The #1 Mindset Shift to Stop Overthinking and Start Living with Nikki Eisenhauer

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and
in swirling the story instead of figuring out how to
really move forward.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great
thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,

(00:34):
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in

(00:55):
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
If you've ever felt like you're stuck in your head, overthinking,
second guessing, and feeling weighted down by your emotions, it's
good to know that you're not alone. Today I'm talking
with Nicki Eisenhower, who's a psychotherapist, a coach, and the
host of Emotional Badass. She believes that emotional sensitivity isn't
a weakness, it's a strength. We'll explore why so many

(01:23):
people struggle to change, how overthinking keeps us trapped, and
what it really takes to break free from our old patterns.
As we talked, I realize how much of my own
journey has been about learning when to listen to my
emotions and when to challenge them, because, as Nicky says,
our feelings aren't always telling the truth. By the end

(01:44):
of this episode, you'll have a better understanding of how
to quiet the inner chatter, take real action in your life,
and step into your own strength without getting stuck in
your story. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one
you feed. Hi, Nikki, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
I am excited to have you on and talk about
all kinds of different things. You have quite an interesting
background as a psychotherapist, as a coach, as a podcast host,
and you cover all kinds of topics, so it'll be
really interesting to see where we end up. But we'll
start in the place that we always do with the Parable.
And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with

(02:21):
their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
the grandchild stops and think about it for a second,
and they look up their grandparent and they say, well,
which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.

(02:43):
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
It means so much. I used to teach a group
with that parable, well before I even knew what a
podcast was. It hits me in a lot of ways.
I think we have so much power to feed the good,
to feed what serves us, and I think the confusion
is that sometimes we don't know what we're feeding, or
we don't know that we have that power to feed

(03:11):
different beasts inside of us, if you will. And so
to me, that parable is all about the empowerment of
that choice and being mindful and intentional so that we're
feeding what we really want to feed, so that we're
growing in a direction of lightness, of ease, of peace,
of joy, of really experiencing what is good in this

(03:32):
one precious life and letting go of the rest.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah. You know, as I was listening to a couple
recent episodes of Yours, they were what seventeen years of
working with my clients has taught me? And there's lots
of interesting lessons in there, But I kind of want
to pivot a slightly different direction off of that, which
is that seventeen years of working with clients is a
long time. You've worked with a lot of people, and

(03:56):
in that time you have seen people grow and prosper
and change and just beautiful stories. And you've seen tragedy
and heartbreak. You've seen people who don't change, people who die,
all the negative outcomes we could think of. And I'm
curious if you have any wisdom about what it is
that allows some people to change and others not, because

(04:20):
any of us that are in this field for very long,
or even if you're not in it directly, if you
observe people in your own life, it is a mystery,
right Like why was Bob able to moderate his weight
and his health and his cholesterol and become healthy where
Sam is now a Type two diabetic and only gets
out twice a week, Like we see it all around us,
And I'm just curious if you have some thoughts on

(04:42):
what are some of the key factors in people's ability
to make change.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
That's a great question. I think the main thing that
is so hard to put our finger on or name
about that difference. It is so easy to see because
you can really see it, especially when you do this
work over and over again. It's like, what is that
stuff that one person has that motivates them towards this change?
And what is this stuff that this other person is

(05:08):
missing that doesn't seem to be able to do that
work or to let go of what isn't serving them.
To me, that stuff is insight, and insight is one
of those things that we can't really teach and we
don't really know why. This is something that I had
professors in my counseling program when I was in my
master's program teach and what they taught brand new green

(05:32):
therapists was that we were really going to try to
hammer in insight to people that just didn't have it,
and their intelligence level would make it seem like they
should be able to connect these dots and make these
changes and go forward, and that that very thing that
seems to motivate change is in sight, and it's sight
and just like our eyeballs. Like if you and I

(05:54):
are standing next to each other looking out at a landscape.
I live in the mountains and see the mountains right
now as we're talking outside of my window. If you
and I are standing there looking at those mountains, we
know very well that you're going to have a different
site ability. I'm gonna have different site. Maybe one of
us has glasses, but when it comes to things like

(06:14):
our intuition or our insight, we can't really measure it
like we can to get prescription glasses. So I think
it's harder for us to really understand that other human
beings have different parts of them. And it's part sensory,
maybe it's part spiritual. Maybe it's the different karmas that
we're living out why some of us are born with

(06:35):
insight and some of us aren't. I tend to work
with very high insight people that come from family systems
where most of the players seem to suffer from and
really suffer, whether they know it or not, from low insight.
And that's just our ability to look inward, our ability
to observe ourselves, our ability to see our own patterns,

(07:00):
our own inclinations, our own motivations, our own desires, and
question them. That if we can't see those things, then
it's not going to be easy to question those things
or to change them. So I think the stuff that
you're talking about is insight. And you and your work,
I'm sure of it, and me and mine we do

(07:21):
insight oriented therapies or coaching, or we're helping people who
already have insight connected and many of them are hurt
in the world by people that just don't seem to
have that insight and likely never will, which we don't like.
Right Like, I'm all about hope and change, and so
one of the things I teach in my Boundaries course
every October is that we also have a dysfunctional hope.

(07:44):
You know, we're kind of supposed to give second chances,
not infinity chances. So I think there's a lot that
plays there about that ability, that willingness, that seekers spirit,
that drives us to change.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
I have a thousand follow on questions that So when
we say insight, I think it's worth talking a little
bit more about what that is because I'm certain that
you see this and I've seen it I got into
a recovery at twenty four years old, and I hate
to say fifty two, right, And so I mean I've
been watching some people change and other people not for

(08:20):
a long long time, right. And what I have seen
is people who show up and put in effort, who
appear to have some degree of insight, because they wouldn't
be there putting in the effort if they didn't have
some insight, or they can pare it back some insight.
Maybe what is it you think that they need to

(08:41):
be seeing that Oftentimes people are not connecting or are
not seen more deeply.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Maybe it's how deep our personal responsibility really run. And
I also think we're not so aware naturally of what
are motivating factors. So I've worked in addiction where people
live for residential treatment, and I did intensive outpatient That's
where I started my career, and very often someone could

(09:10):
speak the speak right, talk the talk, and the truth is,
as a trained therapist, we want tangible, evidence based stuff
to help people with and to speak from. What I
learned as a human being going through that experience beyond
a therapist going through that experience was that I had
to decipher and it was a feel It's very hard

