If you've ever felt flooded by strong thoughts and emotions, then this one is for you.
Starting to create a healthy distance from strong thoughts and emotions is the first step to creating a more resourceful state where you can lower the stress response and work yourself into better feeling thoughts.
Today I'll distill a practice I use to loosen the hold on these strong thoughts and feelings to be able to tackle the current situation from a more grounded, less emotionally charged position.
These two phrases come from the work of Susan David and Emotional Agility and they are really quite simple. Our tendency when we feel something strongly is to over identify with the feeling. For me and those I've worked with, being able to loosen the grip and see thoughts and feelings as an experience we are having and not something we are has proved extremely useful for creating a mindset that allows for more creativity and solutions to emerge.
The typical response to strong emotions such as anger would be "I am angry."
Susan David suggests using the two phrases:
"I am having the feeling that..."
"I am having the thought that..."
Putting these two tools to use would look like this...
"I am having the feeling that I am angry."
"I am having the thought that what she did made me angry"
Everyone's experience is unique so try these out and play with the variations. You know it's working when you feel the charge start to subside and you can see it more as an experience instead of a state of being.
I get deeper into this in the podcast, so be sure to tune in and leave a comment below letting me know how you're going to put this into practice.
Language is a powerful shaper of our experience. The depth of training and knowledge most of us have when it comes to words stops at basic grammar. I remember when I had my first powerful experience with language and consciousness, and how from that moment forward, my view of language was forever changed.
Back on episode 065 I chatted with Mark England about Upgrading Your Language to Resolve Conflicts at Home, at Work, and In Your Head where we got into the nuts and bolts of Procabulary and how to use language. Today we are diving deeper to go beyond surface language.
Mark England is a TEDx speaker and the co-founder and lead presenter of Procabulary. He loves to travel, exchange empowering ideas and strategies and practice martial arts. Mark holds a Masters Degree in International Education and was an elementary sports teacher before developing Procabulary.
Procabulary builds fun, simple and easy to use tools that help you discover direction, purpose and turbo-charge every goal – from the smallest daily task to life’s biggest dreams.
As we roll into today's show Mark and I both share our own short story of the first time we experienced the power of language and then pull back the curtain to go beyond the surface.
In this episode you'll learn
Language was the equivalent of my gateway drug into the personal development space about 10 years ago. I was already into fitness and health, and was working as a personal live in chef for the years prior. When I got a glimpse of the "non-physical" modalities like thought, language, and consciousness, I was hooked.
In a soon to be released episode of my interview series, I sat down with Mark England who was on the show back on episode 65 talking about the core principles of Procabulary and upgrading our language. In there we dive deeper into language and go Beyond Surface Language.
This really got me thinking of what I did in the beginning to start conditioning new language patterns and modes of perception.
If you're just getting started in the language game or if you could use a little focus adjustment, then see if you can only state the affirmative for an entire day.
While it sounds quite simple, I think you might find this a little more challenging than meets the eye.
I give a few examples in today's show, so check it out and when after you put this into practice, shoot me a message over on Instagram @jeffagostinelli or on Facebook and let me know how it was.
Being able to bounce back from the inevitable hard times in life is an essential skill. The recovery period between something that happens and how we come through on the other side is known as resilience.
We often see resilience as a hard skill... something that we gain when we go through experience that toughens us up. I know I typically thought of it this way too, making "thick skinned" and resilient synonymous. My guest today has a different perspective on resilience.
Sarah talks about resilience as having a softer quality and the result of how we integrate the most horrific, embarrassing, shame filled, disappointing, experiences... integrating those into our story in a way that strengthens us but doesn't make us hard.
As a certified Life Coach, Spiritual Director and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, Sarah empowers people to rebound and recover from the damaging effects of stress, trauma and chronic illness/disease. Her clients stop the stress cycle, double their energy and break their limiting patterns and habits. Becoming resilient – emotionally, mentally and physically – they live free from anxiety, stop doubting themselves, and find courage to take action on their dreams, regardless the difficulty and challenge they’ve endured. Sarah believes that obstacles and failures are part of the path to reach our fullest potential. Therefore, we must master how to become resilient instead of shrinking back from pain or resistance.
Today we are going to unpack what resilience is and how it can actually have more of a soft, integrated quality to it. We also going to get into how shame and resilience are related.
In this episode you'll learn
If you guys are yet to gather this from the show so far, I’m completely obsessed with esoteric teachings, spiritual practices, and certain concepts like Penney Peirce and I talked about in the last episode… a holographic reality.
I also love science, research, and data driven findings that reveal the “scientific proof” of what these ancient esoteric teachings knew in a different way.
Where all this comes together, literally… is integration. Bringing together all these different aspects of utilizing the power of the mind, understanding the subconscious, spiritual practices, daily rituals, and the use of our will through direct action.
I see it as a buffet where we can look at our little bag of tricks and select the best tool for the job.
In the second half of 2017 I had a strong sense to move into story and to hit the pause button on the left brain linear data driven side of things and dive deeper into spirituality, story, and creativity.
In 2016 I decided to dive into A Course In Miracles and apply the teachings daily for the whole year. Contemplating, focusing on and acting from some of the concepts in there produced some amazing shift and what I can obviously refer to here as miracles.
Late last year (2017) I was in a similar place emotionally, mentally, and spiritually where I was yearning for answers… but not in the usual research and record way that I have became accustomed to.
I ended up stumbling upon The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo and decided that this year I would go through the book each day and do the practice.
Today I want to share with you a passage from The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. In here he talks about an aging Hindu master who grew tired of his apprentice complaining.
