December 4, 2025 • 55 mins
Your words are planting something. The only question is whether those seeds grow thorns of fear or roots of resilience. We sit down with author and corporate well-being coach Barry Nicolaou to unpack how subconscious “soil” works, why language like “hard” quietly programs outcomes, and how small intentional shifts can help kids and parents move toward calm, confidence, and connection.
Barry shares the soil metaphor for the subconscious—neutral, fertile, and ready to grow whatever we repeatedly think and say. We explore generational fear and scarcity, how worst-case thinking hijacks parenting, and a simple worldview check inspired by Einstein: do you believe the world is friendly or hostile? From that foundation, we get practical. Learn how to replace “I’m proud of you” with “You must be proud of yourself,” install nightly gratitude so anxiety has less room to run, and set clear boundaries without catastrophizing. We also talk about modeling mistakes and repair, building psychological safety at home, and choosing language that invites kids to move toward values instead of away from threats.
If you’re ready to reset intention and grow a family culture rooted in love, patience, and agency, this conversation offers tools you can use tonight. We close with where to find Barry’s latest book, Move the Mountain, and how his corporate programs blend mindset science with purpose-driven practices. Subscribe, share this with a parent who needs some peace, and leave a review so more families can find these tools. What seed will you plant today?
For more on Barry's work, visit his website or read his book.
Lindsay Miller is a distinguished kids mindfulness coach, mindfulness educator and host of The Stress Nanny Podcast. She is known for her suitcase tricks and playful laugh. When she's not cheering on her daughter or rollerblading on local trails with her husband, you can find her using her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing. Having been featured on numerous podcasts, platforms and publications, Lindsay’s words of wisdom are high impact and leave a lasting impression wherever she goes.
To sign up for Lindsay's "Calm & Collected" Newsletter click here.
To review the podcast click here.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (00:20):
Welcome to The Stress Nanny, the podcast where
we take the overwhelm out ofparenting and help kids and
parents build calm, confidence,and connection.
I'm your host, Lindsay Miller,kids mindfulness coach and
cheerleader for busy familieseverywhere.
Each week we'll explore simpletools, uplifting stories, and
practical strategies to helpyour child learn emotional
(00:42):
regulation, resilience, andself-confidence, while giving
you a little more peace of mindtoo.
I'm so glad you're here.
My guest is Barry Nicola.
He's a fierce advocate ofwell-being, and he wants people
to be able to chase down life'ssought-after moments.
His ability to unlock and definecorporate inspiration, purpose,
(01:02):
gratitude, and drive led him tohis number one best-selling
book, The 11 Master Secrets toBusiness Success and Personal
Fulfillment, in 2015.
And then he recently publishedMove the Mountain, an intention
reset.
Very national talks, keynoteaddresses, webinar
presentations, and workshopswork to deconstruct the untapped
(01:25):
power of subconscious thoughtand the science of creative
visualization.
He focuses on the deconstructionof mindset blocks, which
surround cognitive fear,old-wired subconscious
paradigms, inherited thinking,and their connection to
real-world managerialexpectations and experiences.
Barry instills his corporatewell-being and executive
(01:48):
coaching programs primarilythrough four inspirational
programs.
And his merging ofspiritual-based fulfillment
practices into the corporatespace not only makes Barry's
programs highly sought after,but seen as a secret weapon for
employee engagement in apost-pandemic era.
And today on the podcast, we'regoing to translate those
(02:09):
teachings and Barry's wisdominto both work and family life
in a way that helps us apply theprinciples that he teaches and
the message that he shares withour families in terms of our
kids, in terms of ourinteractions with other people
as adults.
Barry, I'm so excited for thischat.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
SPEAKER_00 (02:29):
Lindsay, thank you for having me in this beautiful
space with you.
I'm sure we're going to unpacksome amazing, amazing wisdom
today.
SPEAKER_02 (02:36):
I think you're right.
One of the things that reallycaught my attention when Barry
and I were chatting about thisand determining if it would be a
good fit for us to do an episodetogether, was this phrase.
He said, to understand how ourvery thoughts can sabotage or
assist us in creating the lifewe want is the most pressing
(02:57):
conversation of our time.
And I feel that so strongly forkids.
Like my passion is that if wecan help kids to prevent
themselves from creating so manyof these blocks, right?
And then if we can help themsift through the ones that they
already have, that they will beable to build incredible lives
(03:19):
and have the kind offree-flowing mental health that
so many of us are searching forand trying to cultivate.
But we have years and years ofthis programming and
conditioning that we're kind ofworking with.
And so I'm so excited for justyour passion around this subject
because I feel like I agreecompletely that I mean it is the
most pressing conversation thatwe can have.
SPEAKER_00 (03:41):
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, I'mcoming from a place now where
I'm speaking as a father.
I've got two girls.
Grace is turning six in May, andHarmony is three in July.
And I want them to be fiercelyindependent and self-reliant.
And I guess it's why the twobooks are out there.
It's why I teach this instillingin the people that are ready to
(04:05):
listen, that are open to listen,that as a parent, as an
employee, as a partner in life,there's a sense of
responsibility to the peoplearound you that you live a life
based on your truest and highestprinciples of who you are.
And that ends up being acatalyst for your children and
(04:26):
for your partner to kind of livea life where you are not just
pushing the boundaries, so tospeak, but get into a situation
where you become the bestversion of who you are.
And that's very cliched intoday's kind of coaching
terminology, coaching world.
But it really is very important.
(04:46):
You know, children will oftenfollow the example of their
parents.
If I want my children to act andbehave in a certain way where
they are strong internally toface a lot of life's challenges,
then I've got to lead byexample.
So the second book that I'vejust released is actually for
them.
You know, there's a wholechapter dedicated to them.
(05:06):
And when I'm not around, it'slike if you want to know what
dad thought in his 40s, this iswhat he was thinking.
So it ends up being somethingthat I've taken on quite
seriously and quite intimatelyas well.
Because I want them to grow upto not be, I guess, codependent
as such on other people.
I want them to assist and be ofvalue to others, but at the same
(05:28):
time fortify their innerframework, their inner
structure.
So then when they do facechallenges, that they've got
some sort of toolkit that theycan refer to inside themselves
to be able to face thosechallenges and then have it
easier to face future challengesas well.
SPEAKER_02 (05:46):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (05:47):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (05:48):
I mean, they're so fortunate, right?
That at such a young age, youhave your eyes on that kind of
development.
And I often say that when we doteach it at that age, I mean, it
does change the trajectory oftheir entire life.
Like you're saying, you haveyour eye on these girls who will
be women who know themselves,who have that, like you said,
(06:11):
inner sense of resilience thatis the foundation on which they
built their life.
Spot on.
And they're gonna go out and doamazing things with it while
also being able to connect, askfor help, and you know, depend
on other people in healthy ways,but not topple over if something
comes their way that kind of isis tricky or frustrating or
(06:32):
hard, they'll have that innerstrength, right?
SPEAKER_00 (06:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
To give you an example, Lindsay,I'm of Greek descent and I'm
currently in Sydney, Australia.
So you can tell by my accent ifyou're listening that I'm not
from the States.
But but you get to a point whereI look at my grandparents and I
think, okay, they've got somegreat values and morals and
ideologies about how to live asuccessful or happy life.
(06:58):
But they also came from a placeof scarcity and war in many
cases.
So that fear has become embeddedin them biologically, right?
And that translates to, say, myparents as being risk-averse,
not being opportunistic inlooking at opportunities in life
and how to move forward incertain fear really takes the
driver's seat of the car.
(07:20):
And what I'm trying to teach mygirls is ego and fear should
kind of be somewhat in the car,but they should never be in the
front.
The ego should always be andfear should always be in the
back.
Because, you know, a little bitof fear, understanding that
there are dangerous situationsin life.
It's kind of inherently builtinto our biology.
But if you look at say fear andverse with say danger, you know,
(07:41):
danger is a very real thing.
But fear, like 90% of fearsdon't eventuate.
So the energy that we'refocusing on, what if this bad
thing happens could be spent inhow can we make things better?
So I've been very sensitive, Iguess, to where I spend my
energy.
And then with my girls,fortifying them, yes.
(08:04):
But then looking at the otherside of life, which is what do
you want to do?
Who do you want to be?
Is there any way I can help youget there?
Do you want my help to beginwith?
You might not.
But it ends up being as a parentand as someone who pushes
forward in life as much aspossible, that I want the best
for them.
And the only way that I can dothat is, I guess, go for it
(08:25):
myself and then lead by thatexample.
So you've got to keep at it, yougot to keep consistent.
The other thing I will say, andthis is very important to note,
I've eradicated the word hardfrom my vocabulary.
It's become a word that isbecome ingrained in our society.
Something is hard.
You know, you work hard, youplay hard.
(08:46):
And in this new book, I'veuncovered that life literally
gives you back what you aresaying and what you are feeling.
So we keep using these wordsthat we don't want to
experience.
And we spoke about subconsciousthought before, which is what
I'm delving into, like thescience of thought and how
thoughts do become things.
And the analogy that I keepcoming up with is really, really
(09:08):
cool for any parent or anyemployee or any partner to
realize is that I'd like you toconsider the soil outside of
your home.
And you look at the soil and youask the soil, what are you like?
And the soil will say, Well, Inurture expansion.
And you say, Well, what do youmean?
(09:29):
Are you going to grow a weed ifI let you grow a weed?
And the soil will say, Ofcourse.
I nurture expansion.
I've got sunlight, I've gotnutrients, and I've got water.
Anything you plant in me, I willgrow.
So I will grow a rose bush asmuch as I will grow poison ivy.
And that is what I do.
(09:49):
Now the soil has no notion ofright and wrong, it just
nurtures expansion.
So our subconscious mindoperates in exactly the same
way.
It has no concepts of fairness,it has no concepts of prejudice,
it has no concept of joy.
It nurtures expansion.
So when we're entertaining athought that something is hard
(10:13):
or something is difficult orsomething will cause stress or
whatever it is, the soil says,you must know what you're doing.
I will show you the physicalexpression of what that thought
means in the world.
And we experience hard times andwe experience situations that we
don't want to be in, and wecomplain about our situations to
(10:36):
people who are probably goingthrough similar scenarios to us.
So we gain some sort of clarityor we're searching for some sort
of understanding that is this anormal thing that I'm going
through, right?
And what we're actually sayingis we've kind of planted the
same seeds.
We don't know when thishappened.
We don't know that we wereconscious when we were doing it.
(10:57):
But here's the plant and it'sgrown.
And what I say to those people,and this is in all areas of
life, it's not just withchildren, but if you do not like
what you've grown, you have theability to pull that plant out
and plant something elsedeliberately in its place.
Right?
So if you for let's just use themost difficult example, if there
(11:18):
are traits in your children thatyou do not necessarily like,
then the compass has to comeback to you and say, is there a
moment in your past where youmight have intentionally or
unintentionally planted a seedof fear in that child?
And then this is manifested intosome sort of life experience.
Now, I'm not saying it's likethat for everyone, but I do know
(11:40):
that as parents, we want toprotect our children.
And sometimes the way we do thatis through fear.
Like, don't do that or somethingbad will happen, or don't talk
to that person because he'shanging around the wrong people.
And all of a sudden you instillthis sense of fear out of
protection.
But what we don't know is we'realso stopping the joy and we're
also stopping the happiness, andwe're also stopping the life
(12:03):
experiences that might need tohappen to put them back on a
trajectory of happiness.
And this is something that wejust got to be really careful as
people when we do have influenceover others, that we don't
necessarily go on the feebandwagon unchecked.
Because I think that ends upbeing an inherited and habitual
(12:27):
thinking practice.
And after a while, Lindsay, wedon't remember thinking any
other way.
Like if fear ends up being abiological way of how we express
ourselves, and then you becomerisk averse, you don't look at
opportunities, you don't look atresilience.