(09:32):
to put into words. It's a feeling because two people
can stand next to each other and utter the same thing,
the same desire, But I can feel the difference between
someone who is genuinely passionate and driven about going after
the very behaviors and mindsets that will serve them, and
someone else may say the exact same phrasing, but it

(09:55):
feels empty, it feels hollow, and often the difference there
is they're not really motive to do it for themselves.
We don't understand motivation, and when we have lower insight,
we also tend to have a lower empathy and a
lower maturity. So often what I think is at play
is a lower maturity, and we don't do a great

(10:16):
job in mental health. I think even in spiritual circles,
just as people. I don't think we talk about maturity
in any kind of self development space, but we can
see that. There was a philosopher that I very much
identified with when I was going through my schooling. I
think it was Ericson, But I'm not great at remembering
the names and pairing them with the right information. That's

(10:38):
not my strong suit. My strong suit is the how
to heal, but in that one of those philosophers theorized
that most people did not truly emotionally develop into adulthood,
most stayed kind of stunted in adolescents. And for me
that was a gobsmack moment to hear that information, because
I could see in my own family system that was

(10:59):
very dysfunctional, and in the family systems I was working
with and learning about at the time that that was very,
very true. That often there was a younger person who
had been parentified, who seemed to be born an old soul,
like just born with some kind of maturity. And we
can really see that a lot of people have parents,

(11:20):
a lot of people have family members. A lot of
people themselves may really be operating emotionally like a twelve
year old. They really may be operating like a sixteen
year old. And some of that is temperament, some of
that is experienced, some of that is nature, some of
that is nurture, some of that is drug and alcohol use.
Stunting emotional development, we certainly know about that, But I

(11:43):
would also say growing up with chaos for certain personalities
can stunt that development. So when we say trauma or dysfunction,
those are overused they're overplayed. They're almost like the word
good at this point, it's like we all know what
it means, but it doesn't mean much of anything anymore.
Things that would not try ammatize us today, that would
just be annoying to us today, are truly traumatic. For

(12:04):
a child, we need a certain amount of peace. So
if we grow up with chaos, that may become traumatic
in a way that today would just be annoying. But
for the child we were was really unfortunate for the
development of our own maturity, our own ability to communicate
with more and more age and wisdom instead of reaction,

(12:27):
being able to really respond with greater wisdom. And if
we come from people that functionally didn't mature, I can
very much say that's true in my family system. That
is so confusing and frightening. And so if we have
a portion of the population that isn't emotionally maturing, then
of course that's going to affect how they grow and develop.

(12:47):
Because an immature person is going to want to eat
that whole bag of oreos. It takes a certain amount
of maturity to go, wait a minute, even though part
of me wants to just stuff my face with all
those oreos, another part of me has to step in
and now, hey, that'll make me sick. And we need
to know that about all these more complex interactions and
dynamics and motivations and desires. Who are we doing things for.

(13:10):
We're pleasing the people in our family because they want
us to get sober, you know, and we want them
to quit riding our ass. So we learn to say
the right things. Or are we really cultivating and innern
drive towards expressing in this life to our highest potential?
Is that our driving force? Are we just trying to
get by and feel good in the moment? And if

(13:31):
we're immature, I suspect we're more likely. I know that
we're more likely to reach for those in the moment
feel goods that really thwart our personal development and our
security and our groundedness and even developing things like a
certain amount of wealth and financial stabilities, because money is choice,
and it's power, and it's comfort, it's so many things.

(13:54):
So I think so much plays on what comes together
to really a person towards seeking and working and it's work.
And again, if you're immature, how do we convince somebody
that the work is worth it? If their immature part
is just like I don't want to do that uncomfortable stuff.
I rather sit and watch TV. How do you motivate

(14:16):
that if we're not really talking about maturity in these
spaces too.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
So I think there's a lot to be said for
this idea of maturity. When you're talking. It made me
think of Ken Wilber, who formulated that sort of we
need to clean up, grow up, and wake up. Right,
there's these three elements. Some people even include showing up
in that. What I think is interesting though, is that
by definition, so many of us arrive at the process

(14:44):
of change very immature, though growing through immaturing is part
of it. But is that the essential element because many
of us don't have it when we get here. I
know I didn't, right, you know, when I got sober,
I'm a little bit grateful. You know, I got sober
and kind of a hard ass aa environment and today's
world it would not be smiled upon too much. Maybe

(15:06):
there were some things about it that were not great,
but there was a real strong focus on personal responsibility
and growing up and being an adult and taking care
of your business, and that was really good for me.
I really needed to see that element of like all
the different ways that I show up in life. But
the other thing that that time really taught me that

(15:29):
I think is interesting about thinking that insight is the
stuff was you know, what I was really taught was
sometimes we can't think our way into right action. We
have to act our way into right thinking. And so
my focus was always on like, let me just do
what I'm being told to do. Let me just try
and do the thing, even though my brain still feels
like an angry four year old all the time.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
So I work with a lot of highly sensitive people,
and often I think I shock them when I say,
you cannot be so feeling driven. Our feelings are liars.
Part of the time. We have to do hard work
despite how we feel. We cannot let how we feel
drive the bus of our life. Like I'm from New Orleans,
it is the land of vices. We eat and we drink,

(16:14):
we feed people, we hand people drinks. We almost don't
know how to socially relate unless we're doing it through
food and alcohol. So we have to be able to
get real about the difference between what we want and
what we need. When I'm talking to highly sensitive people,
that is shocking, and it used to not be shocking.

(16:34):
I've been doing this for seventeen years, and it used
to not be shocking. And I think it's part of Frankly,
where mental health has failed in the last two decades
is becoming so soft and so listening of emotion that
we've forgotten that we need a balance between. Yes, of
course we need to listen to ourselves and each other,

(16:55):
we need to pay attention to emotions and their inherent
information to check those things out, But I believe we
very much need to have that real world grounded basic. Hey,
you are going to have to grow up. Hey, you
can't give in to every feeling you have if you
want to have a really good life. It is just

(17:16):
that simple sometimes, and I believe sometimes therapists too get
caught in over complicating what really is simple in this way.
That's why AA has saying it's like, just do the
next right thing, no matter how you feel. Stop paying
attention to how you feel in that moment, and just
do the next right thing. So as a profession I
think mental health has gone way too far into holding

(17:39):
space for emotion, dropping the ball of that personal responsibility,
and I think that is why we are seeing skyrocketing depression, addiction,
and suicide. We need to tell people that they must
take responsibility for their lives. There's no getting around it.
There are no people with white knights that will come
and save us. I waited for one for a while.

