose, she points people back to their own innate wisdom. she is passionate about helping people find freedom from their limiting beliefs.
Why don’t you start out tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Inside-out Understanding
Beka: I came into this understanding out of desperation actually. I struggled for about 12 years with cycles of eating disorders, which started out as innocent dieting in my teenage years. And then that turned into overly restrictive dieting, where I lost too much weight. And then my body fought back and I became a binge eater.
Then I became a bulimic, when I felt like I couldn’t get the binge eating under control, but I still felt like I needed to lose weight. So I struggled with that. And then there was depression and anxiety in there too, sort of just this overall feeling of feeling lost, not feeling like myself, whatever that meant. Feeling as one feels when they’re just over identify with their own mind.
Since the mind changes like the weather, it felt like I changed with the weather and just feeling like I didn’t know why I was here. I always felt like I needed to lose weight or be better in some way, or prove my worth in some way.
So I started with that for about 12 years and tried a whole bunch of things from traditional therapy to different like spiritual understandings, techniques, different types of diets. I thought that if I was just addicted to sugar or something or some food and if I eliminated that, then all the problems would go away. But of course, none of that really worked.
I happened to stumble upon Dr. Amy Johnson, just from searching on Google, for somebody to help me with binge eating. And I ended up doing coaching with her for I forget how long the package was, I think maybe nine months or something. And slowly but surely, I just began to see things in a totally new way.
Then I trained with her to be a coach. And now I coach people to help with those same things and more.
Alexandra:You said something really interesting in there. Well, you said a few interesting things.
You said your “body fought back with the binging”. Can you say a bit more about what you see there?
Beka: The way this looks to me is, our body is really wise, and wants to keep us alive. And so when we restrict too much, the mind interprets that as a period of starvation or restriction. And there’s some brain science that points back to as we evolved the mind would become obsessed with food after periods of non restriction, so that if you saw a bunch of berries, or whatever, you would eat all of them in order to be able to stay alive for for any upcoming periods of starvation.
So that’s how I see how my brain reacted to that, and just how brains react to dieting in general. I see this cycle with a lot of my clients, too, it’s where it’s just like, anytime there’s like some restriction or they are trying to lose weight. They’ll go on some diet that’s either eliminating a ton of different kinds of foods or just not enough, they’re trying to eat under a certain number of calories.
And then binge eating is almost a natural rebound from that. That just looks almost like cause and effect to me at this point.
Alexandra: I was going to say, and the way you’re describing it, it just sounds completely natural. It doesn’t sound normal when we’re restricting so hard.
Beka: It’s like of course like our body wants to stay alive. Of course it’s going to do that.
Alexandra: Another thing I love that you said was that you said you thought that when your mind changed, like the weather, that you changed as well. For listeners, can you describe what you mean by that?
Beka: What I see about minds is that they’re always just churning out information. They’re like little computers. They’re always making predictions, analyzing the past, they’re just always computing. And what we see about it, when you really pay attention to it, in one moment something that looks like a really good idea will, in another moment, look like a really bad idea.
You might do something one afternoon and then wake up at four in the morning being like, oh, my gosh, that was a horrible decision. Why did I do that? We see that about so many different types of things. I think that’s why people talk about how the ego is inherently insane and I feel that the mind too, it’s just always, in the moment, just throwing out a bunch of ideas. And none of them are true, or, like necessarily good or anything like that. It’s just churning.
When we’re constantly focused on the mind, when it looks like that’s who we are, which to most of us, it does look like that’s who we are because it’s there all the time. It’s literally in our head, controlling the way that we see life a lot of the times. And when we don’t really see that there’s another place to look, we feel crazy, like we’re just going with we, it looks like that thing that we really, really regret doing? And was really wrong in this moment. And how could I have done that? And then the next thing you’re doing it again.
I felt this with food a lot. My mind would tell me that it was like the best idea ever to go and binge. And then five minutes later, beat me up for it.
Alexandra: How is that different from the constant that is you?
Beka: The constant, to me, feels like this oneness essence. One way that I’ve heard it described, that I really like is, it’s the thing that’s observing throughout your entire life. When you were a kid, it was there. It was observing, and it was aware of everything that you were thinking and feeling and seeing and doing.
Even though everything about you changed, including your body, and your mind, and your brain and your beliefs and your opinions, and the fact that you have a name, and all of those things, even though all of that changed about you, you’re still the one looking through the lens. I think that’s the easiest way to get an idea of it.
It’s like that awareness of the whole thing. And I think when we sink into that, we have this feeling like that thing is connected to everything. And it’s this peaceful presence that is never perturbed and can’t be broken or tarnished in any way.
Alexandra: What do you see as the difference then between the other techniques and modalities that you tried to heal your eating issues versus this one?
Beka: There are a lot of things that are different. I think, again, that identification with the mind is really a key thing. Seeing that we are not our mind. I think a lot of traditional therapy as I went through it, or a lot of coaching practices, or even things like law of attraction type stuff, it’s all about changing thoughts with other thoughts, or replacing thoughts. And it’s not that that’s not helpful.
I still like to think about how to view things in different ways. But I like to do that when it’s available to me. When my mind is in a place where it feels natural. I think the main difference with this is seeing that the mind is not you and those thoughts aren’t you and those thoughts aren’t true. So when we really see everything as that everything changes.
I think another thing that separates this understanding is along that vein, I don’t really see us as being in control of our thoughts, even though sometimes it looks like we are. Sometimes, like I said, we can try on new ways of thinking or whatever. I don’t really see it that way. And that’s something that’s is, I think, really different about this.
It’s like seeing our thoughts and feelings as the weather. No matter how hard we try, we can’t change the weather. And if we do try to change the weather, especially outside in the middle of a storm, it’s going to be really, really, really frustrating and hard and we’re not going to get anywhere. So, yeah, I think that’s another difference.
And then just the idea that there’s a home to come back to. There’s a peaceful presence, an awareness, that’s just always there. That’s not trying to judge a situation, not trying to make it better not trying to get you out of a habit or anything like that. It’s just observing. I think being able to come back to that is so cool. Because even in those situations, where you’re like, Why did I do that? Or man, I really wish I could do this thing, or I’m going to do this or when we’re in that mind spinning place. We know that there’s more to see, it’s just that we’re really pressed up against the glass.
That was an all over the place answer. But it basically comes down to instead of adding on strategies, it’s more of like a subtractive way of seeing things.
Alexandra:I thought your answer was great. I’d love to know, your last point was about that peaceful presence, that home base feeling.
Was there anything that you did or saw that helped you to connect with that?
Beka: That’s such a good question. I think there are some things that I can think of to put us there. But I think one thing that comes to mind is just this idea that you’re never disconnected from it.
I think that usually people are like, Okay, how do I connect to it? Or how do I feel that more? aAnd just seeing that that’s a mind wanting to perfect and experience as our minds are always doing. In my mind to there are still moments where I’m like, Oh, I want to be in the oneness more or whatever. But just seeing that that’s exactly what a mind does, and was designed to do, is try to somehow optimize this experience, or grab that one more thing.
So just seeing that, like, even as we’re asking that question, we’re there. We can’t be disconnected from it. So I think that’s a key point.
And then also, I’ve seen a lot of people point to meditation or something like that. Personally, I don’t really meditate regularly. I’ve had some good meditation experiences. But again, I think that’s like when that feels available and right to you, that’s something to do. But it’s just sort of stepping back and stepping back and stepping back from everything that you think defines you and your experience if you wondering who you are, if you’re not your name, if you’re not your body, if you’re not your life experience, if you’re if you’re not your habits, if you’re not all of your opinions and beliefs.
I don’t know if I said that already. But if you think about what you’re not, then what you are is the void in which all of those things arise. So the one thing that I think it can be fun to play with, when it feels fun to play with that but it doesn’t always but just knowing that even if it doesn’t feel available, you can’t be disconnected from it. It just can’t be so.
Alexandra:Right. And that goes back to your point about the subtractive nature of this understanding.
When we want to grab on to doing something or figuring something out there’s actually so much less to do than you think there is.
Beka: Yes, I see so much about how to love yourself. And it’s like all these practices: do this for 20 minutes a day and then do this and then affirm this and all that. And it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s a full-time job.
But when we realize like, no, it’s so much simpler than that. It’s really just right there in front of us, or even just in us all the time. It’s so nice, because we realize this is the is the way and releasing feels so good.
Alexandra: So true. Let’s talk about your work a little bit.
You have a post on your website about guilt and shame, specifically around food, and how they aren’t helpful. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Beka: I think we’re used to seeing, somewhere along the line, we get told that guilt and shame are really good motivators. I used to think that if I could hate myself enough, then I would have the motivation to starve myself more. And I just don’t see that as the way to lasting change anymore. It might influence behaviour in the short term but it just doesn’t work long term.
With food, especially, I think guilt and shame and in any arena are actually not helpful. I know that can sound almost like a controversial thing to say. But that’s just how I see it. But with food stuff, in particular, it’s such a good illustration, because a lot of the time the reason why we have any habit, and food or comfort with food is one of those, it’s because we’re trying to avoid a painful feeling, really. It’s the mind’s solution to not feel something that’s going on.
Shame feels really, really bad so that’s something that we want to avoid. So what I see a lot of the time is people will carry so much shame around their body, like not being good enough, needing to lose weight, needing to change in some way. And then all that heaviness that that brings has us reaching for that food, and then it’s like just this double whammy, because then you feel so much shame around doing the behavior.
Then that shame just makes you want to do the behavior more. So it becomes this just awful spiral that just feels terrible. I think in general guilt and shame are just heavy thinking. They’re just really like some replaying of a painful past, memory or belief. And we don’t need to carry that around.
In fact, and the ironic thing is, when when we’re able to release those stories a little bit, or release our grip on them, and feel whatever’s coming up and sometimes do the habit sometimes not but when there’s not that heavy energy around it, things fall away so much more easily. Holding on to any thought pattern isn’t going to set you free. It’s the opposite of freedom.
Alexandra: Do you do you find that your clients have an easy time letting go of shame and guilt? Or is that something they struggle with?
Beka: I think it depends. Sometimes I think we’re all waiting for permission to not have to carry those around. And just having somebody be like, hey, I don’t actually think those are helpful or serving you in any way. It’s like, oh, like there’s something and then they’re like, okay, good.
I think it can be hard if if it’s something that you’ve felt for a long time, especially if it looks to you, and it usually does look to them, at first, like it serves them in some way. People usually think that if they didn’t feel those things, and if they weren’t so concerned about bodily shame, then they would just eat all the time, and just things would be so out of control, and their binge eating would be worse. But they don’t realize that it would actually be a lot better if they didn’t believe those things.
I guess I should clarify too; sometimes those feelings come up when we’re programmed to feel them. They’re going to bubble up. Maybe you eat something that you previously never allowed yourself to eat, and you feel a shame response to it come up in your body. It’s not about fighting that, or saying like, Oh, that shame, I shouldn’t feel that.
You can feel anything and welcome anything, but just seeing that you don’t have to believe the story that it has around it I think is the key thing, and the more we can ironic, again, it’s like, I feel like there’s so many like, things that look like contradictions with this. But if you can feel that and just be with it, I think it wants to come up and out of your system. But if you if we sit there and believe the story and think like okay, well, this is how I’m going to fix it, or this is how I’m going to diet next time or whatever.
Alexandra: It’s so interesting, isn’t it, that feelings like guilt and shame only contribute to making a habit worse. And yet somehow we convince ourselves that those feelings are going to make it better.
I myself who struggled for 30 years with overeating. I never figured that out until somebody pointed it out to me and you’re right. We think, “If I felt more guilty or more shame, maybe this would get better.” I don’t know why we don’t clue into that. more quickly. It’s just one of those crazy things about life.
On the the flip side of this, you also share on your website that bad habits are a gift. Tell us about that.
Beka: I think something that I noticed with food behaviors that I definitely noticed with myself is, as I said before, we engage in a behavior in order to not feel stuff, that’s how it feels to me. And a lot of the times, we have these running stories or beliefs in our head that make up their links to things that are so painful that we’d like just don’t want to look there in our mind, or to anything to get us to just not look there.
Sometimes I would notice that, maybe I’d be like sitting watching TV and there would be something that will come up on the TV that hit something in me. I don’t really love to like talk about triggers, or whatever. But that’s how it feels sometimes, right? We hear something and then I would all of a sudden find my hand and a bag of chips. Or find myself walking over to the fridge.
I began to see, Wow, that’s so interesting that that happens, because sometimes it really feels like we just do these things really automatically. And we do that because I think because we’re trying to avoid feeling whatever it was we’re avoiding, the awareness of some belief or story.
The cool thing is that action of going and doing that thing showed us that a lot of times I think we do these things because we feel like crap, but we don’t realize that we really don’t necessarily need to feel like crap. We do because that’s the human experience. And we’re in this contrast and whatever. But when it’s something that we’ve just been holding on to us, like some belief we don’t have to hold on to it.
Our habit is almost like a little alarm clock that wakes us up to this idea that there’s something there that I’m believing. There’s some false story here that I’m believing that I just haven’t even been able to look at. I don’t want to say confront it, because that sounds like you’re about to like go to war with it, but shine a light on it. It’s like a gentler way.
I think bad habits feel like a gift in that way. Because sometimes I’ll be like, even still, I’ll find myself like walking over to the fridge. And I’m like, wait, I’m not like, oh, like, what? Someone just said something and it reminded me of something. And now I’m like, Oh, that’s so nice that I had this little this little thing that my brain does. To tell me like, No, it doesn’t have to be so hard. Life doesn’t have to be so painful.
Alexandra: I totally agree. I use the analogy of the check engine light. That those those behaviors because we don’t like them necessarily, or they feel out of place. They are just like you said a little, a little alarm clock to wake us up to what’s going on.
Beka: I love that analogy, the check engine light one. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Alexandra: I love that on your coaching page you mention that you help your clients ‘come home to themselves’. I just thought that was such a nice phrase made me feel so good.
Can you tell us what coming home to yourself means to you?
Beka: Coming home, to me, means coming back to, like we talked about, coming back to that true you. Which to me, it’s that awareness. It feels to me like, and obviously, I don’t know if this is true, but it feels to me, like we come into this life experience from the oneness that we all are. And we’re seeking contrast, and we want to like come into this life and play and do all these individual looking things.
We’re built with this beautiful, like you said, check engine light, or like a little alarm system to show us like, oh, hang on, you’re going a little far into the individual part. You’re going a little far into the contrast. Can you back off of it? And so yeah, I think that is what I help people see is that there’s, there’s a place to come back to when we’re feeling not ourselves.
People come usually feeling like they’re in some hell, because they’ve been trying to kick this habit for so long. It feels like it’s ruining my life, it feels like it’s stopping me from pursuing the things that I want to pursue. Helping people see that there’s a home in themselves that has never left them that they can come back to. And it’s always there, and they can go out and they can play in the contrast and then the individual but then always get to know that like they can they can come home to themselves.
Alexandra: I really agree. I think that’s something that we’re not taught; that we we are our own safe place. That peace and well being exists and is there like we talked about earlier all the time, you don’t need to even access this. It’s just there. And it’s just something that escapes us as we go along.
You mentioned playing in the contrast, and I haven’t heard that before. Can you explain what that means?
Beka: I think it probably came from I don’t know, I probably heard that from like Abraham-Hicks or something. Because if we are all just connected, and we’re all this peaceful energy, it’s the idea that the contrast is like this idea that there are different things. There’s a you and there’s a me, there’s like my cat, there’s a computer, there’s like these boundaries that our mind draws around things. And when we view life in that way, like it really actually gets to be fun.
It’s like a game almost like that we get to experience all these different kinds of emotions and different personalities and we get to be in fear and be in happiness and all this stuff. So it’s like, getting to play with that and experience all of it and let all of it move through us is like there’s just this giant fun game. So that’s what I think about when I think of contrast. The individual separateness that we see in this world that our brain is very much a part of, and really, really good at playing.
Alexandra: Okay, thank you. That’s awesome.
I wondered if there’s anything you’d like to share about this understanding that we haven’t touched on today?
Beka: I think one thing that comes to mind is just following a feeling, following a curiosity towards it. I think sometimes, especially if people are new to seeing life this way there can be almost like a confusion, or, “What are you talking about?” But what about this? And what about this, and just knowing that, like, that’s all perfect and fine.
Even if it doesn’t look like life could be viewed this way, just knowing that anything that you’re going through is temporary and if people are going through pain or whatever, just knowing that everything moves through. Life is just wanting to move them through that. So just staying in curiosity. And following that, and following a peaceful feeling that you might get from hearing the stuff that you talk about on your on your podcast and stuff we talked about today.
Alexandra: That’s a lovely point. Thank you for saying that. That’s great.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Beka: My website, you can go to BekaElle.com. You can find everything there. I have a podcast called The Lived podcast that you can find on there. You can find my Instagram, I sometimes post little things related to this understanding. And you can always reach out for one on one coaching.
I also have a little free community called Soul Huddles that meets once a month. That is completely free. People join for zoom calls. It’s like an office hours style thing. Those are all ways that you can find me and I’d love to hear from you.
Alexandra: Great. I’ll put links to those in the show notes so that people can find you.
Beka: Thank you.
Alexandra: Well, thank you. It’s just been so lovely talking to you, Becky. I appreciate it.
Beka: It’s been so lovely talking to you, too. I’m so glad that we connected.
Q&A 5 – I can only ever stay on a diet for 3 days. What’s wrong with me?
Mar 13, 2023
Why are diets so hard to stick to? Why do we fail more often than we succeed?
The answer comes down to the brilliant way we are designed and when we work with this design, instead of against it, that’s when our unwanted habits begin to fall away.
Transcript of episode
Hello explorers!
Welcome to this Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
Today I have a question for you. First I want to say to please let me know if you have questions about letting go of unwanted habits. You can do that at alexandraamor.com/question and I’ll answer your question on an upcoming Q&A episode. I’ll be happy to do that.
Today’s question is, again, from me, back when I was really struggling with an unwanted over eating habit.
I can only ever stay on a diet for three days. What’s wrong with me?
This was something that I really struggled with, and you might as well, which is why I’m posing it. This question of willpower, and how we’re supposed to be able to have the kind of willpower that enables us to circumvent, I guess, I would say, an overeating habit. Get over it, get under it, get around it.
We live in a culture that’s very willpower oriented, I’ve noticed, in the diet and weight loss and letting go of unwanted habits industry. The other thing I noticed was that a lot of places or people that want to support us to let go of an unwanted overeating habit, at least my experience was, that what they were doing was giving me alternative ways to have willpower.
What I mean by that is the things that we try, for example, counting food points, having a maximum number of points that you’re supposed to be eating every day, and then assigning each food a number of points and adding those up. Or restricting the kind of food that we eat. So only eating certain things, not eating other things. All those kinds of examples are, to me now looking back, it looks like ways of bolstering our ability to have willpower, and we’re trying to strengthen our willpower.
In fact, one of the healing-your-overeating-habit programs that I tried was one where it was all around the science of willpower. And getting ahead of how much willpower we have every day. The person who created this, felt that or saw in the psychology and science literature, that we have a limited amount of willpower every day. It’s like a gas tank. And when we run out, according to this theory, that’s when we fall back on over eating habits. And so the idea was that you did a bunch of stuff to make sure that your willpower tank didn’t get that empty.
I remember reading that book on an airplane going to Ontario to visit my family many years ago, probably in 2015 or 2016. And thinking, oh, yeah, this is it. This really makes a lot of sense, which it did. Innocently, I grasped onto it and gave it a try. And maybe like you I lasted three days, and then it all fell apart. Maybe a week at the most.
So here’s my answer to why that happens. And the first thing I want to say is that you’re not a failure, if that’s happened to you. And this isn’t about a lack of moral character on your part or even a lack of willpower. It’s really not about that.
It can look that way. And of course it does and the diet industry really tells us that there’s a lot going on in that willpower area. But what I’ve discovered through the exploration of this inside-out understanding is that the answer doesn’t lie there at all.