You've got this wall up ofprotection consistently because
the world is out to hurt youwhen really the world is out to
(12:50):
be enjoyed and to be experiencedand to learn from and make
better choices as we go on.
SPEAKER_01 (13:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (13:02):
Sorry, that was a bit of a rave from me.
So I did take a breath and allthat.
SPEAKER_02 (13:07):
I loved it.
I love that analogy of the soil.
I think it's really, reallypowerful.
One of the first interviews Idid on the podcast was with
Stephanie, and she has a bookcalled You Are a Gardener.
And it's a children's book forkids in terms of thoughts, and
how we each have this garden andwe plant what we will in it.
(13:29):
And sometimes other people tryto plant stuff in our garden,
and sometimes we have to do alittle tidying up or intentional
replanting.
But the words that you sharedwere so rich.
One of the things that Iappreciate about it was the
neutrality that you mentionedand how the soil it's not
discerning.
(13:50):
What's the and what's the youknow, the rows or what I want to
have grow there versus what Idon't.
And I think there's so much inthat that we could, I mean, we
could set up without unpackingthat, right?
Because the way that weinterpret our surroundings,
yeah, like has so much to dowith the way that we interact
with them, right?
(14:11):
And like you said, if we havethat lens of fear going
constantly, and that's ourinterpretation, then the things
that come our way are gonna bescary, right?
Like you said, if we're gonnahave that fear-based
perspective, either as a parentor if we inherited it from our
parents, or if life handed usexperiences that set us on that
(14:32):
path, that we find ourselves inlike that constant state of high
alert and concern and worry andanxiety just mounts and mounts.
And I love how you, you know,you're saying we can reorient
that.
Like if fear is your reality andif just anxiety is coming your
way constantly, it's a functionof like digging into that and
(14:54):
then reorienting so that you canplant.
Maybe the experience doesn'tchange immediately, but the
orientation to the experiencedoes, right?
Because if we shift in oursubconscious, we can see
different things, like we cansee abundance in the face of
struggle, we can see opportunityin the face of you know,
failure.
Like there's so much there thatwe're maybe not seeing simply
(15:15):
because of the lens throughwhich we're viewing the world.
SPEAKER_00 (15:19):
Absolutely.
And I think that is the hardest.
Well, he here, I use the wordhard again, right?
Because it's embedded in me aswell.
I think that's the mostchallenging part of resetting
intention because we get to apoint where we feel comfortable
in our fears and we justify thatcomfortability with, say, words
(15:42):
like protection.
And I'm a parent, I get it.
It's not like I'm speakingwithout children.
I want to protect them more thananything.
Give you an idea.
Grace, we recently went to aparty.
Friends invited us to theirchildren's party, and they had
it in this park.
And either side of this park,imagine a like a square park,
(16:04):
and either side of the park werequite busy roads.
The cars were actually movingquite quickly.
And there was about 12 to 15little kids under six years old
running around in this park.
And occasionally, and they werefollowing balloons, and the
balloons would drift close tothe road.
So my fear kicked in, and Istarted to get very how could
(16:25):
they have the party at thisplace?
This doesn't make any sense.
There's kids, there are carsmoving that would kill an adult.
The kids don't have a sense ofwhere the boundaries are, more
or less.
And then I started questioningthe planning of this city.
Why would they put the park inthe middle of these fast, busy
roads?
(16:46):
And then you start kind oflinking fee-based thoughts and
protection-based thoughts, whichturn to anger because you start
to think, why wasn't thisplanned better?
Or why didn't these friends ofmine that I trust and respect,
why didn't they have it at theirhome?
Or why didn't they have it in asafer space?
Now, Grace was running around.
(17:08):
If I look at it dispassionatelyas not being a father, she
wasn't in any real danger.
She knows where the road is.
I've stepped it to her three orfour times.
I said, Sweetheart, don't go tooclose to this part of the park
because you're quite close tothe road.
She says, Yes, dad, okay, I'mlistening and no problem.
And she never did.
And the other kids kind offollowed her lead and didn't
(17:28):
either.
But the anger and the fear in medidn't dissipate.
It was still there because ofwhat could have happened, right?
So sitting there speaking to mypartner, Lana, and I said, Lana,
you know, I don't think this wasthought through properly as
we're driving home.
I don't think this was thoughtthrough properly.
You know, imagine how bad thingscould have gone.
And I had to catch myselfbecause this is the problem and
(17:51):
the challenge with humanity inmany respects.
We keep entertaining worst-casescenarios.
We keep wondering why we'reexperiencing worst-case
scenarios quite often.
But we could be settingourselves up for it.
And this is the sabotaging partof the conversation here, right?
So are we, could we besabotaging the future that we
(18:14):
want to live in all areas oflife, not just with children, by
setting up a thoughtful set ofparameters of how bad things can
be.
And then, like the soil, theplant that we start to grow
isn't as beautiful as what weintended to grow in the first
place, because we've got thisfear that's expanding in our
(18:36):
souls, in our consciousness, inour bodies.
And then you go, okay, if that'strue, and I'm looking at this
with a little bit moreperspective now, a little bit
dispassionately.
Yes, I believe that maybe thatfear wasn't warranted within me.
Because even in the parkscenario, I made sure that I was
within 10 or 12 meters away fromGrace at all times because I
(19:00):
knew how long it would take me.
And I thought, Barry, calm down.
If she runs, you can run fasterthan her, you can get there in
time.
So I kind of tried to calm mynervous system down by knowing
that.
And then the day wentbeautifully well.
The cake was beautiful, the kidshad cake all over their face.
It was a great birthday party,best parties.
(19:22):
And and I robbed myself of thatmemory because it's overshadowed
by my fear.
And I'll probably never forgivemyself because you know,
Gracie's five.
She's gonna be a kid for alittle while, she's gonna be an
adult for a long time, right?
And this is the time in her lifewhere you want to not be in a
(19:46):
state of fear, you want to tellher how beautiful the world is
and how gorgeous the environmentis and how beautiful her mind
is, and how she's got nolimitations at five, only the
limitations her parents andsociety place on her, right?
And as a parent, I fell into thetrap because I wanted to protect
(20:07):
her, and then the instinct ofbeing a parent crept in.
But how many of us do that inlife and say, well, don't go for
that opportunity because you'llprobably fail?
I failed at it, so you'llprobably fail at it.
Or, you know, I never made it tothis level in life.
I'm gonna push my ideology ontomy children and hope that they
make it to that level in life.
(20:28):
When really, have you asked thechild or have you asked the
person, what do you want?
What's that thing inside youthat you really want to express?
What is that?
I want to understand thatbetter.
And if you allow me, I want totry and help you on that path,
whatever that is.
And it's important that we dothat with adults as well.
(20:48):
And this is my work that I donow.
It's uncovering what the desireis.
You know, Lindsay, most peopletell you what you what they
don't want.
Most people say, I don't wantcancer.
No one says, I want to behealthy.
Everyone says, I don't want tobe broke.
No one says, I wonder whateconomic freedom would feel
(21:08):
like.
I want, I wonder how that couldhappen.
I'm really enthralled in that.
Wow, that means I would havemore time, and that means I
could help that person, and thatmeans I could help that charity.
Like we're always viewing lifethrough a what if the bad
scenario happens?
And then we become perplexedwhen bad scenarios come into our
(21:29):
life and it confirms our biases.
It confirms that you see, Barry,I've told you I get cut off in
traffic.
Look, that truck just cut meoff.
Well, hang on, you've beensaying you get cut off in
traffic for the last threeyears.
Are you entirely surprised bythe fact that you just got cut
off?
It's like life, the soil, right?
You come back to it.
(21:49):
You're growing a plant thatyou've intentionally nurtured.
And then you're perplexed by thethe way the plant looks.
And I wonder if we could go astep back and just say to
ourselves, let's see if we canplant some intentional seeds
here.
What sort of plants do you wantto go to the nursery or you know
(22:11):
the garden center and look atthe plants that you want to grow
and go, I want that one, thatone, that one, and that one.
I'm gonna see if I can bringthose plants home and plant them
in my garden.
All of a sudden, you've plantedwith intention.
And what are those plants?
Joy, love, understanding,patience, tolerance,
non-judgment as much aspossible.
(22:32):
They're the plants you want tosee grow, and they're the humans
that are gonna take the world,Lindsay, in a beautiful
direction, not necessarily beliving, walking, fear-based
examples of what parents orgrandparents went through in
times of scarcity and fear.
SPEAKER_02 (22:50):
Yeah, that was so beautifully put.
I think often about thisgeneration of parents and how it
really is a huge developmentalleap.
When I was growing up, there wasvery limited information
available.
So there were like a handful ofthings to be afraid of.
(23:11):
And your parents would get thenewspaper, and there might be
crime or different things goingon.
And I grew up in a city that hada significant gang population.
But I went to school, those kidswere my friends, and so it was
normal.
It wasn't scary to me as much asit was that you needed to know
what to do in differentsituations.
One of the things that I thinkparents grapple with so often
(23:34):
now is just the awareness of allthe things in the world,
literally, that there are to beafraid of, right?
And we as kids didn't have thatawareness.
We didn't grow up with that, wedidn't have to grapple with it.
And like you said,generationally, there's been
different levels of awarenessthat have kind of filtered their
way to us.
But as parents now, theinvitation really is to up-level
(23:58):
our ability to, like you'resaying, direct our thoughts,
intentionally reframe andintentionally phrase experience
in a way that doesn't perpetuatethe fear as much as it
perpetuates the love and thejoy.
And I think if if someone islistening right now and they're
feeling like they have a hardtime with that and their go-to
(24:19):
is fear, I think the invitationis just to look at it as an
opportunity for growth rightnow, right?
We are in such a unique space interms of the information that's
available to us as parents.
And there hasn't been anothergeneration of parents that's had
this kind of information attheir disposal.
And so being able to filter allof that and look for the things
(24:41):
you want instead of letting fearcontinually draw you back into
the things you're afraid of.
Just the powerful skill that Ithink all of us need just based
on the time that we live in.
SPEAKER_00 (24:53):
Absolutely.
And, you know, I'll keep goingback to this second book that
I've just written, but it'simportant to talk about this.
The premise of the second bookwas to get an understanding of
how thoughts do germinate andbecome physical, tangible
experiences.
I've headed back to Einstein andhis philosophical views on, you
(25:13):
know, when Einstein was talkingabout the theory of relativity
and his thoughts on how thingsworked and how the universe
worked, he had this quote that Ibecame absolutely obsessed with
because it opened up the doorsof curiosity in a way that I
never thought possible.
And this is a question thatevery human being really answers
consciously or subconsciously,and it forms the premise of this
(25:35):
book.
I need you to ask the questionof yourselves if you're
listening.
You've got to ask yourself ifyou believe, like in your heart
of hearts, that the world is ahostile place?
Or do you believe in your heartof hearts if the world is a
friendly place?
Now, the point of the questionis not to give a long-winded
answer on the side of goodexperiences and the side of bad
(25:57):
experiences.
The idea of the question is toreduce your answer to a single
word.
Do you believe that the world ishostile or do you believe that
the world is friendly?
Now, the reason he asked thequestion is because the answer
you give will start to form anarrative on the experiences,
(26:21):
situations, and circumstancesthat you will find yourself in,
increasingly so as you getolder, because it forms the base
of the concrete underneath yourhouse.
It is the framework that you'rebuilding on that concrete base,
right?
If you believe and you exposeyourself to the negative
(26:42):
narratives of the world, youwill argue on the side of
hostility and you'll mentionCOVID and you'll back it up and
mention what Russia's doing, andyou'll talk about the Ukraine
and all the refugees, and you'llstart to, you know, you'll link
that to babies that are notnecessarily living anymore.
The babies have died, and andthe mind will go down a track of
hostile, hostile.
(27:03):
And then the person that's well,Barry, I don't think the world
is actually a hostile place.
