Ep #16: Learning to Push the Edges

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Hello, hello, how is everyone doing? Here we go. Let’s take it away. Let me tell you what’s happening this week. I have been working on some really fun projects. I have been in this creative flow and it’s been so fun. So I’m about two weeks away from a trip to Santa Fe and Sedona and Lake Tahoe. We’re going to do probably about two weeks driving all the way across the United States. So fun.

I think I’m going to end up going all the way to Mount Shasta, so I’ve been told that this is the root chakra of the world and I need to check it out. So I hope to get that in when I’m there and I’ll be reporting along the way and letting you guys know how it’s going.

So what’s happening in my world right now? We are diving into new beliefs, reinventing yourself, creating the life that you want. And this requires change on several layers, and it’s hard. It’s tough. It’s what we’re going to talk about today, so I have this belief boot camp in the making. It is so exciting. We are already – if you guys are not in the Integrative Life Facebook group, you have to come over.

We’re having so much fun in there. I’m doing Facebook Lives and we’re just starting to prep the surface of where we are going with this. So what it looks like is I’m just slowly dropping in the concepts about beliefs. How to change your beliefs, how to reinvent yourself, how to create this life that you’ve maybe always wanted, or maybe you’ve just decided recently like, you no longer want what’s happening in yours the way it is.

And it’s so tough to do by yourself, so I want to offer support and help, and it’s also like my favorite thing to do. My jam is transformation. So come on over and join the group and see what’s happening. And the podcast will kind of be going along with it so you can follow in both areas, but the fun part is when you stop just absorbing new information and you start putting it into action. That is what the belief boot camp is about.

It’s interactive, you have accountability, we’ll be shifting and guiding, supporting and holding. The way I see it is your beliefs are kind of like this hot air balloon and we need to be in the basket holding it down, holding it on the ground, like keeping the beliefs really solid, anchoring it.

And sometimes we kind of go flying away and we start losing our belief. We start losing our grounding in that, in ourselves, and we’re like, hey guys, can you come jump in the basket and hold it down until I can anchor it again. And then we want to set those new roots in the ground. We’ve already talked about recreating from the root system, and that’s what the belief boot camp is going to be all about.

Alright, so enough of that. Let’s talk about reinventing yourself and why it is so stinking hard. For one thing, habits, your environment, the neural pathways, the things you tell yourself, the things that your social community expect of you, the way you feel in your body when you begin to make changes, the emotions that come up. Change is scary, but here’s a thought; so is staying stuck.

Do you want to stay in the position that you’re in right now? Even though evolving, changing, growing is scary and uncomfortable, I’m going to ask you to really consider how comfortable are you right now? How comfortable are you when you are not growing, when you are not evolving, when you’re not creating?

And maybe for you that is comfortable. So I’m obviously speaking to people like me and I get bored. So I’ve been accused of being discontent and unsatisfied and always looking for something, as if there’s something wrong with me. And I used to believe that until now. Like no, there’s nothing wrong with me darn it. I’m here to have a human experience, to play, to create, to feel, to touch. This is third dimension. We want to feel all of these sensations in our body. Hear, smell, see, and I want to be in all of it. I want to play.

And I realize now that those that were accusing me are suggesting that it was about me being unsettled or unsatisfied or discontent or like, as if that were a bad thing. That’s their story and that’s how they want their life to be. And the fact that it’s uncomfortable seeing someone else move and shift and change, that’s their thing. That’s their insult. That’s their problem or that’s their opinion.

And it’s perfect. I love them for it. Thank you. Thank you for holding the space of consistency. Thank you for being a mirror. Thank you for being consistent with it in enough time so that I could see it really wasn’t a problem at all. Like, in any bit, any shape, any form. I truly love lighting bonfire, getting things started, and then handing off the torch and allowing others to tend it.

That is who I am. That is what I do. That is the presence and space that I hold. I am an edge pusher. I’m all about reinventing. I don’t think we have just one identity in this lifetime. I believe free will allows us to have as many lifetimes as we want. We get to recreate, reinvent ourselves and then we can arrive like yeah, that was fun, but how about this? And the process starts all over again and you go, here we go, because those neural pathways are set to that other identity, we’ve got to change all that again.