When we’re trying to apply willpower to overcoming an overeating habit, or any other habit, we’re trying to circumvent the way that we’re built, the innate and divine engineering that’s within all of us.
In a way, the reason we aren’t able to do that, the reason we fail very often at these things, is because you can’t do that. You can’t fight Mother Nature. The way that we’re designed is so much more powerful than our little brains can organize.
What is really going on, is that with a craving, with the feelings that we have about food and the drive to overeat, that’s a signal from our body. And it’s trying to tell us something. It’s like the check engine light in a car, or I also use the example of a flagger on a on a road. It’s not something you want to ignore. And what I teach is that when we look in that direction, when we see the wisdom of that signal, it’s really just a signal, that’s what cravings are, from our divine engineering. That’s when the need for the check engine light or the flagger on the road goes away.
But if when we try to circumvent that with willpower, with increasing our willpower, and as I said, get around or over or under our natural desires to overeat it’s like trying to hold back the tide with a beach towel. I think that’s how I said it in my book. It’s like trying to stop a storm, a big rainstorm, or a snowstorm just with wishful thinking. It’s, as we found out, as I definitely have found out, it’s just not possible. Mother Nature is so much more powerful.
And thank goodness for that, because our bodies never give up on us, our bodies never stop sending us those signals.
There’s a funny episode of, or a running joke on the TV show Big Bang Theory. And on it, the neighbor, Penny, if you’ve seen the show, it’s an American sitcom. Every once in a while, she has to take someone in her car, which is kind of an old beater because she doesn’t have a lot of money. And so the running gag is that the check engine light is always on and she doesn’t take that as a signal that she needs to check her engine. She ignores it and hopes it will go away.
And then over a couple of seasons of the show, there’s one episode where the check engine light has gone off. And she sees that as a very positive sign. And whoever it is with her in the car is horrified of course, because it’s kind of like the engine has given up or the car has given up trying to give her this signal that she needs to check the engine.
Thankfully, our design is not like that at all. And seeing how persistent cravings are and how they will not let us get around them with willpower and planning and all those things that we try to do to control our cravings is actually a really positive sign. It shows us that our our nature, the way that we’re built, is trying to work with us. It’s trying to alert us that we’re caught up in some thinking that’s maybe not healthy for us, that our minds are very busy, that we’ve forgotten who we are and what our true nature is.
Those little check engine light reminders are never going to give up on us. They’re always going to be there until we see them for what they are. And then once we see that they start to drop away. So that’s my answer to the question of why you may have been unable to stay on a diet for any recommended length of time. And I think this also applies.
Sometimes people do exhibit a tremendous amount of willpower, and they’re able to stay on a diet for quite a while and lose quite a bit of weight. And then, as you’ve probably noticed, I certainly have, the weight comes back on. We return to the old eating habits that we had. And why is that? That’s because the our true nature still wants us to see what’s really going on.
We may have been able to hold the tide at bay for a little while. But eventually, it’s going to come back in. And this is also why habit switching happens. So somebody may be able to stop drinking, let’s say, but they pick up a different habit of maybe smoking or are eating too much.
So that’s the answer to that question for today. I hope that’s been helpful for you. And as I said, if you’d like to submit a question about your challenges with an overeating habit or another habit, please let me know.
I will see you again next week with a new Q&A episode. Take care, talk to you soon. Bye.
Who We Are Beyond Our Thinking with Jason Shiers
Mar 09, 2023
Jason Shiers was my coach for several months in 2022. It was through our work together that I felt I reached a tipping point in my understanding of why my overeating habit existed and was then able to see it transform and release.
Jason has been through it. He can share so deeply about the transformation that comes from being in this inside-out conversation because he was on a search for years to ease his own suffering and find solutions for his addictions and unwanted habits. It was only when he found the 3 Principles that he found answers to the questions that had been haunting him for years.
Jason Shiers is a Certified Transformative Coach with 25 years of digital creation helping people free themselves from suffering.
He has been been working with people and helping to change lives for as long as he can remember in one way or another, while going through his own change, and learning about how the mind works.
Jason: Thank you. Excited to be here. I’m wondering what we’re going to talk about.
Alexandra: I’m excited to have you here. And I’m turning the tables on you because you have your own podcast about this understanding called Misunderstandings of the Mind. I’ll link to that in the show notes.
Why don’t you tell us a bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles?
Jason: Well, so long story. I’ve shared it today, in a different way, this morning on another thing that I was on, and it always it gives me a sense of gratitude, to go back sometimes and look at the chaos and the craziness in the things that I did.
My life was very full of chaos, and chaos to me means everything that I could do to avoid myself, in the extremities, with drugs and alcohol, and bodies and weight loss and extreme diets and seeking, searching for myself: money, sex, relationships, everything, gambling, prostitution, anything I could, at the time, just to escape myself.
I started off with a horrific childhood; the tragic loss of my dad when I was young, and then using and medicating, finding a way to cope with my internal world using something externally. I didn’t really care too much what it was, over the years. So, drugs, alcohol, food, relationships, they were all my coping mechanisms. Now, they were are what I used to escape myself.
And then, for many years I was in the field of psychology, as a traditional psychotherapist, and there was more seeking in different ways, but still seeking. Seeking myself unknowingly, in psychological concepts and qualifications and status is because it really, like if this thing here that I called Jason needs to be someone in the world, it has to get things, like things being anything outside of myself, status, money, titles, letters after my name, qualifications, credentials, recognition, I thought I needed those things to be okay.
It was probably one of the reasons why I did so many qualifications in the psychological world, and they were all in service of finding happiness, but none of them contributed to that. I did all those things, I completed them at the end, every time I felt deflated and thought, “Well, maybe it’s the wrong way to another qualification.” Every time it never did what I thought it was going to do. For me, it didn’t give me that endless confidence or real belief in myself or any of those things.
There’s so much to that story, the endless seeking with weight, I know, we’ve talked about this. To the point of having six or seven cosmetic surgeries to change my body on the outside, hoping that somehow it would make me happy on the inside. Even twice waking up in a third world country having been put to sleep and had a surgery. I was thinking about that today, how desperate did I have to be to go to a third world country? Not necessarily a backstreet hospital. It felt pretty safe but it was a cheap hospital to be put to sleep, to have a cosmetic surgery hoping to wake up thin and happy.
That was the extremities that I’m talking about. The lengths that I went to. Committing crime when I was taking drugs. Anything to get more. It was quite extreme my discomfort my dis-ease inside myself, my feelings of not wanting to be me or feeling like I’d been handed a bad hand. I’d been given a bad hand in life. I had this trauma and I was certainly a victim of everything. That’s how I felt.
Inside of us there is a knowing of home, a knowledge of something deeper, something beyond our current level of thinking. It’s always that we just don’t know what it is and that’s the thing that keeps us seeking. It’s our intuition of home, it’s our knowing that there’s something more than the content of our experience, that we’re that we’re escaping from, but we just don’t know that.
No one educates us, Hey, let’s learn about emotions and how the mind works and your spiritual lessons in school. It’s like let’s turn everyone into a little societal robot; get them into school from ages five to 16, and then send them to college and university and turn them out to work for one of the big corporations, or like a conveyor belt. That’s no education. If we taught children who they were, how their mind works, and give them a more emotional maturity, an understanding of themselves, there would probably be a lot more peace and love in the world, and a lot more creativity.
But I didn’t know any of those things, and that’s how it’s tuned out of us as children. It just really is tuned out with that intuition, that knowing of our heart of love of home, of the place of the location, or the source of our well being. And so I was always having this seeking, which is the longing, the knowing and the longing for my for myself but I didn’t know what that was. It just became apparent to treat that, medicate it, with anything I could, from outside of myself.
So in my seeking, after all the therapy qualifications, I turned to personal development. I went through all the Tony Robbins stuff, all his courses. And straightaway, I was like, this is the one. It was the same feeling as when I took drugs for the first time. I found it. I found peace in myself, my mind went quiet. And I took drugs and my body relaxed.
And I found Tony Robbins. I was like, Oh, yes, this is the thing. It wasn’t quite the same experience but it was a similar sort of thinking of finding something, that was important. But pretty quickly, I felt deflated with that. I just felt like something’s not right about this. I started to see this whole hype thing where they got people really hyped up dancing, and then told them, “Just for the next hour, you can buy all my courses at 40% discount at the back of the room. Take your credit card out now.” And I’d be looking at all these people lined up, with their card out. “Yes! Quick, let me let me have the deal.”
And they were going back year after year after year after year for this uplifting feeling, to get that. I stood there one day at two o’clock in the morning, and everyone was writing all these things about beliefs and negative beliefs and positive beliefs and how to have more positive ones. And I said, it just doesn’t work this way. Just doesn’t, and I didn’t do it. I didn’t go back. I’m done with this.
But I still had the seeking, the longing. I still really wanted and was longing for something I didn’t understand. And that’s when I found Michael Neill. I think that I only found him by accident, because he had a video called The Path of Effortless Change. And my life had been anything but effortless. It had been like walking in quicksand. It had been a real struggle, a real tragedy, and so much chaos and darkness, and suicide attempts and different things.
When I heard the word effortless I was like, Please give me something effortless. That sounds the most amazing word I’ve ever heard, because nothing was effortless. I watched the video, but I certainly didn’t have an insight. I found the video was alright, it was good. There were certain things about it that I got caught up in and found myself drifting out of my thinking about myself, just being present with and I had never had that experience before. But it didn’t register too much with me at the time.
A year later, I was going to LA and I thought, Oh, I remember that guy, Michael Neill. I’d forgotten about it. I thought he lives in LA, I’m sure he does. So I’m going to look on his website. And I think it was going to a Rich Litvin coach training or something in Santa Monica and I was going back home on the 15th of April. So I looked on Michael Neill’s website and he said, starting on the 17th of April, he had a three day thing. I was thinking, this is just weird, how come two days after I’m there, he’s got this thing’s thing going on. I just had to go. So I changed my tickets, and I went there.
Often when I speak to groups I talk about listening and about presence, at the start, because it was really the presence and the ability to not critically consume information, just absorb and let it waft over me words, without trying to work out if this was the next thing, if it was right, for me, if it was wrong, if it was valuable, if I agreed with it, or not, all the things that the mind the brain wants to do. The onboard computer that we have that wants to lead the way and everything.
Michael said to me, why don’t you just be here and see what happens. And I thought, I’ve done more than 10 years of qualifications and training, the first thing anyone ever did, when they sat in the room, and somebody started, they take their notebook out. I was going to take the notebook out, and I looked around the room, and everyone’s going like this, taking notes down frantically, I could remember this guy, remember that? Cuz if I don’t remember it, it’s not valuable to me. And it’s like, there’s no presence in notetaking, it’s gonna, you’re not there.
I didn’t used to take notes, but actually started to in my psychotherapy training, , because I felt uncomfortable being the only one that didn’t want to take notes. I better get myself a notebook! But it’s not looking like I know what I’m doing because to me, being with people, the presence and the love of that was the the appeal of everything that I did in psychology. It was not about becoming academic, it was nothing to do with that. I hated that part of it.
So anyway, I took my notes, because then I took a lot of notes, and then I got to this training. And, he said to me, you can put your notebook down, so you don’t need it. If you remember anything, if something strikes you, you’ll remember that. It resonates with you. You have a feeling of something, about something that said. And actually, the more present you are, the more likely you are to actually hear something, and the less you’re trying and efforting, using the brain, the mind to critically consume information.
There was a love in the invite, and I guess, knowing what I know now there was a knowing, that something that I didn’t know. Looking back at it, there was a knowing that there’s something for me to see that he’d seen that I hadn’t. That’s often why I offer that invitation to people when I talk to groups now. It’s really about seeing the perfect mental health that’s inside of us, and I hadn’t seen that. I really thought I was broken, damaged. And I also, paradoxically, thought I knew a lot about change, just because I had a lot of letters after my name, but that hadn’t really helped me find any joy, but I still had the qualifications and the credentials.
That’s how I saw the world, it’s like, who had the most, the biggest, the longest, the best, was the most important or had the most to say. That’s just how it looked in the paradigm of life. And in those couple of days, I had this experience where I felt a sense of peace for the first time since I’d taken drugs. I just relaxed inside.
I always say to people, the heaviest thing you’ll ever carry is the weight of your own thoughts about yourself, about where you think you need to be to be okay. It’s the heaviest thing you’ll ever carry. I got to put that down for the first time in years and years of abuse to myself, and the guilt and the shame and the grief and everything that I carried. On top of that being a flawed, broken human who had been told and given so many diagnoses that the list was so long that you couldn’t even read to the end of it. In my own mind, I just thought I would never find peace. I’ll never be okay. I just had the experience of it just disappeared. It was just not a thing anymore.
I realized that what I had been suffering from and trying to escape was the weight of my own thoughts about myself. Nothing more. There was not a real thing that was wrong with me. I wasn’t a flawed individual, broken, damaged, any of those things. They were just thoughts that I thought daily, for as long as I could remember about myself.
Just the fact that I thought them every single day didn’t make them any more real than whether I thought them once or not. That’s just what I believed about myself.
That was my long winded answer to how did I find the principles. That was my introduction by Michael Neill to seeing deeper, to being truly willing to look inwardly for the answers versus outwardly, which is all I’ve done my whole life before that.
Alexandra: Thankyou for sharing that. It is such a great story. I’ve heard you tell it before, in a couple of different places, and I’m always struck by, well, I just feel so much empathy for how much suffering you experienced. That’s the first thing that occurs to me. So thank you for sharing that with us.
Now I’m going to quote you back to you. I remember once on one of our calls, you said, addiction is always the result of a busy mind. And that was huge for me. I remember I wrote it down, and I put it on a piece of paper here in my office. I’d love if you could talk a little bit about that, because it was so it was just so profound for me.
Why is addiction is always the result of a busy mind?
Jason: I love talking about this, because it just makes so much sense to me that the body-mind, as we are, as humans, is completely intelligent. It knows it can manage everything. It does everything by itself; heals itself, digests, you put food in your mouth, you don’t have to do your digestion, you don’t have to work with any of the other systems, they just work by themselves, you break your leg, it heals, you cut your finger, it heals. Everything works that way.
I was in a talk this morning, and I was saying, rather than thinking about the pathologize-ation, if that’s the right word, of normal human response to adversity, as something in us that’s broken – that’s just an idea we’ve been given. If you think about it addiction is innate intelligence, and it makes sense, because everything else is intelligent about the body-mind system, it works by itself. If we’re creating or having an internal disease, it makes complete sense that we find a solution to it.
For example, the body-mind doesn’t know any difference between prescription drugs and street drugs. You can take heroin, or you can take benzos, or opiates, I get from the doctor, my body is still experiencing the same thing, it does not give a shit where it comes from. It’s the same way that there’s no moral or social or any values in what my body does to escape from itself. It could be compulsively eating. It could be compulsorily having sex, taking drugs, doing anything; smoking, crack cocaine, drinking alcohol, whatever it is, it’s but the system is still working intelligently.
You can almost describe it like a pressure cooker, and addiction is the valve on the pressure cooker. I say that the presssure keeps building up and building up in the pressure cooker, like thoughts about thoughts about thoughts about thoughts, thoughts about me, thoughts about the world, about everyone else, what people think of me what I think of me when I think of them. If there’s no valve of release, then from a human perspective, what’s the next option? It’s probably suicide or psychosis, from a mental health perspective.
So it’s great that the body-mind works intelligently, and it finds a way to cope with its internal experience. It’s just a different way of seeing what I call the normal human response to adversity. I had an traumatic, dramatic and tragic experience, and I found a way to cope with it, it makes complete sense.
Alexandra: Absolutely. And you touched on it earlier, but all that seeking and longing that you experienced, it struck me that that’s part of our perfect design. We know somehow instinctively that there’s a way to feel at peace.
I said earlier, I felt so much empathy for the suffering that caused you to keep looking but at the same time, and I experienced a lot of that as well, at the same time, it’s the thing trying to bring us home.
Jason: I sometimes refer to addiction as the lost man’s way to enlightenment. I have empathy for anyone suffering for sure. And I don’t mean to make light of it. If anyone listening is really struggling, but in hindsight, it always looks different.
Looking back and thinking, not that I’m grateful for my loss or any of those things, but now it has happened, and I can see the gift in it too. I can see the gift in, in where it made me look. I can see the gifts in so many areas of my life in my presence as a parent, in my presence with people, in so many things in the opening of my heart to life.
I can see so many gifts in that, but like you said, if I if those things, if the suffering hadn’t been how it was, I may well have just had whatever a mediocre life is, I don’t know, something different for sure. But I’m grateful for what I’ve got.
Alexandra:Exactly. I was reading an article yesterday. There’s a link from your website. And it was an an interview with Dr. Bill Pettit.
You mentioned in the article that changing behaviour is the last step in addiction recovery. Could you share more about that?
Jason: I think that’s quite an old interview with a long article that I wrote about addiction treatment coming out of work for. It’s part of in my book as well, there’s a chapter in my book about behavioral change, because a lot of, especially cognitive focused psychology, and so on, and even in psychodynamic and approaches, there’s a focus on you have to change your behaviour.
You have to do more of this, do more of that. Just take yourself in a different direction, be kind to yourself, physically don’t do certain things, and so on. And it’s like, that’s impossible for anyone suffering. I just used to feel so, so frustrated, when anyone would ever suggest to me. “Have you tried just not doing it or just doing something different?” It’s like, if you knew what it was like to be me, the obsession of the mind, and the compulsion of the body. When you’re in that cycle, it’s just too intense, you can’t not do it, you can’t just change.
And the thing is, is that the way that I wrote about it in my book, and in the article is that behavioural change is the end result. It’s not where you start, it’s never gonna be where you start, because the behaviour is in service of coping with the internal internal disease. It’s your coping mechanism. It’s like, someone’s like saying, hey, stop coping. It’s all inbuilt. It’s habitual, it’s part of my misunderstanding of myself, it’s what I need to do to be okay. I can’t just stop.
Saying that, people can stop for a little minute. You can go on a diet for two days, or three days or something. And if food is your thing and then three days in, you probably like find yourself craving, longing, eating things you don’t want to eat. Or you can not take drugs for a couple of days sometimes, depending on what the drugs are, but you’ll find yourself going back to it or jumping from one thing to another to another.
So the behaviour is always the end result. It’s never anything to do with the problem. It’s another form of our coping mechanism. So it’s always going to be futile to try and like I said, you might find little moments of freedom, but they’re not going to help you look at the core issue, which is your misunderstanding of yourself. Your misunderstanding of the source of well being and misunderstanding of who you are. That’s where you need to look not at like what you’re doing to cope with your internal disease.
Alexandra: I love that. It’s interesting because as a culture, we were taught that so prevalently to start with the behaviour. All the techniques and strategies and diets and everything else. That’s where we think we should begin.
If we don’t begin there, if someone’s brand new to this understanding, where would they start?
Jason: I’ll get to that. But it’s about what you said, it’s an important point what you said, it’s like, just because there’s whole billion dollar industry built around changing your body on the outside, losing weight, going on diets, finding the right supplements to support your data, and all this stuff. A lot of money and a lot of identity involved just in that one, as an example, addiction treatment is another one where there’s a lot involved in the pathologizing of normal human response to adversity. So they’ve taken a problem and provided a solution. A problem that isn’t really a problem, in a way, it’s perpetuated the idea of us being broken and flawed individuals.
So that’s the first thing important point to know is just because there’s a whole industry around something doesn’t make it right. Some people do need just a little bit of nutritional advice. They’re not really escaping, they’re suffering, isn’t it a bit of direction, but you can’t find the line of what’s in between that.
Where you would start, is the first thing is not always, but quite often people have had some life experience that feels sticky, repetitive. “I keep getting into the same relationship, I don’t know what it is. It’s a different person, but I have the same outcome.” Or “I keep trying to go on diets to change my body, because I’m not happy with myself. And somehow I don’t last more than three days.” Or “I keep gambling away my mortgage payment,” or whatever it is. There’s some feeling of something not being right.
That’s when people start to question, like, well, do I get external help? Where do I go? And maybe people have been getting external help for a long period of time. And then they’re having more of that, I’ve been having that for ages, and I’ve just been putting up with it.