There are people like Lindsay inthe world that are actually
unpacking a lot of this stuff.
There are good mothers outthere, there are good fathers
out there that are trying tolearn and be better, that are
going to raise children that aregoing to want to learn and be
better themselves.
And that's happening at the sametime.
(27:26):
So what's true here, it comesdown to what you believe to be
the right thing to do for you.
And where we get hijacked iswhen the fear turns around and
screams at us so much that we godown the hostile answer road
that Einstein was speakingabout.
I talk about affirmations and wetalk about how to get into a
(27:47):
better space as young adults andchildren and even grandparents.
How do we get into a betterspace mentally to be able to
project that love?
And you've got to believe thatthe world is a friendly place
because inherently it is.
What we see is the fear-basedreasonings in people's minds
(28:08):
that are playing out at atangible level.
So where life's going, well, youbelieve the world's fearful?
Let me give you examples ofthat.
I'll show you fear, I'll showyou wars, I'll show you
pandemics, no problem.
I'll show you horror movies,I'll show you movies that end in
destruction of the I'll show youall that.
No problem.
I've got no problem because Ithink that you know what you're
(28:31):
doing.
And as parents and as adults, wedon't.
We often don't.
We say we want to live joy,love-based lives, but inner
framework is the oppositedirection.
So how on earth do we thinkwe're gonna manifest a life for
our children that we want forthem when our inner framework's
(28:54):
going the other way?
There's a constant duality thatis going on within us.
Now, how do you handle that?
You get to a level where yourealize that bad things happen,
yes, but I'm not gonna livethere.
I'm not gonna live out of thatspace where bad things are
happening.
I'm gonna live out of the placewhere love, joy, tolerance,
(29:14):
non-judgment, reverence for allof life.
That is the basis of what I'mgonna build my house on.
And if that makes me delusional,then it makes me delusional.
But I think we want the best forour children.
So we have to make sure thatinner framework supports that
best for our children mindset.
And is it difficult to do?
(29:35):
Absolutely.
Is it possible?
Yes.
Make a choice, make a decision,make a commitment to yourself
that I'm gonna let this child orI'm gonna let this person in
front of me express themselvesin a way that they only know
how.
I'm gonna support thatstructure.
It feels good to me.
And then all of a sudden, peoplelive life based on what they
(29:59):
feel is the Innate purpose andcalling of who they are as
people because they've hadsupporting parents to be able to
nurture that.
And you know, it's probably notgoing to fit everyone.
This isn't a one-size-fits-allhat that I'm talking about.
But I tell you, it's the worldthat I want to see for my two
girls.
So the only way I can see thatworld is to try and be that
(30:20):
change myself on my small,impactful level, to then say,
well, you know, dad managed todo it.
Dad had all these challenges.
Dad's been through divorce, youknow, dad's been through a loss
of jobs over and over and overagain.
Dad's been through hard times.
You know, it was a time where wedidn't have any money.
It's not like I'm preaching fromon top of the mountain with a
(30:43):
huge inheritance.
I don't have that.
So it ends up being, what do youwant to see in the world?
Am I an example of that?
And if I'm not, how can I be?
And that's the premise of thebook.
That's the premise ofunderstanding that if you want
to reset intention, you can.
Are you courageous enough tomake the physical and mental
(31:06):
moves that enables your world toshift in that direction?
And then this is what alwayshappens when you do shift.
People will say you got lucky,and people will say that you've
been blessed beyond otherpeople's blessings.
And it's not the case.
You've just tapped into adifferent part of God's mindset,
and God's mindset is ultimatelove, like ultimate,
(31:30):
unconditional, beautiful lovefor humanity at the highest
level that we can ever imagine.
That's the source of which wecame.
And if we're a slice of thatsource, if we're just a spark
from within the fire thatflickers out of the fire, if
we're from the fire itself, thenaren't we love as well?
(31:51):
Aren't we love-based people thatare projecting our fears onto
others and ourselves?
Isn't that what's really goingon?
Rather than thinking that it'soverly complicated and there
must be dynamics that we don'tunderstand here.
You just got to come from aposition of is this decision
that I'm making love-based?
Is it nurturing to my childrenor to the people that I'm with?
(32:14):
Is it valid?
Is it is it gonna add to theconversation in the world that I
want to see take place?
Is that is this conversationadding to that world?
And if the answer is yes, haveit.
And if the answer is no,consider that if your words are
gonna negatively impact someone,it's your call.
(32:36):
But that's not the world that Iwant to live in.
SPEAKER_02 (32:40):
Yeah, I'm struck by the simplicity, and I think
mindfulness reminds me of thesimplicity every day, right?
But I mean, what you're saying,it's it's relatively simple in
idea.
I mean, you presented it in sucha beautiful and dynamic way.
But like you just said at theend, does this promote love in
(33:02):
the kind of world that I want tocreate, or does it not?
At the end of the day, whichdirection do I want to move?
And it reminds me of the aMeg-Duck part of our brain, its
only actions are move away from,move toward.
SPEAKER_01 (33:14):
Like, yep.
SPEAKER_02 (33:15):
That's all it can do, right?
Move away, move toward.
And if we're constantly in thatfear mode, then the reactionary
response is gonna be move away.
Yes, move away, but the realpower comes in choice.
One of the ways that I describemindfulness is knowing what's
going on inside of you, knowingwhat's going on outside of you,
(33:37):
and then making a choice onpurpose.
SPEAKER_00 (33:39):
I love that.
I love that.
Making an intentional choice.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (33:45):
Like noticing what's going on inside of me.
I'm acting from a place of fearright now.
When my daughter was little, alot of these tools were ones I
was still cultivating.
So I did plant a whole bunch offear at different points in her
development.
But I think we all have hadthose moments.
But the more I've practiced andthe more I realized the way that
(34:05):
my perceptions were coloring herreality, the more I realized
pretty quick I've got to getserious about creating a reality
that I want her to be excitedabout, right?
That I want her to engage withfully and from a place of
independence and confidence.
And so that's the reality thatwe talk about, or the way we
frame things in our house orconversations.
(34:26):
It's with, like you said, themove toward approach.
Find the thing to move toward inthat situation, find the way
through that has abundance in itor that has tolerance or joy.
Whereas the gratitude in thismoment not to shove down or
ignore the struggle or the chaosor whatever it is that we move
(34:47):
through, but just acknowledgeand then move toward the thing
that we actually want.
SPEAKER_00 (34:54):
Absolutely.
I'll tell you one of the bigthings that I speak with Grace
about.
Grace is starting to read now tothat the level where she's got
homework at kindergarten, right?
So we're looking at specificwords and how words move into
one another.
And last night she did herhomework and I was helping her
with it.
And one of the things that I'velearned to do well is, you know,
(35:15):
when parents say, I'm so proudof you, like you've accomplished
something.
I've tried to reframe that andsay, You must be so proud of
yourself.
Make it about her.
She should be proud of herself.
Whereas if you go the other way,and it's kind of just an easy
little play on words, but you'retaking from making dad happy to
(35:38):
you should be making yourselfhappy here.
Right.
So I catch myself even today.
I'm so proud of you.
Oh, I mean, you must be so proudof yourself, but I'm really
proud of you as well.
Because you've actually readthis sentence and you're doing
really well.
It was a simple sentence, butI'm so proud of you.
But you know what, Gracie?
You should be so proud of youbecause you did it.
You made it possible.
(35:59):
And I make her voice the words.
I'd like you to say, I'm soproud of myself.
I did this.
And she says, I'm proud.
And she says it sheepingly, youknow, I'm so proud of myself.
But I'm like, darling, that's astart.
At night, one of the big thingswe do is gratitude.
You mentioned gratitude, it'ssuch an important part of our
home.
We have a thank you, Jesus,moment for us in our home.
(36:22):
And at night, when she goes tobed and I give her a kiss good
night, I said, now it's thankyou, Jesus, time.
And she says, What do you mean?
She says, Well, what's what whatare you thankful for?
Oh, she says, I'm thankful.
She says silly things, you know,the wall colour and this picture
and whatever.
But it means a lot to her atfive years old.
And she rattles off about 10things.
What that does as a young girlis she's going to be in a state
(36:44):
of before she goes to bed atnight to be thankful and
appreciate everything that'sgoing on in her life when she's
25, 30, 35, 40, whatever.
So I want gratitude to be aconsistent theme because I'll
tell you what happens if it'snot.
Fear takes the wheel, and wedon't balance the equation.
Just as a silly example, you gowatch television and you see a
(37:06):
court scene being played out,and you have the defense and you
have the prosecution, right?
And the judge is in the middle,and the judge is letting both
sides usually have their say,and then in the middle is kind
of the decision, for better orfor worse, whatever that
decision is.
But what's happening in a lot oflife is that only one side of
the courtroom is speaking, andit's the fear.
And you're kind of the fear, thefear, the fear, the fear.
(37:28):
And as you're in the jury,you're sitting there and you're
going, you know, the fear makessense because that's all you're
hearing.
So after a while, you think, oh,yeah, well, that's true.
And I'll think of examples in mylife where that's actually
happened.
And yeah, I think the fear'sright.
I think the fear is absolutelyspot on, but you haven't even
heard from the other side.
You haven't heard from thedefense at all.
(37:48):
You're just making your mind upbased on one side of the
argument.
And when we look at the world,when we look at life, and when
we look at scenarios, it's veryimportant that you balance any
fear you feel with theappreciation of the joy of
what's already going on in yourlife.
You've got to balance it.
You can't be in that courtroomlistening to one side and
(38:08):
thinking that's the world.
It's not.
The whole premise of thecourtroom is to find the truth.
So you have to turn around andgo, okay, so what's the truth
for me?
There are bad things happeningin the world, but there are
amazing things happening in theworld.
I want to be on the side ofamazing and make a conscious
decision to do that or to be onthe side of truth.
I want to know what that meansfor me.
I want to listen to both sides.
(38:30):
And then you'll end up picking aside that resonates.
And I'm sure that 99% of peoplewould say this: picking a side
that resonates with love.
Because it is a core programmingof who we are.
And, you know, we all hear aboutlove yourself, love yourself.
And it is not a place ofspeaking from ego, it's a place
(38:51):
of understanding of howbeautiful you are, how beautiful
the planet is, and how finitethe next 70, 80, 90 years of
your life, whatever it is thatyou have here.
And it is amazing to considerthat with this blue pearl
spinning in space, and we can'tsee any other planets around us
(39:11):
that are like us, and we'regoing to find things to complain
about and have fear about whilewe've got this little finite
existence.
Is there another way?
The other way has to begratitude.
Like it has to be appreciation.
And by the way, try feeling fearand gratitude simultaneously.
You can't.
The studies have shown that youcan't be in a state of fear and
(39:34):
gratitude simultaneously.
The two emotions cancel eachother out.
So if you are in a state ofappreciation and gratefulness
for the stuff that you'vealready got going on that is
good, fear doesn't even comeinto the thought process.
It doesn't even enter it.
I'm so appreciative of myfamily, of the food that we've
got in the fridge, a little bitof money in the bank, great
(39:56):
podcast shows, great books outthere that can help me.
There are so many good thingshappening.
Family members that love us thatwill drop everything to make
sure that we're okay.
Those things exist, but we'renot paying attention to them
because we're focused on how badthings might get, possibly,
maybe in the future at somepoint.
(40:18):
And you ask yourself, what's thehealthier worldview here?
Where's the clarity gone?
And God's saying all this time,you've got choice of thought,
man.
You can create utopia or you cancreate hell on earth.
You've got the choice.
I have given you my lineage,which is you can create from
thought.
You are of me.
(40:39):
So you can create of thought.
So what sort of thoughts are youthinking?
And what sort of world do youcreate?
It's up to you guys.
You know, I can't hold your handforever.