(18:02):
I hope for one. I fantasized about somebody coming and
doing the work for me. That may be part of
the grief process, the bargaining stage of grief. But to
get real, deep down into the nitty gritty of my
life comes down to me, no matter what happened to
me in childhood, no matter what choices my own immaturity made,
if I want a matured life, I have to actionably

(18:25):
take myself towards that maturity, and as myself sees me
do those actions, I will mature. I also think like
in your story, yes, of course you came to it
with immaturity, but whatever that stuff was, that insight that went, hey,
this isn't right for us, this feels icky. There's got
to be a different way that desire to want to mature,

(18:47):
I believe is the insight.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, there's a few different things there. I tend to
agree with you. You know, I've been doing this podcast
about nine years, I feel like even just in this
nine years, I have seen a shift where I mean,
I can see even in the answering of the wolf parable, right,
Because on one level, the wolf parable is a simple
parable about choice, right. Our actions and our thoughts and
our behaviors, they all matter and we have a choice

(19:11):
in them. Right. So on one level, it's a very
straightforward and simple parable, And once upon a time that
was how most people would answer it. More and more
now the answers are about how we need to embrace
and love our bad wolf, and I think that's an
insight that's important and useful. I'm not saying we shouldn't
be doing that. I do think we need to listen

(19:33):
to our feelings. I do think we need to hold
space for emotion all that stuff. But I agree with you,
I feel like the pendulum has just swung a little
bit too far in the direction of being a victim,
of being traumatized, of not being able to do something,
away from empowerment. I mean, I don't think we want
to go back to something that's very extreme. And I

(19:55):
don't think my early days in AA were great, right.
I had to actually move out of that for a
period of time where I was like, you know what,
they just keep saying, it doesn't matter what happened to you,
just act like a certain person. I was like, well, okay,
but at a certain point, certain level of healing, I'm
going to have to deal with what did happen to me.
I have to deal with the trauma. I do have
to deal with the ways in which I didn't develop.

(20:17):
So it does feel like the pendulum is a little
over too far, and I'm waiting to see it sort
of start to swing back because I feel like it will.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
I think it has to.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
I just hope it doesn't snap back right. So I
think it's, you know, let's kind of come back in
the middle, because I think that actually the answer is
it really is in the middle, right. It is a
case of like, yes, we'd need a really strong sense
of personal responsibility and accountability and a real focus on
like here's the right thing to do, here's the right action,

(20:47):
and we need to be compassionate and kind to ourselves
and others about the challenges that we faced and the
ways that we haven't developed. I think your work actually
strikes a pretty good balance between those two things, which
is partially why I wanted to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
I'm passionate about that balance. I mean, for years my
clients would probably tell you that balance was the word
that came out of my mouth the most. And we're complicated,
and it's something that I've had to work on accepting
in myself. I think most highly sensitive people walk the
world like, Hey, when are you going to accept me?
And then tell me that I'm okay? And it doesn't

(21:21):
work that way. If it did, I wouldn't be uttering
these things out of my mouth. What works is to
work on accepting who we are. So I had to
do a lot of work on hey, I'm an intensely
feeling person. Hey, I have had a lot happen to
me in my history. I have survived the abandonment of
one parent. I have survived the sexual abuse of another parent.
I have survived a mother that is a sociopath and

(21:43):
an ice queen and not warm with me. Those are
things that need to be considered in who I am,
how I developed, how those shaped me, what I want
to let go of, what I don't want to take forward.
There's a lot there, but there's also a point at
which I just have to do the next right thing.
In this present moment, So talk therapy sometimes gets people lost.

(22:04):
I see people sometimes partnering, like you said, embracing our
inner dark parts or our inner dysfunction. I see people
more in the last three to five years partnering with
their depression instead of seeing it, acknowledging it, and then
fighting their depression. So there's nuance there that I think

(22:24):
gets missed. You know, like the Internet connected you and I.
You know, there's so much power in this technological contraption.
We're all using way too much. But there's also downside.
And so as much as these messages get celebrated and
shared more, they also get watered down. The nuance gets lost,
and you have to be really real with yourself. Therapists

(22:47):
have to be real with themselves. Are they enabling people
to just keep circling their story? Are they helping them
really connect the dots and move forward? And as a
patient or a client of a cult or a therapist,
are are you asking that person to challenge you to
help you get unstuck? Are you helping them just kind
of circle and circle and circle, Like everybody has to

(23:08):
take responsibility for their part and their role. And I'm
passionate about If we do that, we really are healing
the world, one person at a time, as corny as
that might sound, and that is our job. It is
your one precious life. You're responsible for it. If you
keep trying to farm that out, I think you'll just
be resentful later for the time wasted not taking responsibility.

(23:30):
I don't live with a lot of regret, but if
I could go back in time, I would tell myself
stop thinking so hard, do some of these healthy things,
and move forward. You're gonna have a chance to process.
But move Yeah, like with trauma. Yeah you have to
move slowly sometimes, but you got to move. And too
many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and the

(23:51):
swirling the story instead of figuring out how to really
move forward.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
It makes me think of one of my favorite, you know,
tropes about depression, which is depression hates a moving target,
because that's just been my experience is I just have
to move, you know, whether that be physically emotional, I
mean movement in all the different ways you can think
of it. Now, one of the cruel paradoxes of depression
is it sucks the energy out of you, and you
don't have much energy to move and so I think

(24:34):
sometimes we have to recognize what is the next right
thing for me and my actual real capabilities right, So
the next right thing for me, I may be able
to take a bigger next right step than the next person.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Or vice versa.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Right, but I do strongly believe there are always positive
steps to take, even if they're really really small, and
we need to be taking them. And one of the
other things you're talking about made me think of is
I interviewed a guy named Ethan Cross. He's a University
of Michigan researcher, and he wrote a book called Chatter,
which is all about kind of the internal chatter. But