But we’ve always been focused on the outside so the first place to always look where I want to work with people is, let’s look inside ourselves instead of outside ourselves. Not to what we’re doing, not to the way you eat, or the way you behave, or the drugs you take, or any of those things, let’s look at what’s happening inside, what’s happening inside. Right now.
How much do I know myself? How much do I know? Who am I? It’s not my name, my age, my job title, my status, my parent or my relationship status? Let’s strip all those things away, and start with that question like, who am I?
Alexandra: Oh, that’s lovely. I’ve never heard anybody phrase it that way before. That’s great.
The other thing I wanted to mention, too, is that that same article talks about how we tend to look in the past for answers. But what it said was finding a new way to move forward and experience life allows us to live at a different level of consciousness, which I loved.
I remember, I think it was on a webinar with Christian McNeil and Barbara Sarah Smith, you talked about how when you were having your psychotherapy training, that’s the paradigm, is to look into the past and dig up all that stuff. And you talked about how it was making you feel worse and worse and worse.
I’d love if you could talk about that idea of instead of looking at the past, moving forward and experiencing a new level of consciousness.
Jason: I use the words level of consciousness loosely, because I don’t know if there are any levels of consciousness, but it appears as a, what you might call a concession, something it appears that our level of consciousness can be low when we’re caught up in our mind and our thinking. So I just want to clear that up.
When we’re very busy minded, caught up triggered or something, we might not see so clearly. You might call that a lower level of consciousness. But what I’m really referring to when I say that is that I’m caught up in my mind, I’m caught up in my thinking, and the past stuff.
We’re all a byproduct of our past. I’m not saying the past is completely irrelevant, but it’s really important from my point of view to understand what this conversation is pointing to, before I even consider the past because from my current perspective of being a suffering separate, flawed individual, if I start looking at my past, the only thing I’m going to do is find more problems to resolve, feel more pain, feel more suffering, feel more darkness.
I’m further creating cement in this identity that I think I am, and that’s a horrific thing to do for anyone. It’s not a useful thing to do for anyone. You don’t get a new relationship with the past, but it’s still part of you, part of your whole beliefs, even unconscious beliefs and so on, will be byproducts of the past. I’m not saying that they’re not. But the most important thing you can know is that you’re not that you’re not your past. It’s not about getting a new relationship with the past, it’s about learning to live in the present moment.
And it’s about seeing who you are beyond your thinking about the past. When you’ve seen that, when you’ve experienced a palpable shift in your reality, when it feels like, I know, I’m okay, no matter what, I know I get lost in my experience from time to time, but there’s a part of me that just knows that I’m not this flawed, broken individual that needs fixing. In fact, I’m fine, exactly as I am, even when I’m not, I am.
When you really know that, then you might want to look at how some past traumas or adversities show up in your body, your bodily sensations, you’ve no longer got the story of being a broken floor, damaged, individual needs to fix themselves, but you’re just still having an experience of the moment. You’re in a social situation, your body contract, you feel this anger raise up inside you, and you feel all dark, and it triggers you into something, you can you can look at that.
At that time, I think when I wrote that article, maybe four years ago, I hadn’t seen this, I hadn’t seen it. So my own understanding is constantly evolving, and, via myself, via my own realizations about myself, and what always brings me closer to my heart to being more loving, to being more connected to life and to people. Because I’d originally taken on this concept of the 3 Principles and not really seen so much of what it was pointing to, the beauty of the human design, but more got lost in another psychological concept.
At that level, it can be used as a spiritual bypass. It’s almost like I’m a human without a body and I don’t want to feel my feelings, because I’ve misunderstood something that’s been taught to me. I’ve taken it the wrong way, adapted it to find this spiritual bliss that I think is on the other side of something that I am. So, that puts a little bit of information around how I see it now versus what I saw at the time of writing that, but it still makes complete sense.
The litmus test is if I really think I’m broken, damaged, and so on, looking into the past, via some sort of therapy, or traditional psychological process is probably going to bring me more pain. But if I’m living a joyful life, I’m content and I know who I am, and I’m pretty much okay, most of the time and these things show up. It’s okay to be able to learn to be with my body with whatever is springing to me in the present moment.
Alexandra: That’s an interesting contrast and comparison. I like hearing that.
I was wondering if you could compare your 12 Step experience to this understanding. And I guess what I’m asking is what differences do you see? What similarities do you see?
I didn’t know until very recently that Bill W., who co-founded the 12 step program, had an enlightenment experience or a big insight. And then, from what I understand, he created the 12 steps to reverse engineer, to help people to have that same experience. So as we’re wrapping up, I’d love you to touch on that. I think it might be interesting for people.
Could you please compare your 12 Step experience to this understanding? What differences do you see? What similarities do you see?
Jason: Yeah, he did. You’re exactly right. If you read about Bill’s experience, he had a moment similar to Syd Banks. He’d been exploring all sorts of stuff, psychedelics, Jungian shadow work and different things. So the thing with the 12 steps is that Bill had his experience, he tried his best to pass it on to people.
The 12 steps are what I call the recipe. If you imagine a cake recipe and method, the list of things you need, and how to do it. And the method has gone through million people. It like what Chinese whispers are. Everyone’s played that game. By the time you get to five people, the story has completely changed, it’s gone. So you can imagine the method going through a million people across country to country group to group year to year. Who knows if what people are teaching today is what Bill really meant?
But the thing is, you can’t argue with the size of the 12 step fellowship, the value. And for me, it saved my life. And a lot of my friends. So I can’t say anything bad about that.
In my most gentle way, why I’d say the 12 steps, is a better ally than the one I was telling myself before I went there, it was a different belief to adopt. And it served a purpose for the time. But I do hear a lot of wisdom in the 12 steps. I just think people don’t know what it is. They really have adopted this belief of this unexplainable phenomena. What I was told, when I was so naive, when I went to rehab, you’ve got a disease, it’s unexplainable. You need to do these things to be okay and you’ve got to find the spiritual or higher power.
My whole 20 odd years and 12 steps, I was asking myself, and other people, what is the spiritual awakening? I didn’t really know, I had no clue. And no one had ever really pointed me to any of those things. So it served a great purpose. It kept me clean, and I went on some beautiful adventures, had all sorts of experience, met some great friends. I went in prisons, institutions did all sorts of stuff with the 12 steps. It was always something I was passionate about.
Saying all that there was for me, there was always still that longing inside of me for something, to know something more, to know something deeper about myself. And, if you think about one of the things I said, and I hear quite often in 12 steps is all I wanted to do was to build on my whole life, and I found something here that I belong to. So I cling to that belonging, feeling part of it, because it qualifies my identity, it gives me an identity because I’m identity less. I think that I’m Jason, flawed individual. I don’t think that I’m part of the oneness, the wholeness of life, the spiritual energy, that we’re all part of, I don’t think that I think I’m a flawed separate individual.
So that belonging to a club, feels like a great thing. It’s like, boy, you could look, you could flip that on its head and say, Well, the fact that I longed to belong to a club full of people that consider themselves damaged, tells me that there’s something with what I know today, missing from my understanding of myself, because when I’m connected to who I am, when I know who I am, when I’m willing to just be with my experience, when I see that I’m part of the spiritual intelligence behind life, I don’t need to belong to any club.
I see that I’m part of the human race I’m part of connected to everyone. So yeah, I don’t want this to sound bad but the tool set is great, served a huge purpose. It saves a lot of lives. It’s a beautiful experience. And many people feel evangelical fanatical about it, and it’s like, great, if that works for you do that. I never advise people not to do it. And also be open to being something more.
Alexandra: Well said. That was great. Thank you so much.
We’re almost out of time so why don’t you tell us let us know where we can find out more about you and your work.
Jason: The easiest place to find me is my coaching site: WideWorldCoaching.com or like you said, listen to the podcast. There’s many beautiful conversations.
A friend just contacted me yesterday, we’ve been friends for even before I started the podcast, and he had never listened to it until the last couple of months. He just said to me, I’ve listened to all your podcasts. He said, I really like these three principles thing that sounds really good, and it’s like, Oh, wow, that was because there was some of them have been a few years old now. It’s like, but there’s still such value. Conversations, where we have open and beautiful. Looking at what’s true about life and what isn’t and what’s true about suffering and individuality and who we are and how the mind works and different things like that. And, if one person hears something that’s valuable, I think that’s always the most important thing, you know.
Alexandra: Yes. They are beautiful conversations. I’ve enjoyed so many of them. Well, thank you, Jason. This has been amazing. Thank you for chatting with me today.
Q&A 4 – Why is overeating not about the food?
Mar 06, 2023
The title of Alexandra Amor’s book about healing the drive to overeat is It’s Not About the Food. How is it possible that a ‘problem’ related to eating too much can not be about the food we consume?
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Transcription of the Episode
Hello, and welcome back explorers to another question and answer episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
I’m here today with a question from early on in my exploration of this understanding. If you would like to submit a question to be answered here on the show, please go to alexandraamor.com/question and you’ll see a little form there. You can submit your question to me using that, and I’ll be happy to answer it.
Today, the question is actually about the title of my book,It’s Not About the Food, which you see here behind me. And why is it called that?
Why is overeating not about the food?
To answer that, I’m going to tell you a little bit of a story, first of all, kind of an analogy. For years, I’ve had this weird little pain in my mid upper arm. So for those of you just listening it’s sort of between my elbow and my shoulder midway, on the outside. And it definitely doesn’t feel like nerve pain. It’s more like a kind of a pinching feeling when I make certain motions.
I would say about 10, or 12 years ago, I went to massage therapy and I explained to the girl, and she got me to point to exactly where the pain was. And then she worked on that pain for, I want to say two or three appointments. And it really didn’t move the needle at all. And so I kind of left it.
It’s not debilitating, it’s not interfering with my quality of life at all. I just notice it sometimes and it would be nicer if it wasn’t there. So I just kind of left it alone, because we weren’t really making any progress.
Then a week or two ago, I was at a different massage therapist and she was asking me what we wanted to focus on that day. And almost as an afterthought, I said to her, “Oh, and also, by the way, I have this weird pain here in the middle of my upper arm between my elbow and my shoulder.” I pointed to it, and instantly, I mean, right away, she said, “Oh, yeah, that’s because your rotator cuff muscles are really stiff and tight.”
I got her to explain what rotator cuff was. And it’s apparently a series of muscles kind of around your shoulder. And they have something to do with your with our shoulder blades. I can’t explain it entirely. I’m not a massage therapist. So what she did then was she worked on those muscles a little bit during that session. And she gave me some exercises to do on my own at home.
I’ve been doing those; stretching my arms and doing various things to relieve or release some of the tension of that rotator cuff muscle. And this pain in my arm is actually improving.
After the massage session, I got her to explain what that was. And she said what it’s called is referral. So there’s something that can happen in one part of the body and it will refer to a different part of the body. So that’s exactly what was going on here. That rotator cuff muscle, according to this massage therapist, is not connected in any way to my the middle of my upper arm. There aren’t any nerve paths that lead from one to the other. The muscles aren’t connected directly. And yet, this tension in my rotator cuff muscles is causing this pain in my arm. What it is, she said, is a tendon that’s being pinched between two I think she said two muscles.
I walked away from that and thought you know what, that’s really interesting because there’s a real parallel with this understanding that we’re exploring, the Inside-Out understanding. And it’s this and it’s and it’s exactly why my book is called, It’s Not About the Food. And that is that when we experience food cravings and the kind of pressure and drive that causes us to develop an over eating habit or any other kind of habit, the drive the impulse the craving for cigarettes or alcohol or gambling or whatever it is. We innocently like the first massage therapist I mentioned, we go in, and we try to address the problem where it exists.
So that original massage therapist massaged my upper outer arm, because she thought that that’s where the problem was. And that’s exactly what we do when we have these habits; we use willpower to try to prevent ourselves from participating in our habit, we abstain from the things that we feel we have a habit around, or in the case of food, we try to curb our eating and constrict and control and manage it. I talked about that in a previous episode about the beach ball and trying to manage keeping the beach ball under the water.
But what’s really going on is exactly the same as what’s going on in this situation with my rotator cuff and my arm is that we’re experiencing something in one place yet the answer doesn’t come from addressing that specific situation directly.
The answer comes from looking at what that feeling, that craving, feeling that drive to over eat, is trying to point us toward.
So this feeling in my arm was pointing me and I didn’t know this at the time, innocently, but it was trying to point me toward my tight rotator cuff muscles. And the drive to overeat or the cravings we feel around food are trying to point us toward our innate well being and resilience and the true nature of who we are as a whole and innately well beings, spiritual beings having a human experience. But as I said, we innocently just like that first massage therapist dive in and start dealing with the problem where it looks like it exists.
And in this case, in the case of unwanted habits, they they aren’t actually a problem, just like the pain in my arm wasn’t a problem about my arm, it was pointing to something else. So when I realized that walking home from the recent massage therapist, I wanted to share I think it’s just the perfect analogy to describe what it is we’re trying to look toward when we when we are talking about this inside-out understanding and why it is that our cravings are not a problem. They are information.
That’s just the same as the pain in my arm. That was simply information about the tight rotator cuff muscles and our cravings, our information about our true nature about how we’ve momentarily – even if that moment has been a long one – we’ve innocently forgotten, or don’t know who we are, and that we are innately whole and well and resilient. And the more we see those messages for what they are, the more they don’t need to exist.
The analogy, going back to this muscle thing is, the more I stretch my rotator cuff muscles and get them to loosen up, the more of this pain in my arm is going to disappear because it’s not necessary anymore. And the same thing goes for habits and cravings.
The more we see cravings for the message that they’re trying to deliver about our innate well being, the less and less they need to exist.
That certainly has been my personal experience I talked about in the book. It’s not about the food, about how some of my habits and cravings drop away on their own. And, in fact, in fact, all of them do. As I have more and more insights that deflate that beach ball that I talked about in a previous episode, so that’s what I wanted to share today. I hope that analogy is a little bit helpful for you when you’re exploring this understanding as it relates to an unwanted habit, including over eating. And so I’ll leave it there for now. I hope you’re doing well and taking good care of yourself and I’m sending you lots of love. And I will talk to you again next week. Take care bye bye
The Innate Wisdom of Our Bodies with Tania Elfersy
Mar 02, 2023
It seems that in our present-day culture we have an attitude that our bodies are something to be conquered, mastered, and controlled. We object to the feelings in our bodies, often to the point that we mistrust everything about them.
However, what my guest today, Tania Elfersy, points out is that our bodies are wise and that we can always rely on that wisdom no matter what we’re going through, be it menopause symptoms or food cravings.
Tania Elfersy has a passion for revealing rarely discussed truths about women’s life-cycle events.
She is a transformative coach, speaker, writer and educator. Since 2015, Tania has been supporting women through perimenopause and menopause, allowing them to reach natural symptom relief, and a greater sense of well-being.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be interested in the Inside-Out understanding?
Tania: I am originally from the UK. I live in Israel. I’ve lived here for almost 30 years. I am in my mid 50s, which is significant considering what I do for a living, which is supporting women through midlife change, through perimenopause and menopause, helping them have a much lighter experience of this fascinating time.
I am coach and author, speaker, educator, trying to bust through the myths of women’s health, and also the misunderstanding that we have around our emotional spiritual health, mental health as well.
I’ve been around the 3 principles since 2015. I was sucked into them after a very quick experience of an insight. I was a lucky one that quite soon after I discovered the principles, I had a major life changing insight, just around the nature of thought.
At the time, I was experiencing a lot of perimenopause symptoms, physical, emotional, night sweats, two weeks of PMS, and lots of migraines, skin problems, bit of hair loss, all kinds of things just to make your life joyful. And I had this insight around thought and within days all my symptoms cleared up.
That made me see that there was something very interesting in this inside-out understanding. Since then I’ve been exploring it more and more and sharing it in the context of women’s health.
Alexandra: I love that story. And it’s such an interesting one because it just happened so quickly for you.
I occasionally mention that as an example of how we just never know when an insight is going to strike and how it will impact us.
Tania: Yes, I was in the bathroom. I wasn’t anywhere special. So anyone who had the idea that we need to be under the right moon, or something like that, that wasn’t my experience of it.
I read certain people that have a similar understanding like Eckhart Tolle and Michael Singer. And I was impacted by this whole nature of the observer of your thoughts. So I’d already seen something around that. But that hadn’t changed anything in how I felt about my health, or I was experiencing my health or other things in my life. And then just really getting to know the principles that was sort of the major change point for me.
Alexandra: Nice. So let’s maybe kind of start at a foundational level.
Your website is called The Wiser Woman. Tell us why you chose that name. And who that is?
Tania: It’s not me. I mean, she’s in me, and she’s in you. But it’s not only me.
When I was getting to understand more about the principles and the concept of Mind, I felt that that term was a bit misleading, because it makes us think of what’s going on going on up here in our head. And I was seeing the innate intelligence throughout the body and I was trying to find a way to describe that innate intelligence.
The best thing that that came up for me was the wiser woman because it really felt like there was me with my little mind and my little thoughts, trying to run the show, and then there was something much deeper, and it is an intention within me that I could actually relax into it when I remembered. And that whole concept of a guided self or a guided intelligence, or God, some people, I’m sure we would rather call it or a divine intelligence, however we want to call it whatever feels best for us.
I landed on that term, the wiser woman because it felt like that described this thing that already knew how to get me through midlife change. It known how to get me through every single stage of my life, from a baby to where I am now, and being a mother as well. It just knew. And I didn’t have to run the show. I didn’t have to jump in and tell my body what to do at each stage, and neither did any doctor.
So there was this wiser woman always running through me and always running through every woman and there’s a wiser intelligence running through every person. In our very modern technological society don’t give it much presence or thought. And so often we think there’s a lot for me to do in order for my health to be good, in order for me to experience well being, when actually the body really, really knows what to do. And when it should, for example, express feelings and symptoms that will help bring us back into our state of balance and well being so lucky us.
Alexandra: Yes, exactly.
When it comes to menopause and perimenopause, what are women struggling with these days that you see?
Tania: I think in the West, we live our lives at a very fast pace, and with a lot of expectations. And we are taught to analyze it every step of the way. And especially now, I’m not knocking advancements created through feminism, but especially now we have more choices. And more to think about, it seems, and more expectations than we used to have, for example, a few generations ago.
This creates a lot of thought in our head that is experienced throughout the body as stress. And we don’t learn that we can have a different experience of all the circumstances that we’re facing, whether it be on the career side on the family side, aging parents, teenage kids, the wealth situation, the politicians here, we can take that all on and think, oh, that’s all on me to sort out and all I need to fix. And if I want to have a happier time, then I need to be thinking about that all the time.
It all seems to come to a head at midlife, maybe because we’re sandwiched, many of us. And maybe because we’re at this point where we look back and say, Where have we come from and where should we be? Where are we going? It seems to be this sort of crossroads.
I also think it’s because the body itself is creating the conditions to heal. And these days, I really have a number of gentle terms to call menopause or midlife change and one of them is this journey of healing. Because I really think that even if we carry perceived trauma from the past, we come into midlife and the body’s start saying, I’m not going to let you carry that on much further. And so we’re going to have a resolution, and I’m going to make your life a little bit miserable. Not because I want to make your life miserable, but you need to wake up. And if I just do it gently, you’re not going to wake up because you’re just going to take the odd ibuprofen or whatever to sort of calm it down.
The body’s going to start talking to us because it wants to bring us into this path that’s going to lead us to good health and protect us as we age. So women are experiencing a number of symptoms. These days they have 30 something symptoms that they categorize as perimenopause or menopause symptoms and it’s so peculiar in the narrative, the dominant narrative that this is all caused by women’s hormones, all those symptoms, how peculiar.
The way that I see it is that we’re in the sensitive time, so women who have had in the past sensitive skin like I had when I was a teenager, I had it when I was pregnant, issues came up very quickly. So lo and behold, I came to midlife I was experiencing all kinds of eczema and things like that. Women who have had problems with their stomach, IBS or something similar, that will often come out again in midlife. Women who have a tendency for migraines, or depression or something like that, that they’ve experienced in the past, this will come to the surface, not because the body’s trying to punish us, but because the body is sensitive.