We were blessed with thisbeautiful human being that was
God in flesh, and in my opinion,and you know, he's the example.
This is how you can live.
And if we don't choose love,then we've got to be prepared
(41:04):
for living in a state of fear,and then worse, perpetuating
that fear onto futuregenerations, be it
unintentionally orintentionally.
I just think that the world onto answer Einstein's question,
it's a friendly place.
You just got to make sure thatyou act that way first to be
able to receive it from others.
(41:30):
So, yeah, I think I'veabsolutely exhausted your
episode here.
SPEAKER_02 (41:36):
No, this has been so beautiful.
I'm reminded of one of theanalogies that I use with the
kids when we're talking aboutthis idea of choosing where you
focus.
It's tricky, you know.
I work with the coolest familiesand with parents who are making
inroads in this in reallyincredible ways.
And I love seeing the ways thatthey're changing the dynamic for
(41:56):
their kids and making such a bigdifference.
And one of the things that we'lltalk about is how it's a bit
like a word search where you seethis big jumble of letters and
you know that there's some greatstuff in there for you to find,
right?
But if you get too caught up injust the mess of it, then it's
gonna be tricky for you to focusin on what you're looking for.
(42:18):
But when you tell your brain,these are the words we're
looking for, this is your job,find this.
And then your brain goes towork, right?
And it's like, oh, okay, this iswhat I need to look for, and it
finds it, right?
It might be backwards orforwards or diagonal, but your
brain's like, okay, I know inthis space that these things
exist and I'm gonna find them.
And so thinking of life likethat word search, which is
(42:42):
oversimplifying it to be sure.
But the idea that when youbelieve love and joy and
gratitude and abundance arethere, and you set your mind to
it with that kind ofdetermination, it may be tricky
at first.
You know, the word search getseasier the more you cross off,
right?
Because you start getting therhythm and you're more
confident.
But when you're just starting tomake these shifts, it's tricky
(43:03):
because you're used to lookingfor the fear words or you're
finding words, you're like, ohno, that's not actually what I'm
looking for anymore.
These are the things I'm lookingfor, these are the experiences.
And so I think for anyonelistening who is feeling like an
inclination and feeling drawntoward what you're saying and
what you've shared sobeautifully today, when they're
feeling that pull, trusting thatin the first part it might be a
(43:26):
little tricky to adopt that kindof mindset with a routine grace.
Initially making that shift canbe challenging.
But as you build momentum, youstart to see, like you're
saying, more and more and morethings that fulfill your belief
that the world is a beautifulplace, that life is meant to be
(43:47):
enjoyed, and that there's somuch incredible happiness and
joy available to us at everyturn.
Sometimes it just takes a littlebit of time, right?
SPEAKER_00 (43:57):
It does, it does.
I would say that in thatanalogy, you would be the
sidebar.
A lot of parents just see theword search and don't actually
know what they're looking for.
And then you start searching,and you might see the odd little
few letters that look like aword, and you ask yourself, is
this actually a word that I'mlooking for?
(44:17):
And you don't know because youhaven't seen the sidebar.
I think that's probably takenyour analogy a little bit
further.
I think that there are people inthe world that can tell you
which words to look for.
And then once you find thosepeople, hang on to them because,
like you said, as you find thefirst or second or third word,
as you gain momentum and knowingthat it could be backwards,
(44:39):
forwards, diagonal, or reverse,that the brain goes, okay,
there's only really four waysthis can actually work.
And you start to kind of look atthat four-dimensional view on
the page, and you find thingsbecause you've identified a
framework, and then you alsoknow which words to look for.
So you've already set yourselfup for success.
Does success take a little bitof time for some of us?
(45:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, success takes a littlebit of time for all of us.
I think it does, and I thinkdon't shy away from the failure.
A lot of us don't want to failin many respects, especially as
parents.
I'll tell you now, and I've cometo terms with this.
There is something my child willblame me for in 20 years' time
that I didn't do.
They're gonna say, Baz, youknow, you did this, right, that,
(45:23):
right, but you were really badat that.
And I've resounded to knowingthat I'm gonna have that
conversation whenever it is.
SPEAKER_01 (45:29):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:30):
And then the recourse to that is, but did I
do anything good?
And that list will be longer forme, right?
And as parents, as just aspeople, isn't that the point
that you have a longer list inthe good things, the love, the
tolerance, the non-judgment?
Isn't that the list you want togrow?
(45:51):
And if the answer is yes, thendon't necessarily beat yourself
up for the two or three thingsthat you're still learning and
that you're still coming togrips with and that you're still
trying to implement.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
Because here's the other catch.
If you are really hard onyourself and your children see
that, then what do you thinkthey're gonna mimic?
They're gonna mimic being hardon themselves, right?
(46:14):
And when they make a simplemistake or when they feel like
they haven't read this sentenceproperly, the whole world
topples for them.
When as an adult and as aparent, if you can go, oh, okay,
messed up a bit there.
I wonder how I can do thatbetter next time, and have a
little chat with your child andsay, Listen, daddy and mummy are
still also learning.
(46:36):
And there actually wasn't aninstruction manual when you were
born.
So I'm so sorry about that.
It I just might have missed it.
It didn't happen.
So I'm trying to figure this outas I go along based on what I
feel, what your grandparentstaught me, and the environmental
factors that we have, yourschool, your friends, our
friends as parents, whateverelse.
And I'm trying to figure thispuzzle out and put it together
(46:57):
in the best way that I can.
If you can be patient in thatprocess with me, I promise you I
will try my best for you.
And I think that is whatchildren need to hear more than
anything in the world, thatmummy and daddy are still
figuring it out.
And this notion of you shouldhave it all together and all
understood straight away, Ithink is just the biggest load
(47:18):
of you know what.
Because you don't.
And there are differentparenting ideologies all over
the world, all in differentcultures of how you treat
children.
And you've got to make sure thatthe world that you want to see,
they are the principles that youteach.
So you go from the other way.
You know, do you want to seemore love in the world?
Barry, I want to see a lot morelove in the world, then teach
(47:40):
love.
And hopefully, who your kidswill marry if they marry, if
they want to find someone, it'sup to them.
But who they marry, they'll lookfor those same traits that they
were brought up with.
And all of a sudden you've gottwo people that are getting
married with children who willperpetuate those traits, right?
So sit easy knowing that you didyour best in that regard.
(48:00):
Don't necessarily, as a parent,go, Oh, I could have done
better.
Yeah, you probably could have,but no one's gonna do this
perfectly anyway.
So just give it your best go andthen learn from whatever things
you think that you failed in.
SPEAKER_02 (48:15):
Yeah.
Well, and I'm always such a bigproponent of the transparency
that you mentioned, and I thephrasing that you used, because
I think when we give our kids aglimpse into growth through
example, that it does give thempermission, like you said, to
make mistakes, to own theirmistakes, to sit okay with
mistakes, you know, to not runin the other direction to be
(48:37):
like, yeah, that was a mistake.
And I'm gonna make a bunch ofthem and I'm gonna move through
them and I'm gonna learn what Ican from them.
And I think that conversationand that willingness to engage
with our own growth and have agrowth mindset around it is one
of the biggest gifts we can givethem, right?
Because they'll carry that kindof patience with themselves for
(48:59):
their whole lives.
It's the performance of life,it's just the living of life.
It's messy sometimes.
SPEAKER_00 (49:06):
It's very messy.
Yeah, 100%.
It's messy.
And I guess the great thingabout thinking like that is that
if you're okay with makingmistakes yourself, and then your
children go, okay, just amistake, or I'm gonna make sure
that I try my best not to repeatthis mistake.
I'm gonna try and make differentmistakes.
SPEAKER_02 (49:25):
Exactly.
That's what we try to promote inour house.
Like, just don't make the ones Ialready showed you were real.
SPEAKER_00 (49:30):
Yeah, just learn from those.
Yeah, exactly.
Just make different mistakes.
But you know, if you are makingmistakes, you're actually trying
something different, if youthink about it.
Because the people that don'tmake any mistakes are the ones
that don't venture out to doanything, which is, by the way,
the biggest mistake because youdon't go out there and venture
in the world and stake yourclaim and whatever you want to
(49:50):
do with your life and find yourpurpose and find what you want.
The idea of going for that andbecoming, say, the highest,
truest expression of your soulis the fact that you're gonna
hit a few learning curves onthat road, which will more or
less polish who you would liketo become.
Now, the polishing process isquite difficult because it hurts
(50:13):
sometimes, you know, and we makethose mistakes or with wrong
decisions and we go down thewrong road and we come back
again.
But isn't that part of thelearning process to have a
deeper appreciation of what loveis?
If you think about it from adivine point of view, if you
look at humanity's mistakes overthe last 3,000 years, 2,000
(50:34):
years, I mean, I'll tell youwhat, if we didn't have a loving
father, he'd probably click hisfingers and we would all
disappear.
Yet we're still here and we'restill learning, and we're still
in the situation where he's gotinfinite patience because he
knows that this is how theylearn, this is how they
(50:55):
understand.
I have to have patience withthem.
This is how they get closer tome, this is how I can show more
love to them.
And aren't those the sameconversations we have with our
children?
This is how they learn, this ishow we get closer to them, this
is how we show more love.
Aren't they the sameconversations?
(51:16):
And in a funny way, havingchildren enables us to get a
glimpse of infinite love andinfinite love to his children,
which is us and how we learn andgrow.
We just make the same mistakesas our kids, just different,
just adult-sized ones.
That's the only difference.
So please don't be too hard onyourself.
(51:38):
Know that you're learning.
Try not to make the same mistaketwice.
If you can, avoid it.
Please try because you'velearned that lesson.
It's time to move on todifferent lessons.
And just have tolerance forother people's mistakes as well
as much as possible.
They're on their own learningjourney and they're not at the
same level as you.
(51:58):
So don't necessarily run tojudgment if a lesson that you
learned two years ago, they'rejust learning today.
Don't run to judgment becausetwo years ago you were in their
position.
So thank God that you didn'thave someone to judge you,
right?
So try not to be that for themas much as possible and just go,
this is how that person learns.
(52:18):
That's okay.
I'm okay with that.
I know it's hard being a humanbeing and having that kind of
godlike tolerance and godlikepatience, but it's the way that
humanity is going.
And the way that I know that isbecause these conversations are
being had.
That's the evidence, that's theproof that we're having these
conversations now.
So it means that humanity is ata stage where we are evolving to
(52:42):
higher planes of consciousness,love, resilience, understanding,
non-judgment.
We're rising to that.
But for a lot of us, all we seeis the fear.
And it's not that way at all.
SPEAKER_02 (52:55):
Yeah.
Well, then, like you're saying,in that evolution, that growth,
that up leveling that we'redoing as a society, it again
becomes all the more crucial,right?
That we choose the love andchoose the joy.
Because in time, there's thepotential to make such an impact
with those kind of choices.
So I love that your workhighlights that, and I'm
(53:16):
grateful, so grateful for ourconversation today and the ways
I know that that has shownthrough.
As we close, will you sharewhere people can find you?
Find your work.
SPEAKER_00 (53:28):
Absolutely.
Yeah, just type my name intoGoogle.
So just put Barry Nicolau.
The surname's a bit tricky.
N-I-C-O-L-A-O-U.
I'm sure you might have shownotes, Lindsay, if you want to.
Awesome.
So the new book, if you type inMove the Mountain into Amazon,
(53:49):
you'll find it.
I think the Kindled copy is like$5 Australian, which is like$3
US or something.
SPEAKER_01 (53:55):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (53:56):
So please download it.
You can order a physical copy ifyou feel enticed to do that.
A lot of the work that I'm doingnow is with corporations.
So the wellness and thewell-being space of leaders in
corporations.
So that's exciting.
But yeah, it's all about makingsure that we can move the
mountain in our own respectiveways.
And I've got a copy of the bookhere.
(54:16):
You probably see it on screen.
