Unbroken

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.

Please remember that we are all always unbroken.

Take care, bye.

Featured image photo by Jack Church on Unsplash

The post Pausing and Stepping Into Quiet appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

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 find Stephanie Benedetto at TheAwakenedBusiness.com.

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.

Alexandra: All right. Take care. Bye bye.

Featured image photo by Natalia Slastnikova on Unsplash

The post We Don’t Need To Figure It Out with Stephanie Benedetto appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

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.

You can find Bonnie Jarvis at BonnieJarvis.com.

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 being a ‘secret seeker’

Following the breadcrumbs of insight, interest, and synchronicities

How the Three Principles explain what is before other philosophies and traditions

Having the courage to leap into the unknown based on inner knowing

The importance of coming back to the present moment

Getting really familiar with how wisdom speaks to you

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

3PGC

Raymond Moody’s book Life After Life

Azul Leguizamon’s Unbroken podcast episode

Bonnie and Azul’s monthly free webinar, What Has Wisdom Shown You Lately?

Bonnie and Azul’s The Heart of Service program

Transcript of Interview with Bonnie Jarvis

Alexandra: Bonnie Jarvis, welcome to Unbroken.

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.

Alexandra: That’s lovely. Thank you, Bonnie. That’s great.

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.

Bonnie: Oh, thank you.

Alexandra: All right. Take care. Bye bye.

Featured image photo by Matti Johnson on Unsplash

The post Listening for Guiding Wisdom with Bonnie Jarvis appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

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

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Mind Magic by Dr. James Doty

Transcript of episode

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.

Featured image photo by Uwe Conrad on Unsplash

The post 3 Tips For Dealing With The Inner Critic appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

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.

You can find Ellen Friedman at HealingHouseCalls.com.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

Seeing the whole person when it comes to healing

Noticing how health improves when our nervous system is downregulated

Ellen’s personal discoveries experiencing chronic fatigue

How mental busyness affects our physical health

How fatigue can be a signal that there is pressure on our mental system

Are you the source of your energy?

How our feelings are a barometer for what’s going on within us

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Mavis Karn’s book It’s That Simple

Mavis Karn’s Unbroken podcast episode

Azul Leguizamon’s Unbroken podcast episode

Transcript of Interview with Ellen Friedman

Alexandra: Ellen Friedman, welcome to Unbroken.

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 [email protected]. 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.

Ellen: Bye for now.

Featured image photo by Alessio Soggetti on Unsplash

The post We Are The Peace We Seek with Ellen Friedman appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.