If something is out of balance, that’s the way it expresses itself. And so women can be experiencing so many different symptoms that seem very, very complicated. But luckily, the cure or the healing journey is so simple. It all comes back down to the balance of the natural path that’s really it. So it’s listening to what does my body actually want me to know, at this time, which is one of the favorite questions that I like to ask clients, because we normally know, even if we don’t want to admit it.
What is your what is your body trying to tell you?
It could be if that career isn’t lighting you up. It might be time to do something else, or have a different experience of where you are. Or if that relationship isn’t healthy, then it may be time to try and nourish that, or take a decision around that. Or if you’re still carrying that perceived trauma from your 20s, or whatever it was, now is the time that we’re going to resolve that and let it go. So that we don’t have to carry all that stress wherever it comes from in into our older age as we move forward.
And ‘asterix’: *it is coming from our thoughts about whatever’s happening.
Alexandra: Right. And when you ask women to ask their bodies, I’m curious about that. Is there a way that they can do that?
How do you point them toward understanding what their bodies are trying to say?
Tania: I think that when we ask ourselves that question, we just know the answer. And it comes in very, it’s quite obvious, and it’s quite quiet. It doesn’t come in like the marching band. It doesn’t come in like that. But we just know. And often, it’s a thing that we don’t want to say that’s the thing that maybe needs attention or needs nourishing, or something like that.
When we’re in a quiet place, then it comes through. I think that you know, it just, it just does. And some women say I don’t know, I don’t know what my body’s trying to tell me. Okay, well, when you’re in a quiet place, and maybe for somebody that will be when they’re on a walk or in the shower, or having a swim, or wherever it is, it may just come to mind. But I think normally, the way guidance works is that there is an answer. We’re not always prepared to listen to it.
Alexandra: I love that. And I wanted to ask a follow up question about what I asked earlier about what women are struggling with now.
I’ve been curious about where do you think this idea came from that menopause and perimenopause are a problem when we don’t think about puberty or pregnancy like that?
Tania: I think looking over the history, women’s health wasn’t really much interest for medicine. Philosophers have a bit, if you want to look at it. But there was certainly a thing about, Why are women still around when they’re no longer fertile, what are they doing? This crazy idea.
And women, themselves have sort of taken on these beliefs in society as well. Especially in the last 100 years, because it’s so in effect, about it’s downhill from now on, and what is our purpose and are we becoming invisible etc, etc. Whereas in traditional societies, there was much more respect for elders and the role that they played.
In modern society, scientists have to think well, what is this? A woman who’s not fertile anymore? What’s her purpose? Whereas any woman, for example, who’s had young kids and has seen an older woman walk through the door who doesn’t have a kid attached to her, we’re gonna know that this woman has a really good role to play, actually. But scientists had to look at orca whales to understand that a postmenopausal woman may indeed have a purpose.
In orca whales, they discovered that the pods that were led by postmenopausal females actually thrived more than the pods that weren’t. And it’s because there’s no competition, it seems in the time of the postmenopausal female, between her own offspring and her whale children. So she’s available to deal with conflict resolution and finding where there’s food available for the pod, and use all her wisdom. She’s not busy with her own offspring.
So scientists had to look at orcas in order to realize maybe there’s a role for an older wiser person. So that’s the first thing that we have in our mind.
And then on top of that, came this idea of, oh, it’s the relationship between hormones that were discovered around 100 years ago, and women’s problems. And so they created this idea of correlation between, oh, if you’re losing your hormones, you must need your hormones. So there’s an understanding that with pregnancy there’s a hormonal change, it makes a woman sensitive, we give a lot more time for pregnant woman in terms of if she’s experiencing symptoms, or perhaps he should slow down here, take two weeks leave off work, how are you eating? Are you resting? How is your sleep, etc, etc.
Whereas in the sensitive time of midlife change it’s like, well, you just need to fix your hormones, because, wow, you used to have that level of hormone and now you have that that level, which is that of a pre adolescent girl, who, by the way, doesn’t have the symptoms that we attribute to though estrogen or something like that. But science has got it worked out that it must be that.
And it’s basically just a theory that they pulled out of wherever they pulled it out of, and so then women then see themselves as deficient. And this especially now, for listeners, perhaps in the UK, they will be seeing this more and more, because for some reason, in the UK, defining menopause as a hormone deficiency has come back into in vogue.
This was something that was really pushed out in the 1960s, certainly in North America, but now it’s been dropped, and it’s seen more as a part of a woman’s lifecycle. Whereas in the UK, this idea of, Oh, your hormone, really deficient has resurfaced. And yeah, that’s not helpful.
Alexandra: Exactly. And it just strikes me that it’s so simple to see that the body is so intelligent and knows what it’s doing. At puberty, it knows what it’s doing and how to do things. And then the same at pregnancy. So why would it be different at midlife? That just doesn’t add up. I love that you explained a little bit about where are these ideas have come from. That’s lovely. Thank you.
Tania: My pleasure.
When we think about it in a really logical way, it doesn’t make any sense. Well, how could my body know how to do all that? And then it comes to midlife.
Of course, I should just mention, there is this idea of Oh, because we never used to live beyond menopause. I talk about that in my blog, or in my book, and I show references that we can find in the Bible from the second century from the 12th century. And there are other references as well, that completely debunked that myth because women have always been around since menopause.
But the charts that we’re familiar with of life, average life expectancy increasing over the ages look like that because child mortality used to be really high, and that would bring down the average age of life expectancy. So we’re getting to midlife and just dropping off now they weren’t.
And interestingly, it’s never used against men. It’s just used against women, “because you never used to live that long. And that’s why we need to supplement your hormones because your body didn’t know because it wasn’t planning to live this long.” And it’s absolute nonsense. I’m happy to report.
Alexandra: Speaking of orcas, there were some in the inlet here where I live yesterday. They show up every once in a while.
Let’s talk about how our thinking affects our bodies.
You have a great story in your book, which is there behind you for people who are watching on YouTube, about experiencing menopause symptoms, or perimenopause, and then going to Thailand and having them fall away. So tell us a bit about that.
Tania: Yes, I’d been experiencing all these symptoms. And first of all, it took me a little while to understand that I was in perimenopause, because no one had told me. I was 43 when I started my symptoms. I just was trying to deal with them individually. And then I heard a webinar and realized there was this thing called perimenopause, I realized menopause didn’t happen overnight. I don’t know why I thought it did. But I thought it did and happened at 51, overnight.
And then, I realized that I was having these symptoms, but I was still on a natural oriented path. But I was trying to deal with them very much from the outside in. I was running to acupuncture and taking herbs and Bach remedies and other thing doing other things. I was getting some relief, it was taking the volume down a little bit. So it made life a little bit easier. But I really never felt that I was healed. It was always, let me make sure I’ve got my acupuncture appointment in and when am I going to take this? And is there another potion? And is there something that’s better? I was always on that sort of wheel of things.
Then I went holiday with my family to Thailand, and it was just as glorious holiday. I’d been really looking forward to going back to Thailand, because I’d been there in my 20s. And it’d been so lovely. And I realized that while I was on holiday, I was really forgetting to take my potions and my remedies and use my potions and I wasn’t getting regular acupuncture. And my symptoms just disappeared.
I thought that that was interesting. And I wondered about that. I wondered, well, what is it about holidays? And we can imagine, well, holidays? Oh, yeah, you have a lovely time. But there’s something in that, oh, you’re having a lovely time, you’re not thinking about the things that you normally think about. And so you’re having a lighter experience of life. And your body just is able to relax into that and doesn’t display symptoms.
So when I came back, I thought, well, that’s interesting. How can I bring that holiday experience back into my regular life. For me, this was my journey, that I really didn’t need to run to all these treatments and use all these potions and remedies, etc. And perhaps I could just be where I was and see what happened and have a different relationship with my symptoms, because they were obviously telling me something about where I was in life and my state of mind. I didn’t really see it as my state of mind but I knew that there was something that was often my regular life when I was thinking about the regular things. And that didn’t happen when I was in Thailand.
My symptoms actually did come back. But I had a different experience of them just because I wasn’t trying to fix them and thus fix me. I was aware that perhaps they were telling me something and perhaps they could guide me. I see now that they were gifts.
I know that when we’re experiencing all the symptoms, it doesn’t feel like a gift. But they actually are they’re these divine gifts, these divine guides that show us how far have we are from balance. When other symptoms returned, like I said, I was able to have a different experience of them.
I think then when I came across the 3 principles, I was in a different mind really. I was more open to see something new. And I wasn’t hating on my body and I wasn’t blaming it and just disappointed by it and I wasn’t thinking that it betrayed me or anything that I had thought when I was feeling a little bit crazy about my symptoms. And so, it all just was able to fit into place and I was able to see all my body’s intelligence and then I was able to see this insight about thought which was which was only and simply I don’t have to take my thinking so seriously.
I think I will have a nice time in life if I don’t. That was it. I often say to women, I wish I could copy and paste it for you. But it’s so simple. And yet I felt it on such a profound level, that it was such a huge change within days, in terms of my symptoms.
Alexandra: I love hearing you say that, because I tend to talk mostly about unwanted habits, specifically overeating. And it took me quite a while to figure out exactly what you’ve just said; the things that we’re experiencing in the case of an unwanted habit, it would be a craving, the drive to overeat, as I call it. And that is actually intelligence. It’s feedback. It’s trying to help us to see who we really are. I love that there’s this parallel with perimenopause and menopause symptoms.
It’s the same thing that’s going on. It’s the same intelligence trying to guide us.
Tania: Yes. In Western society, again, we have this detachment from the body. I remember speaking to a woman who said, I didn’t really realize I had a body until I was in my 40s. And it can be true, because we can live so detached from the body, and we just think everything is from the outside; I need to feed it, or I need to get to the gym, or I need to do something on the outside, rather than seeing it for what it is, which is such an intelligent energy that enables us to live this life on this planet.
We so easily fall into that trap of oh, if it’s a symptom, whatever kind of symptom it is, as you’re describing, or as I’m describing, then it’s a malfunction. And it’s really difficult for the body to malfunction because all it ever wants for us, is to bring us back into balance. All it ever displays is love.
And then we come in with our little minds and say, Oh, no, it’s a malfunction. Oh, no, there must be something wrong. Oh, no, it’s my hormones. Oh, no, I’m bad. Because I have this habit. Oh, and it’s not the body just expresses love. But it does it in different ways.
With our minds, we don’t see it often. And that’s innocent on our part. But we do have a choice to see symptoms and understand them in a different way.
Alexandra: Beautifully said that was great. Thank you.
You have particularly bumped into a lot of pushback in your work.
Why do you think then it can be controversial to talk about this intelligence about our bodies?
Tania: It’s a kind of victim consciousness. I talk about that in the book. But it is because we’ve said, Oh, it’s not me, the essence of me that could be causing this, we say it must be something external. And that’s something that needs to be fixed externally.
So it could be if we’re really experiencing unhappiness in our job, then it’s the job that needs to be fixed, it can’t possibly be anything to do with the way that we think about the job or the way that we think about the people in our workplace or anything like that. It doesn’t need to be that sort of stance out there.
The hormone story fits in very nicely into that I’m a victim to something going on, that’s not in my control. So when I’ve shared my perspective on midlife change, and how hormones also have to be part of this intelligence, then I’m kind of pulling the rug from under the feet of some people, and then they feel like they’re about to fall down. And they’re grabbing onto anything, and they want to grab on to their hormones and keep that as the reason why they’re suffering.
Because if I’m saying to someone, well, you might want to look within, and it might be something that we’re choosing in our innocence, some misunderstanding, not because we’re trying to hurt ourselves or something like that, but it’s just a misunderstanding, then that’s a big shift from Oh, it’s my hormones, I need to go to the right doctor and the right doctor will give me the right medicine and the right medicine will fix my hormones. And then I’m going to be happy.
Women chase around, as I did for a number of years, looking for the thing that’s going to help them and now there’s so many things Things that are being promised that can help, even on the synthetic drug side and on the more natural sort of bioidentical hormone side of things. But I never give advice on medicine or even herbs or anything like that. But it’s an outside in understanding.
It’s something about the victim consciousness that we’re saying, I’m a victim to my hormones. I’m a victim to the circumstances, or I’m a victim to the trauma that I had. And then we can’t come back into the present and say, Well, what am I responsible for? And am I responsible for my own health? And yes, I am. And, that’s a big shift. But it’s so amazing, when we can see that, and it’s so empowering.
It’s so long term, giving over the long term, because I’m not, for example, stuck on any one supply chain of any kind of hormone, or any kind of drug or any kind of doctor who is going to change your mind or science that’s going to change or the side effects are going to change. And just me and my body cooperating together to create health.
That’s the easiest way in the end, once we can orientate ourselves from sort of forgetting what we’ve were brought up with and come back into the present and the responsibility of, oh, yes, I’m creating my help, and I can create wellbeing, simply.
Alexandra: Right. And it’s already there, too. Yes. That’s great.
I’m going to shift gears here now slightly, and talk about your book. I’ve got my copy here for those people watching on YouTube.
When it came to writing the book, you have this great story about getting that done by doing nothing, essentially, for a while.
Tania: I had been thinking of this book for five years. And I had started it and stopped it. And I already had an understanding of, I really don’t need to push this. There’s a reason why I’ve stopped and it will come when it comes and I wasn’t really thinking about it.
These days, I don’t make plans over the year and say, Okay, this year, I need to achieve X, Y and Z. So it wasn’t in it in any plan. But it was just very much on the backburner.
And then a little bit before the summer I’ve been playing with my eyesight, and being interested about how I could improve my eyesight. I went to a workshop, and I managed to come down by one number. I was wearing multifocal glasses, and I went off multifocal glasses. I was sort of plus four and a half. And then I came back from the workshop and I was doing these exercises that I learned at the workshop. I could see that they were helpful, but to me, they felt like a chore. And so I thought, well, where can I go for expansive views, which is really important, because that’s what we lack so often in life. I realized, Oh, I could go to the beach, because I do live in a town by the beach. And I do love the beach.
So I started going in the summer by myself in the morning, and it felt very naughty. And every time I’m like, I don’t really go to the beach by myself. And sometimes I would see people on the way. But when you’re going to the beach, by yourself you’re not meeting anyone, now by myself going to the beach by myself at my age. I managed to do that about four times a week over a few months in the summer.
Very quickly, within a few days, I realized that the beach was very, very good for my eyesight. I could see details on the beach. I could take a book and read it on the beach. That was just a joy that I would just go to the beach and really do nothing. And my eyesight was was improving.
Then a few weeks in I thought well I wonder what else will come out at the beach and lo and behold the the chapters of the book came and it came in an insight. I was lying on the beach and I had, “Look to the Bible.” I’m not religious. But I thought, okay, the Bible, okay, and then I came home and because I speak Hebrew I know the names of the books in the Bible in Hebrew and I know them in English. And it’s not exactly a direct translation. Sometimes the English sort of refers to more things in the books themselves. And then there’s Hebrew, but anyway, I looked at the books.
I was able to find the chapter titles in the books between the Hebrew and English and the content of the of the book. So I thought, Oh, that’s very obvious. I could have ignored that ‘look at the Bible’ with me and the Bible. But I thought, okay, that’s interesting that that came through. So I did that. And the chapter titles were there. Then it was just a matter of filling in the text. It just came so easily.
I just was going to the beach, coming home, writing for a few hours. And that’s the way that it happened. Just to say, writing and editing a book is not great for your eyes afterwards, but I still have managed to halve my prescription. So that’s good. But yes, that’s how it came.
And so people say, oh, I need to go to the beach if I want to write my book, but it doesn’t work like that, because that was my inspiration. I love the beach and I was having such nourishing time there. And it just allowed the book to come through me, I think. Again, I was just listening in, and I didn’t at any time think oh my god, I must write that book again. And oh, my God, I must go back to the third of the book that I had already written. No, I just left that because I knew Oh, look, something new is being delivered here as it were in terms of the chapters. And yes, that’s how I that’s how I got the book published in quite a quick time.
Alexandra: Yes, you really did. It was so interesting to watch because there was this period of just quiet and reflection when you were going to the beach. Yeah, it could have looked like, oh, you know, in our culture, we have this obsession with doing so much. And you were just being quiet. And then suddenly the book came about. And as you say, that’s not a prescription for if you go to the beach, you’ll be able to write a book.
It’s it’s pointing to your wiser woman that you were listening to, the intelligence that’s within you. And that’s within all of us.
Tania: Yeah, I was just, like you said, I was just following guidance that I heard and I was following bliss. I was having such a nice time going to the beach. And how amazing that that’s what happens when we just follow that little guidance, follow our bliss, have a lovely time. feel nourished. Miracles can happen. I really felt like that.
Alexandra: We should say that the book is called The Wiser Woman’s Guide to Perimenopause and Menopause. I’ll put a link in the show notes for the episode as well. So if people are interested, they can go and find that.
Is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on?
Tania: I think I always like to share with women that the journey of healing through midlife is really part of the design, I think. And although we come and we think there must be something complicated to do, it’s so much simpler when we can just relax into the design of it or into the wisdom of it all. And let that take us on the journey and let the body lead.
It’s so much more intelligent than us coming in with all our thinking about what midlife change should be and what menopause should be, etc, etc. And it’s a shift to really trust the body to really say, even if you’re experiencing a symptom, that’s not something bad, that’s not malfunction, but it’s just the body doing what it needs to do in that moment, either to overcome some kind of condition that we’ve created, or to wake us up to the fact that we’re not in balance.
Once we develop this new relationship with the body with this intelligence, with the divine, however we want to look at it, it just becomes so easy. The journey of healing. And like I said, it’s really it’s part of the design.
Alexandra: Oh, lovely. Thank you.
Where can we find out more about you and your work, Tania?
Tania: The easiest place is TheWiserWoman.com. And there’s loads of resources on my blog, but other podcasts, not to compete with this one. But videos and blog posts, and that will give you a really good taster for what I’m sharing here and how it can be helpful. And I have an online course and coaching. I’m also on social media, wherever you find me on Facebook or Twitter.
Alexandra: And your book is available everywhere. You can get books online, or people can ask in their local, independent bookstore.
Tania: Yes! Your local independent bookstore. They’ll have it in the computer.
Alexandra: Thank you, Tania. This has just been lovely. Great to chat with you. And with you.
Q&A 3 – Why are unwanted habits part of our perfect design?
Feb 27, 2023
Traditionally, we think of our unwanted habits as problems. They need to be fixed and eliminated. They are a sign of a flawed character.
What if that isn’t true? What if we are designed perfectly and our unwanted habits are pointing toward that innate health?
Transcript of Episode
Hello Explorers!
Welcome back. This is episode three of the Q&A episodes of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
As I mentioned last week, what I wanted to do in this first few episodes that I’m calling Q&A episodes is answer questions that I had at the beginning of the exploration of this inside-out understanding. If you would like to pose a question, please do that, I’d love to answer your questions. And you can do that at alexandramor.com/question. So please shoot me an email of using the form on that page and I’ll be very happy to answer your question on a future Q&A episode.
As I mentioned last Monday, what I want to talk about today is our divine design. So the question that I might have posed a few years ago would have sounded something like this:
I’ve heard people say that our unwanted habits, and our cravings are actually part of our divine design, and they’re not a problem. How is that even possible?
So that’s a such a great question. Thank you for asking. And here’s how it looks to me, here’s what I understand at the moment.
We are as human beings, we have very what people describe in this understanding as a kind design. So we’re designed perfectly well. And we all have innate health and innate well being. And at our core, at our essence, we are peace, we are love, we are calm, and a very good feeling.
One of the things that’s happening when we’re experiencing an unwanted habit, even though it can look like something like self sabotage – I mean, that was something that I felt. I must hate myself, I must be doing something terrible to myself. Why would I do that? – when I experienced my unwanted over eating habit. I would get really caught up in that kind of thinking, trying to dig down and figure out why I didn’t like myself so much that I was doing this thing that I hated.