I don't know if you can see thatwithout the reflection of the
light.
But yeah, it's all about the suncoming over the horizon.
So it's yeah.
Yeah, it's cool.
SPEAKER_02 (54:26):
Yeah.
Well, thank you again for beinghere and thank you for sharing
your wisdom with us today.
SPEAKER_00 (54:31):
Thank you, Lindsay.
It's beautiful to be here withyou.
SPEAKER_02 (54:36):
Thanks for listening to The Stress Nanny.
If you found today's episodehelpful, be sure to share it
with a friend who could use alittle extra calm in their week.
And if you have a minute, I'dlove for you to leave a review.
It helps other parents find theshow and join us on this
journey.
For more tools and support, headover to www.thestressnanny.com.
Remember, you don't have to dostress alone.
(54:57):
Together we can raise kids whoknow how to navigate life with
confidence and ease.
Until next time, take a deepbreath and give yourself some
grace.
Welcome to The Stress Nanny, the podcast where
we take the overwhelm out ofparenting and help kids and
parents build calm, confidence,and connection.
I'm your host, Lindsay Miller,kids mindfulness coach and
cheerleader for busy familieseverywhere.
Each week we'll explore simpletools, uplifting stories, and
practical strategies to helpyour child learn emotional
(00:42):
regulation, resilience, andself-confidence, while giving
you a little more peace of mindtoo.
I'm so glad you're here.
My guest is Barry Nicola.
He's a fierce advocate ofwell-being, and he wants people
to be able to chase down life'ssought-after moments.
His ability to unlock and definecorporate inspiration, purpose,
(01:02):
gratitude, and drive led him tohis number one best-selling
book, The 11 Master Secrets toBusiness Success and Personal
Fulfillment, in 2015.
And then he recently publishedMove the Mountain, an intention
reset.
Very national talks, keynoteaddresses, webinar
presentations, and workshopswork to deconstruct the untapped
(01:25):
power of subconscious thoughtand the science of creative
visualization.
He focuses on the deconstructionof mindset blocks, which
surround cognitive fear,old-wired subconscious
paradigms, inherited thinking,and their connection to
real-world managerialexpectations and experiences.
Barry instills his corporatewell-being and executive
(01:48):
coaching programs primarilythrough four inspirational
programs.
And his merging ofspiritual-based fulfillment
practices into the corporatespace not only makes Barry's
programs highly sought after,but seen as a secret weapon for
employee engagement in apost-pandemic era.
And today on the podcast, we'regoing to translate those
(02:09):
teachings and Barry's wisdominto both work and family life
in a way that helps us apply theprinciples that he teaches and
the message that he shares withour families in terms of our
kids, in terms of ourinteractions with other people
as adults.
Barry, I'm so excited for thischat.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
SPEAKER_00 (02:29):
Lindsay, thank you for having me in this beautiful
space with you.
I'm sure we're going to unpacksome amazing, amazing wisdom
today.
SPEAKER_02 (02:36):
I think you're right.
One of the things that reallycaught my attention when Barry
and I were chatting about thisand determining if it would be a
good fit for us to do an episodetogether, was this phrase.
He said, to understand how ourvery thoughts can sabotage or
assist us in creating the lifewe want is the most pressing
(02:57):
conversation of our time.
And I feel that so strongly forkids.
Like my passion is that if wecan help kids to prevent
themselves from creating so manyof these blocks, right?
And then if we can help themsift through the ones that they
already have, that they will beable to build incredible lives
(03:19):
and have the kind offree-flowing mental health that
so many of us are searching forand trying to cultivate.
But we have years and years ofthis programming and
conditioning that we're kind ofworking with.
And so I'm so excited for justyour passion around this subject
because I feel like I agreecompletely that I mean it is the
most pressing conversation thatwe can have.
SPEAKER_00 (03:41):
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, I'mcoming from a place now where
I'm speaking as a father.
I've got two girls.
Grace is turning six in May, andHarmony is three in July.
And I want them to be fiercelyindependent and self-reliant.
And I guess it's why the twobooks are out there.
It's why I teach this instillingin the people that are ready to
(04:05):
listen, that are open to listen,that as a parent, as an
employee, as a partner in life,there's a sense of
responsibility to the peoplearound you that you live a life
based on your truest and highestprinciples of who you are.
And that ends up being acatalyst for your children and
(04:26):
for your partner to kind of livea life where you are not just
pushing the boundaries, so tospeak, but get into a situation
where you become the bestversion of who you are.
And that's very cliched intoday's kind of coaching
terminology, coaching world.
But it really is very important.
(04:46):
You know, children will oftenfollow the example of their
parents.
If I want my children to act andbehave in a certain way where
they are strong internally toface a lot of life's challenges,
then I've got to lead byexample.
So the second book that I'vejust released is actually for
them.
You know, there's a wholechapter dedicated to them.
(05:06):
And when I'm not around, it'slike if you want to know what
dad thought in his 40s, this iswhat he was thinking.
So it ends up being somethingthat I've taken on quite
seriously and quite intimatelyas well.
Because I want them to grow upto not be, I guess, codependent
as such on other people.
I want them to assist and be ofvalue to others, but at the same
(05:28):
time fortify their innerframework, their inner
structure.
So then when they do facechallenges, that they've got
some sort of toolkit that theycan refer to inside themselves
to be able to face thosechallenges and then have it
easier to face future challengesas well.
SPEAKER_02 (05:46):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (05:47):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (05:48):
I mean, they're so fortunate, right?
That at such a young age, youhave your eyes on that kind of
development.
And I often say that when we doteach it at that age, I mean, it
does change the trajectory oftheir entire life.
Like you're saying, you haveyour eye on these girls who will
be women who know themselves,who have that, like you said,
(06:11):
inner sense of resilience thatis the foundation on which they
built their life.
Spot on.
And they're gonna go out and doamazing things with it while
also being able to connect, askfor help, and you know, depend
on other people in healthy ways,but not topple over if something
comes their way that kind of isis tricky or frustrating or
(06:32):
hard, they'll have that innerstrength, right?
SPEAKER_00 (06:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
To give you an example, Lindsay,I'm of Greek descent and I'm
currently in Sydney, Australia.
So you can tell by my accent ifyou're listening that I'm not
from the States.
But but you get to a point whereI look at my grandparents and I
think, okay, they've got somegreat values and morals and
ideologies about how to live asuccessful or happy life.
(06:58):
But they also came from a placeof scarcity and war in many
cases.
So that fear has become embeddedin them biologically, right?
And that translates to, say, myparents as being risk-averse,
not being opportunistic inlooking at opportunities in life
and how to move forward incertain fear really takes the
driver's seat of the car.
(07:20):
And what I'm trying to teach mygirls is ego and fear should
kind of be somewhat in the car,but they should never be in the
front.
The ego should always be andfear should always be in the
back.
Because, you know, a little bitof fear, understanding that
there are dangerous situationsin life.
It's kind of inherently builtinto our biology.
But if you look at say fear andverse with say danger, you know,
(07:41):
danger is a very real thing.
But fear, like 90% of fearsdon't eventuate.
So the energy that we'refocusing on, what if this bad
thing happens could be spent inhow can we make things better?
So I've been very sensitive, Iguess, to where I spend my
energy.
And then with my girls,fortifying them, yes.
(08:04):
But then looking at the otherside of life, which is what do
you want to do?
Who do you want to be?
Is there any way I can help youget there?
Do you want my help to beginwith?
You might not.
But it ends up being as a parentand as someone who pushes
forward in life as much aspossible, that I want the best
for them.
And the only way that I can dothat is, I guess, go for it
(08:25):
myself and then lead by thatexample.
So you've got to keep at it, yougot to keep consistent.
The other thing I will say, andthis is very important to note,
I've eradicated the word hardfrom my vocabulary.
It's become a word that isbecome ingrained in our society.
Something is hard.
You know, you work hard, youplay hard.
(08:46):
And in this new book, I'veuncovered that life literally
gives you back what you aresaying and what you are feeling.
So we keep using these wordsthat we don't want to
experience.
And we spoke about subconsciousthought before, which is what
I'm delving into, like thescience of thought and how
thoughts do become things.
And the analogy that I keepcoming up with is really, really
(09:08):
cool for any parent or anyemployee or any partner to
realize is that I'd like you toconsider the soil outside of
your home.
And you look at the soil and youask the soil, what are you like?
And the soil will say, Well, Inurture expansion.
And you say, Well, what do youmean?
(09:29):
Are you going to grow a weed ifI let you grow a weed?
And the soil will say, Ofcourse.
I nurture expansion.
I've got sunlight, I've gotnutrients, and I've got water.
Anything you plant in me, I willgrow.
So I will grow a rose bush asmuch as I will grow poison ivy.
And that is what I do.
(09:49):
Now the soil has no notion ofright and wrong, it just
nurtures expansion.
So our subconscious mindoperates in exactly the same
way.
It has no concepts of fairness,it has no concepts of prejudice,
it has no concept of joy.
It nurtures expansion.
So when we're entertaining athought that something is hard
(10:13):
or something is difficult orsomething will cause stress or
whatever it is, the soil says,you must know what you're doing.
I will show you the physicalexpression of what that thought
means in the world.
And we experience hard times andwe experience situations that we
don't want to be in, and wecomplain about our situations to
(10:36):
people who are probably goingthrough similar scenarios to us.
So we gain some sort of clarityor we're searching for some sort
of understanding that is this anormal thing that I'm going
through, right?
And what we're actually sayingis we've kind of planted the
same seeds.
We don't know when thishappened.
We don't know that we wereconscious when we were doing it.
(10:57):
But here's the plant and it'sgrown.
And what I say to those people,and this is in all areas of
life, it's not just withchildren, but if you do not like
what you've grown, you have theability to pull that plant out
and plant something elsedeliberately in its place.
Right?
So if you for let's just use themost difficult example, if there
(11:18):
are traits in your children thatyou do not necessarily like,
then the compass has to comeback to you and say, is there a
moment in your past where youmight have intentionally or
unintentionally planted a seedof fear in that child?
And then this is manifested intosome sort of life experience.
Now, I'm not saying it's likethat for everyone, but I do know
(11:40):
that as parents, we want toprotect our children.
And sometimes the way we do thatis through fear.
Like, don't do that or somethingbad will happen, or don't talk
to that person because he'shanging around the wrong people.
And all of a sudden you instillthis sense of fear out of
protection.
But what we don't know is we'realso stopping the joy and we're
also stopping the happiness, andwe're also stopping the life
(12:03):
experiences that might need tohappen to put them back on a
trajectory of happiness.
And this is something that wejust got to be really careful as
people when we do have influenceover others, that we don't
necessarily go on the feebandwagon unchecked.
Because I think that ends upbeing an inherited and habitual
(12:27):
thinking practice.
And after a while, Lindsay, wedon't remember thinking any
other way.
Like if fear ends up being abiological way of how we express
ourselves, and then you becomerisk averse, you don't look at
opportunities, you don't look atresilience.
You've got this wall up ofprotection consistently because
the world is out to hurt youwhen really the world is out to
(12:50):
be enjoyed and to be experiencedand to learn from and make
better choices as we go on.
SPEAKER_01 (13:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (13:02):
Sorry, that was a bit of a rave from me.
So I did take a breath and allthat.
SPEAKER_02 (13:07):
I loved it.
I love that analogy of the soil.
I think it's really, reallypowerful.
One of the first interviews Idid on the podcast was with
Stephanie, and she has a bookcalled You Are a Gardener.
And it's a children's book forkids in terms of thoughts, and
how we each have this garden andwe plant what we will in it.
(13:29):
And sometimes other people tryto plant stuff in our garden,
and sometimes we have to do alittle tidying up or intentional
replanting.
But the words that you sharedwere so rich.
One of the things that Iappreciate about it was the
neutrality that you mentionedand how the soil it's not
discerning.