(25:10):
he references a study in there that has really stuck
with me because the question was, when somebody comes to
you with a problem, what is more helpful. Is it
more helpful for you to listen and empathize, or is
it more helpful for you to offer solutions and advice
or to give them a gentle nudge. And what this

(25:33):
study found was surprise, surprise, it's both right that what's
actually most helpful is both. You have to start, at
least my experience has always been you have to start
with the listening and the understanding and letting someone know
they've really been heard. That is essential. If that step
is skipped, the next one simply won't work. But then

(25:55):
there is a point where sometimes we need a nudge
from the people who care about us.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yes, it's interesting to hear you use that language that
is almost verbat on the language I use with individual clients.
I will often at the beginning of a session a
couple of minutes and say, what do you need today?
Do you need to vent? Do you need to talk
this through? Do you need some strategies, do you need
some tips? What do you want? What do you need?
And the interesting thing about me leading with that question

(26:21):
frequently is that I can see and people will tell me, huh,
They basically don't realize that those are the two options.
So a lot of people, I think, get caught in
that story or that venting as a mode. When I
ask that question, it's also a teaching of Hey, you
have the empowerment to decide, and you need to be

(26:42):
mindful about what you're doing there, because there needs to
be a time to be done with the venting, at
least in this day and this season. Sure, we might
revisit it if it's impactful for something that's happening in
our future. But there's a point at which is that enough.
So that's another question I will ask someone, is hey,
have you vented about that enough? And watching the wheels

(27:03):
turn of have I, and sitting with that question, have
I does that ego? Want to just complain about this
some more because you can start to feel it if
you're paying attention to it. There's a point of diminishing
return for all things, right. Yes, So I want my people,
I want anybody listening to me to know that you
have the power inside of you to start sensing is

(27:25):
this useful for me and helpful? Have I said enough?
Then let me be done with that venting part and
move on. And that's the kind of nuanced skill that
sounds so freaking simple when I say it out loud,
but it's the very thing that somebody doesn't ever intentionally
teach us as a kid, unless you're doing this kind

(27:45):
of process with me and then you pass it on
to your child. Most of us did not organically come
to that kind of nuanced emotional education about sensing yourself.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Yeah, And what's interesting is that it does seem that
people by default fall to one side or the other
of that more naturally, one side is the stereotypical man
who just doesn't think about process or emotion at all.
It's just here's what we need to do, cuts right
to it, right. And then the other would be the person,

(28:17):
as you're describing, the classic ruminative person right, who gets
completely stuck in their head and it just spins and
it spins and it spins. And what we're looking for,
at least for me, is sort of like you said,
it's that middle ground, that middle way between those two
things where we're able to do it. And I agree
one hundred percent there is a point where the thought

(28:38):
processes has diminishing returns. And you use one of my
favorite phrases in there, which is useful, right with thoughts?
Is this useful? Because there are some very difficult, negative
thoughts that are very useful at times, they are very helpful.
They have a lot to teach us. You know, we
can be very uncomfortable, and then there's a point where
they are no longer useful, and you know, knowing that

(29:00):
point can be really helpful. I mean, for me, I'm
kind of looking at like, am I covering the same
ground again and again? With no new back to your
word earlier insight, like nothing new is popping up. Like
the first five times I thought about the conversation I
have with my partner, Each time I went through it,
I saw something slightly different. So I went back through

(29:20):
it and oh, I saw this, and ah, God, that
makes me cringe. But at least I know, you know.
But now the last five times that my mind has
circled it, it's circled it in the exact same way
at which point diminishing returns, and now it's moving into Okay,
this thought now is becoming not useful, even possibly destructive

(29:42):
and harmful. Now how do I move out of that?

Speaker 1 (29:44):
I am passionate about helping people understand that if they're overthinkers,
likely they're very smart, and likely they started overthinking as
a kid in my own life, because I didn't have
a lot of emotional nurture, urrence or understanding of what
I was going through that could help me understand what

(30:04):
I was going through. I believe I had a lot
of intuitions that I couldn't do anything with because my
intuition would say, Hey, your mom's real scary right now,
maybe you're about to be hit and as a child,
I couldn't do anything with that intuition. I couldn't get
in my car and drive off. You know, I couldn't
handle the situation any better than just taking it because

(30:25):
I was a kid, or trying to mouth off and
rebel against it. But I was a pretty good girl
growing up in the South, too good good Southern girl
like you just don't fight back. So if we really
understand that concept, if we grew up with a lot
of stress, if we grew up with a lot of
unsafe parenting or immature inadequate parenting, and you're really smart,
your energy had to go somewhere. So I think it

(30:48):
leaves the intuition and goes to the head and we
start overthinking in those moments where we can't escape with
our bodies. So when we start to understand that I
can help people manage their own in our child and
be able to say in that moment to themselves when
they catch that cloud of overthinking that starts or oh
this isn't useful. I've already thought this from the beginning

(31:11):
to the end and through ten different times. I don't
need to think about this again. That it is your
job and it's a gift. It's a gratitude that it
gets to be your grown up job to do for
your own inner psyche, your own inner child, what your
parents or your childhood situation didn't know how to do
for you. You get to step in now and go
oh sweet boy or oh sweet girl in there. This

(31:32):
is a time where grown up me says, we don't
need to overthink this. We've thought about this enough and
learning how to internalize enoughness with the overthinking that so
many of us do when we have a lot of emotion,
a lot of passion, a lot of intensity with who
we are, and we're really smart. The way I say
it a lot is you gotta be smarter than your

(31:54):
smarts because your critical voice and the overthinking part are
going to be just as smart as you are. Yeah,
so we've got to outthink your thinking parts so that
you stay sort of in the integrity of using your
intelligence for your own greater good and not letting your
critical voice or that overthink or grab your intelligence and

(32:15):
dig a hole into the ground with it.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
see people making, and that's really that we don't think
about these new habits that we want to add in
the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen
in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
that we have. So when we just keep adding I

(32:38):
should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
So it's really helpful for you to think about where
is this going to fit and what in my life
might I need to remove. If you want to step
by step guide for how you can easily build new
habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf

(32:59):
dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Oftentimes,
I naturally go back to my sort of early recovery days, right,
And there was a real sense there that like, being
smart was a bad thing because of what you're describing, okay, right,
because you would just overthink things. And this is not
a time for overthinking, right, This is a time for

(33:21):
taking the actions that will keep you sober. Right, It's
time to stop the overthinking. But it sort of cast
that thinking as a negative. It's one of the things
that ultimately sort of pulled me away from that place.
And I'm not saying all twelve step programs or AA
or like this, By the way, I want to be
extraordinarily clear, this was a particular group of people at

(33:42):
a particular time in place in history, you know, twenty five,
twenty six years ago. So don't think, listeners that all
twelve step groups are like this at all. So I
just feel like I always have to say that. But
knowing that I was somewhat intelligent, you know, it ultimately
sort of drove me away because I was like, wait
a second. My goal here is not to dumb myself down, right.