One of my favorite teachers is Joe Dispenza, and that’s actually where I’m heading in Sedona. That’s who I’m going to be with. And it’s all about reinventing yourself, changing the way you think, changing the way you feel, but on different layers and levels. It’s not just in positive affirmations. It’s actually in an experience, in meditation, in mindfulness, in awareness.  So different from what we’ve been taught about safety.

Our minds believe that things have to stay the same. We have to be in control, and we have to know what to expect. And I just want to challenge you today. Is that safe? Is that true? Is that real? Is that you? Or is that what you’ve been taught? Have you been taught that change is risky? Change is scary. It’s not going to be fun, you got to watch you. You may lose everything. They’re not going to want to be your friends anymore. Business might not be the same.

I’m experiencing that in my business right now as we change and evolve and we offer higher service and more value and our teachers are more educated and we’re standing stronger in what we believe and we’re bringing in the mind-body connection. We’ve moved from just a fitness and tanning and hair and nails and superficial business into a more in-depth transformational business, and it’s not welcomed by everyone.

People have left. They don’t like it. They don’t like change. It’s not what they want, and that’s okay. That’s okay. But as we evolve, our business evolves. And not being willing to go through that change, that changing all of the patterns and all of the way things were to become the way things are, or the way you want them to be is not a terrible thing.

It’s just uncomfortable. That’s where the fear comes from. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unfamiliar. You don’t know what to expect. Your brain has not been there yet so it doesn’t know. It wants to keep you safe. It wants to keep you small. It wants to keep you doing the same thing so it knows exactly what’s coming the next day and the next day and the next day.

And you can stay there. It’s beautiful. It’s fine. Luckily, we do have things that stay exactly the same so it gives us the contrast, but it’s not who I am, it’s not who this business is, it’s not what this coaching is about. We are about relationship, community, conversation, growing, processing, becoming. We are the edge pushers. I am the edge pusher. We are the bridge from the third dimension of the superficial into the fifth dimension of the knowing and the being and the inner essence and the soul inspired, passionate, driven life.

The bridge is the fourth stage. That is what we represent. And you know, I hid from that for a long time and I wasn’t able to see because I was so worried about not being connected or not being accepted or being judged for being different, and so many times people would walk into the business like, oh, you changed again, you changed that, or you’re doing this, or what now?

And like, my dad would say when’s enough going to be enough? And those old samskaras, which are just old memories in the body, old feelings that come up when I think these thoughts, used to scare the bedazzles out of me. Scare me enough to stop me from moving forward, stop me from creating, stop me from inventing, and that pretty much felt like hell.

That felt like death because what is living when you’re not living? When you’re not creating, when you’re not feeling, when you’re not being, when you don’t have contrast, when you’re not joyful and inspired and fulfilled and satisfied? What exactly is life? Let’s just eat the same thing every single day at the same time, let’s have the same friends and the same conversation, the same coffee, let’s have the same view, bah-humbug.

That does not sound fun at all. I remember the day my husband told me like, oh my god, when are you going to quit this? Are you ever going to be satisfied? How many times are you going to enlarge and expand your business? How many licenses does one person need? This is what I would hear. And I was like, I don’t know, I don’t plan on stopping. What are we going to do about this?

And he’s like, look, this is just not how I was brought up. This is just not how it should be. You go to school, you graduate, you get a job, you have some kids maybe or get married. You retire and then you’re like, done. Then you die. And I’m like, I started crying. I was like no, that sounds horrible. It was so scary to hear that. That is not what my soul wants.

I want to have fun. I want to dabble in and out. I don’t want to pick a basket of berries and then just go and make the pie and then just cut it and eat it and die. I want to hop and skip and jump and go and just pick the berries and indulge in them and taste them and eat them and then go to the next berry bush and whatever’s in season next, I want to go and pick that fruit and I want to taste that. I want to watch it ripen. I want to see all of the stages of it. I want to evolve with nature, with life.

And yeah, that might make me a little weird, little freaky, a little different. Might even make me a little scary because it is a bit unpredictable. It is a bit too flexible. But you know what, I acclimate really well. I’m super grounded, I’m super passionate. I am soul-driven. I am intuitive, I am passionate, and I love that about myself.