Saying it out loud, like that so succinctly, I realize now it doesn’t make any sense. But that was my innocent misunderstanding at the time. Unwanted habits that we have our never sabotage, they’re never something that we’re doing because we don’t like ourselves. We are, as human beings always, simply trying to feel better, to return to that place that we know is innate within us that that natural state of calm and peace and well being.
To me, what it looks like is that the experience that we have of unwanted habits is an instinctive drive, to help ourselves to feel that way, to feel even a little bit closer to peace and calm. And because it’s so instinctive, because it’s so apparent in people all over the planet, there’s not a single group of people who don’t experience that compulsion. Everyone experiences this.
When we look at that, that tells us that therefore it’s something built into our design. It’s just not a matter of our cultural upbringing, or our geographic location. It has to have something to do with the way that human beings are designed. Unfortunately, I think what’s happened in the old paradigm of psychology, which was more of a pathology based understanding, where we’re viewed as being broken in these places, and we have to be fixed, this inside out understanding or the 3 principles as it’s also known takes the opposite view.
Sydney Banks articulated this back in the 1970s. Lots of other wise people have articulated it as well, he kind of pulled it all together. What he saw is that we are always innately whole, and well. And so what that leads us to see then, is that an unwanted habit a craving, is, actually it’s two things:
It’s ourselves wanting to comfort ourselves and to feel those feelings of peace, which I talked about a minute ago.
And then it’s a second thing as well. It took me a long time to really see this. It’s actually that feeling of craving, or what I call it the drive to overeat. That was how I felt that. It was a really unwanted feeling. And it was a tremendous amount of pressure. The only thing that would relieve it would be to eat the foods that I wanted to eat. So that feeling is actually a call from our divine selves, our innate well being. All it’s doing is reminding us that we are entirely whole and entirely well, and that it’s just that we haven’t seen that for ourselves insightfully yet and fully.
And, again, it can seem like quite a paradox to say that, and to hear it. I’ll just speak personally, until I started to see for myself that that was the case it really looked like my cravings, my overeating, was a problem, like it was as a serious problem that had to be fixed. It was causing me to gain weight, it was causing my blood pressure to go up. How, I would think to myself, is this not a problem? But it really isn’t. It is as simple as that.
It’s a call from our innate state of well being just saying to us, hey, just a reminder, you’ve forgotten who you actually are. I’ve heard lots of great quotes that really sum up this thing that I’m explaining now, not very succinctly. And one of my favorites that does it so succinctly is from Dicken Bettinger:
“Tension reminds me that I have everything I need.”
I just love that so much. I think about it quite often. So anytime we feel in our bodies a state of tension, a state of feeling kind of crunched up, like things just aren’t right. It could be in the case of having an argument with a spouse or being angry at somebody in traffic. Or it could be the feeling we have where we have an unwanted habit, and we’re wanting to set it down. But it keeps cropping up again and again.
We keep feeling the feelings of craving and of wanting to participate in that habit. That tension is that call from ourselves saying, you’ve forgotten who you are, you’ve forgotten that you are innately well, innately whole, that you have innate well being and resourcefulness and resilience. And so that’s what this understanding is trying to point us toward.
That’s what we’re exploring always when we talk about this understanding that no matter what the circumstance, no matter what the situation, no matter how long you’ve had a bad habit, no matter how many unwanted habits you’ve switched from one to the other. None of that has had any impact at all, on your divine engineering and your well being.
And in fact, the persistent nature of those cravings are exactly the thing that point to how well we are built, to how perfectly we are designed. It can look like quite a paradox, but it’s really, really beautiful once you start to see it.
I’ll leave it there for today. If you have any follow up questions, anything you want me to expand on about that I’ll be very happy to do so. So you can just fill in the form at alexandraamor.com/question, and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future episode.
Thanks very much for listening. I really appreciate it. I’m sending you lots of love. Take care, talk to you soon. Bye.
Addiction: One Cause, One Solution with Barbara Sarah Smith
Feb 23, 2023
This is part two in our series about the book Addiction: One Cause, One Solution. My guest is Barbara Sarah Smith, who co-authored the book with my guest from Episode 1, Christian McNeill.
Barbara shares about her connection to the subject of addiction recovery, why it matters to her, and how she sees addiction differently now that she understands the principles of mind, consciousness and thought that shape our human experience.
Barbara Sarah Smith is retired from her work as a mental health practitioner where she worked for over 40 years in various settings including acute health care, hospice, outpatient mental health and addictions treatment.
In 2014 she was introduced to a new, principle- based understanding of mental health that has transformed her life as well as her client’s lives in extraordinary ways. Rather than a pathology based lens, she now teaches her clients about our innate emotional health and resilience.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
How our past has the ability to affect us only as long as our thinking is focused on it.
On the universal nature of wanting to feel better
Our fluid experience of life and how that helps with addiction recovery
Alexandra: Barbara Sarah Smith, welcome to Unbroken.
Barbara: Thank you. Lovely to be here with you.
Alexandra: I’m so happy to have you here. This is part two of our series on Addiction: One Cause, One Solution, which is the book that you co-authored with Christian McNeill. So I’m so glad to have been able to speak to the both of you.
Barbara: Well, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Alexandra: We were just I was just saying before we started recording, for our listeners that many of the questions today that I’m going to ask Barbara are similar to ones that I’ve asked Christian. I did that deliberately. Because I think sometimes from different voices and different perspectives, we can hear different things, they might just strike us in a different way. So that’s the reason for that.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to discover the three principles?
Barbara: Okay. Well, I’m an MSW by education. And I have been in the field of social work in all different forms for 46 years, I really loved it. I had a private practice for about 45 years before coming to this. And I really loved my work, I had a very full practice, very full practice.
Years ago, I really started to burn out, I thought, I’m just not sure what we’re doing here is really helping anybody because I was seeing some people for years. And it just, I just didn’t have the same feeling I wasn’t showing up in the same way. And that didn’t feel good. So anyway, very long, very long story short, a colleague of mine introduced me to the principles.
Or at least she introduced me to someone who she said, could introduce us to this. And I was absolutely, first of all, very skeptical, and extremely skeptical, and, but really no clue that there was anything that was going to be different than what I already knew after 46 years in the field.
So I really didn’t want to meet with this woman who was on her when I didn’t have any interest, but they wanted me to do it. And I thought I’d be nice and do it. And when she started talking about this and used words like wisdom and common sense and intuition, it just really piqued my interest. And that sort of drew me in and it was six months off again.
Maybe not. Then finally, I think very skillfully, at some point, she really recognized that something had shifted and recommended that I go for an intensive, which was the turning point for me.
Alexandra: Oh, nice.
And given your background in therapy and social work, and you ran a retreat center for a while, didn’t you?
Barbara: Yes.
Alexandra: Is there anything you can pinpoint that that kind of helped you to, to flip the switch to see the difference between this paradigm and the pathology related one?
Barbara: Honestly, I would love to know that myself. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t even know why I stayed with it. I don’t know. I didn’t have the money.
But for some reason, I kept going back to it, I think in part because I was really, I had to keep working. So I needed to do something and I knew I couldn’t do what I was doing. So part of it may have been desperation. But I don’t know when when the tide started to turn. I’ve thought off and on. But I think I still have all the recordings. I should go back and look at them. Because something happened.
And again, she recognized it, I think. I don’t I don’t really know. I just know, it started to sort of make more sense to me at some point.
Alexandra: Thank you for that.
We’re here mainly to speak about your book addiction one cause one solution so maybe share with us how did that come about?
Barbara: What happened was I was a guest on Harry Derbitski and Greg Suchy’s webinar on alcoholism, addiction in the three principles. I was on that several times. And Christian saw me on there and got in touch with me to talk on her show. And we just hit it off.
I invited her to come visit me in the Azores, where I live part of the year. And she did and she came and we were like, well, I said something about I’m writing a book just a while I’m writing a book. And so we decided to combine forces and write a book together. And it was really quite an extraordinary experience for both of us that it was just seamless. It was seamless.
We knocked it out, really, in three months, we were we had a deadline, because we were trying to get ready for the big addiction conference that was going to be held in Minneapolis. So we had that time pressure. But we’ve just worked so well together too.
We both are pretty strongly opinionated people, but we just, we’re able to just feed off of each other in terms of really good suggestions and really good edits. And it just came together really quickly. I mean, it was really very seamless. Really.
Alexandra: Christian, in Episode Two, she explained her interest in addiction related to her experience with alcoholism, and then sobriety.
What is it that draws you to that subject?
Barbara: I’ve worked in the field of addiction for 30 plus years. I came from a family where alcohol created issues. And I blamed that for my mental health or lack of many, many years.
I love working in the field of addiction. I worked in a number, a number of treatment centers over the years, and I’m a great fan of 12 step recovery.
I love people who get it once they get it. And so, it was a challenge for me. But again, I was at a place where I thought, what are we doing? We weren’t I wasn’t seeing any progress and people. So it was I was starting to feel so frustrated that is this best we can do? I would I remember saying to some of my clients?
Well, I know you’ve done your steps over and over and over. And I know you’ve done this, and when when do you get to the joy part? And they’d look at me like I had 12 heads. Joy, what’s joy?
So, I didn’t really realize what was happening. But it was, I think, at a place where either I’m going to get out or I’ve got to find something different.
Alexandra: Something that really caught my attention there about blaming our lack of mental health on the past what may have happened related to an addiction or something, some other circumstance in our home.
I’d love for you to touch on that and how you see it differently these days.
Barbara: Well, that’s, I would say, one of the greatest gifts out of this for me, because I get into psychotherapy personally, early on in my life, and really always blamed my mother’s drinking on all of my problems.
My mother was an incredible woman. She was brilliant, and she was funny, and she was generous, and she was kind but I didn’t focus on those things. Growing up, I just focused on the several hours a night she had a very strange reaction to alcohol, the minute she started drinking, she would just get me and she could be very cruel.
And so I focused my attention solely on that. And it became the lens through which I measured my whole life. And so I really felt as though I needed a lot of therapy and that she had essentially ruined my life with the way she treated us.
When I found the principles, I was still blaming her drinking. And it was it was kind of hard to wrap your brain around when you were a kid because when she wasn’t drinking, she was just awesome. And my friends loved her. But when she was drinking, she was, she was really, it was mind bending, to could be very difficult.
So, I focus my attention solely on that, really, I over time I, in some of my spiritual work, over the years, I certainly came to forgive her more and more, and I could see her after reading Women Who Run with the Wolves that she was this brilliant woman who really didn’t have a lot of options. At that point in her life, she went to college, interestingly enough at Smith College with Julia Child.
Julia Child once wrote, “If I hadn’t found what I found, I probably would have become an alcoholic.” I think they were bored and restless. And, so sorry, I sort of got that. And I gave up gave her some credit for that. And but I still believed I truly fully believed that my mother had ruined my life.
And then when I really found the principles, I realized that all my focus had been on what she had done wrong. And that kept me miserable. And once I saw that, it was like, that was the lens through which I saw my mother.
It wasn’t about all the wonderful things and what was interesting over different over the course of years, different ones of my sisters would say, I thought mommy was stupid for drinking, but I had a great childhood. And I was like, oh, I know, you’re in denial.
So all the psychobabble that went along with that kept me stuck. Kept me stuck in believing when you believe that the feelings you’re having or that your entire childhood formation is due to what happens to you? It’s a trap. And I was ensnared in that trap for my whole adult life.
Until I learned the principles, and then I realized no, no, I created a story about my mother’s drinking and her ability. And that story was the was that it had an ability to, to ruin me. And it carried, I carried it around, like, a big heavy ball and chain free for my whole life, my whole adult life. And then it was gone.
Alexandra: What do you see now about your mental health?
Barbara: Oh, I feel robustly mentally healthy. Even when I get caught up in old things that may come up again, I’ve had several periods over the last few years of, feeling depressed, but now I see that as an opportunity to explore a little bit more deeply.
I remember a few years ago, I had a period of intense insecurity. I don’t know, just sort of came out of nowhere, it seemed like it came out of nowhere. And it felt like every insecure thought that I’d ever had was like, velcroed on me a little post it notes. I couldn’t shake them, they wouldn’t go away. And it was just I went down a dark dark hole for a period of time. And then one morning, I woke up to this insight.
Ah, the problem isn’t that you still have insecure thinking the problem is that you believe and then it was done.
We all have insecure thinking at times. It’s perfectly normal. But I was for some reason during that time just stockpiling it, piling up pulling them all together, and they were sticking to me but I do believe that that was the beginning of the end.
So now when it happens, and I just did a retreat last weekend, and everybody kept referring to going down the rabbit hole of their their thinking, when I go down the rabbit hole, I don’t stay in the rabbit hole very long. I go down and then I come out. it’s like, okay, well, there it is again.
Alexandra: If I could say what I hear in that, is that what you saw going back to about your mother was that you may be innocently believed that she could have an impact on your mental health and your well-being.
What you later saw was that that wasn’t possible. Is that a fair way to say it?
Barbara: Yeah, it was because it was just the opposite of what you do in psychotherapy. A good friend of mine, who was also a social worker gave me a set of cocktail napkins one time that said, it’s all your mother’s fault.
That is psychotherapy. We really didn’t mean to do that. But we explored a lot about what our mothers or parents or families or did or didn’t do that created our unhappiness, that was a major focus of it. And I bought in hook line, and sinker, obviously for 40 years.
Seeing that that’s not how it works, is has been enormously liberating, enormously liberating, because then you can really look at where the true where the truth lies, in yourself and in your situation.
That gives you back all the power, you’ve now got the power.
Alexandra: And for those who are new to this understanding, that this the way that we’re speaking about this now, doesn’t mean that you as a child didn’t experience the things that you experienced, correct?
Barbara: Correct. Yeah.
Alexandra: They still happened. And they had an effect on you at that time.
What you’re pointing to is looking at how you’re moving forward, how your thinking, kept you stuck in a way in that place? Is that a fair way to say it?
Barbara: Yeah, it certainly happened. I mean, there was no question that my mother had this reaction, but I would spend all of my time ruminating on that.
I wasn’t able to shake it off, and move on. And, and again, I think this spiritual work helped me to see her within a bigger context and be more compassionate towards her life. But I still believe that she had damaged me.
I remember having that conversation with a bunch of my peers, probably a year or two before I learned the principles. Yeah. So that’s how long it had to held out. It seems so true. Because it was supported by the whole psychotherapeutic community. Of which you were a part of which I was a part.
Alexandra: Let’s switch gears slightly now. And talk about your book.
One of the things that I really appreciated in the book, Addiction: One Cause, One Solution is that you talk about variability, and the ups and downs of life and how normal that is.
I wondered if you could talk about this a little bit more in the context of addiction recovery and what it means in that circumstance.
Barbara: I think, in working with addicts, over the course of years, anytime there was any kind of blip on the radar screen, or they had a bad day, or they had a fight with their husband or their wife, or they had difficulty at work they became this automatic default, that would take them to, um, damaged goods.
I have these problems that I have because I’m an alcoholic or an addict.
And I used to say to people, alcoholics and addicts don’t have don’t have corner on the market. Just because you’re an alcoholic or an addict doesn’t mean we don’t all suffer from the human condition.
Now, again, this wasn’t within the context of principles, but it just was pretty clear to me that every single passing mood got turned into, oh, I’m so damaged, I have all these, these issues that are because I’m an alcoholic or an addict.
I felt like I was trying to pry people’s fingers off of that, and character defects. That’s a term I’m looking for. These are all my character defects. And, so then the solution to doing to having that time, a difficult time, challenging time was to do another fourth step, which Alcoholics Anonymous, for those who don’t know, is that inventory of basically everything you’ve ever done wrong in your life.
And as I would say, to them, like, really down in the dumps, I’m not sure I would start digging all that stuff out. But, that wasn’t program, the more you could sort of self flagellate around that, I think the idea was that that was going to make you better make you humble, make you better in some way. And now, now, talking about it, and I don’t mean to make fun of it. But it doesn’t even make any sense. It doesn’t even it’s not even logical.
So I just really can see that we all have bad days, we all have bad days, in the program, they call it one day at a time. Well, if you had to stick, bamboo shoots under your fingernails for 24 hours, that would be a long time. But when you realize that we have bad moments.
I have a wonderfully funny client, former client who was just at the retreat this weekend, and she actually timed it. One time she was she went down the rabbit hole with her thinking and wanting a drink and feeling really, sorry for herself and whatever else was going on. And she timed it, she waited. She waited, and it passed. And she’s like, you’re right, it did pass.
So, the idea of one of the spiritual guiding features that I have in the quotes that I have all over my office in my home, and everything is this too shall pass. Well, I got that I knew that was true. But once I learned the principles, I really started to see that this too shall pass because it is the nature of all things to pass.
It’s not just words.
Alexandra: We can rely on that, it’s not just something to tolerate, it’s a predictable experience.
Barbara: And so grounded. All the wisdom that’s been surrounding us our whole lives, like your grandmother saying, all the things will look better in the morning. They always do, unless you keep cranking out the same negative thinking they do better, they certainly look different, at least until all your negative thing kicks in, they look different, you feel better.
And I now have very physical, I am really in touch with the physical sensation in my body when the thinking lets go or the, the place where it’s caught in some sort of eddying effect of of your mind. Some people refer to it as a thought storm.
Kind of once it lets go, it’s like, Oh, okay. So there’s a real physical experience of that in your body when when your mind stops doing that, and you just move back into it flowing down, like a normal stream.
Alexandra: Right. And it it’s occurring to me now to that when you talked about previously holding your mother responsible for your life and your approach, as you say, you have to pry people’s fingers off that belief.
What that can really do, it seems, is interfere with this natural variability and flow so we can almost make ourselves stuck, in a certain part of that stream, create a stickiness that doesn’t need to exist.
Barbara: Absolutely. The stories that we write based on the outside in misunderstanding keep people stuck, sometimes the whole lifetime. And when we can be open enough to see this, again, the freedom is just extraordinary. But there are people who don’t want to let it go.
If they really are convinced in I am, and in all fairness, I think, 20 years ago, I don’t know that I would have been able to let it go either. So I don’t know when we’re going to be open, if I would love to be able to predict when someone is going to be open to hearing this and seeing this.
Alexandra: In another part of the book, you and Christian talk about subtractive psychology. And I just, I hadn’t actually heard that phrase until I read your book, which I reread a couple of weeks ago.
I would love for you to touch on what that is, and why it’s central to this understanding that we’re exploring.
Barbara: Sure, it’s actually a term I believe, that was coined by Jamie Smart. So give him credit for that. And it just really rings true for both of us, in that, when someone believes that they are broken, and they’re damaged goods, or they have a disease, an incurable disease. And there’s all of this maintenance that needs to be done to just help you limp through to the finish line of life. That’s a lot of stuff on your mind.
I have, not even an addiction, but certainly an addict, well, let’s stick with addiction for now. if you believe you have to go to this many meetings, and you have to do this much stuff, and you have to go to psychotherapy, and you have to do body work in the service work that’s a lot of stuff on your mind.
And there’s a lot of stuff on your mind about, again, if you tell someone that they have an incurable cancer, if you go to the doctor, and he tells you, sorry, your scan just came back and you have terminal cancer, it’s going to be a long haul, it’s, I don’t know that you’ll ever feel better, and you’re going to die at the end. And then you go back the next week, and he says, Oops, wrong scam.
That’s how sort of I see this, like this, this constant monitoring this constant sense of measuring yourself against someone else’s yardstick, and especially the program. How many meetings is enough? How many meetings is too many? How many times should she be doing this? And you can’t, God forbid, you would walk past a liquor store, go to a wedding where there’s no, I mean, just like the lack of farce, our ability to trust ourselves.
And trust our judgment, now, that doesn’t mean at the beginning of recovery, it’s a good idea to go hang out at a bar. I mean, that’s just common sense. But I remember I had some friends once who stayed at my house, they were both in recovery. They’d been in recovery for 10 years or something, we had a half a bottle of wine in the refrigerator, and they freaked out because what do you think it’s going to do? Jump out and pour itself down your throat. I mean, they both had very stable recovery.