(34:03):
My goal here is not to cut out my thinking brain, right.
So to your point, it's how do we do it?
So let's say that we have realized, like, okay, too
much enough, you know, I am past the point of
usefulness in this thinking. What are some of the strategies
that you recommend that people use to try and deal

(34:26):
with that inner chatter? Because just because I've realized that
I don't want to think about it anymore certainly does
not mean that I have the skills to not think
about it.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
So I could answer that for the next fourteen hundred hours. Okay,
I don't think there's any one tool. I think it's
actually about wrapping our minds around a lifestyle change, like
this is how I live now. I think the world
is also speeding up so much and requiring so much

(34:57):
of us that no matter what our childhood state was, like,
our addiction history was like, we are really being brought
into realms of just ridiculous levels of expected franticness. For
lack of a better way for me to say that,
so I think, yes, there's healing childhood trauma. Yes there's
healing and learning how to take care of yourself post addiction.

(35:18):
But just being a human being right now in this
time period I think requires very similar strategies. I try
to live slowing down now, even if that means I'm
doing a lot that day and I'm moving fast. I
want to understand that. I don't want that sort of
frantic go go go, rush, rush rush to be in

(35:41):
my brain, in my mind, in the tissues of my body. Yes,
so it's a lifestyle choice of practicing slowing down. I'm
actually it might be releasing today as we're recording. Actually,
I have a emotional strength training thirty days to peace course,

(36:02):
because it takes repetition. I can tell by the things
that you offer, you very much understand that it takes
repetition of what it is to calm, to internalize peace,
and to actually value stillness. In this world that gives
stillness the finger, it doesn't value it, It dismisses it. Hustle, culture,

(36:23):
work harder. I'll sleep when I'm dead. If you're trying
to heal your nervous system too, that is a way
to feel fried and burnt out. And how are you
supposed to evolve and be your best self if you're
living from a place of fried and burnt out. So
just having a framework of I want to fold the
laundry like a Buddhist monk eats. They sit down, They

(36:47):
don't multitask, they sit down. They pay attention to everybodite
going into their mouth. When you really think about that
versus our American eyes. Eat while you're driving, while you're
balancing your checkbook, I mean, you know, while you're doing
a handstand. On one hand, I mean, we are expecting
out of ourselves to do really a ridiculous amount of things.
So that's kind of my framework for just let's in general,

(37:11):
understand the forces at play, no matter what our history was,
and we have to understand that we have to combat
those forces or those forces are going to take a stand.
We have to limit the scrolling. It's like a slot machine,
you guys, and especially if you have addictive history. It's
addictive to all of us, you know. We have to
do simple things like that that our inner adolescent doesn't

(37:33):
want to do. It doesn't want to put down the phone.
But putting down the phone, stopping and taking a breath meditation.
And when I say that on my show, I go,
I hear the eye rolls, I feel the eye rolls,
because every spiritual psychological teacher just says meditate, meditate, meditate.
All forces out there are the opposite of meditative energy.

(37:53):
But if we really understand that, then I think it
can give us a permission. We need to counterbalance those
forces in the present, and we need to do some
counterbalancing of our historical forces also, So slowing down, I
try to fold laundry like that Buddhist monk eats. I
try to drive slow and calm and use each experience

(38:15):
to be the practice of calm. Instead of giving yourself
five different peace practice tasks, our mind quieting tasks to do,
which is just adding more things to your to do list,
which you know technically is correct and right, you can't
find something wrong with. But in terms of the spirit
of what I'm saying, adding to your to do list

(38:36):
isn't it. You don't need ten more things to do.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
I mean, that's the whole focus of the Spiritual Habits
program that I created, which is, as we go about
our day to day lives, how do we do some
of these things that will allow us to access more
peace without adding a lot to our to do list
because there's just no more time. There just isn't. Yes,
that's what the cause of a lot of stress is

(39:00):
to be told. Well, now you need to in addition
to eating, getting enough sleep, exercising, taking care of your children,
having a career, now you need to meditate for an
hour a day and journal for thirty minutes. It's just
like you know, it just isn't going to happen. So
there's got to be a way to integrate more of this.
And as you said, there is something to some time

(39:23):
in stillness I think being really beneficial. Whatever that way
of stepping out into stillness is for you. It could
be meditation, It could be sitting quietly, It could be
listening to a piece of music you love, very focused
and intently, but it is slowing down, nowhere to go,

(39:43):
and some attempt to sort of put our attention on
something and keep it there. I do think that is
a foundational skill for humans, and one that is becoming
even more important, as you said, as we become increasingly
distracted and fraged.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Yes, I think people like you and I are doing
the work to hold on to that art form so
it doesn't become a lost art of knowing the value
and stillness. So many of my clients at a point
wind up laughing and going, Nikki, am I really paying
you to teach me how to just be still and
do less? And in some ways yes, yes, And it

(40:22):
sounds so it sounds like the simplest thing we could
possibly to ask ourselves with, But it really is something
that I find we need help with. I mean, I
didn't see anybody value stillness growing up, not one time,
not for one minute. It was do do Do. I
was raised by a German descent grandmother who if I
got still, if I just stood still for a moment.