I don’t want to hide it anymore. So here’s the thing; this is what I want to help you with today is are you feeling the nudge to reinvent yourself? Are you feeling the nudge to create something new? Are you feeling stifled? Because what’s happening for most of us is a lack of communication and that comes from fear because we have been emotionally manipulated most of our lives.

If you don’t say a certain thing or act a certain way, or behave or do or give them what they want, then there’s this shunning, this turning off. I’m not going to be your friend anymore, I’m not going to hang out with you, well, that’s now how I want it or I’m not going there anymore. I X that place, they quit serving cauliflower on Tuesdays and I’m never going there again. They said they were going to do it and they changed and that’s it.

Just silly stuff like that and we do this all the time. This is emotional manipulation. I don’t like the way you are, I don’t like what you say, I don’t like what you do, so it’s done. It’s over. I’m going to ignore you and make you invisible now. It’s horrible, right?

But it’s our responsibility to learn communication skills and to be willing to be vulnerable, to be willing to feel that fear and when they are disappointed and when they are upset, you do not have to take it personally. It can just be that you think a different way, and if they choose to go on then that’s fine too. everyone has that right.

You have to choose to be offended. You have to choose to take it personally and make it about you. Maybe it’s not about anyone. Maybe it’s just a difference, right? Instead of it being a personal attack. But the thing is we’re such people pleasers and we’re so afraid that someone’s going to be disappointed or upset. But if emotional manipulation wouldn’t be into play, then it wouldn’t even we talking about that right now.

And this is kind of what I feel about people-pleasers. They’re kind of liars. Think about yourself when you’re acting a certain way so someone doesn’t get mad at you. You’re a liar. You’re pretending to be something that you’re not because you don’t want to feel the fear. You don’t want to feel the vulnerability. You don’t want to take the risk of what it’s going to be like when there’s change.

And I understand it. It’s scary. Doesn’t feel very safe. And what happens when you don’t feel safe, the body reacts and the nervous system fires up, and then anxiety comes in, and then you start to feel the shake and the vibration and the oh my god, I’ve got to do everything to turn this off, I need to eat, I need to behave differently, I need to make up for it, I need to apologize, I need to never do that again.

Then you make this contract, you make this agreement that you will turn off who you are so that you can become who they want you to be, and this is the trap. This is the people-pleasing, codependent, do what everyone else wants, let them have my life, I’ll take it back later when I’m older and stronger, and often it never happens. You never take it back. Very often.

Now, clients that I work with, we are totally reinventing. So we are reinventing them. Most of them are healers. Just naturally. It’s just who we are. We love to serve. And it was a matter of turning off that people-pleasing mode and cleaning them up, cleaning up their thoughts, cleaning up their emotions, get everything processed and integrated and embodied, so therefore they can build the container to become the leader, to become the entrepreneur, to hold the space for true healing so the healing happens in the other person.

We are not the healer. We are just the space holders for the healing. So think about communication and where did your skills come from. Who taught you how to communicate? How to stay in processing, how to feel that vulnerable feeling, those sensations, that fear, the doubt, all of the things that personally come up when you’re standing in your power, when you’re using your voice, your opinions, that your opinions do matter.

They’re just opinions but they matter to you because they make you unique. They make you different. They make you who you are. And when you have to stifle that and not speak it, this is why we have Hashimoto’s, thyroid disease, breast cancer. This is closing off the heart and the voice and anything that happens around the throat, the ears, the jaw.

This is your communication center. This is your power center and it’s not only your ability to communicate out. It’s also your understanding of communication coming in. How you articulate, how you understand, what is your perception. All of that is affected right here around the throat chakra, around the jaw, the teeth.

You hear a lot of people with tinnitus and ear issues, but most of all, I would say the hormonal family and not being who you truly are and not expressing your love and your passions and your heart, so many people have breast cancer and this is what a lot of this comes from. Heart conditions.

Think about it. This stuff is not your body’s natural state. These things are triggered from mental and emotional issues. Depression, anxiety, chronic pain. We’re going to talk so much more about this. I just wanted to – I keep sticking my toe in and then pulling it back because I can hear my podcast producer like, let’s just stick to the topic, don’t get too far, so let’s come back to the communication and really think about where did you learn to communicate.

