September 20, 2024 • 39 mins
Welcome to another episode of Get Your Happy Back with Nina Lockwood. In this uplifting conversation, Nina sits down with Lisa Giruzzi, a peak performance transformational coach, best-selling author, and accomplished speaker.
Lisa shares her transformative approach to coaching, emphasizing the importance of removing obstacles that hinder true happiness and peak performance. She introduces the concept of "unconditional living," explaining how letting go of societal and self-imposed "shoulds" can pave the way to a more fulfilling and joyful life.
Throughout the episode, Lisa delves into the common misconceptions about happiness, the impact of thoughts and feelings on our well-being, and the freedom that comes with detaching from societal expectations. She also touches on her personal experiences, including the profound insights she gained during her husband's health crisis and her mother's passing.
Join Nina and Lisa as they explore practical ways to shift from a survival mindset to one of creativity and play, offering listeners a fresh perspective on living a life free from unnecessary stress and filled with genuine happiness.
Connect with Lisa:
www.transformationalconversations.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagiruzzicoach/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Nina Lockwood. Welcome to Get Your Happy Back.
Stories and insights that will inspire you to find new sources of happiness in your own life.
Hello and welcome to Get Your Happy Back.
And today we are going to have fun. We're going to talk with Lisa Jerusi. Lisa, welcome.
(00:21):
Thank you. I am so excited to be here. So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about Lisa.
Lisa is a peak performance coach. She's a best-selling author.
She's an accomplished speaker.
Lisa, tell us about your books, your company, and how you help your clients.
How I help my clients is to take the things out of the way that are in the way
(00:46):
of them performing and living life in the way that they most want to.
My work is not about adding more information.
I'm a transformative coach. My company name is actually Transformational Conversations.
I've been in that conversation for 30 years on how to live life differently,
but it doesn't start with actions.
(01:09):
It starts way more upstream and how you see life.
And so I help people to see what's in the way.
Primarily, I focus on business, although it permeates throughout people's lives.
Lives and I absolutely love what I do. I've been coaching for 30 years.
(01:29):
It's evolved dramatically over that time and my books, both of them were written
more than 10 years ago when I was coaching in a different way.
I still think they're valuable, but they're not the books I would have written today.
I actually have a new book in mind that I'm toying with.
(01:50):
So since this conversation is mostly about finding and keeping happiness,
in your experience, what do you think gets in the way of people's happiness,
however we define it or they define it?
It's a great question. I've been thinking about this ever since we talked about my being a guest.
(02:11):
And it's really in line with what I think my next book is about.
I like to call it unconditional living.
Like that term. Yeah. When we think about people talk about unconditional love,
I think that there's something about the conditions we place on what life is
supposed to be like that keeps us from happy.
(02:35):
And I say that because me too. Not like, oh, everyone else.
I mean, but what I've discovered, especially over the last six to eight years,
has been happiness is there for the taking at any moment, regardless of what's happening.
It's only because I have a condition that I think is necessary for me to be happy.
(03:00):
You mean like one of those shoulds? Exactly.
That's my idea for my book. It's unconditional living or letting go of the should life.
And, you know, just seems to me that we innocently place all these conditions
and have this idea that there's this ideal life that we should be living.
(03:26):
It's like this parallel universe where Lisa's the right weight.
She's the right age. She's the
perfect success story. like there's this perfection to this ideal life.
And I'm constantly, you know, my life was a lot about comparing myself to this
imaginary parallel life.
(03:47):
And that is the recipe for unhappiness and suffering and despair.
FYI. I've been there. I know that one. Yeah, yeah.
And so the more and more I live in what's happening now.
And I don't mean that in some fancy schmancy way, but really,
(04:08):
you know, I think it's Byron Katie who said, when you argue with reality,
you lose, but only every time.
And it's true, right? Like this shouldn't be happening.
I shouldn't be this I shouldn't have that thought.
I should be happy, right? Like all the shoulds that are in the fabric of how we live.
(04:32):
And thinking that happiness is a someday event when I make this much money or
I get the right job or have the right significant other or whatever. Yeah.
We have all this thinking around when happiness is going to happen rather than being happy. Yes.
And I definitely have been a recipient of that kind of conditioning,
(04:57):
both in my own family and then society, school, you name it.
We get it from every corner, every magazine, how things should be.
This ideal life that really ends up making us feel so unhappy. happy.
One of the things I wondered if you have noticed is that as you've gotten older.
(05:20):
Those requirements, those shoulds seem less demanding.
Because one of the things I was thinking about as I was telling you about that
Roseanne Cash concert that I saw the other night is that I think one of the
blessings of getting older is realizing you don't have to prove yourself to anyone anymore.
(05:42):
You've already done that. You've already accomplished things.
You've already checked off the bucket list of things that are supposed to make you happy.
And now there's a certain kind of freedom that you don't have to answer to someone
in a way that is inauthentic anymore.
And I wonder what you thought about that. It's hard for me to say,
(06:02):
because, you know, if I had known this, that what I know now at 25,
I don't know how life would have been.
And certainly many of my clients are much younger than I am and are transforming
how they relate to life and letting go of the whole proving mentality.
(06:22):
Not everywhere, but more and more because I still find at times,
I still compare myself to other people.
That's one of those things that is a total recipe for unhappiness.
Whether I'm comparing myself to someone who I think is doing worse than me or
someone I'm doing better, it's still not good, right?
And I don't even mean not good like, oh, I shouldn't do that.
(06:45):
I mean, it's another argument with reality.
I think it's likely that I'm less as I've aged.
And as I continue to age, I think I have more space for other people to be where
they're They're at one of the fundamental shifts that I saw about eight years
ago or so was that life wasn't happening to me. It was happening through me.
(07:12):
And all the work that I had done up until that point, I had a certainly talk
to people about their thoughts distinct from facts.
I talked to people about, you know, using their strengths versus their weaknesses.
And there were a lot of systems versus psychology, like a lot of those things I talked about.
But the piece that was missing for me, that when I say it out loud sounds really, duh, but I missed it.
(07:41):
Sometimes the most obvious of things, that there was something beyond thoughts
and feelings and circumstances.
Circumstances that was who I essentially
am that the thoughts and feelings and
circumstances were arising inside of and that was a game changer for me I could
(08:05):
no longer not see it right like I could see the moods coming and going the thoughts
coming and going the things I thought were important not
being as important at different times.
All of that was going on and my life was getting better and better and that
I was more at peace and happy so much more of the time.
(08:30):
My circumstances didn't dramatically change overnight, but who I was was so
clear to me and who I wasn't was very clear to me.
So can I ask a question here? here. When you talk about who you were,
are, are you referring to your true nature or are you referring to something else?
(08:53):
Yeah, I would say true nature is a way of saying it. I think of it as the screen
that life is projected onto, like, you know, Rupert Spire talks about an aware space, right?
