Inside Knowledge

This is the final episode of Season 1 of the podcast.  This is a solo cast in which I share a little of my journey of resilience in 2018.  I talk about creating the podcast and why.  I also talk about my personal journey this year which included working with a counselor to try and reduce the symptoms of PTSD from an historic incident.  I also talk about my two month episode of depression which almost derailed everything.  At the end I talk about my online course Embodied Resilience, my website and FB page and groups.  I'm enjoying my season break from the podcast and will return in 2019 with Season 2.

This episode is a compilation of excerpts from sixteen of my podcast interviews for season one.  I chose them because they best reflect the key themes that were covered relating to resilience.  

Show Notes – Stacy Brookman When you experience trauma those memories are stored in a different part of the brain from regular memories.  They are very sharp and they can hide from your own self.  They come out when you least expect it.  They can direct how we operate in the world – particularly childhood trauma.  You can't live joyfully because there is this stuff going around in your head. Writing helps put those memories into the place where regular memories are stored – where they can fade. There is a large body of research around writing to heal.  Writing as little as two minutes ago has been found to boost your immune system, make you calmer, make you happier.  It is a wonderful tool for anybody to have. Your Life as a Story by Christine Rainer – recommended book.  Not specifically trauma related but it will lead you through writing and discovering your stories.  When you find the words to describe what happened to you then the transformation can take place. 

Show Notes – Dave Conley Radical self-care – learning to love himself as much as his loved Carole. Are you dead? No.  You're alive – let's keep it that way.  Drink water, eat and move.  All very primal.  This started cracking open the space to some powerful questions.  What do you want?  I want to live.  What kind of life do you want to live?  I want a healthy life, I want vocation and achievement that makes sense of my life, I want community, I want relationships. What do you want? What will having that do for you? What is it going to be and how to you want it to be? A day doesn't go by when I don't ask – what is the most important thing? What is it that I want to be doing?  And how are they aligned?  What are the most important non-negotiable things?  It is really easy to just distract ourselves, self sooth ourselves and pretend we feel good.  Self-care is non-negotiable for me because that is how I bring the most the best to my vocation, that is h

Show Notes – Hope Zvara What is happening on the matt when you step onto it?  What are you actually trying to cultivate?  Ask yourself if you have a healthy relationship with your yoga matt.  There has to be a point when we are challenged as an individual to go beyond the physical.  What does this pose mean to me?  Where in my life am I experiencing these same thoughts and behaviours?  Asana is like a mini incubator.  How you behave on the matt is pretty much the same way that you are living life except that it is in a controlled environment.   Form a bridge between your yoga matt and your life. How to bring intention to the yoga matt.  Hold an intention while you are in a pose.  Open yourself to your higher power.  Trust that you are going to be guided in the right way.  What happens is we can find a morsel of peace and serenity.  Be okay with not having all the answers right at that moment.  Three pillars - breath, body and belief. B

Show Notes – Pradeepa Is a fertility coach – her purpose is to coach men, women and couples going through fertility and help them make their journey suck less. Went through her own journey and tried everything that was offered.  They had every treatment and test but after the 8th failure she found the courage to say "let's stop here."  She was struggling through mental, emotional, spiritual and physical pain.  She lacked clarity, she didn't know what she was doing, she was just going through the motions.  She stopped thinking for herself.  "What do we really want?"  They decided to go down the adoption route.  It took more than three years more to get over the fact of unexplained fertility. She decided she was going to own fertility moving forward.  It wasn't going to own her anymore.  But it took eight years of struggling to get there.  She struggled with jealously when her friends and family were throwing baby showers. She used to wonder "why me?"  Now

Show Notes – Mario Porreca We know we have to regularly exercise to feel good and to get the benefits.  But we very rarely take that active consistent approach with our mindset. After a number of years working as a chef he gained a lot of weight.  It was after his own weight loss journey that people started asking him to teach them how it did it.  After about six months he realised he was making more money from coaching than he was from cooking.  He then wondered what would happen if he became intentional about helping people.  95% got the result they wanted.  But half of them would keep the weight off while the other half would lose the weight but they inevitably went back to their old ways.  What was the difference between them and those that kept the result?  He started doing a lot of research into this.  What he found out was that it was all about mindset.  The people who regressed back were only focused on the short term goal.  Now what?  When y