What are the rules of your mind? I have to say a certain thing for them to feel a certain way for me to be accepted. Like, typically that’s what it is for most of us, and this is how we were all taught. It is not our fault and it’s not anyone else’s fault. It was just our perception and our way of staying safe.

The number one thing our brain wants to do is keep us safe, so it’s going to keep those old neural pathways running, it’s going to keep the old habits moving, it’s going to keep the environment the same, and it’s going to keep you in the same exact behavior and that’s what I mean by change is scary but the thought of staying stuck is even scarier because that could be forever because that is super powerful.

So here’s what happens. You’re in a relationship, you’re trying to become a new person, you’re trying to reinvent yourself, you’re trying to become better, you’re trying to evolve and grow, but the people in your surroundings, the relationships that you have that are existing, they don’t realize that. So they keep treating you like the same old person.

And when you try to behave differently, then due to this fear of communication thing, there’s this emotional manipulation. I’m going to lose the friendship, it’s not going to be the same, our relationships are changing, oh my god, I’m so sad, this feels like death, I’m so stuck, I can’t do this because this happens, I can’t do this, then this happens.

I hear this all the time. As soon as I take care of myself, then everyone is mad at me. This is why change, reinventing, transformation is so hard because you have to unravel. You have to be willing to be vulnerable and shame will come up and fear will come up and discomfort will come up. It’s all about change and loss and unfamiliarity and our brain does not like that.

You have to be willing to trust the process that this is the process. The unraveling, the falling apart, the dismantling what you knew in order to release it to become. It’s coming undone. I often tell my clients and it’s drop the whole entire basket of eggs. Just imagine, it’s super fragile and you know the minute you separate your hands and that basket falls, everything is going to come crumbling done.

But here’s the thing; let me soften the blow. Let me hold the space for you. I’m not going to save you. I’m not going to stop the eggs from cracking and breaking, but I’m going to be there with you when it falls apart, when all this stuff starts to unravel and come undone, when the emotions start going wild and you don’t know what to do with, I mean, running rampant.

I know this sounds like, “Oh that sounds like so much fun, Kim, why would I want to do that?” The reason you want to do it is because of the liberation, the freedom on the other side, because of the abundance on the other side, because of the growth. It is so addictive. Once you are liberated and you have freedom in your mind, you have freedom in your body, you have no more pain, no more anxiety, no more stress, and you are truly super strong in what you believe and who you are and what you’ve come here to do as a soul in a human body.

This is our bodysuit and your bodysuit will be affected by your inner life. And so, if you are stifling and turning off your power, turning off your energy centers, your physical body will manifest discomfort, chronic pain, illness, disease, dysfunction, all of this stuff, because we are a whole system. This is a holistic lifestyle. We are a whole system.

We’re not pieces. Well, we kind of are pieces. We’re bringing them back together and we’re creating wholeness. So trusting the process, the willingness to sit with the emotions, that’s what I want to show you today. I want to take a couple of minutes because I want to leave you with some processing and start teaching you how to do it.

So imagine you’re reinventing yourself, you’re making this change so the first thing is, like, you decide, this is what I want, this is what I’m going to do in my business, I want my relationship to work out. And I should say that. I am she who defends her who wants to stay because she wants to and not because she has to. And I’m also she who defends her who wants to leave because she wants to and not because she has to. Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. I defend it all. I support it all. And I don’t have an agenda here. I’m not on a political side in a way that I think things should or shouldn’t be, which makes people super uncomfortable.

I’ve had to claim things in the past so that people would feel comfortable, but it’s not true, and I’m claiming my truth. So if that triggers you, then I want you to sit with those emotions. Oh, can’t be trusted, don’t know, not so sure, this is what they say. You know, all of that stuff starts coming up. So the skill to sit with emotions is something that is learned. We have not been taught it. This is new. This is what we know now. This is the mind-body wellness, the mind-body integration. This is the missing piece.

This came through in a downloaded process, like as I was in meditation, and it’s fabulous and it’s, like, so exciting to be able to bring this forward, to train coaches in how to teach it and how to help their clients and help their patients. It’s so fabulous, most of all, how to transform and help themselves.

So the willingness to sit with the emotion, things come up, it feels uncomfortable, you tell your brain to settle down, that you are safe. I call this an interruption. It’s like, “Listen, we’re safe. You don’t need to protect me. It’s okay for me to be me.” And breathe into the discomfort that comes up. The breath is the healer and the healing comes on the exhale.