Like an aware, that yeah, our true nature is this aware consciousness,
this knowing, right this look when a baby is born.
(09:17):
There's an aware space and the baby isn't even, doesn't even know they're there,
you know, like there's a body and all of that.
And then that gets all added. And I think there's a real freedom in seeing that
all unhappiness, all, you know, shoulds, all of that is all added,
(09:42):
that none of it's true that the one
fundamental truth and we are like we
exist there's an existence that's the one
fundamental truth and everything else is made up and so there's just so much
freedom in that you know it doesn't mean bad stuff doesn't happen you know as
(10:02):
you know my husband had a brain bleed in 2020 and almost died i didn't get out
of that because i had this misunderstanding.
I didn't not have moments of despair and suffering because I had this understanding.
But what I did have in it, that no matter what happened, it was all going to be okay.
(10:24):
And that it wasn't up to me how it went.
And in that space of it not being up to me, all kinds of cool,
creative ways of dealing with life came to me.
Ideas came to mind that were available, I think, because I was so clear this
was outside my realm of knowledge or understanding or control.
(10:47):
And so there was nowhere to go. It was 2020, pandemic, nobody else around.
So it was me and my husband dealing with his recovery day in and day out,
making it up as we went along.
It's not like, oh, I know this now, so I never get unhappy. No,
it's that there's, it doesn't affect me in the same way.
(11:10):
It's like a thunderstorm. You know, it's going to come and go.
No thunderstorm ever stuck around forever.
What I'd love to do is sort of unpack what you're saying,
because it sounds like, and you know,
I'm familiar with this understanding as well, that once we are aware that there's
something else running the show and that it's not that God is my co-pilot,
(11:36):
it's that we're God's co-pilot,
that that freedom that you don't have to control your circumstances makes you less.
Are identified with what feelings you have or what thoughts you have.
They come and go because we're in this, I mean, nobody knows where thoughts come from.
(11:56):
They just come in and then they go out again after a while.
What I'm wondering if you can add to this conversation is how this kind of freedom
makes it easier to live life.
So I don't have to be identified with my own thoughts.
I I don't have to be identified with the rules of the game that society has
(12:18):
set up for us because we're making everything up. So could you speak to that?
One thing I think that's super cool is that because I am so clear that I can't
control anything, it's just not up to me how things go.
That doesn't mean I don't show up to my office every day and do things and take
(12:43):
actions. It just gives you the freedom to play the game, not worrying about
the result. It's like an improv.
It's like the difference between when you are attached to a particular result, right?
Like I need this client or I got to get this sale or I need to be this way or whatever the goal is.
(13:06):
You're so attached to it. Like you've identified that, A, it's up to you and
somehow your happiness depends on it, right? We put all the significance and weight on it.
Creates this like this lane that you
have to stay inside of and then when you're inside that
lane the choices look really scary right
(13:27):
because what if it doesn't turn out what if i never you
know get that thing or weigh that away and so it's like this level 10 problem
just add all that pressure and all that significance now every action is like
you're you're trying to walk a marathon with 50-pound weights on each ankle,
(13:47):
right? That's what it's like.
But when you have the experience of, oh, I want this thing. I really want this thing to happen.
Wouldn't it be cool if I got this, if this thing happened, if I was able to
make it happen? Now it's play.
Now it's like, okay, how do I, what would be fun to do?
What would I like to learn, right? And it's this experiment that you're in life
(14:13):
experimenting and seeing how it, what happens.
Like I'm working with a client right now to help build her business.
And, you know, she comes to the conversation and she's like,
no, no, this is real. I have to make money.
And we fall into these traps all the time.
And I'm like, well, how's that thinking working for you?
Like, how's believing that working for you? Are you enjoying your work?
(14:37):
Are you, are you making the calls you need to make? No.
Are your conversations free and interesting? No.
Okay. Well, how about we try something else? Like what if it isn't up to you?
What if this is about providing the service that you provide and helping people?
What would you do then? Then it becomes, oh, I'd call this person or I'd offer this product.
(15:01):
Like 50 ideas come to mind or of these ideas, which one feels most fun or most interesting to you.
Picks one or two. Okay, let's experiment with them this week. Let's see what happens.
Now she's having a different week, more freedom.
It doesn't mean that the worry doesn't come and go. It just means it doesn't
(15:23):
have to be the avenue to get to what you want because it never really works.
That's really a great point. And so here's a scenario and tell me,
flesh this one out for me.
So you've got someone in their job who has their boss or their board,
whoever, breathing down their neck. You've got to get this in.
(15:46):
You've got this deadline.
You have to make sure X, Y, and Z happen.
To implement what you're talking about or to be able to see what you're talking
about, how would someone need to shift the sense of panic and urgency and,
holy smokes, if I don't do this, I'm in big trouble?
Well, I don't think you have to shift that. That'll shift on its own.
(16:09):
I think that we have this misunderstanding that we have to feel a certain way
to perform. And that's just not true.
You can perform, I mean, under any feelings. It's just whether you give the
feelings importance or not, right?
If I said, I need you to go ride this bike and you have to go this many miles
by this amount of time, you would just figure out, okay, it's this many miles.
(16:32):
How many miles can I ride on the bike?
And you would figure it out and you would just go ride the bike.
You wouldn't go, well, how do I get motivated to ride the bike?
No, you just get on a riding bike, right?
I think the thing that gets in the way with something like that is,
and I know it's happened to me too, is I add too many shoulds and what ifs.
(16:53):
You know, the what ifs are, what if I don't get it done, worrying about the
future, rather than dealing with the facts.
Okay, this is an agreement I have to do this. It's part of my job.
They need it by this date at this time.
Between now and then, how do I make that work? What information do I need to get?
(17:15):
We get too caught up in what if it doesn't turn out?
And then that creates the pressure.
The board isn't or the boss isn't creating pressure. Our mind creates the pressure
because we make something more important than something else.
So my coaching would be, what are the facts? Is it doable?
(17:35):
If they said, I need this by tomorrow at 8 a.m. and it's 6 p.m.,
I'm going to be like, that ain't happening.
Because I'm not staying up all night, right? Like, you know,
and then I would negotiate and create an agreement.
I think that if it's something that's doable, and you may have to ask,
well, what other priorities can I let go while I'm working on this,
(17:58):
giving my sole focus to this?
It's just what needs to get done.
That's a very different approach for most people.
Because here's something that came
up in my mind as you were talking is that there's
one line of thinking which is trust your feelings
which I think is different from trust your gut instinct trust something deeper
(18:22):
in you but if if we're taught to trust our feelings then we get so identified
with them the scary feelings or the pressure feelings or the anger feelings
whatever whatever they are,
is that we can't be present to what needs to be done in the moment.
I would agree with that. And I think a lot of times it's because we've,
(18:44):
I think, been, we have a misunderstanding that our feelings are coming from the world.