Alani Bankhead – Show Notes Personal definition of resilience – the ability to bounce back in difficult circumstances. Ever since she was a little girl she always knew she was born to serve others and protect life.  That desire led to a life in the United States military.  Ended up as a special agent working for the Air Force.  Started her career in Japan working a lot of drug cases.  She started a country wide programme to prevent the sexual abuse of children via the Internet.  From there she deployed to the Middle East where she worked for Special Forces to chase terrorists.  From there she went to the headquarters in Quantico where she over saw counter intelligence.  From there she went back to The Middle East doing counter intelligence / counter terrorism work.  From there she became a senior bodyguard to a senior government official.  Very stressful, very frequent and long deployments, long days, went from 60 up to 100 hours per week.  Always having to be

Show Notes – Katie de Jong Left her corporate career in 2011 when she was pregnant with her first child.  Finished her coaching certification in 2014.  Clarity can emerge in layers over time.  We start off with a seed of an idea.  We begin with an idea and experiment with new things.  We learn and discover about ourselves as we go.  Being on a purposeful path is an evolution.   Wants to help heart centres change makers.  People who have a drive to leave the world in a better place than how they found it.  The core of her process is a very deep dive into helping the person get back to their true authentic self.  When you tap into your true authentic self and what she calls "your zone of magic" then naturally you will start making money because you become like a magnet.  Because you are living your truth you become a very affective person at what you do.    Your purpose is a very helpful decision maker for you.  You can decide very quick

Show Notes – Nancy Seibel It can feel like a struggle to be there with the blank page in front of you.  Journaling – can be a useful way of exploring thoughts and feelings.  Prompts can be useful to get the writing started.  "I figure out what I think and feel when I see what I write." Expressive writing – developed by James Pennebaker.  Is a productive way to explore something from our past that might still be with us in some way.  Write in our own voices and with no regard to editing.  Purposely shift perspectives – from 1st person to the 2nd person or even the 3rd person.  The insights are powerful and immediate.  It is helpful to work this through with a group.  It allows you to talk about what came up for you and what you learned.  This can deepen the experience. Affirmative writing – writing a letter to tell yourself you did the best you could at the time.  Transactional writing – in the form of a letter as if you were going to share it with someone

Show Notes – Tracie Nichols Thinking in terms of the whole person whenever she is coaching.  Are they building in resilience practices?  Are they evaluated their self-care?  Are they working alongside their personal rhythm?  Are the things they are doing in alignment with who they are spiritually and emotionally.  What they are doing in sustainable from within and it aligns with what they believe in.  Spiralling leaves.  When we are being in alignment with ourselves, doing good in the world, we create conditions that allow life to thrive.   Referring business out to a women colleague or sharing resources or simply talking about the amazing work that is being done by other people within the community.  Creating a thriving system.  What if we don't block the sun from anyone else and we can all do well?  The communal energy can lift you when you are having a struggling moment.  Highly sensitive people – discovered by Dr Elaine Aron.  20% of th

Show Notes – Michael Walker Diagnosed with PTSD three years ago.  Up until then he thought he was flying but it turns out he was hiding a lot of things. He had a very violent childhood.  Consequently, he was broken not long after being born.  He struggled with the rest of his life with panic attacks and hyper vigilance.  Under stress he would become vocal, under pressure he would become violent.  Men don't talk or show emotion in this country unless we are cheering for the All Blacks.  The defence force was a good outlet for him because he got to lace up his shoes and use up some of that negative energy.  There is a culture in our country where we just don't talk about the stuff that makes us tick and it is very dangerous.  It nearly cost me my life three years ago.   He was in the navy from 1990 – 2003.  Resilience wasn't talked about.  There was some psychological assistance provided in certain circumstances but no one took it up.  Instead the

Sarah Carpenter The goal should not be getting rid of anxiety because it only makes us more anxious.  The goal is not to get rid of it but to stop giving it power.  "Just because you're on my team doesn't mean you get to get to be my boss." Anxiety doesn't control our thoughts.  It is the reverse.  Our anxiety comes from our thoughts, from our belief system, how we are viewing and seeing the world.  This is often a subconscious process.  When we notice anxiety we can sit down and take a look at the thoughts that are causing the anxiety.  Then we can start to reassess these thoughts. Become the three year old in your brain and keep asking "why".  Get curious.  Don't judge your thoughts or your anxiety.  We talk about how being a highly sensitive person and being very aware can contribute to the anxiety because we notice the people around us and their reactions.  We can use these qualities for good as well.  We can be more empathetic.  Anxiety is