So, almost as if you were smoking a cigarette, like, take an inhale, feel that little point where you drop down into the diaphragm, and then release. And you’ll keep doing that every time you feel the discomfort, every time you feel the emotion shifting, every time you get antsy, if you’ve tried meditation and you keep wiggling. That is repressed emotion trying to move through you. But it’s so uncomfortable that your brain wants to, like, get up and go do something else and it wants to turn it off because it doesn’t feel safe.

I want to encourage you to sit with that emotion, tell the brain to settle down. It’s almost as if you had a wild horse and you were holding down the reins and you’re just telling your brain, stay, stay, these are just emotions, this is just a feeling, a vibration, a sensation in my body. And breathe and release, relax, feel.

So the process would be, like, you’re seeing it, you’re saying it, and you’re releasing it. So it’s like this seeing, feeling, hearing, let it go. So, through the dismantling process, the unraveling, the coming undone, this is the secret sauce to help you get there.

So, my son was listening to the podcast and he was like, “This is all great and I’m listening to all those teachers that you told me about, but no one’s telling me how to do it.” I said, “Well, on the next one, I will tell you how to do it.” It’s truly trusting the process when you’re sitting in the scariest thing imaginable; be willing to feel it. Be willing to unveil the story that comes up and ask the question, is this true?

Am I unsafe? Can I be safe in this moment? Can I practice being with this right now in this? And keep breathing and exhaling and keep breathing and exhaling, and just tell your brain, it’s just a sensation in my body. It’s going to move through. I can release. I am safe. This is step two of the process that I teach, of the approach that I take.

And just keep doing it, stay with it. There is a meditation on the website that takes you through this that you can go to. But for now, just be willing to be in it. Whatever’s coming up for you right now in this moment, just feel it. And if that’s too much for you, start here. Feel your feet on the floor. Feel your butt on the seat. Feel your fingertips. Notice your teeth clenched. See if you can soften your jaw. Notice if you can soften your eyes. Notice if you can release your shoulders. And just notice what you notice in your body.

Just notice. This is where awareness starts; just stopping long enough to allow the breath, to allow the sensations, vibrations, feelings come up in your body, and not react, not react, just being with it. So I’ll just go through this one more time.

Change is hard because you have to unravel. You have to be willing to communicate. You have to be willing to feel the fear that comes up when you’re communicating. You have to notice the emotional manipulation and then you have to decide to set a boundary and then decide if it’s working for you, if you want to be different, if that’s the thing that you want to accept in your relationships.

And then you have to make the assumption that it’s a personal attack on you or not. You have to decide if you’re going to take it personally and notice when you’re being a people-pleaser, notice when you’re saying and doing things that they want you to say and do just for you to be comfortable because you’re fearing the emotional manipulation or you’re fearing the change or the loss, then being willing to be vulnerable, to die to the old self.

It’s truly grief. You will feel grief. Things will change. If you quit drinking, your friends change. If you quit smoking, your friends change. If you change jobs, your friends change. This is just a part of life. People will die, things will change. As a matter of fact, every 100 years, it’s a whole new crop of people.

Shame will come up. Fear will come up. Discomfort will come up. Loss will happen. And it’s okay, just be comfortable with getting uncomfortable and trust the process, be willing to sit with the emotions and enjoy the dismantling, the unraveling, the undone, the undone process, because there is so much on the other side.

And then, just ask yourself the question, what do I know and what needs to go? And maybe make a list. I’m going to keep moving through this process with the next episodes to follow, so you can just get you a notebook and follow along. Join us in the Integrative Life group if you want to have actual conversation around it.

And then, just take note that what you put out begins to open for opportunity. So once you set the intention and you make the decision that you want change, things will naturally begin to fall apart. And I’m going to ask you just to be with it. This is the process. And even though it’s scary, you won’t die. It won’t be the end of the world. There’s actually going to be a time where you’re going to want more of it. I’m proof of that. Alright, take care, until next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Integrative Life Coach Training for Health and Wellness Practitioners! If you’re feeling stuck on your journey to mind body integration, head over to KimGuillory.com to download your Stability First Meditation today.