It's not. It's coming from, it's not the way we're thinking because we aren't
thinking. Thinking is happening.
And when we have thoughts, the system called the human body,
which, you know, we've had this dichotomy of the brain and the body,
(19:05):
like it's two different things.
It's all one system, right? So when you have a thought, we have a sensation
that comes with the thought.
And so then we identify the sensation with a label called feeling,
you know, angry, happy, sad, whatever.
If you took the circumstances out and you just had the experience,
(19:25):
you wouldn't know what the experience is, right?
They, you know, excitement and, and fear look very much the same in a body,
right? The sensations are very similar.
And so I think that people identify with their feelings or get enamored with
that because it looks like it's coming from the world.
(19:47):
So give me an example of that, something that you, you would mistake that something
was coming Coming from the world.
Well, a deadline or the boss saying, I need this done by such and such a time
or else, or even if the or else is implied, right?
Like, that's a very neutral thing.
The world, you know, the world is neutral, but you get a bunch of people together,
(20:09):
they're going to a whole lot of agreement around that stress,
that's pressure, right?
You look at Olympic athletes, they are not stressed when they're performing at the Olympics.
They are the opposite of that, right? They have, they can't control the outcome.
They go and they perform. And the quietest mind performs the best.
(20:30):
And it's not even that their mind is necessarily quiet.
It's that They're not paying attention to what's going through their mind.
They have their attention on this moment of now, this balance beam or this,
you know, swimming or whatever.
It's in this moment of now. So they're having the thoughts just like everybody
(20:52):
else. No, they're not relevant.
Such a great point that there are especially those things that don't feel so
good. The thoughts that feel crummy.
Yeah. Yeah, but not taking them as the path I need to go down.
I coach a triathlete. He also runs marathons all the time.
(21:14):
And he competes, competitive, right?
And so I'm coaching him not on that, because that's not my area.
I'm coaching him, he's a leader in an organization.
And so we talk all the time about how when he's running, I said,
when does the mind get loud?
Really loud. He goes, yeah, about mile marker 18 or so. I go, what's it saying? Stop.
(21:39):
You're crazy. You don't need to run anymore. And I go, and how often do you
leave the race at mile marker 18? He goes, never. Why?
Well, because I'm committed to running the whole race.
Okay. Does the voice stop yelling at you? Never.
It doesn't stop. It just doesn't give it any attention. It doesn't, It's irrelevant.
(22:01):
It's an irrelevant commentary.
Because if he stopped at mile marker 18, what do you think of my thoughts would be then?
Oh, you loser. What's wrong with you? You only had, you know,
however many miles left. You gave up.
The brain does not let us win.
I love that phrase, irrelevant. It's just spinning.
(22:23):
It's so easy to believe that. Oh, that's right. I have to do this rather than
reclaiming that commitment.
Which I think is easily distracted. We're easily distracted from it when we
start believing the thoughts that are making us feel like we can't do it.
(22:44):
It's so innocent because we
have this misinterpretation about how the mind-body system works, right?
It's that, oh, something, there's such a thing as stress happening to me.
And that's just never true.
There's such a thing as unhappy happy happening to me. I mean,
I recently, my mom passed away earlier this year.
(23:05):
There was every emotion under the sun, including joy and happiness and at her
wake seeing people I haven't seen in years.
Cousins showing up. The joy and love in that room was everywhere.
And my mom was in the casket. And there was that too.
Explain that, right? Like people say, oh, what about dying? Okay.
(23:30):
I've never been to a wake where there hasn't been laughter and love and joy
and sadness. It's all there.
So there's no thing that happens that causes a reaction.
That is a made up thing because that's how it looks.
But the actual way that
(23:51):
it works is the opposite stuff happens it's all neutral and then based on our
neural pathways we have a reaction and that reaction looks like it's coming
from the outside but it isn't not really a reaction we have a conditioned thoughts,
you know they look real so suddenly oh my god my boss oh my god this is my job
(24:16):
my job my business my kids my this my that whatever it is like there's always
just stuff happening and then commentary and the commentary is irrelevant.
Unless it's knowledge that you need. I work with emergency medical services leaders.
I co-own my second business. I co-own a leadership academy for paramedics and EMTs.
(24:42):
I love working with them for so many reasons.
But one of my favorite things is that they think EMS is stressful.
Goodness gracious, if we did a survey, so would everybody, right?
So when we slow down and we really explore it, and I say, okay,
think about one of your critical incidents that you've been on,
(25:02):
like 2% to 4% of the time, to be honest,
maybe 5% of the time, of all the calls are what they consider critical incidents, life or death.
And I talk about that, and I say, okay, tell me about the incident itself.
What happens the moment you get on scene?
I do this, I do this, I do this. assess the situation
(25:24):
you start at taking action where's the
stress comes in after during the
time they're there and this is universal their
mind is so quiet just like the olympic performers it's what needs to happen
this needs to happen this needs to happen this needs that they know they can't
control the outcome but they're going to do their damnedest to make sure that
(25:45):
person gets to the hospital and the hospital takes care of what's next so then
we talk about what happens next?
And what happens next? What ifs?
And shoulds, the commentary, and they mistake it for truth.
And that's where stress comes from. And that's where burnout comes from.
It's not what's happening because they're well-trained for that.
(26:09):
They're not trained at all with how to deal with the barrage of thoughts that come in.
So when they can start to disconnect that, they start to see that they did the
absolute best they could in that moment.
They couldn't have done it any differently, no matter what.
They could not have done it any differently.
The freedom that comes from that. They don't have to add a 50-pound weight to
(26:33):
their back for the next call. They're free.
That's what I'm interested in. And that freedom is, I think,
an expression of that true nature of ours, that essential, the baby,
born as a baby, you're happy.
Unless there's some trauma that's been transmitted genetically or something,
(26:54):
you know, nine babies out of 10 are, let me at it, let me at life.
Isn't this amazing? This is exciting.
And then all of the shoulds happen and all the expectations start to get layered on us.
But that initial beingness is such so obviously happy and And happy to be alive.
(27:17):
And they cry when they're wet. And they're hungry. They have a sensation.
They voice that, you know, whatever. But it comes and goes.
Yeah. And we see it. And that's humans in their natural state.
And everything, once we get the ability to have concepts and language...
(27:38):
Then we start to go into survival. Yeah. And again, surviving a situation is the opposite of happy.
Right. That's for sure. Yeah. And the brain is geared towards survival. That's innocent.
That's how we got to be a species that still exists, right?
Evolution is a powerful thing. But when you see that, oh, my brain also is able to thrive.
(28:05):
First system that got created was the amygdala and
that is fight or flight that is all survival and
that has the ability to determine
where the resources go in our body
so if i'm even have a whiff of this is a dangerous situation it could just be
(28:25):
dangerous because i'm walking into a room full of people i don't know it doesn't
even have to be someone's chasing me with an ax or something Somebody didn't
like my cooking. I mean, it could be that ridiculous, right?