(40:43):
She would say, what is the purpose of what you're doing?
And as a child, I could not answer that. Today,
if she was still alive, i'd go, aha, I finally
know the answer to that question. I'm centering, I'm breathing,
I'm giving my nervous system a chance to just ground
its I'm being a human being instead of a human

(41:04):
doing so. It's looking at those dynamics to understand. Oh oh,
I was really taught that it was wrong and bad
to have stillness. You take that old teaching on top
of what's going on in modern life and my goodness,
of course, I have to intentionally bring in stillness, and

(41:24):
I have to talk to my inner child because I'm
going to hear that critical voice. In some ways, I
was raised by very critical people, so in some ways
that's like my original language. I only speak English. But
what we know that other speakers who speak multiple languages,
they tend to think in their native language. I've accepted
that in some ways, I may think in my native

(41:45):
language of the critical voice, and so I have to
know that when I get still, that critical voice might
show up and go, really, again, you're being lazy, what
are you doing? And I need to know about how
that voice works, because in that moment, I'm being different,
I'm being intentional. I'm doing something against my original programming

(42:06):
and the programming that's going on right now. So of
course that voice is going to show up and go ooh, nikkiya,
I don't know if this is right. Bad bad, shame,
shame on you. And I have to know how to
feel that vibe wash over me or hear that voice
so that I know exactly what my job is and
how I can effectively combat those forces. And in that moment,

(42:28):
if I'm on my game, I can turn to my
own inner self and go, oh no, that would have
worked before, but now I know the value in the stillness.
That's what I'm doing, and we're going to be still.
Grown up wise woman me decided that this is a smart,
right practice for us, So we're going to do it.
And the more I do that, the more that that

(42:49):
voice lowers an intensity in frequency and kind of steps
to the background, whereas it used to drive as the
primary driver of my life.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
You said a whole bunch of great things there. I
think one thing that we sort of hit on briefly
was repetition and quieting the inner chatter or quieting that
inner critic, at least for me, has simply been a
matter of just more times than I could possibly begin
to count at this point, recognizing that voice and doing

(43:46):
something different with it, like over and over and over.
And I think one of the places that people get
discouraged is they hear stuff like this and they go, well,
I tried that last week and I'm not better. I
do think, you know, if we want to talk about maturity,
that is another sign of maturity is recognizing like, Okay,
this is going to take a long time. It's the

(44:07):
only game in town. Really, there are no other good choices.
I can continue to try and believe that it's this
supplement or this one magic trick or this one thing.
But once we realize like wellness is a thing that
takes a lot of repetition, a lot of time.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
It's not a thing you do, it's the way you live. Yes,
I think that is what traps people. They're like, hey,
I went to the doctor, they gave me these meds. Yeah, okay,
I did this health thing. When am I going to
feel better? Living well is what makes us feel better.
So a lot of people show up to a therapist
or a coach basically saying this without realizing they're saying this, Hi,

(44:46):
will you please help me change while I try to
remain the same. Gee? Why is this so hard? Why
do I feel like I'm spinning my wheels? Why do
I feel like I'm stuck in one spot? Well, because
you're trying to hold onto the sameness while you're just
using language and telling yourself thoughts about wanting to change.
If we take that thought process away, what are you

(45:08):
doing Because you're living the same as you've always lived,
are the same as you've lived in this last season
of your life. You can't be different and the same
at the same time. What are you willing to change?
And that's not unique to any individual. That's the human experience.
There is something about being a human where our egos
they don't go, oh wow, this change would be great

(45:29):
for us, let's dive in. That ego really grips sameness.
And I think that comes from survival for centuries since
the beginning of time, the beginning of humanity, because stepping
into an unknown was dangerous, and so we learned at
a very deep level to just hold on to sameness,
even when that sameness is screwing us over is not working.

(45:52):
So it takes a lot of courage and a lot
of I think just seeing and that might be insight again,
but seeing, oh, that is what I'm doing. I'm trying
to be the same and different. No wonder, this is
getting weird and struggle bussy. Let me let go of that.
Let me just try to be different in these simple ways.
It's why I'm so passionate about offering simple strategies. And

(46:14):
it's simple. It's not easy, but if you let it
be simple, you stop chattering in your mind about it
and you just go do this stillness thing. Let's just
do this thing, Nicky or Eric suggested, let's just do
it for a while, stop thinking about it and do it.
Then you can see yourself in the change, and that
becomes its own self motivator.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yep. I think what gets so difficult is that we
have all these inner voices that often want different things,
and they all sound like us, you know. I mean
That's been one of my insights, is well, whether it's
my alcoholic voice, or my inner child voice, or my
grown up voice, my ere voice, whatever, they all sound

(46:59):
like me. They all know how to impersonate Eric very well.
And so what gets hard is it's like, well, I
decided I'm going to do this change, but now the
same voice that decided I was going to do that
change is now telling me that that's stupid and it's
never going to work. And so then I believe that
I often think about, like when I got sober, I

(47:19):
sometimes feel like like fifty one percent of me wanted
to give up drugs and forty nine percent of me
did not, And those two were engaged in moral struggle
for a while, and eventually that proportion has changed. Right
now it's like ninety nine percent does not one percent
still like, well, come on, we need to think about this,
but ninety nine percent of me knows it's a terrible idea.

(47:41):
And I think when those things are closer to fifty
one forty nine, which is often the case when we
start to make a change because we're still getting something
out of the old thing, sorting those voices out is
really difficult. How do you encourage people to be able
to sort that out and know what's their way wiser voice,
what's their truer voice.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
I think when people listen to my show over time,
that starts to clarify because very often I am speaking
to different parts, and in the work that I've done
with my clients and myself over the years, it's in
really differentiating and learning to hear the difference in those voices. Okay,
I have trained myself into nothing's one hundred percent right,

(48:27):
but damn near one hundred percent. Where I don't make
a decision, I don't mean like what cheese do I
want to buy at the grocery store? Not just big decisions.
I basically don't make a decision without the check in
which part of me is at the home. So that
I have learned to distinguish the difference between is that
an inner child part and in that moment, I might

(48:49):
give in what my inner child wants that might very
much fit the situation. But the person that I give
the power to, the part that I give the power
to is my wise woman. So there's always the check
in there for hey, wise woman, what do you think
about this? Because my wise woman is always going to
want what is best for me because she is the
wisest part of me, and I'm checking in with her

(49:09):
for her wisdom, her hard earned wisdom, and the easier
wisdom too. I can differentiate my inner child for my
inner adolescent. When people work with me, I'm often pointing
that out because I can sense their resistance. If I
throw a suggestion, I'll go, ooh, what did your interadolescent
think about this? And they'll go, how did you know
that I had that kind of reaction? I saw it,
I felt it, I sensed it. Did you feel it?