So it’s this sort of fear based lack of, of trust in this in our ability to make it through life. And once that starts to come off your mind, it creates a whole lot more space and perspective to see life as it really is.
Alexandra: You give an example in the book about how this ties in with your clients asking what they can do to really get this understanding and how it sort of doesn’t work that way. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Barbara: Well, again, most people want homework, they want doing. I guess this client I was talking about a minute ago, said this weekend, I asked Barbara for her homework and she wouldn’t give it to me. So I broke up with her for six months.
She’s got a great sense of humor, anyway. We’ve been taught, what do I say Okay, so now what do I do? I go home, and I need to practice this and I need to try to have more positive thinking, and I need to, you know. And so when we say no, in fact, and I think this is really important.
I used to really hate getting anxiety clients, which was pretty much everybody but they would come in, and they would have all these anxious feelings, it’s anxious thoughts, and they were in a great deal of pain at night. I’m not trying to, because I’ve had anxiety a lot, like, but, we give them there’s this big book and field called the anxiety and phobia, workbook, panic, and it’s about that fat.
So you’d give them all these exercises to go home and try to do something about their anxious thoughts. And they’d come back the next week and just be in we didn’t do it, maybe if I did it right before bed? And should I do it twice? oh, no problem. We’ve got another exercise for you. Oh, okay. Good, and then go home. It didn’t work. I just, I can’t.
Oh, and, their anxiety would ramp up, because it was innocently a setup for failure. Because there’s nothing you can do about the flow of thought, except to see it, see what you see what experience you’re creating. Once you can see that, like, Oh, I’m doing, I’m just focusing like I did with my mother, I’m just focusing on these anxious thoughts. And I’m scaring myself with my imagination.
Once you start to see that, that you don’t, there’s nothing you can do about that other than to see it more clearly. And the more you see it, and the more curious you get about it, the more it will show you the more it will teach you.
Because there’s information in that, the feelings that you have the anxious feelings are just pointing you towards some information about how you’re using this creative, creative ability of our minds with thought.
Alexandra: love that you use the word curiosity. That’s so great.
Barbara: What a gift man. Yeah, I have to say that. Someone once asked a doctor that I was working with who are the ones who are going to survive? I have chronic Lyme disease. And he said the ones who are going to survive are the ones who have good detox systems. Well, mine is the ones who survive and thrive are the ones who are curious.
When we can be curious about what’s going on, instead of having these walls that we build up with our thinking about, that there’s a right way to live or a wrong way to live or convinced of our rightness. And certainly I had a lot of that when I came into this a lot, 40 years of psychobabble under my belt. I was convinced, but again, I give Annika a tremendous amount of credit because I wasn’t good at it. Just your patience at letting me bang my head against that for months at a time.
And then eventually starting to see… once you start to hear yourself, and then it starts to fall away.
Alexandra: I want to ask a question now that’s a little bit unfair. So forgive me.
I wonder if you’ve had any fresh insights about addiction and unwanted habits since your book was published?
Barbara: Ooh, good question. I don’t know that they’re fresh. I think they’re just more peaceful, that basically we just want to feel better. We don’t want to be in pain. And however you get into addiction, I know some people feel you’re going to get into addiction because you’re insecure of insecure. I’ve known plenty of people who are plenty secure, and they got into addiction, because they thought it was cool so I don’t know how we get in, but I know that we want to feel better.
I get that. I want to feel better. It’s the most normal thing in the world to not want to feel bad. So I guess for me, when you realize when you just don’t know this, and you think that feeling better is going to come from circumstances or people places and things, you get derailed by that.
And once you know this, if you’re open and curious. They have a saying, part of the slogan is how which is open, honest, open and willing. So if you can be honest with yourself and open and willing to see something new, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish and achieve emotionally and in your world.
Of course, we want to feel better. I have issue going on with my knee right now. Just came from physical therapy, like, I want to feel pain in my knee, I want to be able to get in my kayak, I’m going to do what it takes to figure this out. I’m not that old. So,
It’s most normal thing in the world. But when we jump in with this notion that you’re sick, and you’re diseased, and it’s incurable. And, again, it doesn’t mean you can drink again, I just I really want to go on record saying that, there are certain percentage of the population who cannot and should not drink alcohol. Just like there’s a certain percentage of the population who are diabetic or who, have tremendously high cholesterol and dietary related. I mean, that is part of the wisdom of this.
But once you can see that it’s very much a part of the human condition to one A, find a way to make yourself feel better, alright, I just have a lot of compassion for that.
Alexandra: Me too. Absolutely. And for all the ways that we try to do that and then suffer because we think there’s something wrong with us. And that’s why we’re doing that thing.
Barbara: And so then, again, then all the negative stuff, the character do fix, and I’m doing this because I’m this and I’m not, yeah, it’s not a good way to feel better.
Alexandra: There’s a podcast I listened to, and the host is a recovering addict. Cocaine and alcohol, I think mostly, but other things as well. And he very often casually refers to himself, as I think he says, scuzz ball or scumbag or something like that. And you can hear it when he says it, that he’s, he’s being sort of light hearted. But he really believes that.
He believes that at his soul, at his core, there is something really defective about him, that there isn’t about someone who hasn’t had an addiction to alcohol and cocaine or whatever. And I just always want to reach out and give him a hug whenever I hear him say that.
That’s what we can do to ourselves, when we innocently misunderstand that there’s really nothing wrong with us. We’re just trying to feel better.
Barbara: Well, I understand that, I understand how that got started, again, it’s trying to be more humble and trying to own your stuff.
One of the things that I say a lot is that in 12 step recovery, there is so much wisdom, so much wisdom. I just I love reading through the big book and some others, I miss just amazing, it just runs through it at its core, but there’s also a lot of contamination, then innocent contamination, but again, this notion that, you’re going to be more humble and feel better once you start listing everything you’re doing wrong or have done wrong.
Some groups that are just awful in that way, they just really harp on that everything, how screwed up you are. And again, the goal was and their thinking was to, get you to see, how, where this has led you and but I think there are much better ways of going about it. And I see the principles as a much kinder and gentler adjunct to 12 step recovery theory, because we certainly with this understanding, do not have the kind of support that’s available in 12 step recovery.
Alexandra: Yes, 365 days a year. Pretty much everywhere in the world.
All right. So we’re coming up to being out of time here.
Is there’s anything you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet today?
Barbara: I think that about covers that. Thank you so much for this. This has been great.
Alexandra: Thank you for wanting to chat with us today.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
Barbara: I have a website, GiftsOfInsight.net. I do work with individuals and I love doing intensives that’s one of the things I think I was born for, either with groups or families or individuals, and then I do workshops and retreats.
You can find all of that on my website.
Alexandra: Great. Okay. I will put links in the show notes, so people can find that. Thank you so much, Barbara. This has been so lovely.
Barbara: Thank you. The best of luck to your with your new venture.
Hello, explorers, and welcome back to this Q&A episode of Unbroken Podcast. I’m very glad you’re here. I’m Alexandra Amor and these are the shorter episodes on Mondays where I answer your questions.
Given that this is a brand new show, and as I said last week, I don’t have any followers yet to submit questions, what I’m going to do is search back in my memory and ask the questions that I would have asked all those years ago, or several years ago.
If you have a question that you’d like to submit, I’d love to hear it. Submit it to alexandraamor.com/question, and I’ll have a look at those and answer them on upcoming Monday episodes.
Today, I want to answer the question:
What should I do about my cravings?
This was something that I was, of course, really interested in and have been interested in for the last 30 plus years until I found this understanding. As I mentioned in last week’s episode, it might be good to go back to that first Q&A episode, I talked about how when we have unwanted habits, we tend to use a lot of management strategies to deal with them.
They really feel like a problem. And we really try to get our arms around them and our big intelligent brains and manage those habits. So suppress them, control them, use willpower, use whatever tactics and strategies we can to control them and deal with them. I talked about how this exploring this understanding takes a completely different approach than that. So anything that we’ve tried in the past, a diet or measuring and weighing our food, or distracting ourselves, or anything like that is really a management strategy, and we’re looking in a completely different direction.
So, given all that, the short answer to the question, What should I do about my cravings is nothing. There’s actually nothing you need to do about your cravings, about your over eating, about any maybe binge eating episodes that you’re having. They’re not a problem. And that’s why there’s nothing for you to do about them.
The first thing I want to say, though, is that we are divinely designed, although hardly anyone points this out to us. But we are divinely designed to return ourselves to a state of equilibrium or peace, or calm, whatever word you want to use to describe that feeling of being peaceful, being calm, being in a state of feeling very centered, and grounded. All of that stuff is innate within us. We don’t have to do anything to get ourselves back to that state. So even when we’re really riled up, feeling disregulated, feeling really upset or jangled, or like we really want to lean into using our habit, because we’ve had a really hard day, or whatever it is, it turns out, there’s actually nothing we need to do, in order to come back to a place that feels really good within us come back to a very calm, quiet, peaceful state.
We are designed for that to happen automatically, our within our bodies and within our minds as well. So when our minds get really stirred up, they too are designed to automatically and without any interference from us return to a state of equilibrium.
Conversely, what’s happening when where thinking about our habit and about how to control it, how to deal with our cravings, we’re adding more thinking to what’s already there. We’re stirring the pot up, shaking up the snowglobe, though we’re doing that innocently. We’re adding another layer of busy thinking sped up thinking to a situation that is already like that. So it sort of heightens that.
What we actually end up doing is making our interaction with the habit, even worse than it was perhaps at the beginning.
I’ll use myself as a personal example. For 30 years, I tried to fix my overeating habit using all the self help tactics and strategies that you can mention. I mean, name something and I’ve tried it. And in fact, the other the other day, I realized one of the only things I didn’t try was acupuncture. But I tried hypnosis, I tried diets, I tried meditation, and mindfulness and emotional freedom technique, and EMDR, which is that thing that you do in therapy, I held two paddles, and it supposedly does something to your brain. Talk therapy, and just on and on and on.
All these what I would consider to be healthy strategies to try to curb my over overeating habit. And it only ended up getting worse. Sometimes I saw a tiny bit of improvement. But the willpower approach to trying to not eat my favorite foods just never worked for more than a few days, maybe four or five at most. And, again, I was doing this innocently. I was I was taking an approach that was the only thing I knew how to do, as maybe you can understand, maybe you’ve been in that position yourself.
Now, looking back, I can really see that what I was doing was adding a lot more thinking to the busy, heightened sped up, really stirred up thinking that was already there. And the more I bounced from one strategy to another, the more that situation got sped up stirred up even more. Think of when you’re having a really heavy rainstorm, and you think, wow, it can’t really get much heavier than this. And then it does. That was what it was like, inside me with all the information that I had about how to manage my overeating.
And then every time I failed, that too added more thinking to the whole situation. I think I say in my book, It’s Not About the Food that it was like trying to get out of a hole by digging it deeper. That’s what it felt like. And it really seems that way to me now that I’m looking back at it.
So that’s one reason that my answer to this question, what should I do about my cravings, is nothing. There’s actually nothing you need to do. And let me say, I know that that answer is super, super scary. Because I’ve been there, I get it. What I would think if someone had said that to me as an answer to this question, I would have said, You’re out of your mind.
If I let go of the tight control that I have over this craving, or my eating habits, and just let it be whatever it wants to be I’ll weigh 600 pounds by the end of next Tuesday. That answer would not have worked for me at all. And so I really get it, I really understand if you’re having an objection to that. And so what I would say is, just listen, at this point if that answer is completely freaking you out.
There’s nothing that you need to do. You don’t need to change anything. At the moment, I would really say just keep listening to the people who are talking about this understanding, don’t feel any pressure at all to change anything that you’re doing. Because what’s going to happen if you if you continue to learn about this understanding is that you’ll start to have insights.
One of the reasons that cravings aren’t a problem, and maybe I’ll get into this deeper in the next Q&A episode, is that they’re actually a part of our divine design. So we don’t need to control them or manage them. We just need to see them for what they are and the way that you’ll see that is insightfully
Something will occur to you, some fresh thinking. And the more that you stay in this conversation, read books by people who are exploring this understanding, listening to podcasts like you’re doing right now. Chatting with other people maybe who are part of this understanding, joining Facebook groups or whatever feels good to you. Eventually, you’ll see things insightfully.
It’s not just going to be one big giant insight, like a bolt of lightning out of the sky. My experience has been that it’s a series of smaller insights. Once that starts to happen, then you’ll realize that you can ease off the control that you have of your unwanted habit. And that doing nothing about it actually is the answer. But as I say, there’s nothing you need to do about that right now, today. Listening is your best option at this moment.
So I think that’s about all I have to say about that today, right now for this Q&A episode. Next week, I think what I’ll talk about is why we can be friends with our cravings, and how, for me that was the big game changer when it came to letting go of an overeating habit.
I’ll leave you there for now. If you have an interest in this understanding and want to explore it a little bit further, I encourage you to go to my website and sign up for the Freedom From Overeating and Other Habits video series that I’ve got there. It’s free. It’s a series of five videos. It’s over 90 minutes of learning material. You can find that at alexandraamore.com/start.
I’ll leave you there. Take care. I’m sending you lots of love, and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye.
Addiction: One Cause, One Solution with Christian McNeill
Feb 16, 2023
What if addiction is not a disease? What if addiction is caused by the same thing that causes fights with a spouse or anxiety about air travel or suffering about school grades: Thought. In this episode, Christian McNeill and I explore how thought plays such a huge role in our attachment to (or addiction to) substances, including alcohol and drugs, and how the solution to these attachments is simply seeing how being human works.
Christian McNeill is an author, coach, and former barrister and tribunal judge. She lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
On the life-changing insight that ended an alcohol addiction
How Christian’s creativity was enhanced by sobriety
Recognizing and experiencing that insight is the key to change
An insight about the importance of listening to oneself
Co-writing a book from 2 separate continents
Why variability of moods and life experience is nothing to be worried about
What is ‘subtractive psychology’ and why does it matter?
Resourcesmentioned on the show
Christian’s book is Addiction: One Cause, One Solution
Joe Bailey’s book about addiction is The Serenity Principle
Alexandra Amor: Welcome Christian MacNeil to Unbroken. It’s lovely to see you.
Christian McNeill: Well, it’s lovely to see you too, Alexandra. Thank you very much for inviting me. I’m delighted to be here honored to be here.
Alexandra Amor: Oh, my pleasure. You’re going to be my first guest actually. So even more exciting. I’m thrilled to have you here.
Why don’t you tell us anything about yourself that you’d like to share about your background. And maybe when you came upon the 3 Principles.
Christian McNeill: Sure. Thank you. Yes, on the one hand, I have a background, a career in law, and I was a lawyer for a long time. And unbeknownst to me, at the same time, as I was training to become a lawyer, I was working out an alcohol addiction. I did not know that. I was not aware of that until it became a real crisis in my mid to late 20s. And at that point, I had a rock bottom kind of experience and followed immediately by a moment of clarity, and I got sober and it was a completely life changing shift.
And although I had a lot of help from the 12 step movement in getting sober, the actual moment of clarity occurred more or less in a gutter in Edinburgh in a city street on a Saturday night. And almost everything I see or talk about now is kind of informed by hindsight. I see things differently, or I understand what was going on in a way that I didn’t at the time.
I didn’t know that my life was going to change in that moment, but it did. And the thing that happened then was what had previously been a daily compulsion to drink. I mean, I was able to sort of function but I just had this daily compulsion to drink no matter what I resolved in the morning about being healthy and sober that day, it never, never worked out that way. And that compulsion disappeared in that moment.
And I got into that whole sort of 12 Step thing and working the program and having a very different kind of life. That was really that was a great thing. It was a wonderful thing, but it was also I think it’s very countercultural here in Scotland. I live now in Glasgow, but I was living in Edinburgh at that point. And Scotland is a very boozy place. Everything is lubricated with alcohol, apart from some breakfast meetings, perhaps. Even more so then.
I’m also not particularly secretive with it, but it became a bit of a secret side gig. It certainly wasn’t what you lead with. I had my career on the one hand, and then my secret side gig of recovery on the other. Almost just spontaneously, a lot of my latent creativity woke up at that time, and I’d always had this other interest in being good at art at school.
I’d always been good at making things. I enjoyed that and really that just mushroomed. I got into things like stained glass at that point. I was enjoying the process of being sober, but I was still struggling a bit. And I think as I see it, now, I was still looking for answers outside myself, just not drink.
My relationships became a bit compulsive and unhappier, frankly, than they’d been before. I think there was too much riding on them in my mind. There was a period where my smoking went through the roof. I quit that after a year. It didn’t even occur to me that this was a thing of looking outside yourself. I had some issues with overeating and bulimia and being out of control around food, and just various things like that.
So, alongside the work, the secret gig, new things came in as I tried to medicate my moods, to find ways to feel better all the time. I had this idea that it was about a sort of linear progression to being happier, being more spiritual perhaps than which was also a challenge for me, because I didn’t quite know how to place myself. I certainly didn’t have any kind of what you might call a conventional view of God or anything like that. But I was open to it.
The 12 step program is about trying to find a spiritual power or a higher power that you can rely on, but it’s not prescriptive. Anyway, so I began doing meditation courses, someone which I found horrendous, I just couldn’t get it. Personal development things. Every few months there was something new, and it was a quest to be feeling good all the time. And it was like, the more I was aiming for that, and the more I was failing, as I saw it, and other aspects of my life were just kind of going along.
I met someone and we got together, and we had two children, who are now grown, two wonderful, two adult children. And then that relationship fell apart. It was devastating for me, because I had a belief that this painful, chaotic period of my life was behind me that things should begin to fall into place. And my cherished dream was to have a happy family, to have a happy home that was different from my own upbringing, where my kids would thrive and all that, and then for this to fall apart was just catastrophic.
And of whatever faith I had in life, in the system was dashed. Because I felt like this is the payoff for living a sober life or living a good life, if you I feel like, and where did I put myself with that?
This is before I encountered what we know as the 3 Principles, but I began to have spontaneous insights for myself, and again, it was after a period of significant emotional pain and confusion. The first of those really, that I remember was one day in a garage, parking garage. I just thought:
If you’re going to have any quality of life, you’ve got to start listening to yourself.
There isn’t anything particularly magical about those words, I think, but I knew that there was something deeper in this. This wasn’t a prompt to be more egotistical, if you like, but there was something about the the listener. I knew that it meant listening deeply. And I knew that it was pointed to something other than following the 12 steps. Not that there’s nothing wrong with the 12 steps, per se.
What I realize now is that until that point, I’d been running everything through a filter of ‘is it sober?’ Am I living right, kind of thing. And it was like that, forget that, just trust yourself. Trust your own inner voice. And that was a huge one, really, for me. The other massive insights and realizations that came along were helpful. And I now see they’re part of that process of things, dissolving and falling away, so instead of having a rule book to live by, I forget the rule, but you’ll know what to do moment to moment. And if, if, for whatever reason, you get it wrong, you’ll deal with it, you’ll make amends, or you’ll put it right or whatever.
There was a sense of life opening up a bit and new hope coming in. I trained in yet another modality around that time, which was, I found the best thing so far for me, and that was a NLP. I did several trainings at different levels. And then something came along and an NLP trainer was offering a kind of practice, how to grow your practice with integrity. I think that’s what the course was called. And I thought, well, that’s excellent.
Because once my children are grown up, I can leave law and build up an NLP practice. So that was my idea. Anyway, went on this course but it turned out it was all about something called the 3 Principles. I had stumbled across that once or twice previously through the works of Richard Carlson and Joe Bailey, but I hadn’t really, really got it in the way that I was about to. And this was a weekend course, which just changed my life, it really changed my life, it was the missing link of everything.
My first insight, having stumbled across the principles and informed by that was, coincidentally, given the name of your series was that I’m not broken. Because I realized, as I had that insight that I’d been operating on the basis that I was indeed broken, that my alcoholism was a sign of that. And my job was to work as hard as I could on my secret side gig to unbreak myself, or to knit myself back together again. And suddenly the penny drops; this is just nonsense, I was never broken. And that’s not denial of the chaos of alcoholic drinking. And in my mind, mostly people who have had that.