My body reacts like I'm being chased with an X.
And so the resources go from the highest functioning part of the brain.
(28:49):
No, no, we don't need that during fight or flight.
We need to be able to run and breathe a lot, right? So that's where the resources go.
So that's why I tell people, do not trust your feelings and sensations.
Most of the time, they're giving you the wrong information, innocently, but it's true, right?
(29:11):
Because we're in fight or flight. If we're not distinguishing our thinking from
reality, we're in fight or flight.
So how is this different from a stress reduction program, what you're talking about?
I mean, it is a form of stress reduction, but it's different than what we commonly
refer to as stress reduction.
(29:33):
Yeah. For me, the way it looks to me, stress reduction has the assumption that
stress is a thing that exists in the world and we have to do something about it.
In my work and in my own experiences, stress is like a thunderstorm.
It comes and goes. chose.
Stress is not necessary for anything. It's a label that I put on a particular
(29:57):
experience, and I have no idea if that experience is the same for you as it is for me.
One of my favorite examples of this is I love giving speeches.
I absolutely love it. Put me in front of a room, baby. I love it. That's where I live.
You can put someone else in front of the the same room, and they're like,
quivering, right? Fear of public speaking.
(30:20):
Yeah. Well, if public speaking was scary, wouldn't we all be afraid?
So it's not an inherent quality. And I think that's what I'm hearing.
And what you're sharing is that the emotions that we attribute to an event,
we think that the event is what's causing it rather than our interpretation of the event itself?
(30:42):
The moment people get that I'm working with when I'm coaching someone and they
get experientially, so not, oh, this is a good idea, but they actually see for
themselves that their thoughts are irrelevant,
that their relationship to their thoughts is what's the problem.
It's thoughts themselves aren't a problem. It's the relationship we have to.
(31:04):
So if we have reverence for them, we believe them, we think they're relevant, right?
All that. When you unhook that, when you see that is not who you are,
that's not your essential being, and relating to your thoughts.
As clouds on a windy day, dress seems to disappear. It doesn't lessen. It's gone.
(31:26):
It's just not there. It doesn't look necessary. I don't need to get stressed to get this done.
That's like I'm adding something to this mix that doesn't need to be added.
I'm making it more complex.
So there's just getting the thing done. And I might have thoughts about it.
I might have worried thoughts about it, but that's not relevant.
(31:49):
So talk about the difference between there are some thoughts that are brilliant
and some thoughts that are very self-destructive.
How do you know the difference between the two? I mean, that sounds like a silly
question, but it speaks to your perspective.
I have a couple of different ways that I approach this because I don't think
(32:12):
there's any black and white here in terms of what's a good thought or a bad thought.
Then that's a whole other nightmare I wouldn't want to get into, right?
But there seems to be a quality to certain things that I would call thoughts,
right? Like there's a quality to them.
When a thought comes through and I, it just feels right.
(32:36):
Aha, insight, I don't know what you want to call it, the night my husband was
in the ER and had the brain bleed.
And that moment of the knowing that came through was from such a different place
than an intellectual knowing.
It's very hard to put words to.
But the knowing was, this isn't up to me, and it's all going to be all right.
(33:01):
But not like he's going to be all right, or whatever my story about all right was.
It was more like, I have everything I need inside of me for whatever happens.
There's nothing going to happen that isn't handleable by,
not me, Lisa, the character that I play out,
but that deeper god within
(33:23):
all of us that what i call infinite intelligence like i can trust that like
i can trust get gravity like you know we don't think of it as trusting gravity
but it for me it's like it's the same there's gravity and there's this inner
knowing within every single human being.
(33:43):
And when we see that's there for our benefit, any moment of any day,
then life is just about creating, not about getting through or getting happy.
You know, it's just happiness is there.
And, and but for our shoulds and what ifs, it's all working out.
(34:03):
You know, it's, we just have this, like I said before, this parallel life that
we think we should be living.
Without that, we're just living this life.
This is the one. This is it. Have at it.
It's really, as you say, transformative when and if we can get to that point
(34:24):
where we don't think there's anything wrong with feelings that are uncomfortable.
Because so much of us and so much of this training that we get in the world
is that we're always supposed to be happy.
We're always supposed to be repeating our affirmations. We're always supposed
to be riding high. And yet.
(34:46):
Most people are not acknowledging or else they are acknowledging and ignoring
the advice that they're having all these feelings and they don't know what to
do with them as if they need to do something with them. Yeah.
Listen, that's why I became a social worker way back in the day was because
I wanted to feel better. Me too.
And that's why I was helping other people. You know, the first transformational
(35:11):
program I did back in 1993 was so I would feel better.
And for many years of my coaching, everything I was doing was to feel better.
And that was the biggest shift for me was to see that that was just not up to
me. And it's irrelevant.
It's irrelevant. Listen, I want to be happy as much as the next person.
(35:33):
I just know that the more I focus on that, I'm not living life.
The difference between playing the game and being in the stand talking about the game,
you know and they're both I just don't find it
as much fun to be in the sands you
know I like playing the game and I'm not
(35:54):
always there you know I tell my clients all
the time the minute I start walking on water my rates are going up but in the
meantime you know I'm on the path too I'm on this novice to mastery game and
I am you know seeing all the time where I'm projecting my
(36:14):
ideal onto myself,
other people, life.
I'd like to talk about something that you and I talked about on a previous conversation.
And I think you put it this way.
We were talking about people who are at that, especially women who are at that
(36:35):
point in their lives, they're saying, what else is there? And I think the way
you had phrased it is, I have everything I want, but I'm still not happy.
So how does what you're saying fill in the blanks of that conversation, of that statement?
One of my favorite sayings came from a former coach of mine who you know, Steve Chandler.
(36:57):
He used to say, and I love it, given the circumstances, everything in life is
really a design problem. problem and every design problem has constraints.
Now, if you think it's up to you how it turns out, that's not an easy question.
That's not a fun question.
(37:18):
But if you see that you are an infinite being and the only thing between you
and knowing that is your thoughts and believing your thoughts.
So now when it's like, okay, given the circumstances, what do I want to create?
And the thoughts come in, well, you can't do that.
You're this age or you're this weight or you're this amount of money or you
(37:38):
don't have enough in your bank account. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The question is no longer even present. But if you can look at that question
and not give any reverence to your thinking, suddenly you'll have a game to play.
So you're a woman of a certain age and you recognize like, is this it?
(38:01):
No, this is just what you've done so far.
Given your circumstances, knowing your thinking is totally irrelevant. relevant.
Like the commentators in a football game, right?
Their commentary is not relevant to the field of play ever. They're not moving the ball.
They're never moving the ball. They're just having an opinion about how the ball should get moved.
(38:26):
The ball moves through action, not through thinking about it.
So you go, okay, I'm at this point in my life.