Penney Peirce is a respected clairvoyant empath, visionary, author, and popular lecturer and trainer. She is one of the early pioneers in the intuition development movement, specializing in intuition development, inner energy dynamics, expanded perception, transformation, and dream work. She has worked throughout the US, Europe, Japan, South America, and South Africa since 1977, coaching business and government leaders, psychologists, scientists, celebrities, and those on a spiritual path about the hidden dynamics of what makes for true success.
She is the author of ten books, including Transparency: Seeing Through to Our Expanded Human Capacity, Leap of Perception: The Transforming Power of Your Attention, Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration, and The Intuitive Way: The Definitive Guide to Increasing Your Awareness.
There are these stages of understanding what transformation is doing and how our consciousness is changing and how its affecting the way our life works… and this process of transformation is what fascinates Penney and what she unpacks in the 4 books previously mentioned.
Transparency is what she describes as the last phase that she has noticed so far.
While this is a word you may relate to information, in her book, Penney outlines different levels or types of transparency, specifically horizontal and vertical transparency. She also speaks to the larger shift from the information age to the intuition age.
There is so much in this book and it’s definetley worth a read. For me Transparency was a great bridge between those hard to grasp “spiritual” concepts and reality. It has also exercises in each section to put the concepts and ideas to work right away.
Today we are going to unpack Transparency and dive into what transformation is.
In this episode you'll learn
Something that has been making it's way into my awareness A LOT lately is the difference between familiarity and comfort.
The language we use to describe thoughts and emotions is massively powerful and can create a mental and emotional state of stop or go.
In the personal development space there is a lot of talk about the comfort zone and how we need to step out of our comfort zone where all the magic happen. I had Andy Molinsky on the show back at episode 85 to talk about his book Reach, which is a very well written book on how to strategically step outside your comfort zone. The strategies he outlines are fantastic and very useful, and what I dive into today is how our comfort zone is anything but comfortable. Let's call it a bit of a meta concept if you will.
The objective of getting out of your comfort zone is to achieve your goals, create change, and experience results that you want.
Clearly we have to take new actions to experience a different result, but the analogy of the comfort zone didn't do it for me. It was almost as if I was just trading one frazzled state for another. When I thought about this deeper, it made more sense... it doesn't seem like a worth while trade.
After being with it for a little while I started to see the distinction more clearly. What I was calling my comfort zone wasn't comfortable at all. It was actually creating a lot of collateral damage and unnecessary pain. It wasn't that it was comfortable, it was just familiar.
One of the biggest distinctions that helped me "get out of my comfort zone" was beginning to approach it with curiosity and through the lens of exploring the unfamiliar.
After you tune in to today's show, come over to the show notes and let me know what you think in the comments below.
http://jeffa.co/118
The things that we've ashamed of or have strong feelings about, whether it's addiction or something that may have happened to us, aren't dark in and of themselves. As Shakespeare once said... "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so."
Anna David is the New York Times-bestselling author of two novels and four non-fiction books about addiction, recovery and relationships. She’s been published in The New York Times, Time, The LA Times, Vanity Fair, Playboy, Vice and Women’s Health, among many others, written about in numerous publications including Forbes, Martha Stewart Living, Entrepreneur, Allure and Women’s Health and has appeared repeatedly on The Today Show, Hannity, Attack of the Show, Dr. Drew, Red Eye, The Talk and numerous other programs on Fox News, NBC, CBS, MTV, VH1 and E.
She created and hosts the Recover Girl podcast and the recovery storytelling show Hammer(ed) Time and speaks at colleges across the country about relationships, addiction and recovery. Through her company, Light Hustler, she helps creatives share their dark to find their light—through coaching, writing, workshops and more.
Today we're going to dive into what Light Hustler is all about and find out if you are ready to share your story.
In this episode you'll learn
In this episode, I share some of these insights, lessons learned and guiding principles with you in hope that it will give you context and meaning in the situations or challenges you find yourself in and how to look at 2018 through a new lens.
Here’s a summary, and you can see the full outline at http://jeffa.co/116
These two overarching principles served as an anchor that locked the lessons in place.
#1 - Learn your lesson quickly and move on
#2 - Finding your center - your home frequency
Here are my top 5 Lessons from 2017
#1 - The most powerful thing you can do is put yourself around people who are committed to change, knowing themselves more, and creating deeper meaning in their life..
#2 - If you don’t focus on it, it ain’t gonna change.
#3 - Find out what works for you and honor YOUR process.
#4 - Getting it out there is more important than getting it perfect.
#5 - The light casts a shadow, don’t be afraid of it.
Gay Hendricks has been a leader in the fields of relationship transformation and bodymind transformation for more than 45 years. After earning his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1974, Gay served as Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Colorado for 21 years. He has written more than 40 books, including bestsellers such as Five Wishes, The Big Leap, Conscious Loving and the new Conscious Loving Ever After, the last two co-authored with his co-author and mate for more than 35 years, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks.
He is also a mystery novelist, with a series of five books featuring the Tibetan-Buddhist private detective, Tenzing Norbu. Most recently, he has launched a new mystery series featuring a Victorian-era London detective, Sir Errol Hyde. Gay has appeared on more than 500 radio and television shows, including Oprah, CNN, CNBC, 48 HOURS and others.
As we speak, Gay is actually working on the sequel for The Big Leap which will be out toward the end of 2018.
Today we are going to unpack the key aspects of The Big Leap and how we can create a better awareness for those times where we are upper limiting ourselves.
In this episode you'll learn