If you’ve had that loss of control around drinking, what I’ve observed is most people never get that back. So sobriety is fine by me. I’m okay with that. And that makes a lot of sense to me. But that’s a bit like being allergic to strawberries; it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It just means you’ve got that little adjustment to make.
From there, my life changed rapidly. And that’s now 12 years ago, almost to the day, actually.
Alexandra Amor: I’m curious, did you bump into Joe Bailey’s work in that 12 step space? Or how did that come about?
Christian McNeill: I got sober 1988. And around 1990, I stumbled across his book, The Serenity Principle, which I still would recommend is an excellent book for people in recovery. And it also helped me. I remember a friend of mine saying to me, another guy in recovery, saying, “I’ve noticed Christian that you never really beat up on yourself.” I’m sure that that was, to the extent that that was true, it was because I was influenced by Joe’s work.
There was something about the neutrality of being that addiction is a search for wholeness if you like or completeness but looking in the wrong direction, but there’s a positive motivation behind it. I use words like positive motivations. If I set out with a client, and it was all happening invisibly, and then all of a sudden, I’m find myself in this colossal maze.
Alexandra Amor: We’re always trying to take care of ourselves, aren’t we? Even if it looks like it’s behavior that is maybe self destructive, or whatever.
Your sobriety, and your interest in addiction obviously dovetails with the 3 Principles.
How did it come about that you wanted to write a book with your co author, Barbara Smith, about addiction and the principles?
Christian McNeill: As you say, there was this dovetailing and Syd Banks, the founder of this work, wrote a book called The Missing Link, but it really was like that, for me, it’s suddenly all fell into place. I was no longer searching, I was no longer signing up for another course to try and find the answer for the bit that was missing.
And I would say I knew that it was helpful in the field of recovery. I just knew that. And of course, many of the speakers I heard early on, the teachers and trainers, were people in recovery themselves, or people who worked with addicts and alcoholics. And so, for the first few years, I was still working with a lawyer and then, as I say, life took this colossal shift, and within two or three years I had transitioned and was now working in this field.
I wasn’t particularly focusing on addiction. I was a bit but wasn’t specializing. But someone else was putting on some webinars about addition, and I didn’t actually necessarily agree with everything that was being said, because I think sometimes there’s, especially if you haven’t had the problem, there’s a kind of theoretical message that’s shared, like below that, for example, that people are alcoholics, because they’re not happy. And that’s not nice. It’s just not that simple. It’s really not that simple.
Obviously, there are plenty of times that I was happy when I was drinking. And I’m not saying that I have the ultimate bottom line. But there was a kind of message and the 3 Principles well, that made me uneasy. It was almost if you have a deep enough insight into the principles, you’ll be able to drink safely. That was a real warning bell for me, I think.
On one occasion, somebody put on a conference about addiction and mental health, she wasn’t an alcoholic, but didn’t you know, she didn’t want to stop drinking, and it ended up she was drunk. And then everyone was lying about what was happening to her saying, “She’s not well” and things like that. And I was thinking this is nonsense.
So although it had acted as a completion, a Gestalt feeing, that dovetailing in my own life, I was skeptical about what some people were saying, and it didn’t seem to be borne out. It wasn’t as if they were seeing where some people were having a complete shift and we’re now able to drink without consequence, if they had an issue, but gradually that became sort of clutter in my own mind.
And I was, I think I was a guest on an alcohol and alcoholism webinar and so was Barbara. And I could tell she knew what she was talking about. There was none of this bullshit or pink paint over everything in what she was saying. So I reached out to her, and I think she’d had a similar sense about me. There was some some level of common sense rather than wishful thinking and experience that was valuable.
Barbara Sarah Smith is the co author of a book and we were both thinking about writing something, and I don’t know which of us suggested, but one of us said, why don’t we write it together. And it ended up being a phenomenal experience, as you know, because you helped us with that. We wrote it in about a month, and we were on separate continents. We put a title and a framework together, we spent a week together in the Azores midway between America and the UK. And then we went home, we sorted out, I’ll do this chapter, you do that chapter.
We had permission to edit each other’s and all that, but it was a great experience a really great experience. So we published that almost a one week before lockdown. We had to cancel our launch parties and all of that we still haven’t really done anything like that. That’s how it came about. And we’ve had some very nice feedback about our treatment of the principles. We talked about that. I like to think that people who are not addicts also might also find some find that helpful, and find the way we’ve expressed it simple and clear.
Alexandra Amor: I absolutely find that. I reread it the other day in preparation for this interview. It’s just so clear and grounded and down to earth. And I love that about it.
We should say the title is Addiction: One Cause, One Solution.
Christian McNeill: Thank you. Yes, we should
Alexandra Amor: I’ll put links in the show notes to the book.
So let’s dive a little deeper into then some of the things that you talk about. There’s a chapter about variability. You highlight – and I think this is such an important thing, it’s kind of almost a beginner concept, but I really wanted to talk about it, because I feel like it’s so important – that the ups and downs of life are really normal.
You spoke earlier about how you thought it should be a straight up hill line, to some sort of, you didn’t use these words, but you know, level of bliss, where you’re just happy all the time.
Let’s talk about that and why it’s important to understand that variability is the norm for everybody.
Christian McNeill: Well, again, let me say that was a phenomenal insight for me. I don’t know who said it, but somebody gave this idea that people do that do some form of this. And if you think about everything in nature does some form of this. And I thought, yeah, god, me too. And I thought, well, actually, I’m okay with that. And if it never changes, I’m okay with, I can live with that for the rest of my life.
I think that was also what took the striving off my plate. It’s we’re there, we’re there. And then allow me to continue.
Now, the irony is, in the accepting of that, I would say that the last 12 years have been the happiest of my life, and there have been many happy and meaningful moments prior to that, but there’s been a consistent happiness, which looks like this, up and down, up and down. So that was huge.
It’s so interesting because I do see that all the time with clients. Many people have unwittingly and innocently bought into an idea that any unhappiness any discord is pathological. And it’s not.
Sometimes I’ll suggest, look, if you want to be happy, you’ve got to be willing to be unhappy, too, you know, and it’s not not to suggest that you’re stuck with, you know, dreadful kind of depression or ennui, or distress, whatever. It’s not that but the more you’re fighting, every down moment, or every moment of low energy, that is the one thing you can do that will almost make it more intense.
If you can allow it to be without it meaning anything, because all it simply is, as we know, is that in a low mood, the things that’s happening, and it’s happening automatically, we don’t intend this. But all that’s happening is we’re taking our low thinking or distressing thinking seriously. It’s not telling us what the future is, because that’s a fantasy. It’s not telling us how much worse we are than everybody else, because that’s a false ad. And it’s not telling us that the past is going to come and repeat itself.
It’s just telling us one thing, and the pain is actually an invitation to wake up to the fact that we’re believing negative thinking. But it’s human to do that, and everybody does it at times. So there doesn’t need to be any judgment on it. It’s so interesting that that was one of the very, very common thing that people would want to be someone want no pain. I don’t think that’s on offer. I don’t know anyone who’s living that life. But a degree of detachment from it is possible. Once you know what’s going on, we tend to create less of it.
Alexandra Amor: I would agree with what you said about how these have been some of the happiest years of your life. And definitely for me to once I saw this, the truth of this idea of variability and that fighting our different moods, especially the low ones, was what was causing more distress rather than less.
Once I saw that my lows are much less low, I guess is the way that I would put it. There’s just a much more general sense of contentment overall, for sure. I guess that comes with acceptance or something?
It was so revelatory to me. It just brings so much about so much change.
Christian McNeill: Yeah. And what I was going to say is that we are not outliers. Coincidentally, it is a common experience of just an overall elevation of contentment and peace of mind and fulfillment once you have a sense of what’s actually behind emotional distress.
Alexandra Amor: Exactly. The other thing I wanted to talk about was this idea that you address in the book about subtractive psychology.
Can you talk to us a little bit about that, what subtractive psychology means and why it’s a key to understanding these principles.
Christian McNeill: It’s not unrelated. And it occurred to me that suppose you saw sleep as a problem, for whatever reason. You were going, God, I mean, sometimes I just get so tired, I actually go unconscious for up to eight hours, what else am I going to do about it, and you were trying to address the problem of sleep, which isn’t a problem at all. But, but you’d be doing all sorts of things to to address a known problem.
Now, being in a low state of mind is not as predictable as sleep. It’s not as regular. It’s not maybe as necessary, if you like, but it is inevitable. But as we see that this up and down thing is not pathological. It’s the human condition so we cease to have to do anything about that, which is why for me the the need to retrain in something else, or work harder at my secret side gig or do more meditation or journaling, or blah, blah, blah. And that all just flew off. Because there was no longer a problem. So there’s that thing.
I recently just co hosted a series on living without problems. And it’s interesting enough, because as soon as I posted it, some things came up in my own life; it was a real invitation to walk my talk. One was to do with my now adult son, he was going through a really hard time. So the thing closest to my heart, my kids. And the other was the first the we didn’t get very many signups for the course. I mean, we did eventually.
Somebody asked a great question early on: when we see living without problems, are we just kind of rebranding problems as challenges? Or is it something else?
The answer is no. In my way of the life, there are things that happen. And there’s sometimes things that happen that need action, something like say you have a symptom. And that you may need to go and have that checked out. And that checking out may need to some treatment, and it may even lead to some quite unpleasant treatment, who knows, those things can happen.
But most of our distress in anything, and it could be something completely different, it could be a financial issue or relationship, it should be anything, but most of our distress isn’t coming from the thing. It’s coming from an absolute mind storm of stuff around the thing: what it means, how it’s gonna play out, what will you know, other other causes? Why haven’t other people got this sort of, you know, blah, blah, blah.
There’s just this endless and lots of it’s not even fully visible are in the level of awareness, but it’s just churning and just going and going and going. And, as we come back to the fact that everything in life is neutral, including things that require action, but they are essentially neutral, but for our thinking. The thinking is dissolved or subtracted, feelings are dissolved or subtracted, and we’re left with just the action that needs to be taken.
So we don’t need to medicate over anxiety or depression or fear. We’re no longer trying to. And we’re not even trying to change the circumstances so much, because the circumstances are mainly not the generator of the distress. It’s the peripheral. It’s almost always the peripheral stuff around that we’re thinking about a role of a circumstance. So there’s just a lot less to be done. And we tend to come back to clarity and peace of mind more quickly. That has certainly been my experience.
Alexandra Amor: That’s been my experience as well.
That feeling of equilibrium returns so much more quickly when we’re not caught up in all the storms that are going on around whatever the situation is.
Christian McNeill: Yeah. And this is not some kind of, Oh, goody two shoes, positive thinking. I had an example of myself. I mentioned my son was going through quite a hard time. There was one day when I got really caught up in it and what it would mean and where it was leading and potential outcomes and hazards I was in. I was in a really upset, very tense, anxious close to tears.
I spoke to one of our colleagues. That didn’t particularly help, and although I was still experiencing that distress another part of me knew that I could come back to equilibrium, which I did later that day and peace returned, despite not a thing having changed on the outside.
Some of the stuff was still going on with my son, although, interestingly, after peace returned, he got in touch. And he shifted too, which sometimes happens. That’s beyond my paygrade but sometimes the universe responds, and we find the inner peace, it’s almost as though something’s communicated to others.
Alexandra Amor: Who knows?
When we come back to this term, subtractive psychology, you point out in the book, that what the old paradigm of psychology had us do was with this sense of brokenness that we had, innocently. I was the same for years and years, trying to add things to myself, do more, change myself more, in order to reach the happiness that I felt I was searching for.
In this understanding, what you’re explaining is that really, there’s no need for any of that. And that the basic, foundational understanding that we are whole, we are unbroken is what allows us to come back to that sense of equilibrium without any effort.
Like you said, you tried some things, you spoke to a colleague, but eventually it just happens on its own.
Christian McNeill: Yeah. Whereas had I not had this information that’s available to anyone, I might have been saying, Well, hold on, you’re very anxious about this thing. So you might want to consider meditation, or you might want to step up your meditation or what is interfering with your sleep and suddenly, all these things would have a solidity.
When you know what I did know, even in the midst of it was that none of that was relevant that I was caught up in my thinking, and it was painful, that was it, but it would pass.
Alexandra Amor: Exactly. This is a perfect circling back to the theme of addiction.
The other thing we do with ourselves, when we have these upsets and problems is we medicate ourselves with whatever it is food, alcohol, whatever.
As we come to realize that’s not necessary, because we will return to a state of equilibrium, always, then the need for that kind of outside medication becomes less and less.
Christian McNeill: Yeah. Or, there is a moment of clarity rather than where it’s just gone. Right, that doesn’t no longer makes sense to me, to go there. I think people can be habituated or addicted to all sorts of different things. For example, food, you have to require a healthy relationships, you can’t give it up. Abstinence isn’t an option. Usually there there is a moment of clarity, there is a moment of insight that that takes away the need for that thing, but it no longer looks like a good idea to the user.
Alexandra Amor: Yes, exactly. My experience has been there can be a little series of smaller ones.
Christian McNeill: All this unravels differently for each of us.
Alexandra Amor: We mentioned you published the book just before lockdown. So like February, March 2020. Well, exactly almost as we’re recording this three years ago.
Have you had any fresh insights about addiction since then?
Christian McNeill: Yes, I have. One actually was in response to lockdown, because at that point, I wasn’t a particularly frequent attender in a 12 step meetings. I think there’s a thing in the 3 principles that sort of, there’s a big focus on you don’t need anything or anyone or any technique outside yourself, all the answers are within. On one level that’s true.
But I think what became clear to me over lockdown was I saw I valued going to a meeting. I was not really bought into the whole lockdown thing, I thought it was an overreaction and I didn’t like the compulsive at all. So I really valued that. But more than that, for more than just human connection.
I saw that there’s a spiritual connection that can happen between people as well. And I think that there’s a biblical expression where two or more meet in my name, I am also present and you don’t need to believe in any particular, you don’t need to be Christian to believe. But I think that is something that happens when people come together, one can have insights. And I often do on my own, in any situation. But I think there’s something that that can happen in that place where people are coming together for the purpose of healing.
There’s some very wonderful aspects of the 12 step program, which is very much everybody’s welcome. You’re welcome, where you’re at, you don’t have to subscribe to or believe in anything. That’s an unusual thing in this world, but I’ve come to really value that I think something can happen with an other or a group of others, that doesn’t always happen alone. There’s an importance to that. There’s no particular formula about that you one can trust one’s own instincts and one guidance, if and when that’s appropriate, but I’ve really seen that as a crucial thing.
I think it’s almost a sort of anti dogma, a dogmatic anti dogma, in some 3 Principles community, but we don’t need that sort of something. I’m not on board with that, I think that community is important, and it can be very helpful. And I also think there’s something about if you’d been touched by this, some people can rush to share it with others, maybe that’s true of me. But I think the important thing is that one gets it for oneself first, that you have a sense of being changed and transformed.
There is a recovery phrase, but I think there’s truth in it, you have to give it away to keep it and I think that’s true. Because everything else in the world is pointing in a different way. It’s hard to be an island and to maintain what we know because you’re constantly having something different reinforced. So I think that it’s a good thing if you’re a teacher or a coach in this work to find yourself in both a place where you are a student as well as being that teacher.
I also have come to see – and again this is from the 12 Step thing – that for me it’s important to have an attitude of being of service above making money. I coach and I charge for my sessions and courses. My prices are not particularly high but I always ensure that if people haven’t gotten the money that there are ways. I have a sliding scale and various other things and lots of free resources.
And the interesting thing is I’ve been taken care of and it doesn’t always come through my fee income. I’ve been taken care of. It’s quite surprising and unusual ways since this since I got into this work.
Alexandra Amor: Oh, that’s interesting. I love hearing all those fresh ideas that you’ve had.
Given that you’ve just mentioned the work that you do is there, why don’t you tell us about where we can find out more about you?
Christian McNeill: My website is ElementsOfWellBeing.net. I have some blog articles there. And my contact details and so on. Don’t rely on the email at the moment that’s being updated. WordPress is going is doing something weird.
I also have two Facebook groups and a YouTube channel, they’re all kind of connected. One is called Recovery from the Inside-Out. And the other one is called Three Principles Conversations. So I have lots of free videos and interviews with other people and stuff with Barbara and I in the Recovery One. So yeah, there’s you and your contact me through any of those or just google me.
Alexandra Amor: I personally highly recommend following you on the Facebook pages, because then you send out notices about the classes that you teach, and I’ve taken a number of those and they’ve just been excellent. Just amazing. I’ve enjoyed them so much.
Christian McNeill: Well, that’s one of the one of the absolutely wonderful gifts of this work was my current mentor, Mavis Karn. I was interviewing her for something. And she asked me if I ever did webinars, I said, Oh, yeah, definitely do. So she’s done some with me. They have been wonderful.
We’ve been doing that for about a year and a half. Now, I think we do these short form webinar series, and people can sign up for them. And everything’s, I think, quite reasonably priced and access. Mavis is a treat. She’s in her 80s going strong, and she’s fabulous.
Alexandra Amor: Yes. She’s incredible. And I thank you for introducing me to her. She’s just such a delight. Those classes have been so great.
So we’re winding up now.
Is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on? Anything that feels important to say before we wind up?
Christian McNeill: I want to say to those who might be listening who are new to this, if anything in this conversation, or any of your other conversations is whetting your appetite or making you curious or appealing to you, follow that. Follow that instinct. Do yourself a favor, your life will change beyond your wildest imagination.
Alexandra Amor: Absolutely true. That’s great.
Thank you so much, Christian. It’s been so lovely connecting with you again. It’s been a while since we’ve chatted, and thank you for being my first guest.
Christian McNeill: Thank you very much. And really, it really, really is an honor and I hope the series is a massive success. I’m sure it will be and I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the interviews as they come out. Thanks, Alexandra.
Q&A 1 – How is this not another technique?
Feb 13, 2023
What is the Inside-Out Understanding? When it comes to letting go of unwanted habits, how is it different than all the other techniques and strategies that we’ve tried?
Answers are here in today’s Q&A episode of Unbroken.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Resources mentions in this episode
Submit your question for a future Q&A episode here.
Hello, explorers, and welcome to the very first Q&A episode of Unbroken podcast.
This Monday edition of the podcast, going forward, is going to be me answering your questions about getting rid of unwanted habits, about letting go of an over eating habit, or any kind of other habit. And since this is the very first episode, though, there’s nobody listening yet.
So I thought that what I would do is think back to the questions that I had at the very beginning of exploring this understanding, and then answer those questions.
Moving forward, you can submit your questions, and I’ll be happy to answer them on a future podcast. There’s a little form at that link that you can fill out. And I’ll respond and maybe answer your question here on a future show.
For today, I’m going to go back in my memory and think about one of the most pressing questions I had at the beginning of this exploration which was:
How is exploring this understanding, the Inside Out understanding, different than any other method or approach that I’ve tried?
Over the last however many years for me, it was about 30 years, of trying and failing to fix an overeating habit, until I came across this understanding. So the way that I’m going toexplain how this is different is a metaphor. And it’s one that I use in the free video series that’s available at my website called Freedom From Overeating and Other Habits. If you go to alexandraamor.com/start, you can have access to that.
If what I say today piques your interest, or leaves you wanting to understand more, that might be a good place to start, because we dive in a little bit deeper.
This metaphor has to do with a beach ball. Very often as children, we have those big inflatable beach balls, they’re bigger than a basketball, and the ones we had as a kid were rainbow colored. And something that was fun for us to do, we would throw them around and stuff at the lake as a child. But something else that was fun to do was sort of tried to submerge them under the water, when we were at the lake. You’d sit on it, and it would pop back up.
It was pretty tricky to try to get it to stay submerged under the water. It took a lot of energy, it took a lot of balancing, it took a lot of just thinking about my center of gravity and how my weight was distributed those kinds of things.