(13:50):
What's the and what's the youknow, the rows or what I want to
have grow there versus what Idon't.
And I think there's so much inthat that we could, I mean, we
could set up without unpackingthat, right?
Because the way that weinterpret our surroundings,
yeah, like has so much to dowith the way that we interact
with them, right?
(14:11):
And like you said, if we havethat lens of fear going
constantly, and that's ourinterpretation, then the things
that come our way are gonna bescary, right?
Like you said, if we're gonnahave that fear-based
perspective, either as a parentor if we inherited it from our
parents, or if life handed usexperiences that set us on that
(14:32):
path, that we find ourselves inlike that constant state of high
alert and concern and worry andanxiety just mounts and mounts.
And I love how you, you know,you're saying we can reorient
that.
Like if fear is your reality andif just anxiety is coming your
way constantly, it's a functionof like digging into that and
(14:54):
then reorienting so that you canplant.
Maybe the experience doesn'tchange immediately, but the
orientation to the experiencedoes, right?
Because if we shift in oursubconscious, we can see
different things, like we cansee abundance in the face of
struggle, we can see opportunityin the face of you know,
failure.
Like there's so much there thatwe're maybe not seeing simply
(15:15):
because of the lens throughwhich we're viewing the world.
SPEAKER_00 (15:19):
Absolutely.
And I think that is the hardest.
Well, he here, I use the wordhard again, right?
Because it's embedded in me aswell.
I think that's the mostchallenging part of resetting
intention because we get to apoint where we feel comfortable
in our fears and we justify thatcomfortability with, say, words
(15:42):
like protection.
And I'm a parent, I get it.
It's not like I'm speakingwithout children.
I want to protect them more thananything.
Give you an idea.
Grace, we recently went to aparty.
Friends invited us to theirchildren's party, and they had
it in this park.
And either side of this park,imagine a like a square park,
(16:04):
and either side of the park werequite busy roads.
The cars were actually movingquite quickly.
And there was about 12 to 15little kids under six years old
running around in this park.
And occasionally, and they werefollowing balloons, and the
balloons would drift close tothe road.
So my fear kicked in, and Istarted to get very how could
(16:25):
they have the party at thisplace?
This doesn't make any sense.
There's kids, there are carsmoving that would kill an adult.
The kids don't have a sense ofwhere the boundaries are, more
or less.
And then I started questioningthe planning of this city.
Why would they put the park inthe middle of these fast, busy
roads?
(16:46):
And then you start kind oflinking fee-based thoughts and
protection-based thoughts, whichturn to anger because you start
to think, why wasn't thisplanned better?
Or why didn't these friends ofmine that I trust and respect,
why didn't they have it at theirhome?
Or why didn't they have it in asafer space?
Now, Grace was running around.
(17:08):
If I look at it dispassionatelyas not being a father, she
wasn't in any real danger.
She knows where the road is.
I've stepped it to her three orfour times.
I said, Sweetheart, don't go tooclose to this part of the park
because you're quite close tothe road.
She says, Yes, dad, okay, I'mlistening and no problem.
And she never did.
And the other kids kind offollowed her lead and didn't
(17:28):
either.
But the anger and the fear in medidn't dissipate.
It was still there because ofwhat could have happened, right?
So sitting there speaking to mypartner, Lana, and I said, Lana,
you know, I don't think this wasthought through properly as
we're driving home.
I don't think this was thoughtthrough properly.
You know, imagine how bad thingscould have gone.
And I had to catch myselfbecause this is the problem and
(17:51):
the challenge with humanity inmany respects.
We keep entertaining worst-casescenarios.
We keep wondering why we'reexperiencing worst-case
scenarios quite often.
But we could be settingourselves up for it.
And this is the sabotaging partof the conversation here, right?
So are we, could we besabotaging the future that we
(18:14):
want to live in all areas oflife, not just with children, by
setting up a thoughtful set ofparameters of how bad things can
be.
And then, like the soil, theplant that we start to grow
isn't as beautiful as what weintended to grow in the first
place, because we've got thisfear that's expanding in our
(18:36):
souls, in our consciousness, inour bodies.
And then you go, okay, if that'strue, and I'm looking at this
with a little bit moreperspective now, a little bit
dispassionately.
Yes, I believe that maybe thatfear wasn't warranted within me.
Because even in the parkscenario, I made sure that I was
within 10 or 12 meters away fromGrace at all times because I
(19:00):
knew how long it would take me.
And I thought, Barry, calm down.
If she runs, you can run fasterthan her, you can get there in
time.
So I kind of tried to calm mynervous system down by knowing
that.
And then the day wentbeautifully well.
The cake was beautiful, the kidshad cake all over their face.
It was a great birthday party,best parties.
(19:22):
And and I robbed myself of thatmemory because it's overshadowed
by my fear.
And I'll probably never forgivemyself because you know,
Gracie's five.
She's gonna be a kid for alittle while, she's gonna be an
adult for a long time, right?
And this is the time in her lifewhere you want to not be in a
(19:46):
state of fear, you want to tellher how beautiful the world is
and how gorgeous the environmentis and how beautiful her mind
is, and how she's got nolimitations at five, only the
limitations her parents andsociety place on her, right?
And as a parent, I fell into thetrap because I wanted to protect
(20:07):
her, and then the instinct ofbeing a parent crept in.
But how many of us do that inlife and say, well, don't go for
that opportunity because you'llprobably fail?
I failed at it, so you'llprobably fail at it.
Or, you know, I never made it tothis level in life.
I'm gonna push my ideology ontomy children and hope that they
make it to that level in life.
(20:28):
When really, have you asked thechild or have you asked the
person, what do you want?
What's that thing inside youthat you really want to express?
What is that?
I want to understand thatbetter.
And if you allow me, I want totry and help you on that path,
whatever that is.
And it's important that we dothat with adults as well.
(20:48):
And this is my work that I donow.
It's uncovering what the desireis.
You know, Lindsay, most peopletell you what you what they
don't want.
Most people say, I don't wantcancer.
No one says, I want to behealthy.
Everyone says, I don't want tobe broke.
No one says, I wonder whateconomic freedom would feel
(21:08):
like.
I want, I wonder how that couldhappen.
I'm really enthralled in that.
Wow, that means I would havemore time, and that means I
could help that person, and thatmeans I could help that charity.
Like we're always viewing lifethrough a what if the bad
scenario happens?
And then we become perplexedwhen bad scenarios come into our
(21:29):
life and it confirms our biases.
It confirms that you see, Barry,I've told you I get cut off in
traffic.
Look, that truck just cut meoff.
Well, hang on, you've beensaying you get cut off in
traffic for the last threeyears.
Are you entirely surprised bythe fact that you just got cut
off?
It's like life, the soil, right?
You come back to it.
(21:49):
You're growing a plant thatyou've intentionally nurtured.
And then you're perplexed by thethe way the plant looks.
And I wonder if we could go astep back and just say to
ourselves, let's see if we canplant some intentional seeds
here.
What sort of plants do you wantto go to the nursery or you know
(22:11):
the garden center and look atthe plants that you want to grow
and go, I want that one, thatone, that one, and that one.
I'm gonna see if I can bringthose plants home and plant them
in my garden.
All of a sudden, you've plantedwith intention.
And what are those plants?
Joy, love, understanding,patience, tolerance,
non-judgment as much aspossible.
(22:32):
They're the plants you want tosee grow, and they're the humans
that are gonna take the world,Lindsay, in a beautiful
direction, not necessarily beliving, walking, fear-based
examples of what parents orgrandparents went through in
times of scarcity and fear.
SPEAKER_02 (22:50):
Yeah, that was so beautifully put.
I think often about thisgeneration of parents and how it
really is a huge developmentalleap.
When I was growing up, there wasvery limited information
available.
So there were like a handful ofthings to be afraid of.
(23:11):
And your parents would get thenewspaper, and there might be
crime or different things goingon.
And I grew up in a city that hada significant gang population.
But I went to school, those kidswere my friends, and so it was
normal.
It wasn't scary to me as much asit was that you needed to know
what to do in differentsituations.
One of the things that I thinkparents grapple with so often
(23:34):
now is just the awareness of allthe things in the world,
literally, that there are to beafraid of, right?
And we as kids didn't have thatawareness.
We didn't grow up with that, wedidn't have to grapple with it.
And like you said,generationally, there's been
different levels of awarenessthat have kind of filtered their
way to us.
But as parents now, theinvitation really is to up-level
(23:58):
our ability to, like you'resaying, direct our thoughts,
intentionally reframe andintentionally phrase experience
in a way that doesn't perpetuatethe fear as much as it
perpetuates the love and thejoy.
And I think if if someone islistening right now and they're
feeling like they have a hardtime with that and their go-to
(24:19):
is fear, I think the invitationis just to look at it as an
opportunity for growth rightnow, right?
We are in such a unique space interms of the information that's
available to us as parents.
And there hasn't been anothergeneration of parents that's had
this kind of information attheir disposal.
And so being able to filter allof that and look for the things
(24:41):
you want instead of letting fearcontinually draw you back into
the things you're afraid of.
Just the powerful skill that Ithink all of us need just based
on the time that we live in.
SPEAKER_00 (24:53):
Absolutely.
And, you know, I'll keep goingback to this second book that
I've just written, but it'simportant to talk about this.
The premise of the second bookwas to get an understanding of
how thoughts do germinate andbecome physical, tangible
experiences.
I've headed back to Einstein andhis philosophical views on, you
(25:13):
know, when Einstein was talkingabout the theory of relativity
and his thoughts on how thingsworked and how the universe
worked, he had this quote that Ibecame absolutely obsessed with
because it opened up the doorsof curiosity in a way that I
never thought possible.
And this is a question thatevery human being really answers
consciously or subconsciously,and it forms the premise of this
(25:35):
book.
I need you to ask the questionof yourselves if you're
listening.
You've got to ask yourself ifyou believe, like in your heart
of hearts, that the world is ahostile place?
Or do you believe in your heartof hearts if the world is a
friendly place?
Now, the point of the questionis not to give a long-winded
answer on the side of goodexperiences and the side of bad
(25:57):
experiences.
The idea of the question is toreduce your answer to a single
word.
Do you believe that the world ishostile or do you believe that
the world is friendly?
Now, the reason he asked thequestion is because the answer
you give will start to form anarrative on the experiences,
(26:21):
situations, and circumstancesthat you will find yourself in,
increasingly so as you getolder, because it forms the base
of the concrete underneath yourhouse.
It is the framework that you'rebuilding on that concrete base,
right?
If you believe and you exposeyourself to the negative
(26:42):
narratives of the world, youwill argue on the side of
hostility and you'll mentionCOVID and you'll back it up and
mention what Russia's doing, andyou'll talk about the Ukraine
and all the refugees, and you'llstart to, you know, you'll link
that to babies that are notnecessarily living anymore.
The babies have died, and andthe mind will go down a track of
hostile, hostile.
(27:03):
And then the person that's well,Barry, I don't think the world
is actually a hostile place.
There are people like Lindsay inthe world that are actually
unpacking a lot of this stuff.
There are good mothers outthere, there are good fathers
out there that are trying tolearn and be better, that are
going to raise children that aregoing to want to learn and be
better themselves.
And that's happening at the sametime.
(27:26):
So what's true here, it comesdown to what you believe to be
the right thing to do for you.
And where we get hijacked iswhen the fear turns around and
screams at us so much that we godown the hostile answer road
that Einstein was speakingabout.
I talk about affirmations and wetalk about how to get into a
(27:47):
better space as young adults andchildren and even grandparents.
How do we get into a betterspace mentally to be able to
project that love?
And you've got to believe thatthe world is a friendly place
because inherently it is.
What we see is the fear-basedreasonings in people's minds
(28:08):
that are playing out at atangible level.
So where life's going, well, youbelieve the world's fearful?
Let me give you examples ofthat.