Nancy Smith – Show Notes Currently living in Bolivia as she runs her online business and stationery supply website. Was previously a journalist for a large New Zealand news site – she found it mentally a struggle to keep up and to keep on top of everything as well as keep on top of her own life.  Bullet journaling puts everything together to look at your life as a whole.  We talked about the excitement of starting a new journal.  But remember it for you so you can do what you like.  Some days are busy and messy and because no one is perfect your journal shouldn't be perfect either.  You need to start your journal with a place for your future log or your future spread.  You can have a space for every month of the year for recording big events that are coming up.  Beyond that it becomes very personal to you.  You might want a day per page or a week per page.  You need to understand how you like to plan and how your life is structured.  Leave some clean space to

Jo Casey – Show Notes Feminine conditioning – unspoken rules for what it means to be a good woman.  Also applies to male conditioning.  These can limit us. What does it mean to be a human in the world?  What if you didn't have to stick to all these invisible rules? The Impostor Complex – affects women more than men.  Have to be perfect – 100% prepared.  We talk about male and female conditioning and how it related to the USA presidential election between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. The importance of being authentic in business but how this can make us feel vulnerable.  You don't want to be everything for everyone.  She also don't want to work with all types of clients.  There is a magical alchemy when the right people are working together. The more you try to appeal to everybody the less you appeal to anybody because you become very bland. What is the why behind what you are doing?  Let your values shine.  Let your personality shine.  This is the onl

Melanie Childers – Show Notes Both an activist and also helps other activists and women running for office. Got cancer at the age of 34.  That began her activist career.  Started being very vocal and outspoken about how cancer will change your life.  Started a breast cancer podcast and started an online breast cancer magazine. Facing your own mortality, you realise all these other little things don't matter very much.  If you have something you need to say you need to say it.  There is no time to sit in the corner being sad or afraid. Cancer is like a bomb going off in your life.  When the dust settles everything becomes very clear. Coming to an understanding of the way we talk to ourselves and how we let that hold us back and how we can shift out of that so we are taking action anyway is so important. Your thoughts are not always what is true.  She can decide how you want to feel.  Courage journal – write down every time you've been courageous, everything you're good a

Jenny Eden – Show Notes Body love is a multifaceted problem.  It not just that we have these vessels that we are ambivalent about.  We need to change the conversation.  Not that we have looove our bodies but more like understanding, respecting, listening to, and appreciating.  When someone loves their body they are grounded, they have a warm smile, they are embodied. "Let's work together and do the best possible things we can do in life."  We begin with agreeing to be fully present in our body rather than numbing out.  Where are you experiencing stress, or pleasure?  Are you experiencing your senses?  When you can reframe your thoughts, and what your body if for, then you can step into body reverence.  From that place of worthiness and embodiment we can then make choices that support this vessel that we have; not for anyone else but for ourselves. The problem is the societal belief that there is only one type of beauty. As parents we can only lay down foundations o

Show Notes – Bill Monroe The stroke helped him develop a focus on both his recovery but also what he wants to do with his life.   Changes can occur in people's personality and emotional affect due to physiological changes.  Some people struggle with these changes.  We are all running out of time.  We don't know how much time is left but if we have stuff that we want to get done we've gotta get it done. He had a lot of support from friends and family.  Also got a lot of support from friends via social media.  Also provided entertainment and information.  People shared their own stories about having strokes.  Bill's stroke was most likely caused by extended high blood pressure.  Increasing numbers of strokes among young people. 80% of strokes are preventable. Major contributors to stroke – high blood pressures, diabetes, smoking, sleep apnoea.  Preventatives – eat better; consume less salt, eat more fruits and vegetables, get exercise, stop smoking, drinkin

Melody Spencer – Show Notes Digital marketing and Facebook ad strategist.  Helps female entrepreneurs to get across their messaging and connect with their clients. Was really scary when she first went freelance 5 ½ years later.  She is now making more money than she ever did and is loving what she does. The future of work is moving online and freelance.  Now a huge community of women who are making it work, living the life they always wanted to live without the contraints of an office job. Online marketing changes from day to day.  The biggest way to reach new people is live video. Rather than get caught up in promotion remember that your job is to help people and you need to keep that in mind. Need to be consistent about connecting with people at a heart centred level.  Listen to their stories and meet them where they are at. How to decide whether to learn about digital marketing yourself or when to hire someone to outsource your marketing. The importance of leaving the house when yo