I'm this many years old. I'm this, that, or the other. Whatever you want to
say, whatever you think the constraints are, which 90% of them are not,
maybe 95%, I don't know, some large percentage are not.
You go, okay, what game do I want to play?
(38:46):
Right? Like, what do I want to create? I'm an infinite being.
What do I want to create? Let's see what happens.
Love that. So again, thank you so much for spending a little time with me today.
And for those of you who are listening or watching, thank you for joining us.
And we will see you on the next conversation. So, bye for now.
(39:09):
Music.
This is Nina Lockwood. Welcome to Get Your Happy Back.
Stories and insights that will inspire you to find new sources of happiness in your own life.
Hello and welcome to Get Your Happy Back.
And today we are going to have fun. We're going to talk with Lisa Jerusi. Lisa, welcome.
(00:21):
Thank you. I am so excited to be here. So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about Lisa.
Lisa is a peak performance coach. She's a best-selling author.
She's an accomplished speaker.
Lisa, tell us about your books, your company, and how you help your clients.
How I help my clients is to take the things out of the way that are in the way
(00:46):
of them performing and living life in the way that they most want to.
My work is not about adding more information.
I'm a transformative coach. My company name is actually Transformational Conversations.
I've been in that conversation for 30 years on how to live life differently,
but it doesn't start with actions.
(01:09):
It starts way more upstream and how you see life.
And so I help people to see what's in the way.
Primarily, I focus on business, although it permeates throughout people's lives.
Lives and I absolutely love what I do. I've been coaching for 30 years.
(01:29):
It's evolved dramatically over that time and my books, both of them were written
more than 10 years ago when I was coaching in a different way.
I still think they're valuable, but they're not the books I would have written today.
I actually have a new book in mind that I'm toying with.
(01:50):
So since this conversation is mostly about finding and keeping happiness,
in your experience, what do you think gets in the way of people's happiness,
however we define it or they define it?
It's a great question. I've been thinking about this ever since we talked about my being a guest.
(02:11):
And it's really in line with what I think my next book is about.
I like to call it unconditional living.
Like that term. Yeah. When we think about people talk about unconditional love,
I think that there's something about the conditions we place on what life is
supposed to be like that keeps us from happy.
(02:35):
And I say that because me too. Not like, oh, everyone else.
I mean, but what I've discovered, especially over the last six to eight years,
has been happiness is there for the taking at any moment, regardless of what's happening.
It's only because I have a condition that I think is necessary for me to be happy.
(03:00):
You mean like one of those shoulds? Exactly.
That's my idea for my book. It's unconditional living or letting go of the should life.
And, you know, just seems to me that we innocently place all these conditions
and have this idea that there's this ideal life that we should be living.
(03:26):
It's like this parallel universe where Lisa's the right weight.
She's the right age. She's the
perfect success story. like there's this perfection to this ideal life.
And I'm constantly, you know, my life was a lot about comparing myself to this
imaginary parallel life.
(03:47):
And that is the recipe for unhappiness and suffering and despair.
FYI. I've been there. I know that one. Yeah, yeah.
And so the more and more I live in what's happening now.
And I don't mean that in some fancy schmancy way, but really,
(04:08):
you know, I think it's Byron Katie who said, when you argue with reality,
you lose, but only every time.
And it's true, right? Like this shouldn't be happening.
I shouldn't be this I shouldn't have that thought.
I should be happy, right? Like all the shoulds that are in the fabric of how we live.
(04:32):
And thinking that happiness is a someday event when I make this much money or
I get the right job or have the right significant other or whatever. Yeah.
We have all this thinking around when happiness is going to happen rather than being happy. Yes.
And I definitely have been a recipient of that kind of conditioning,
(04:57):
both in my own family and then society, school, you name it.
We get it from every corner, every magazine, how things should be.
This ideal life that really ends up making us feel so unhappy. happy.
One of the things I wondered if you have noticed is that as you've gotten older.
(05:20):
Those requirements, those shoulds seem less demanding.
Because one of the things I was thinking about as I was telling you about that
Roseanne Cash concert that I saw the other night is that I think one of the
blessings of getting older is realizing you don't have to prove yourself to anyone anymore.
(05:42):
You've already done that. You've already accomplished things.
You've already checked off the bucket list of things that are supposed to make you happy.
And now there's a certain kind of freedom that you don't have to answer to someone
in a way that is inauthentic anymore.
And I wonder what you thought about that. It's hard for me to say,
(06:02):
because, you know, if I had known this, that what I know now at 25,
I don't know how life would have been.
And certainly many of my clients are much younger than I am and are transforming
how they relate to life and letting go of the whole proving mentality.
(06:22):
Not everywhere, but more and more because I still find at times,
I still compare myself to other people.
That's one of those things that is a total recipe for unhappiness.
Whether I'm comparing myself to someone who I think is doing worse than me or
someone I'm doing better, it's still not good, right?
And I don't even mean not good like, oh, I shouldn't do that.
(06:45):
I mean, it's another argument with reality.
I think it's likely that I'm less as I've aged.
And as I continue to age, I think I have more space for other people to be where
they're They're at one of the fundamental shifts that I saw about eight years
ago or so was that life wasn't happening to me. It was happening through me.
(07:12):
And all the work that I had done up until that point, I had a certainly talk
to people about their thoughts distinct from facts.
I talked to people about, you know, using their strengths versus their weaknesses.
And there were a lot of systems versus psychology, like a lot of those things I talked about.
But the piece that was missing for me, that when I say it out loud sounds really, duh, but I missed it.
(07:41):
Sometimes the most obvious of things, that there was something beyond thoughts
and feelings and circumstances.
Circumstances that was who I essentially
am that the thoughts and feelings and
circumstances were arising inside of and that was a game changer for me I could
(08:05):
no longer not see it right like I could see the moods coming and going the thoughts
coming and going the things I thought were important not
being as important at different times.
All of that was going on and my life was getting better and better and that
I was more at peace and happy so much more of the time.
(08:30):
My circumstances didn't dramatically change overnight, but who I was was so
clear to me and who I wasn't was very clear to me.
So can I ask a question here? here. When you talk about who you were,
are, are you referring to your true nature or are you referring to something else?
(08:53):
Yeah, I would say true nature is a way of saying it. I think of it as the screen
that life is projected onto, like, you know, Rupert Spire talks about an aware space, right?
Like an aware, that yeah, our true nature is this aware consciousness,
this knowing, right this look when a baby is born.
(09:17):
There's an aware space and the baby isn't even, doesn't even know they're there,
you know, like there's a body and all of that.
And then that gets all added. And I think there's a real freedom in seeing that
all unhappiness, all, you know, shoulds, all of that is all added,
(09:42):
that none of it's true that the one
fundamental truth and we are like we
exist there's an existence that's the one
fundamental truth and everything else is made up and so there's just so much
freedom in that you know it doesn't mean bad stuff doesn't happen you know as
(10:02):
you know my husband had a brain bleed in 2020 and almost died i didn't get out
of that because i had this misunderstanding.