I'll show you fear, I'll showyou wars, I'll show you
pandemics, no problem.
I'll show you horror movies,I'll show you movies that end in
destruction of the I'll show youall that.
No problem.
I've got no problem because Ithink that you know what you're
(28:31):
doing.
And as parents and as adults, wedon't.
We often don't.
We say we want to live joy,love-based lives, but inner
framework is the oppositedirection.
So how on earth do we thinkwe're gonna manifest a life for
our children that we want forthem when our inner framework's
(28:54):
going the other way?
There's a constant duality thatis going on within us.
Now, how do you handle that?
You get to a level where yourealize that bad things happen,
yes, but I'm not gonna livethere.
I'm not gonna live out of thatspace where bad things are
happening.
I'm gonna live out of the placewhere love, joy, tolerance,
(29:14):
non-judgment, reverence for allof life.
That is the basis of what I'mgonna build my house on.
And if that makes me delusional,then it makes me delusional.
But I think we want the best forour children.
So we have to make sure thatinner framework supports that
best for our children mindset.
And is it difficult to do?
(29:35):
Absolutely.
Is it possible?
Yes.
Make a choice, make a decision,make a commitment to yourself
that I'm gonna let this child orI'm gonna let this person in
front of me express themselvesin a way that they only know
how.
I'm gonna support thatstructure.
It feels good to me.
And then all of a sudden, peoplelive life based on what they
(29:59):
feel is the Innate purpose andcalling of who they are as
people because they've hadsupporting parents to be able to
nurture that.
And you know, it's probably notgoing to fit everyone.
This isn't a one-size-fits-allhat that I'm talking about.
But I tell you, it's the worldthat I want to see for my two
girls.
So the only way I can see thatworld is to try and be that
(30:20):
change myself on my small,impactful level, to then say,
well, you know, dad managed todo it.
Dad had all these challenges.
Dad's been through divorce, youknow, dad's been through a loss
of jobs over and over and overagain.
Dad's been through hard times.
You know, it was a time where wedidn't have any money.
It's not like I'm preaching fromon top of the mountain with a
(30:43):
huge inheritance.
I don't have that.
So it ends up being, what do youwant to see in the world?
Am I an example of that?
And if I'm not, how can I be?
And that's the premise of thebook.
That's the premise ofunderstanding that if you want
to reset intention, you can.
Are you courageous enough tomake the physical and mental
(31:06):
moves that enables your world toshift in that direction?
And then this is what alwayshappens when you do shift.
People will say you got lucky,and people will say that you've
been blessed beyond otherpeople's blessings.
And it's not the case.
You've just tapped into adifferent part of God's mindset,
and God's mindset is ultimatelove, like ultimate,
(31:30):
unconditional, beautiful lovefor humanity at the highest
level that we can ever imagine.
That's the source of which wecame.
And if we're a slice of thatsource, if we're just a spark
from within the fire thatflickers out of the fire, if
we're from the fire itself, thenaren't we love as well?
(31:51):
Aren't we love-based people thatare projecting our fears onto
others and ourselves?
Isn't that what's really goingon?
Rather than thinking that it'soverly complicated and there
must be dynamics that we don'tunderstand here.
You just got to come from aposition of is this decision
that I'm making love-based?
Is it nurturing to my childrenor to the people that I'm with?
(32:14):
Is it valid?
Is it is it gonna add to theconversation in the world that I
want to see take place?
Is that is this conversationadding to that world?
And if the answer is yes, haveit.
And if the answer is no,consider that if your words are
gonna negatively impact someone,it's your call.
(32:36):
But that's not the world that Iwant to live in.
SPEAKER_02 (32:40):
Yeah, I'm struck by the simplicity, and I think
mindfulness reminds me of thesimplicity every day, right?
But I mean, what you're saying,it's it's relatively simple in
idea.
I mean, you presented it in sucha beautiful and dynamic way.
But like you just said at theend, does this promote love in
(33:02):
the kind of world that I want tocreate, or does it not?
At the end of the day, whichdirection do I want to move?
And it reminds me of the aMeg-Duck part of our brain, its
only actions are move away from,move toward.
SPEAKER_01 (33:14):
Like, yep.
SPEAKER_02 (33:15):
That's all it can do, right?
Move away, move toward.
And if we're constantly in thatfear mode, then the reactionary
response is gonna be move away.
Yes, move away, but the realpower comes in choice.
One of the ways that I describemindfulness is knowing what's
going on inside of you, knowingwhat's going on outside of you,
(33:37):
and then making a choice onpurpose.
SPEAKER_00 (33:39):
I love that.
I love that.
Making an intentional choice.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (33:45):
Like noticing what's going on inside of me.
I'm acting from a place of fearright now.
When my daughter was little, alot of these tools were ones I
was still cultivating.
So I did plant a whole bunch offear at different points in her
development.
But I think we all have hadthose moments.
But the more I've practiced andthe more I realized the way that
(34:05):
my perceptions were coloring herreality, the more I realized
pretty quick I've got to getserious about creating a reality
that I want her to be excitedabout, right?
That I want her to engage withfully and from a place of
independence and confidence.
And so that's the reality thatwe talk about, or the way we
frame things in our house orconversations.
(34:26):
It's with, like you said, themove toward approach.
Find the thing to move toward inthat situation, find the way
through that has abundance in itor that has tolerance or joy.
Whereas the gratitude in thismoment not to shove down or
ignore the struggle or the chaosor whatever it is that we move
(34:47):
through, but just acknowledgeand then move toward the thing
that we actually want.
SPEAKER_00 (34:54):
Absolutely.
I'll tell you one of the bigthings that I speak with Grace
about.
Grace is starting to read now tothat the level where she's got
homework at kindergarten, right?
So we're looking at specificwords and how words move into
one another.
And last night she did herhomework and I was helping her
with it.
And one of the things that I'velearned to do well is, you know,
(35:15):
when parents say, I'm so proudof you, like you've accomplished
something.
I've tried to reframe that andsay, You must be so proud of
yourself.
Make it about her.
She should be proud of herself.
Whereas if you go the other way,and it's kind of just an easy
little play on words, but you'retaking from making dad happy to
(35:38):
you should be making yourselfhappy here.
Right.
So I catch myself even today.
I'm so proud of you.
Oh, I mean, you must be so proudof yourself, but I'm really
proud of you as well.
Because you've actually readthis sentence and you're doing
really well.
It was a simple sentence, butI'm so proud of you.
But you know what, Gracie?
You should be so proud of youbecause you did it.
You made it possible.
(35:59):
And I make her voice the words.
I'd like you to say, I'm soproud of myself.
I did this.
And she says, I'm proud.
And she says it sheepingly, youknow, I'm so proud of myself.
But I'm like, darling, that's astart.
At night, one of the big thingswe do is gratitude.
You mentioned gratitude, it'ssuch an important part of our
home.
We have a thank you, Jesus,moment for us in our home.
(36:22):
And at night, when she goes tobed and I give her a kiss good
night, I said, now it's thankyou, Jesus, time.
And she says, What do you mean?
She says, Well, what's what whatare you thankful for?
Oh, she says, I'm thankful.
She says silly things, you know,the wall colour and this picture
and whatever.
But it means a lot to her atfive years old.
And she rattles off about 10things.
What that does as a young girlis she's going to be in a state
(36:44):
of before she goes to bed atnight to be thankful and
appreciate everything that'sgoing on in her life when she's
25, 30, 35, 40, whatever.
So I want gratitude to be aconsistent theme because I'll
tell you what happens if it'snot.
Fear takes the wheel, and wedon't balance the equation.
Just as a silly example, you gowatch television and you see a
(37:06):
court scene being played out,and you have the defense and you
have the prosecution, right?
And the judge is in the middle,and the judge is letting both
sides usually have their say,and then in the middle is kind
of the decision, for better orfor worse, whatever that
decision is.
But what's happening in a lot oflife is that only one side of
the courtroom is speaking, andit's the fear.
And you're kind of the fear, thefear, the fear, the fear.
(37:28):
And as you're in the jury,you're sitting there and you're
going, you know, the fear makessense because that's all you're
hearing.
So after a while, you think, oh,yeah, well, that's true.
And I'll think of examples in mylife where that's actually
happened.
And yeah, I think the fear'sright.
I think the fear is absolutelyspot on, but you haven't even
heard from the other side.
You haven't heard from thedefense at all.
(37:48):
You're just making your mind upbased on one side of the
argument.
And when we look at the world,when we look at life, and when
we look at scenarios, it's veryimportant that you balance any
fear you feel with theappreciation of the joy of
what's already going on in yourlife.
You've got to balance it.
You can't be in that courtroomlistening to one side and
(38:08):
thinking that's the world.
It's not.
The whole premise of thecourtroom is to find the truth.
So you have to turn around andgo, okay, so what's the truth
for me?
There are bad things happeningin the world, but there are
amazing things happening in theworld.
I want to be on the side ofamazing and make a conscious
decision to do that or to be onthe side of truth.
I want to know what that meansfor me.
I want to listen to both sides.
(38:30):
And then you'll end up picking aside that resonates.
And I'm sure that 99% of peoplewould say this: picking a side
that resonates with love.
Because it is a core programmingof who we are.
And, you know, we all hear aboutlove yourself, love yourself.
And it is not a place ofspeaking from ego, it's a place
(38:51):
of understanding of howbeautiful you are, how beautiful
the planet is, and how finitethe next 70, 80, 90 years of
your life, whatever it is thatyou have here.
And it is amazing to considerthat with this blue pearl
spinning in space, and we can'tsee any other planets around us
(39:11):
that are like us, and we'regoing to find things to complain
about and have fear about whilewe've got this little finite
existence.
Is there another way?
The other way has to begratitude.
Like it has to be appreciation.
And by the way, try feeling fearand gratitude simultaneously.
You can't.
The studies have shown that youcan't be in a state of fear and
(39:34):
gratitude simultaneously.
The two emotions cancel eachother out.
So if you are in a state ofappreciation and gratefulness
for the stuff that you'vealready got going on that is
good, fear doesn't even comeinto the thought process.
It doesn't even enter it.
I'm so appreciative of myfamily, of the food that we've
got in the fridge, a little bitof money in the bank, great
(39:56):
podcast shows, great books outthere that can help me.
There are so many good thingshappening.
Family members that love us thatwill drop everything to make
sure that we're okay.
Those things exist, but we'renot paying attention to them
because we're focused on how badthings might get, possibly,
maybe in the future at somepoint.
(40:18):
And you ask yourself, what's thehealthier worldview here?
Where's the clarity gone?
And God's saying all this time,you've got choice of thought,
man.
You can create utopia or you cancreate hell on earth.
You've got the choice.
I have given you my lineage,which is you can create from
thought.
You are of me.
(40:39):
So you can create of thought.
So what sort of thoughts are youthinking?
And what sort of world do youcreate?
It's up to you guys.
You know, I can't hold your handforever.
We were blessed with thisbeautiful human being that was
God in flesh, and in my opinion,and you know, he's the example.
This is how you can live.
And if we don't choose love,then we've got to be prepared
(41:04):
for living in a state of fear,and then worse, perpetuating
that fear onto futuregenerations, be it
unintentionally orintentionally.
I just think that the world onto answer Einstein's question,
it's a friendly place.
You just got to make sure thatyou act that way first to be
able to receive it from others.
(41:30):
So, yeah, I think I'veabsolutely exhausted your
episode here.
SPEAKER_02 (41:36):
No, this has been so beautiful.
I'm reminded of one of theanalogies that I use with the
kids when we're talking aboutthis idea of choosing where you
focus.
It's tricky, you know.
I work with the coolest familiesand with parents who are making
inroads in this in reallyincredible ways.
And I love seeing the ways thatthey're changing the dynamic for
(41:56):
their kids and making such a bigdifference.