The the other methodologies that we try when we’re trying to get rid of an unwanted habit, the other strategies, the other approach are things like willpower or maybe rewarding ourselves when we get through a day without eating a favorite food, or restricting favorite foods, foods that we feel are problematic. or following a diet for example, or depriving ourselves of the thing that we feel comforts ourselves or gives us that good soothing feeling that we’re searching for, whether it’s cigarettes, or soda pop, or what a gambling, whatever it is, that’s giving us that feeling we try to cut ourselves off from that deprive ourselves from that. What that ends up being like, is just like me trying to balance that beach or submerge that beach ball into the lake when I was a kid.
It is possible for a short period of time and some people manage it for longer than that even. The thing is, though, that the beach ball is designed to not be submerged. It’s not like a piece of concrete. It’s filled with air. And so just the basic laws of physics have it wanting to pop back up to the surface of the water.
If this is a habit that we’re trying to distance ourselves from, an unwanted habit, in order to keep it to keep that ball submerged, it takes a lot of energy. Like I explained at the beginning, it takes a lot of balance, it takes a lot of concentration, like you can’t really be doing anything else, when you’re pushing that beach ball under the water. That has to be your entire focus. You couldn’t say, for example, go for a swim at the same time, as you’re trying to submerge that ball. My brother and I used to chase each other in the water all the time, when we were kids but you couldn’t do that at the same time as you’re trying to submerge that beach ball under the water.
So yeah, those are the main points that it takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of focus and concentration. And your your concentration has to be solely on that.
When we come to this understanding, when we come to exploring unwanted habits from the perspective of the inside-out understanding, what we’re instead doing is we don’t have to put that energy and attention on all those managing strategies about the beach ball, or the unwanted habit.
This approach isn’t just another management technique, like the ones we’ve used in the past.
That’s how it’s very different. It instead asks us to look in the direction of our innate well being, our innate wholeness or innate resilience. And it asks us to see the unwanted habit not as a problem, but as part of the way that we are made as a part of our divine engineering, which is what Mavis Karn calls us. She’s a practitioner in this understanding, amazing lady, look her up if you have a chance.
So the way that we are designed as human beings is that these cravings that we experience, and the cravings that then become unwanted habits that we have, are actually a call from our innate well being, from our innate health, trying to remind us about our true nature, which is one of wellness and wholeness and well being. It is one that will return to equilibrium on its own.
Very often what we’re trying to do with an unwanted habit – one of mine was sugar, I really loved sugar – what I was trying to do was a couple of things:
I was trying soothe myself, comfort myself, because I felt some sort of disturbance within myself.
And then also without realizing it, I was trying to return myself to a state of equilibrium.
When we look in the direction in this direction, and the direction of the inside-out understanding, what we’re looking toward is how all of those management strategies, all of that using an outside substance to or an unwanted habit to return ourselves to equilibrium are actually unnecessary.
All that activity with the beach ball, trying to keep it submerged, trying to keep that habit under control, is entirely unnecessary. And that’s the difference between what I would call sort of the old paradigm of psychology approaches to this kind of habit, versus the approach that we’re looking at here.
Unfortunately, 99% of our world is structured around management strategies, especially when it comes to unwanted habits. So exploring this understanding, can feel a little bit unfamiliar. And I wanted to highlight the difference.
If you’re brand new to this understanding this may not quite land with you yet. But once you start to maybe listen to other podcasts, read other books and that kind of thing it will start to set to land, you’ll start to see the difference that I’m pointing to.
So that’s what I wanted to share today because that was a big question that I had when I first started to explore this understanding. So I’ll leave you there for now.
These Q&A episodes are going to be shorter than the main episodes on Thursdays. But I hope that you found that helpful. And you can find lots more information at my website, alexandramor.com. A more is spelled a m o r, there’s no E. It’s the Latin spelling, not the Italian.
I’ll be back every Monday to answer your questions, like I said, and for the next few Monday’s I’ll be answering my own questions from a little while ago, but I hope that they will be just as helpful as if you had asked them.
Thanks for tuning in. Take care. I’m sending you lots of love and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
We Are All Unbroken with Alexandra Amor
Feb 10, 2023
In this first episode of Unbroken, Alexandra Amor introduces herself, shares about the path that brought her to the Inside-Out Understanding and how it helped her let go of a 30-year overeating habit. She also shares why she works with people to help them let go of their unwanted habits.
Alexandra Amor is an author, coach, and explorer who helps those who want to let go of unwanted habits, including overeating.
For 20 years Alexandra has been writing both fiction and non-fiction books, all with the themes of love, connection, and the search for understanding. She began her writing career with an Amazon best-selling, award-winning memoir about ten years she spent in a cult in the 1990s.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
Growing up in an alcoholic household and the affect that had
Joining at cult at age 22
A very brief look at how cults work and how we get ensnared
On the origins of an overeating habit and what I tried to fix that
Learning about the Inside-Out Understanding
Noticing changes starting to happen without doing anything
How we innocently look in the wrong direction to try to fix an unwanted habit
What this podcast will be looking at and who I’ll be speaking to
Welcome everyone to Unbroken. This is episode one, and I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.
I wanted to take the opportunity in this very first episode to introduce you to who I am, and why I’m here, and the work that I do and why I’m doing this podcast. So let’s dive in.
About Alexandra Amor
I’m an author, and a coach and an explorer. And I’ve chosen the title, Unbroken, for this podcast for a very specific reason. And those of you that are familiar with the Inside-Out understanding, or the 3 Principles, will know or perhaps maybe have an idea of why I’ve chosen that title. And for those of you that aren’t, that are less familiar with those things. I’ll explain along the way.
I want to talk today about the reason I do this work, and one of the biggest reasons is that I had an over eating habit for 30 plus years that I tried to fix with all kinds of things, All The Things, as the kids say, these days, and nothing worked. It wasn’t until I found this, Inside-Out understanding that that started to change. So that’s one of the motivations behind the work that I do.
I particularly focus on working with people who do have an overeating habit or other kinds of habits that are causing them suffering. And again, we’re going to talk about that a little bit more coming up here in just a moment.
Childhood Trauma and then a Cult
So a little bit of background on me. I had what I would call sort of your basic, growing up time, kind of a generic Canadian family; a mom and a dad and I had a brother, and my parents divorced when I was 11. Unfortunately, my dad was an alcoholic for his entire adult life and that really affected his behavior around everybody. I found him to be quite frightening, especially as a little child, but even into my adulthood. He was loud and big and scary, very angry.
I know now that looking back that his alcoholism was, to him, it was a solution. It was a solution to the uncomfortable feelings that he felt. I think it was something that he used to soothe himself. With hindsight, I can see I have a lot of compassion for him, and a lot of understanding about what he was going through, but as a child, of course, not so much. I was frightened of him.
I think what that led to was that when I was coming into adulthood, I felt very insecure, and uncomfortable in my own skin, and was really looking for answers. So that led to just after I left university, I was just about to turn 22 and I accidentally joined a cult in Vancouver. It was 1989 I guess.
I should clarify and say that everybody joins a cult accidentally. Nobody does it deliberately. You join a group of people who have similar values or are fighting for a similar cause. Whatever it is, you have something in common and the group feels like a safe place initially. And in my situation, it certainly was the case; it was actually a meditation class.
It was being taught in downtown Vancouver by a woman who fancied herself a psychic medium. And when she was teaching these meditation classes, and my mom had been going for a while and I had just moved to Vancouver didn’t know a soul other than my family, so I went along with her.
How Cults Work
With cults, then what happens is it just gets kind of weirder and weirder. But at a very slow pace that when you’re on the inside of it, you don’t really notice. And that’s how they get jobs, as they say. So, you know, at the time, I think I think I believed the cult had a lot of answers to those questions that I had about my own confidence and insecure lack of confidence, and insecurity and the things that I felt were, quote, unquote, broken about me. And the cult was very much about being broken.
I can see that now looking back, that one of the ways that those of us who were in the cult were controlled, was an emphasis was placed on our brokenness, on our never measuring up, which is a classic element or strategy, I guess, I should say that cults use is that making, on the one hand, building people up, and then on the other hand, tearing them down. I definitely felt like there was so much wrong with me, and that the cult would provide the group would provide answers.
Meanwhile, the cult leader and and the other leaders in the group, had created an atmosphere when nobody was ever good enough. And there was this constant striving for acceptance, and to be good enough. And it felt like that those kinds of things were just around the corner, it was just out of reach. And if we just worked a little harder, did a little more, that would come to us. Of course, it never, ever did.
Leaving the Cult
So after about 10 years, through a set of circumstances, I left the group. And I’m very grateful that that happened to me, because there are some people who were involved who are still involved to this day, and that this is 20 something years later. So I’m very grateful that I got out when I did.
What that created was that when I left the cult, I was going through a process of recovery. And that took about I mean, it’s always ongoing, but I would say the main part of it was seven or eight years, almost a decade after I left. And it had ingrained in me, the cult had, this habit of needing to fix myself, a feeling of being broken, of feeling like I was never good enough. And I needed to improve and change. And there were all these things that I needed to fix.
What that created was just that habit of needing to fix myself and believing that I was broken. And in a minute, I’ll talk about how this inside-out understanding, also known as the 3 principles is so different from that. I was really trying to fix myself from the cult stuff, but also I realized, from the things that have happened during my upbringing, and one of my biggest issues, starting in my 20s was my unhealthy relationship with food.
Overeating and trying to fix that habit
I had developed an over eating habit. And I felt that if I could fix myself enough that that habit would go away. Until very recently, it didn’t end. All the things I did didn’t seem to make a dent in what I was trying to do, trying to fix that problem. Get rid of that habit. And the approaches that I took, were really healthy. I would put them in a healthy category. I never really subscribed to things like crash diets and really restrictive diets of marmalade and grapefruit for three meals a day or anything like that.
I did things like a lot of talk therapy, especially after coming out of the cult, cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation, mindfulness, EFT I think that stands for emotional freedom technique, that’s the tapping, one where you start tapping different parts of yourself, weightwatchers and something called the solution and hypnosis.
You get the idea. So alternative therapies. I can think the one thing I didn’t try was acupuncture. But maybe if I had gone a little longer, I would have done that for sure. And then, in about 2008, I had done enough cult recovery, that I felt like I was sort of moving on from that, not moving on from the trying to fix myself stuff, but moving on from the specific therapeutic work that I was doing around cult recovery. When you’re in a cult, it really ties your brain in some pretty serious knots. And I could talk about this for 9 or 10 hours. But what it does is it really changes the way you think, and really limits your choices, for one thing.
There was a lot of work to be done to kind of untangle all that stuff. And I liken it to, if you were taking a brick house apart, with myself being the brick house, pulled every brick out and examined each one and I had to decide is this something I believe in because I believe in it? Because it’s true for me? Or is it something I believe in, because I’ve been told that it’s true. And that’s very labor intensive work, and it took a long time.
But then finally, and about, as I say, 2008, I was feeling like I was coming to a good place with that. And I realized that I wanted to write a book about the experience. So while I was in cult recovery, the main part the the tricky, challenging, intense parts at the beginning, I was looking for books to read. And at the time, there were a lot of books available that were in the sociological, psychological, textbook kind of area, like they were written by psychologists and sociologists studying the phenomenon of cults. And they were fantastic, they were incredibly helpful for me, I really appreciated them. Additionally, what I really wanted to read was somebody’s personal story about how they got in to the cult, and then what the recovery process looked like for them. And I couldn’t find that memoir. Now, 20 some years later, there are lots of them. And I’m thrilled about that. But at the time, I just couldn’t find the type of book that I was looking for.
Writing an award-winning cult memoir
So in 2008, I started to write my own book. And it was published in 2009. And for those of you on YouTube, I’m holding up the cover, it’s called Cult, A Love Story. I was very pleased with how it turned out. And it won an award when it was published. So that was pretty gratifying.
Since then, I’ve heard, especially at the beginning, lots of people letting me know that it really helped them with their journey, exiting a cult and understanding what had happened to them. So that was great. And I really enjoyed that experience of writing that book.
I went on and focused my writing career on writing mystery novels at that point, and had a side hustle, doing various things, as a self employed person, virtual support for other people, and doing as much writing as I could. And, as I said, trying all kinds of healing modalities to heal my relationship with food and none of it working and my weight kept going up.
Discovering the Inside-Out Understanding
And then in 2017, a friend… well actually let’s back up. In 2015, a friend of mine, a very close friend, had started mentioning this fellow Michael Neill that she was following. And because of my cult experience, I wasn’t interested and so everything she said just went in one ear and out and out the other. I just wasn’t prepared to follow anybody in the sort of spiritual, psychological realm at all, I mean, I still kind of have a bit of a guru trigger. And so I unfortunately dismissed what she had to say.
I guess if she framed what she was learning from Michael, that it was the Inside Out understanding or the 3 principles, I didn’t hear that part. So then in 2017, we were chatting on the phone one day, and she said something, something that Michael had said, or some something from a class of his that she was attending. And finally, it really caught my attention. I thought to myself, Oh, that’s sounds really interesting. I wonder what that’s about. And unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was, she said.
When we finished the phone call, I went to my computer, and I went to Michael’s website. And he’s got this series of information pages called The Basics on his website. And I just went and looked today, and it’s still there. And it walks you through a very preliminary introduction to the Inside Out understanding or the three principles. I read through once, and didn’t really get it didn’t at all, didn’t really understand what the heck I was reading. It didn’t seem to make any sense. And it was unlike anything I’d ever read before.
So I went back, and I started at the beginning, again, read the whole thing all the way through again, was just as confused. But I was very intrigued. And as a self help junkie, at the time, I thought, Okay, well, I’ll try anything. So let me dig into this a little bit.
I read Michael’s book, The Inside-Out Revolution, and thus began my exploration of the Inside-Out understanding. And I’ve been following that… well, how should I say it; I’ve been deepening my understanding, deepening my learning about it ever since. I found that it really turned my understanding of myself and of life on its head, in a really good way.
I noticed that gradually, over time, I became much more peaceful, much more joyful, much more connected with the people in my life that I love. Much, much calmer. And started to notice that things like I had had this a sort of anxiety, urgency, a feeling of urgency. For decades, it was just always there. It was like a demon breathing on the back of my neck all the time, no matter what I was doing, I felt I should be going faster, and doing more and getting it done quicker. I noticed that started to slip away. But not as a result of me doing anything.
Caterpillar Soup
That was the really interesting and peculiar part. So I continued writing my mystery novels and focusing on that part of my career. And then in I would say, late 2021 or early 2022, I felt things starting to shift with me and I wasn’t sure what direction they were going or what was changing. I went through for those couple of years, really not having a clear direction.
I can look back at it now and see that, that people use the expression ‘caterpillar soup’. When a when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it doesn’t just go into the cocoon, and turn into a butterfly, it basically melts down into goo, or soup. Looking back, that was happening to me.
Then in early 2022, I started to feel that things were starting to starting to shift. I didn’t still didn’t entirely know what was happening. But I knew enough. And I felt like it was the right thing to do to just trust whatever was happening, and to resist it as little as possible. So that’s what I did.
One of the biggest impacts that had happened to my life was my relationship with food. And early in 2022, I think it was, published a book called, It’s Not About the Food. The book is about the 3 Principles or the Inside Out understanding as it relates to habits and to my relationship with food. I really felt it was important to share what I was learning because there’s so much suffering that goes on with people, with their relationships, to food, and to other habits. It was definitely, definitely the greatest area of suffering in my life.
When I started to finally, finally be seeing some relief from that, because of this understanding, I just felt compelled to share it. Now, I have to say, I rushed the publication of that book. My gut was telling me not to go ahead and do it, and I did it anyway. And then I ended up unpublishing it, and this must be in 2021, actually, not 2022. And then, later, in late 2022, I was able to revise it, I took some things out that I didn’t feel I had articulated properly, and added some things in, the things that I had learned in the ensuing year.
That book is now available everywhere. And it’s in ebook, paperback, hardback, and audiobook and large print. So I’m very happy about that happy about how that turned out. And about finally being able to articulate what was going on with me, related to food and to this understanding.
How not to heal a habit
What I realized, once I had learned enough about this understanding was that in terms of my relationship with food, innocently, I was adding so much noise to what I was perceiving as a problem. So the problem I saw was that I had an overeating habit. And then with all those modalities that I mentioned earlier, those strategies and techniques, I was heaping more and more and more noise, and interference on to what it turned out wasn’t a problem at all. And, of course, I say innocently because we don’t know this until we see what the Inside Out understanding is pointing to.
We’re always always just doing the best we can with the tools that are available to us at the time. I did do my very best for those 30 plus years with all those other different kinds of tools. And now, in hindsight, I can see that. There was a lot of suffering involved, and I don’t I wouldn’t want to repeat that experience. Let’s say it that way. And at the same time, having gone through, and tried absolutely everything else to heal that relationship and utterly failing and falling on my face so many times, what then happened was that when I discovered the Inside-Out understanding and my over eating habits started to fall away. That was really good proof to me, personally, that I was on the right track, that this understanding was pointing to something very different.
And the more I explored it, the more change I began to see. And the more I realized that I was, and am and always am, and so are you, unbroken. Hence the name of this podcast. We are whole. We are always whole, even when our health maybe isn’t great. We have innate health. And when we see that and begin to understand it, insightfully, when we begin to see that we are whole and well, then then what happens is this need to medicate ourselves, falls away, because there’s no need for it.
I particularly thought that one of the things that I was doing was medicating myself with food, because I needed to soothe myself. Soothe myself because of the traumas that I’d experienced, growing up, and then also from the cult, and then all the other everyday, middling traumas that happen to any of us. What I began to see is that that became unnecessary, because I began to understand that our life is flowing through us, and it has a natural ability to calibrate itself and to bring us back into equilibrium. That happens automatically without any interference from us or with and without any of the tools and techniques that I was applying, that we’re adding this noise to, to the perceived problem of my over eating habit.
And I guess, that kind of brings us up to date. Once I had decided to republish It’s Not About the Food, I realized that I wanted to share this understanding in a in a wider way. And that’s why I’ve begun this podcast. And it’s why I’ve began coaching and mentoring people who want to let go of their over eating habit, and other habits as well. And so I just started working toward that.
You Are Unbroken
I’m so happy to be here now, releasing episode one of this podcast. I hope that you will join me on this journey if you’re suffering from some sort of habit. I plan to provide an interview every week. Every Thursday, there will be an interview with someone else who is exploring this understanding. And very often we’ll be talking about habits, but sometimes we won’t. Sometimes the person I’ll be speaking to maybe focuses on another area of life.
For example, I have an interview coming up with TanIa Elfersy, and she tends to focus on working with women about perimenopause and menopause symptoms. Now, that sounds like a very different situation from having an overeating habit. However, she’s pointing in exactly the same direction that I am. She’s looking toward wholeness.
When we begin to understand the universal nature of how being a human being works, it affects every area of our life. So everything from an overeating habit to perimenopause and menopause symptoms, to our relationship with our spouse or our friends, to our running our business or doing our job. It touches everything. And that has certainly been true for me, absolutely, as I’ve explored this. So that will be every Thursday.
And then on Mondays, I’ll be doing Q&A episodes. So if you’ve got a question about an overeating habit, or any other kind of habit or any anything else, you can email me. And I’ll answer those questions on a Monday Q&A episode.
The address for to submit the form to do that is AlexandraAmor.com/question. When you get there, you’ll see a little form and you can fill that out and send it in and I hope you do.
What I’m going to do today is in the shownotes, at unbrokenpodcast.com, you’ll find links to my books, and to anything else else I’ve mentioned during the show. And every week, that will be the same, you’ll be able to find all the episodes there.
If you’re watching this on YouTube, then I’ll put those down below in the little description box.
I think that’s it for me, that’s a little explanation of who I am, where I’ve come from, what I’ve been exploring and why it matters to me and the change that I’ve seen and therefore, why I want to share it with you.
Thank you for being with me here today. I really appreciate it. You can look forward to episode two, which is coming out on Thursday, February 16 2023. My guest is Christian McNeil, who has written a book on this very topic. The book is called Addiction: One Cause, One Solution. You can look for that soon.
Thanks so much for joining me. Take care and I will talk to you soon. Bye
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