I didn't not have moments of despair and suffering because I had this understanding.
But what I did have in it, that no matter what happened, it was all going to be okay.
(10:24):
And that it wasn't up to me how it went.
And in that space of it not being up to me, all kinds of cool,
creative ways of dealing with life came to me.
Ideas came to mind that were available, I think, because I was so clear this
was outside my realm of knowledge or understanding or control.
(10:47):
And so there was nowhere to go. It was 2020, pandemic, nobody else around.
So it was me and my husband dealing with his recovery day in and day out,
making it up as we went along.
It's not like, oh, I know this now, so I never get unhappy. No,
it's that there's, it doesn't affect me in the same way.
(11:10):
It's like a thunderstorm. You know, it's going to come and go.
No thunderstorm ever stuck around forever.
What I'd love to do is sort of unpack what you're saying,
because it sounds like, and you know,
I'm familiar with this understanding as well, that once we are aware that there's
something else running the show and that it's not that God is my co-pilot,
(11:36):
it's that we're God's co-pilot,
that that freedom that you don't have to control your circumstances makes you less.
Are identified with what feelings you have or what thoughts you have.
They come and go because we're in this, I mean, nobody knows where thoughts come from.
(11:56):
They just come in and then they go out again after a while.
What I'm wondering if you can add to this conversation is how this kind of freedom
makes it easier to live life.
So I don't have to be identified with my own thoughts.
I I don't have to be identified with the rules of the game that society has
(12:18):
set up for us because we're making everything up. So could you speak to that?
One thing I think that's super cool is that because I am so clear that I can't
control anything, it's just not up to me how things go.
That doesn't mean I don't show up to my office every day and do things and take
(12:43):
actions. It just gives you the freedom to play the game, not worrying about
the result. It's like an improv.
It's like the difference between when you are attached to a particular result, right?
Like I need this client or I got to get this sale or I need to be this way or whatever the goal is.
(13:06):
You're so attached to it. Like you've identified that, A, it's up to you and
somehow your happiness depends on it, right? We put all the significance and weight on it.
Creates this like this lane that you
have to stay inside of and then when you're inside that
lane the choices look really scary right
(13:27):
because what if it doesn't turn out what if i never you
know get that thing or weigh that away and so it's like this level 10 problem
just add all that pressure and all that significance now every action is like
you're you're trying to walk a marathon with 50-pound weights on each ankle,
(13:47):
right? That's what it's like.
But when you have the experience of, oh, I want this thing. I really want this thing to happen.
Wouldn't it be cool if I got this, if this thing happened, if I was able to
make it happen? Now it's play.
Now it's like, okay, how do I, what would be fun to do?
What would I like to learn, right? And it's this experiment that you're in life
(14:13):
experimenting and seeing how it, what happens.
Like I'm working with a client right now to help build her business.
And, you know, she comes to the conversation and she's like,
no, no, this is real. I have to make money.
And we fall into these traps all the time.
And I'm like, well, how's that thinking working for you?
Like, how's believing that working for you? Are you enjoying your work?
(14:37):
Are you, are you making the calls you need to make? No.
Are your conversations free and interesting? No.
Okay. Well, how about we try something else? Like what if it isn't up to you?
What if this is about providing the service that you provide and helping people?
What would you do then? Then it becomes, oh, I'd call this person or I'd offer this product.
(15:01):
Like 50 ideas come to mind or of these ideas, which one feels most fun or most interesting to you.
Picks one or two. Okay, let's experiment with them this week. Let's see what happens.
Now she's having a different week, more freedom.
It doesn't mean that the worry doesn't come and go. It just means it doesn't
(15:23):
have to be the avenue to get to what you want because it never really works.
That's really a great point. And so here's a scenario and tell me,
flesh this one out for me.
So you've got someone in their job who has their boss or their board,
whoever, breathing down their neck. You've got to get this in.
(15:46):
You've got this deadline.
You have to make sure X, Y, and Z happen.
To implement what you're talking about or to be able to see what you're talking
about, how would someone need to shift the sense of panic and urgency and,
holy smokes, if I don't do this, I'm in big trouble?
Well, I don't think you have to shift that. That'll shift on its own.
(16:09):
I think that we have this misunderstanding that we have to feel a certain way
to perform. And that's just not true.
You can perform, I mean, under any feelings. It's just whether you give the
feelings importance or not, right?
If I said, I need you to go ride this bike and you have to go this many miles
by this amount of time, you would just figure out, okay, it's this many miles.
(16:32):
How many miles can I ride on the bike?
And you would figure it out and you would just go ride the bike.
You wouldn't go, well, how do I get motivated to ride the bike?
No, you just get on a riding bike, right?
I think the thing that gets in the way with something like that is,
and I know it's happened to me too, is I add too many shoulds and what ifs.
(16:53):
You know, the what ifs are, what if I don't get it done, worrying about the
future, rather than dealing with the facts.
Okay, this is an agreement I have to do this. It's part of my job.
They need it by this date at this time.
Between now and then, how do I make that work? What information do I need to get?
(17:15):
We get too caught up in what if it doesn't turn out?
And then that creates the pressure.
The board isn't or the boss isn't creating pressure. Our mind creates the pressure
because we make something more important than something else.
So my coaching would be, what are the facts? Is it doable?
(17:35):
If they said, I need this by tomorrow at 8 a.m. and it's 6 p.m.,
I'm going to be like, that ain't happening.
Because I'm not staying up all night, right? Like, you know,
and then I would negotiate and create an agreement.
I think that if it's something that's doable, and you may have to ask,
well, what other priorities can I let go while I'm working on this,
(17:58):
giving my sole focus to this?
It's just what needs to get done.
That's a very different approach for most people.
Because here's something that came
up in my mind as you were talking is that there's
one line of thinking which is trust your feelings
which I think is different from trust your gut instinct trust something deeper
(18:22):
in you but if if we're taught to trust our feelings then we get so identified
with them the scary feelings or the pressure feelings or the anger feelings
whatever whatever they are,
is that we can't be present to what needs to be done in the moment.
I would agree with that. And I think a lot of times it's because we've,
(18:44):
I think, been, we have a misunderstanding that our feelings are coming from the world.
It's not. It's coming from, it's not the way we're thinking because we aren't
thinking. Thinking is happening.
And when we have thoughts, the system called the human body,
which, you know, we've had this dichotomy of the brain and the body,
(19:05):
like it's two different things.
It's all one system, right? So when you have a thought, we have a sensation
that comes with the thought.
And so then we identify the sensation with a label called feeling,
you know, angry, happy, sad, whatever.
If you took the circumstances out and you just had the experience,
(19:25):
you wouldn't know what the experience is, right?