And one of the things that we'lltalk about is how it's a bit
like a word search where you seethis big jumble of letters and
you know that there's some greatstuff in there for you to find,
right?
But if you get too caught up injust the mess of it, then it's
gonna be tricky for you to focusin on what you're looking for.
(42:18):
But when you tell your brain,these are the words we're
looking for, this is your job,find this.
And then your brain goes towork, right?
And it's like, oh, okay, this iswhat I need to look for, and it
finds it, right?
It might be backwards orforwards or diagonal, but your
brain's like, okay, I know inthis space that these things
exist and I'm gonna find them.
And so thinking of life likethat word search, which is
(42:42):
oversimplifying it to be sure.
But the idea that when youbelieve love and joy and
gratitude and abundance arethere, and you set your mind to
it with that kind ofdetermination, it may be tricky
at first.
You know, the word search getseasier the more you cross off,
right?
Because you start getting therhythm and you're more
confident.
But when you're just starting tomake these shifts, it's tricky
(43:03):
because you're used to lookingfor the fear words or you're
finding words, you're like, ohno, that's not actually what I'm
looking for anymore.
These are the things I'm lookingfor, these are the experiences.
And so I think for anyonelistening who is feeling like an
inclination and feeling drawntoward what you're saying and
what you've shared sobeautifully today, when they're
feeling that pull, trusting thatin the first part it might be a
(43:26):
little tricky to adopt that kindof mindset with a routine grace.
Initially making that shift canbe challenging.
But as you build momentum, youstart to see, like you're
saying, more and more and morethings that fulfill your belief
that the world is a beautifulplace, that life is meant to be
(43:47):
enjoyed, and that there's somuch incredible happiness and
joy available to us at everyturn.
Sometimes it just takes a littlebit of time, right?
SPEAKER_00 (43:57):
It does, it does.
I would say that in thatanalogy, you would be the
sidebar.
A lot of parents just see theword search and don't actually
know what they're looking for.
And then you start searching,and you might see the odd little
few letters that look like aword, and you ask yourself, is
this actually a word that I'mlooking for?
(44:17):
And you don't know because youhaven't seen the sidebar.
I think that's probably takenyour analogy a little bit
further.
I think that there are people inthe world that can tell you
which words to look for.
And then once you find thosepeople, hang on to them because,
like you said, as you find thefirst or second or third word,
as you gain momentum and knowingthat it could be backwards,
(44:39):
forwards, diagonal, or reverse,that the brain goes, okay,
there's only really four waysthis can actually work.
And you start to kind of look atthat four-dimensional view on
the page, and you find thingsbecause you've identified a
framework, and then you alsoknow which words to look for.
So you've already set yourselfup for success.
Does success take a little bitof time for some of us?
(45:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, success takes a littlebit of time for all of us.
I think it does, and I thinkdon't shy away from the failure.
A lot of us don't want to failin many respects, especially as
parents.
I'll tell you now, and I've cometo terms with this.
There is something my child willblame me for in 20 years' time
that I didn't do.
They're gonna say, Baz, youknow, you did this, right, that,
(45:23):
right, but you were really badat that.
And I've resounded to knowingthat I'm gonna have that
conversation whenever it is.
SPEAKER_01 (45:29):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:30):
And then the recourse to that is, but did I
do anything good?
And that list will be longer forme, right?
And as parents, as just aspeople, isn't that the point
that you have a longer list inthe good things, the love, the
tolerance, the non-judgment?
Isn't that the list you want togrow?
(45:51):
And if the answer is yes, thendon't necessarily beat yourself
up for the two or three thingsthat you're still learning and
that you're still coming togrips with and that you're still
trying to implement.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
Because here's the other catch.
If you are really hard onyourself and your children see
that, then what do you thinkthey're gonna mimic?
They're gonna mimic being hardon themselves, right?
(46:14):
And when they make a simplemistake or when they feel like
they haven't read this sentenceproperly, the whole world
topples for them.
When as an adult and as aparent, if you can go, oh, okay,
messed up a bit there.
I wonder how I can do thatbetter next time, and have a
little chat with your child andsay, Listen, daddy and mummy are
still also learning.
(46:36):
And there actually wasn't aninstruction manual when you were
born.
So I'm so sorry about that.
It I just might have missed it.
It didn't happen.
So I'm trying to figure this outas I go along based on what I
feel, what your grandparentstaught me, and the environmental
factors that we have, yourschool, your friends, our
friends as parents, whateverelse.
And I'm trying to figure thispuzzle out and put it together
(46:57):
in the best way that I can.
If you can be patient in thatprocess with me, I promise you I
will try my best for you.
And I think that is whatchildren need to hear more than
anything in the world, thatmummy and daddy are still
figuring it out.
And this notion of you shouldhave it all together and all
understood straight away, Ithink is just the biggest load
(47:18):
of you know what.
Because you don't.
And there are differentparenting ideologies all over
the world, all in differentcultures of how you treat
children.
And you've got to make sure thatthe world that you want to see,
they are the principles that youteach.
So you go from the other way.
You know, do you want to seemore love in the world?
Barry, I want to see a lot morelove in the world, then teach
(47:40):
love.
And hopefully, who your kidswill marry if they marry, if
they want to find someone, it'sup to them.
But who they marry, they'll lookfor those same traits that they
were brought up with.
And all of a sudden you've gottwo people that are getting
married with children who willperpetuate those traits, right?
So sit easy knowing that you didyour best in that regard.
(48:00):
Don't necessarily, as a parent,go, Oh, I could have done
better.
Yeah, you probably could have,but no one's gonna do this
perfectly anyway.
So just give it your best go andthen learn from whatever things
you think that you failed in.
SPEAKER_02 (48:15):
Yeah.
Well, and I'm always such a bigproponent of the transparency
that you mentioned, and I thephrasing that you used, because
I think when we give our kids aglimpse into growth through
example, that it does give thempermission, like you said, to
make mistakes, to own theirmistakes, to sit okay with
mistakes, you know, to not runin the other direction to be
(48:37):
like, yeah, that was a mistake.
And I'm gonna make a bunch ofthem and I'm gonna move through
them and I'm gonna learn what Ican from them.
And I think that conversationand that willingness to engage
with our own growth and have agrowth mindset around it is one
of the biggest gifts we can givethem, right?
Because they'll carry that kindof patience with themselves for
(48:59):
their whole lives.
It's the performance of life,it's just the living of life.
It's messy sometimes.
SPEAKER_00 (49:06):
It's very messy.
Yeah, 100%.
It's messy.
And I guess the great thingabout thinking like that is that
if you're okay with makingmistakes yourself, and then your
children go, okay, just amistake, or I'm gonna make sure
that I try my best not to repeatthis mistake.
I'm gonna try and make differentmistakes.
SPEAKER_02 (49:25):
Exactly.
That's what we try to promote inour house.
Like, just don't make the ones Ialready showed you were real.
SPEAKER_00 (49:30):
Yeah, just learn from those.
Yeah, exactly.
Just make different mistakes.
But you know, if you are makingmistakes, you're actually trying
something different, if youthink about it.
Because the people that don'tmake any mistakes are the ones
that don't venture out to doanything, which is, by the way,
the biggest mistake because youdon't go out there and venture
in the world and stake yourclaim and whatever you want to
(49:50):
do with your life and find yourpurpose and find what you want.
The idea of going for that andbecoming, say, the highest,
truest expression of your soulis the fact that you're gonna
hit a few learning curves onthat road, which will more or
less polish who you would liketo become.
Now, the polishing process isquite difficult because it hurts
(50:13):
sometimes, you know, and we makethose mistakes or with wrong
decisions and we go down thewrong road and we come back
again.
But isn't that part of thelearning process to have a
deeper appreciation of what loveis?
If you think about it from adivine point of view, if you
look at humanity's mistakes overthe last 3,000 years, 2,000
(50:34):
years, I mean, I'll tell youwhat, if we didn't have a loving
father, he'd probably click hisfingers and we would all
disappear.
Yet we're still here and we'restill learning, and we're still
in the situation where he's gotinfinite patience because he
knows that this is how theylearn, this is how they
(50:55):
understand.
I have to have patience withthem.
This is how they get closer tome, this is how I can show more
love to them.
And aren't those the sameconversations we have with our
children?
This is how they learn, this ishow we get closer to them, this
is how we show more love.
Aren't they the sameconversations?
(51:16):
And in a funny way, havingchildren enables us to get a
glimpse of infinite love andinfinite love to his children,
which is us and how we learn andgrow.
We just make the same mistakesas our kids, just different,
just adult-sized ones.
That's the only difference.
So please don't be too hard onyourself.
(51:38):
Know that you're learning.
Try not to make the same mistaketwice.
If you can, avoid it.
Please try because you'velearned that lesson.
It's time to move on todifferent lessons.
And just have tolerance forother people's mistakes as well
as much as possible.
They're on their own learningjourney and they're not at the
same level as you.
(51:58):
So don't necessarily run tojudgment if a lesson that you
learned two years ago, they'rejust learning today.
Don't run to judgment becausetwo years ago you were in their
position.
So thank God that you didn'thave someone to judge you,
right?
So try not to be that for themas much as possible and just go,
this is how that person learns.
(52:18):
That's okay.
I'm okay with that.
I know it's hard being a humanbeing and having that kind of
godlike tolerance and godlikepatience, but it's the way that
humanity is going.
And the way that I know that isbecause these conversations are
being had.
That's the evidence, that's theproof that we're having these
conversations now.
So it means that humanity is ata stage where we are evolving to
(52:42):
higher planes of consciousness,love, resilience, understanding,
non-judgment.
We're rising to that.
But for a lot of us, all we seeis the fear.
And it's not that way at all.
SPEAKER_02 (52:55):
Yeah.
Well, then, like you're saying,in that evolution, that growth,
that up leveling that we'redoing as a society, it again
becomes all the more crucial,right?
That we choose the love andchoose the joy.
Because in time, there's thepotential to make such an impact
with those kind of choices.
So I love that your workhighlights that, and I'm
(53:16):
grateful, so grateful for ourconversation today and the ways
I know that that has shownthrough.
As we close, will you sharewhere people can find you?
Find your work.
SPEAKER_00 (53:28):
Absolutely.
Yeah, just type my name intoGoogle.
So just put Barry Nicolau.
The surname's a bit tricky.
N-I-C-O-L-A-O-U.
I'm sure you might have shownotes, Lindsay, if you want to.
Awesome.
So the new book, if you type inMove the Mountain into Amazon,
(53:49):
you'll find it.
I think the Kindled copy is like$5 Australian, which is like$3
US or something.
SPEAKER_01 (53:55):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (53:56):
So please download it.
You can order a physical copy ifyou feel enticed to do that.
A lot of the work that I'm doingnow is with corporations.
So the wellness and thewell-being space of leaders in
corporations.
So that's exciting.
But yeah, it's all about makingsure that we can move the
mountain in our own respectiveways.
And I've got a copy of the bookhere.
(54:16):
You probably see it on screen.
I don't know if you can see thatwithout the reflection of the
light.
But yeah, it's all about the suncoming over the horizon.
So it's yeah.
Yeah, it's cool.
SPEAKER_02 (54:26):
Yeah.
Well, thank you again for beinghere and thank you for sharing
your wisdom with us today.
SPEAKER_00 (54:31):
Thank you, Lindsay.
It's beautiful to be here withyou.
SPEAKER_02 (54:36):
Thanks for listening to The Stress Nanny.
If you found today's episodehelpful, be sure to share it
with a friend who could use alittle extra calm in their week.
And if you have a minute, I'dlove for you to leave a review.
It helps other parents find theshow and join us on this
journey.
For more tools and support, headover to www.thestressnanny.com.
Remember, you don't have to dostress alone.
(54:57):
Together we can raise kids whoknow how to navigate life with
confidence and ease.
Until next time, take a deepbreath and give yourself some
grace.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.