(49:30):
Insense it? Yeah? I did? All right? What makes me
call that the inner adolescent? And that's just my name
for that resistant part. And if you were neglected a
lot as a kid, if you were parentified, if you
were abused a lot like I was, you got to
deal with your inner adolescent. Whence therapists would tell me
things that I knew, damn good and well would have
been good for me to do, I would feel my

(49:52):
inner adolescent resist and there were not very many skilled
therapists that could call me on that. It's part of
why I do because that inter adolescent and basically pokes
its head up and goes, excuse me. You basically raise yourself. Now,
this therapeutic boso is going to tell you to do something,
and what you're just going to do it? You raised yourself.
You don't need this shit, And that really is the vibe.

(50:13):
Sometimes you can hear that language, but that's really the vibe.
It is a feeling that washes over and if you
don't know how to wrangle that, how to start attending
to that. I think that's where people have tons of relapses.
They have tons of slips and all kinds of different behavior,
not just addictively, because they don't understand when that part
sort of takes over. And then after when your wise

(50:35):
part comes back and you look at the choices you made,
then you have to go through this whole shame process.
I know better, Why did I do that? How many
times am I gonna have to learn this lesson? How
many times am I gonna have to talk about the
same thing? What's going on with me? Then you have
to work through that too. So at a point when
you start to really give the baton to your wise
woman or your wise man, you start to realize, oh,

(50:58):
I waste less energy processing I make less mistakes. I
kind of like that. Actually, Oh that's what's helping that
inner child and that inner adolescent actually grow up because
I'm giving them what they need. Because what they need
are proper yes, is in proper nos, proper encouragement, and
proper discouragement. Sometimes really so, I want to tap in

(51:19):
somebody to parent me. And we all have that part.
And I can prove that we all have that part
because most people will admit to me if I said, hey,
would you say what you're saying inside of your own
head to a five year old orn eight year old?

Speaker 2 (51:33):
No?

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Why? Well, because that would crush them. Then simply do
not say anything to yourself. Disallow yourself, tell yourself, no,
tell yourself. I'm not going to listen to that. If
you wouldn't say it to a five or an eight
year old, probably shouldn't be saying it to yourself.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
So we are cultivating that wisdom and with more cultivation
and maybe more stillness too, meditating on what was this
part of me? Why did that wash over me when
that part gave me that suggestion? Why did I want
to give them the middle finger instead of going thanks?
I'll consider that. Because I'm a grown up, I can
take or toss out any advice. Why the resistance to

(52:11):
hearing the advice and working through that inter adolescent resistance?
I think it's the missing piece for a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
That missing piece being able to recognize which quote unquote
part of us is at the helm.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Oh yeah, because I'm complex and most of my highly
sensitive people are. I'm super complex. I like almost everything,
So asking me what I want to eat, like, oh
my gosh, like everything, you know, Like I want to
experience everything. So I have to have a part of
me that is going to be at the helm that
can just say, you know what, just make a quick decision.

(52:44):
That's what we'll serve you right now.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
And the more that you work with differentiating these parts,
even if you're hearing me say that and you're like,
I don't know how to how to feel that out,
that's the very thing. It's like, how do you work
up to big muscles at the gym. You don't show
up and lift one hundred pound weight. You might start
with a three pound weight. You might even start with
a one pound weight, And so emotionally and in terms

(53:07):
of getting to know yourself better, just start where you are.
The more that you work with those parts, it's like
lifting heavier and heavier weight, and before you know it,
you're lifting heavier weight and it feels really light. It
feels really easy because you've worked up to it. So
just check in with yourself. And when I teach my
Boundaries course every October, I lead with, hey, please don't

(53:29):
go to the most difficult person in your life and
try to set a boundary. And everybody laughs because that's
how almost everybody shows up to that. They're like, yeah,
give me the wisdom, Nikki, and then I'm gonna go
tackle the tallest mountain. It's like, start small, Start small,
confront the barista who keeps getting your name wrong. You know, like,

(53:49):
let yourself grow into healthy confrontation with yourself and with
other people. Let yourself grow into healthy yeses and healthy
knows Healthiness is available even if you feel super lost.
Just start where you are and cultivate that relationship with
your wise man and your wise woman, because you have
it in there. That is definitely a part of you,

(54:09):
and you're either going to feed it or you're going
to feed the other parts, maybe the immature parts, maybe
the dysfunctional parts, the rebellious parts, feed that wise part.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Yep, that's so funny. In the Spiritual Habits program, one
of the principles is around allowing things to be the
way they are right. It's about acceptance or it's about
not resisting, and inevitably, nearly everybody will be like, well,
how do I accept that children are being abused? And
I'm like, all right, so let's slow down, Like I'm
not asking you to accept that, but let's not go

(54:40):
to the very worst, possible, hardest things in the world,
Like can you just work on accepting that you need
to go to work this morning? Like can we start
with the little stuff? Can we stop resisting all the
little parts of our day that we know we're going
to do.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Anyway, I think that's a younger part. I think that's
a younger part that has misunderstood wisdom there, because if
I say it back to you like this, we can
really kind of hear it. It's like the little kid
in us goes boo, I don't like that everybody's gonna
die worst case scenario? What about the worst case scenario?
What about the worst thing ever, the worst thing I

(55:17):
could think of? And so we need our wise part
to come in in that moment and go, oh, honey,
you don't have to take on the hardest thing right
now in this moment. That's not gonna help you talk
about is that useful or not? Exactly as you marinate,
because I think it's more of a marinating than a
headspace learning of the knowledge. Because I know this for sure. Okay,

(55:39):
I'm on your show. I know for my show, I
suspect for yours too. There are gonna be so many
people listening right now who are really frustrated with where
they are. And I know part of the problem. Part
of the problem is you're just listening to podcasts, you're
just talking in therapy. You gotta let yourself actionably do
these things. Yes, even just sitting still. Maybe your threshold

(56:01):
is twenty seconds the first time you sit and get still.
But you've got to encourage yourself to really do the
things that will move you forward and help yourself grow
that wise woman and really do it. Give that baton
to the wise woman or the wise man in you
and play around with it. Life is an experiment and

(56:23):
you have to sort of experiment with these things and
marinate inside of them. And that's how our change comes.
It's not because you took a quick pill or you
did one exercise or one course. Yep, this stuff will
come together. But please don't just listen to my podcast
or anybody's like, please do the stuff, or you're going
to feel doubly frustrated because you think you're doing the