They, you know, excitement and, and fear look very much the same in a body,
right? The sensations are very similar.
And so I think that people identify with their feelings or get enamored with
that because it looks like it's coming from the world.
(19:47):
So give me an example of that, something that you, you would mistake that something
was coming Coming from the world.
Well, a deadline or the boss saying, I need this done by such and such a time
or else, or even if the or else is implied, right?
Like, that's a very neutral thing.
The world, you know, the world is neutral, but you get a bunch of people together,
(20:09):
they're going to a whole lot of agreement around that stress,
that's pressure, right?
You look at Olympic athletes, they are not stressed when they're performing at the Olympics.
They are the opposite of that, right? They have, they can't control the outcome.
They go and they perform. And the quietest mind performs the best.
(20:30):
And it's not even that their mind is necessarily quiet.
It's that They're not paying attention to what's going through their mind.
They have their attention on this moment of now, this balance beam or this,
you know, swimming or whatever.
It's in this moment of now. So they're having the thoughts just like everybody
(20:52):
else. No, they're not relevant.
Such a great point that there are especially those things that don't feel so
good. The thoughts that feel crummy.
Yeah. Yeah, but not taking them as the path I need to go down.
I coach a triathlete. He also runs marathons all the time.
(21:14):
And he competes, competitive, right?
And so I'm coaching him not on that, because that's not my area.
I'm coaching him, he's a leader in an organization.
And so we talk all the time about how when he's running, I said,
when does the mind get loud?
Really loud. He goes, yeah, about mile marker 18 or so. I go, what's it saying? Stop.
(21:39):
You're crazy. You don't need to run anymore. And I go, and how often do you
leave the race at mile marker 18? He goes, never. Why?
Well, because I'm committed to running the whole race.
Okay. Does the voice stop yelling at you? Never.
It doesn't stop. It just doesn't give it any attention. It doesn't, It's irrelevant.
(22:01):
It's an irrelevant commentary.
Because if he stopped at mile marker 18, what do you think of my thoughts would be then?
Oh, you loser. What's wrong with you? You only had, you know,
however many miles left. You gave up.
The brain does not let us win.
I love that phrase, irrelevant. It's just spinning.
(22:23):
It's so easy to believe that. Oh, that's right. I have to do this rather than
reclaiming that commitment.
Which I think is easily distracted. We're easily distracted from it when we
start believing the thoughts that are making us feel like we can't do it.
(22:44):
It's so innocent because we
have this misinterpretation about how the mind-body system works, right?
It's that, oh, something, there's such a thing as stress happening to me.
And that's just never true.
There's such a thing as unhappy happy happening to me. I mean,
I recently, my mom passed away earlier this year.
(23:05):
There was every emotion under the sun, including joy and happiness and at her
wake seeing people I haven't seen in years.
Cousins showing up. The joy and love in that room was everywhere.
And my mom was in the casket. And there was that too.
Explain that, right? Like people say, oh, what about dying? Okay.
(23:30):
I've never been to a wake where there hasn't been laughter and love and joy
and sadness. It's all there.
So there's no thing that happens that causes a reaction.
That is a made up thing because that's how it looks.
But the actual way that
(23:51):
it works is the opposite stuff happens it's all neutral and then based on our
neural pathways we have a reaction and that reaction looks like it's coming
from the outside but it isn't not really a reaction we have a conditioned thoughts,
you know they look real so suddenly oh my god my boss oh my god this is my job
(24:16):
my job my business my kids my this my that whatever it is like there's always
just stuff happening and then commentary and the commentary is irrelevant.
Unless it's knowledge that you need. I work with emergency medical services leaders.
I co-own my second business. I co-own a leadership academy for paramedics and EMTs.
(24:42):
I love working with them for so many reasons.
But one of my favorite things is that they think EMS is stressful.
Goodness gracious, if we did a survey, so would everybody, right?
So when we slow down and we really explore it, and I say, okay,
think about one of your critical incidents that you've been on,
(25:02):
like 2% to 4% of the time, to be honest,
maybe 5% of the time, of all the calls are what they consider critical incidents, life or death.
And I talk about that, and I say, okay, tell me about the incident itself.
What happens the moment you get on scene?
I do this, I do this, I do this. assess the situation
(25:24):
you start at taking action where's the
stress comes in after during the
time they're there and this is universal their
mind is so quiet just like the olympic performers it's what needs to happen
this needs to happen this needs to happen this needs that they know they can't
control the outcome but they're going to do their damnedest to make sure that
(25:45):
person gets to the hospital and the hospital takes care of what's next so then
we talk about what happens next?
And what happens next? What ifs?
And shoulds, the commentary, and they mistake it for truth.
And that's where stress comes from. And that's where burnout comes from.
It's not what's happening because they're well-trained for that.
(26:09):
They're not trained at all with how to deal with the barrage of thoughts that come in.
So when they can start to disconnect that, they start to see that they did the
absolute best they could in that moment.
They couldn't have done it any differently, no matter what.
They could not have done it any differently.
The freedom that comes from that. They don't have to add a 50-pound weight to
(26:33):
their back for the next call. They're free.
That's what I'm interested in. And that freedom is, I think,
an expression of that true nature of ours, that essential, the baby,
born as a baby, you're happy.
Unless there's some trauma that's been transmitted genetically or something,
(26:54):
you know, nine babies out of 10 are, let me at it, let me at life.
Isn't this amazing? This is exciting.
And then all of the shoulds happen and all the expectations start to get layered on us.
But that initial beingness is such so obviously happy and And happy to be alive.
(27:17):
And they cry when they're wet. And they're hungry. They have a sensation.
They voice that, you know, whatever. But it comes and goes.
Yeah. And we see it. And that's humans in their natural state.
And everything, once we get the ability to have concepts and language...
(27:38):
Then we start to go into survival. Yeah. And again, surviving a situation is the opposite of happy.
Right. That's for sure. Yeah. And the brain is geared towards survival. That's innocent.
That's how we got to be a species that still exists, right?
Evolution is a powerful thing. But when you see that, oh, my brain also is able to thrive.
(28:05):
First system that got created was the amygdala and
that is fight or flight that is all survival and
that has the ability to determine
where the resources go in our body
so if i'm even have a whiff of this is a dangerous situation it could just be
(28:25):
dangerous because i'm walking into a room full of people i don't know it doesn't
even have to be someone's chasing me with an ax or something Somebody didn't
like my cooking. I mean, it could be that ridiculous, right?
My body reacts like I'm being chased with an X.
And so the resources go from the highest functioning part of the brain.
(28:49):
No, no, we don't need that during fight or flight.
We need to be able to run and breathe a lot, right? So that's where the resources go.
So that's why I tell people, do not trust your feelings and sensations.
Most of the time, they're giving you the wrong information, innocently, but it's true, right?
(29:11):
Because we're in fight or flight. If we're not distinguishing our thinking from
reality, we're in fight or flight.
So how is this different from a stress reduction program, what you're talking about?
I mean, it is a form of stress reduction, but it's different than what we commonly
refer to as stress reduction.
(29:33):
Yeah. For me, the way it looks to me, stress reduction has the assumption that
stress is a thing that exists in the world and we have to do something about it.
In my work and in my own experiences, stress is like a thunderstorm.
It comes and goes. chose.
Stress is not necessary for anything. It's a label that I put on a particular
(29:57):
experience, and I have no idea if that experience is the same for you as it is for me.
One of my favorite examples of this is I love giving speeches.
I absolutely love it. Put me in front of a room, baby. I love it. That's where I live.
You can put someone else in front of the the same room, and they're like,
quivering, right? Fear of public speaking.
(30:20):
Yeah. Well, if public speaking was scary, wouldn't we all be afraid?
So it's not an inherent quality. And I think that's what I'm hearing.
And what you're sharing is that the emotions that we attribute to an event,
we think that the event is what's causing it rather than our interpretation of the event itself?
(30:42):
The moment people get that I'm working with when I'm coaching someone and they
get experientially, so not, oh, this is a good idea, but they actually see for
themselves that their thoughts are irrelevant,
that their relationship to their thoughts is what's the problem.
It's thoughts themselves aren't a problem. It's the relationship we have to.
(31:04):
So if we have reverence for them, we believe them, we think they're relevant, right?
All that. When you unhook that, when you see that is not who you are,
that's not your essential being, and relating to your thoughts.
As clouds on a windy day, dress seems to disappear. It doesn't lessen. It's gone.
(31:26):
It's just not there. It doesn't look necessary. I don't need to get stressed to get this done.
That's like I'm adding something to this mix that doesn't need to be added.
I'm making it more complex.
So there's just getting the thing done. And I might have thoughts about it.
I might have worried thoughts about it, but that's not relevant.
(31:49):
So talk about the difference between there are some thoughts that are brilliant
and some thoughts that are very self-destructive.
How do you know the difference between the two? I mean, that sounds like a silly
question, but it speaks to your perspective.
I have a couple of different ways that I approach this because I don't think
(32:12):
there's any black and white here in terms of what's a good thought or a bad thought.
Then that's a whole other nightmare I wouldn't want to get into, right?
But there seems to be a quality to certain things that I would call thoughts,
right? Like there's a quality to them.
When a thought comes through and I, it just feels right.
(32:36):
Aha, insight, I don't know what you want to call it, the night my husband was
in the ER and had the brain bleed.
And that moment of the knowing that came through was from such a different place
than an intellectual knowing.
It's very hard to put words to.
But the knowing was, this isn't up to me, and it's all going to be all right.
(33:01):
But not like he's going to be all right, or whatever my story about all right was.
It was more like, I have everything I need inside of me for whatever happens.
There's nothing going to happen that isn't handleable by,
not me, Lisa, the character that I play out,
but that deeper god within
(33:23):
all of us that what i call infinite intelligence like i can trust that like
i can trust get gravity like you know we don't think of it as trusting gravity
but it for me it's like it's the same there's gravity and there's this inner
knowing within every single human being.
(33:43):
And when we see that's there for our benefit, any moment of any day,
then life is just about creating, not about getting through or getting happy.
You know, it's just happiness is there.
And, and but for our shoulds and what ifs, it's all working out.
(34:03):
You know, it's, we just have this, like I said before, this parallel life that
we think we should be living.
Without that, we're just living this life.
This is the one. This is it. Have at it.
It's really, as you say, transformative when and if we can get to that point
(34:24):
where we don't think there's anything wrong with feelings that are uncomfortable.
Because so much of us and so much of this training that we get in the world
is that we're always supposed to be happy.
We're always supposed to be repeating our affirmations. We're always supposed
to be riding high. And yet.
(34:46):
Most people are not acknowledging or else they are acknowledging and ignoring
the advice that they're having all these feelings and they don't know what to
do with them as if they need to do something with them. Yeah.
Listen, that's why I became a social worker way back in the day was because
I wanted to feel better. Me too.
And that's why I was helping other people. You know, the first transformational
(35:11):
program I did back in 1993 was so I would feel better.
And for many years of my coaching, everything I was doing was to feel better.
And that was the biggest shift for me was to see that that was just not up to
me. And it's irrelevant.
It's irrelevant. Listen, I want to be happy as much as the next person.
(35:33):
I just know that the more I focus on that, I'm not living life.
The difference between playing the game and being in the stand talking about the game,
you know and they're both I just don't find it
as much fun to be in the sands you
know I like playing the game and I'm not
(35:54):
always there you know I tell my clients all
the time the minute I start walking on water my rates are going up but in the
meantime you know I'm on the path too I'm on this novice to mastery game and
I am you know seeing all the time where I'm projecting my
(36:14):
ideal onto myself,
other people, life.
I'd like to talk about something that you and I talked about on a previous conversation.
And I think you put it this way.
We were talking about people who are at that, especially women who are at that
(36:35):
point in their lives, they're saying, what else is there? And I think the way
you had phrased it is, I have everything I want, but I'm still not happy.
So how does what you're saying fill in the blanks of that conversation, of that statement?
One of my favorite sayings came from a former coach of mine who you know, Steve Chandler.
(36:57):
He used to say, and I love it, given the circumstances, everything in life is
really a design problem. problem and every design problem has constraints.
Now, if you think it's up to you how it turns out, that's not an easy question.
That's not a fun question.
(37:18):
But if you see that you are an infinite being and the only thing between you
and knowing that is your thoughts and believing your thoughts.
So now when it's like, okay, given the circumstances, what do I want to create?
And the thoughts come in, well, you can't do that.
You're this age or you're this weight or you're this amount of money or you
(37:38):
don't have enough in your bank account. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The question is no longer even present. But if you can look at that question
and not give any reverence to your thinking, suddenly you'll have a game to play.
So you're a woman of a certain age and you recognize like, is this it?
(38:01):
No, this is just what you've done so far.
Given your circumstances, knowing your thinking is totally irrelevant. relevant.
Like the commentators in a football game, right?
Their commentary is not relevant to the field of play ever. They're not moving the ball.
They're never moving the ball. They're just having an opinion about how the ball should get moved.
(38:26):
The ball moves through action, not through thinking about it.
So you go, okay, I'm at this point in my life.
I'm this many years old. I'm this, that, or the other. Whatever you want to
say, whatever you think the constraints are, which 90% of them are not,
maybe 95%, I don't know, some large percentage are not.
You go, okay, what game do I want to play?
(38:46):
Right? Like, what do I want to create? I'm an infinite being.
What do I want to create? Let's see what happens.
Love that. So again, thank you so much for spending a little time with me today.
And for those of you who are listening or watching, thank you for joining us.
And we will see you on the next conversation. So, bye for now.
(39:09):
Music.
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