(56:46):
things when you're really just thinking the things. You gotta
do the things too.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
Let's change directions a little bit here. We're nearing the
end of our time. But you've used the term multiple
times highly sensitive, and it's something you talk about a
fair amount. So what does that mean. I have a
sense in my mind of what I mean by it,
but I'm curious how you're using that term.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
So there's a lot of science behind high sensitivity. Doctor
Elaine Aaron is the one that first coined the term,
and she's written the books and there they're pretty scientific,
heady books to get through. There's a lot of science there.
Emotionally and functionally, we know that we have people who
have different intelligences, you know, we have people who have
different abilities to see with their eyeballs, to hear with

(57:30):
their ears. People have different emotional intelligence too. We also
have different sensory systems. So there are some professionals who
will make the argument that trauma is wholly responsible for
creating high sensitivity. Others will say we're born with it.
I'm balanced between those two, no surprise, they're hearing me

(57:51):
talk about balance, all show the balance there is strong
for me. So I believe that I was born with
a propensity, a predisp position to be more of an observer,
to be more feeling, driven, to sense my world through
more of my being than my thought process. Just a difference,

(58:13):
just like I'm born with curly kind of wavy hair
and somebody else is born with straight hair. It's just
a difference we have. Then, trauma heightens our sensitivity because
to survive, any kid growing up in a home, okay,
is either trying to deny what's going on and block
it out, or is observing everything and taking it in.

(58:35):
We're very spongy is highly sensitive people. So I say
a lot. I sponged up a lot in my childhood,
and healing has been ringing out that sponge and being
able to be more intentional with what I'm gonna let
that sponge soak up. Okay, highly sensitive people. As a tribe,
we tend to be highly conscientious, sometimes too much. So
if we were conditioned to be a people pleaser, that's

(58:57):
a struggle. How do we please ours and other people
enough to not be in the realm of overfunctioning? For
other people, just like overthinking versus just thinking. How do
we function for ourselves and others without overfunctioning? Okay, we
tend to be overly conscientious. We tend to be observers
of others in energy and action. We tend to not

(59:21):
so much psychic. Some people might use that word. I
don't the gift of prophecy. It's like we can sense
things coming. And because we can sense what's coming, we
tend to be highly attuned to preventing future struggle. So
all of these little quirks that we have as highly
sensitive people take tools, take understanding, take awareness. So many

(59:43):
people show up to me going, Nikki, how do I
dial down this high sensitivity, And I'm like sorry to
tell you can't. You can learn how to work with
it and embrace it and make it a tool and
a gift. And sometimes it's hard. Life is tough. It
always has been for every species on the planet, you know,
So this expectation of it's just going to be easy

(01:00:05):
at some point, No, life is going to be a
certain amount of struggle, but you get to have more ease.
I think when you understand your makeup who you are
as a highly sensitive person, I heard all my life
I'm too sensitive. So a lot of sensitive people, interestingly
and paradoxically will tell me sometimes they think they're too much,

(01:00:26):
and then other times they think they're too little. So
learning how to be the amount of who we are
and accept who we are, learning how to advocate that, yes,
I'm an intense person. There's nothing wrong with my emotionality.
I'm intense. So if I'm in a coffee shop or
a grocery store, just randomly running errands, I can feel

(01:00:46):
a wave wash over me. If a baby smiles at me,
I might get teary just from the beauty of this
little being taken a moment to connect with me, like
his spirit to my spirit, and I might tear up.
Fifteen years ago, I would have been ashamed, embarrassed. I
would have held my head. I would have apologized if
anybody noticed me crying. Today, I have taught myself and

(01:01:09):
grown into in that moment, keeping my head held up high.
And when other people get weird, oh showing emotion in public,
I look at them and I say, it's okay. I'm
tearful and I'm strong, it's all right, And watching their
wheels turn on that like what is this crazy lady saying,
and then watching them go, yeah, okay, all right, maybe

(01:01:31):
she can be strong and emotional at the same time.
The more that I have worked on accepting who I
am in the world and not seeing myself as a problem,
the more that I am in self respect and self
regard of myself, and then I'm walking the world teaching
people how to treat me and teaching them to have
regard for my sensitivity too. One of my things is

(01:01:53):
that we are highly sensitive. We are not delicate, and
I absolutely resist any teaching, any therapy, any coaching, anything
that gives someone directly or indirectly the message that they
are delicate and they better tend to their delicacy. We
are sensitive, and we are strong. We are sensitive and
we are tough. We are not delicate, and going into

(01:02:14):
delicacy is victim mode, and it will not serve you.
If becoming the victim actually helps you in any way,
I'd be all for it. It will thwart you, it
will ruin a life, it will ruin satisfaction, it will
ruin purpose, and it will make your life small and
good healthy people will not hang out with a constant victim.
So this victim mentality that's getting pushed. I am against it,

(01:02:34):
particularly for highly sensitive people. You are strong and you
are capable to surmount anything, even in the moments where
you think you can't. And when sensitive people step into
their strength and their self acceptance, my god, are they
are force?

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Yeah? I really like that. So listener and thinking about
that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
If you were going to isolate just one top insight
that you're taking away, it be remember little by little,
a little becomes a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly
taking positive action. And I want to give you a
tip on that, and it's to start small. It's really

(01:03:12):
important when we're trying to implement new habits to often
start smaller than we think we need to, because what
that does is it allows us to get victories. And
victories are really important because we become more motivated when
we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less motivated
when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting small
and making sure that you succeed, you build your motivation

(01:03:35):
for further change down the road. If you'd like a
step by step guide for how you can easily build
new habits that feed your good Wolf. Go to Goodwolf
dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Well,
I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up
on that really strong message there of not being delicate,

(01:03:56):
sensitive and strong.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
Thank you sir, Thank you for having me and spending
time with me.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Thank you so much. I love talking with you and
I will see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
I appreciate it so much.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this
monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
We are so grateful for the members of our community.
We wouldn't be able to do what we do without

(01:04:42):
their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
To learn more, make a donation at any level and
become a member of the One You Feed community, go
to oneufeed dot net slash join. The One You Feed
podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
the show.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Eric Zimmer

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The #1 Mindset Shift to Stop Overthinking and Start Living with Nikki Eisenhauer