Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to humanizing the podcast that allows you to understand how you've been programmed by both evolution and culture so you can liberate any behavior you choose and be who you'd like to be. Today I I'm Ginny. I'm the map holder. I'd like to introduce Marheen.
Hello. Marhin is the explorer. And together we will journey through this programming so you can understand through the questions you ask, and definitely the questions Marhin asks, how to liberate yourself and be the most amazing person that you choose to be.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: We were talking about thinking, why do we think? How do we think? But we were tying it in with the discomfort of change.
So how do we manage thought when we're changing?
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Ooh, yes.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: How do we manage thought when we're changing? It's not easy. Change is not easy.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: No.
One of the challenges is, we've been taught that change is scary. So I think we should start now. We've been told that if you want to change anything, it's going to be hard and scary. And yet ten point 58 million years of human evolution tell us we've been changing permanently. We've evolved permanently.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I guess evolution is literal change.
We're looking at it totally.
Yeah.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: And some of that happens reasonably fast. And the thing is, we are hardwired. When I say hardwired, I'm going back to those behaviors that are unconsciously programmed into who we are. We are unconsciously programmed to change. Right.
And there is a process, there is a, like everything else, if it's been good for us, we've invented a process. We just don't know we did because it's not conscious anymore. And some of the most important things about that is to understand your own ability to risk. Because in any general population, when I say general, a group of people who come together and maintain a group, there will be an underlying shape. I say shape. It's actually a bell shape curve to the spread of risk within that group of people.
Because what we've done as human beings is realize we need people who are high risk and we need people who are low risk, and we need people in the middle. And what happens is you literally have an inherent risk ability because this is how we drove change. So people at the front end of that curve are very high risk, don't care what anyone else thinks and will go out permanently and try things new with what looks like to other people, no understanding of anyone else around them, or no caring, because literally that's how their brains are constructed. So people like Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk or an Ada Lovelace, sorry, those are all tech people desperately trying to think of. I mean, there are Rosa Parks, for example, someone who decided in a situation, I'm going to do something differently and I'm going to change something. And if you can test any population, it makes this bell shaped curve. So you go from people who are very, very high risk to people who are very, very low risk. And everyone always says, people who are low risk are laggard. Do you know, we use negative language I hate, because people who are low risk were there for a very particular reason in a large group of people, which is to write the rules of why this new thing was what we should be doing and then make sure.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: The rules were policed, maybe to temper the risk takers.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Now, that's us looking at it with a modern perspective. What they tend to do is they wait.
So they wait to see what other people do, but once they decide to do it, they go, right now what we're going to do is. And they literally write the rules.
So you get people at the front who invent things and drive things, initiators and push things forward, and you then get people who are called, or in the work I did are called optimizers because they take all that new stuff and look at it and go, needs improving and they play with it till it breaks and then they improve it and they play with it till it breaks again. And you will know people in your own environment who do that because they don't care about you lot. It's the thing itself they want to play with, or the process, and they play with it till it breaks and then they sort of go, oh, well, that's fine. And they hand it on, they hand it on to the next people who are influencers, stroke coaches, and using influencers, in a word, a way of supporting other people to do things, or coaches coaching other people to do things, because people like that look at all the people at the front, the initiators and the optimizers and go, that's a great idea, blood. Useless if we don't all do it. And then they look at the sort of early majority and late majority and go, how do I convince you lot to do this? So they drive that into things. And the early, not early adopters, but early majority, those people go, I've gone, then I'll give it a go. You've convinced me. Let me, I will try.
But the late majority sit there and going, I ain't doing it. Late out of ten people, or cats, depending if you like that advert. People are doing it. They come, slate. Then the very last bit are these people who program things into our standard way of being and drive how we remember them. But this is that curve that those people are prevalent, should be in every single group of people you come across, because that's the next thing is we don't change as individuals. That's a lie.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I can totally, totally appreciate that. We absolutely change in groups. I'm going to be touched on that in the previous episodes, don't we?
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
Probably because it feels gone. Sorry.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Probably because it feels safer to do that.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: It's not so much safer.
What the brain does is go, I need other people. Well, it depends. Concept of safe. I need someone else to do this with.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: I need to see that it's okay to do it.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is why sometimes when you go out and ask, and we might have touched on this in the last one, but if you go out and ask someone else, should I be doing this? And they'll go, I'm not sure what they're doing is not telling you not to change, they're asking you why they should.
This is a quick review, so it's your own risk. Change in a group.
But then what if when you've decided all of those things and you know you should do that, it's still really hard, or you think it's really hard, you find it as an individual, really challenging. And this is the bit about how your own way of thinking, or how you've been taught to think, can get in the way.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Thought becomes action.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So you've been taught to be frightened of learning. We've done that thing. So if you've been taught to be frightened of learning because you don't want to get something wrong, because if you get something wrong, you'll be punished, why would you actually go out and do anything different?
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Of course, it's really simple. Of course you're not going to do that.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Of course not. No.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Terrifying.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Or another one where we started this conversation because we were discussing why both of us find it easier and we would spend it easier doing stuff for someone else than for ourselves.
Just.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So much easier.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: And that tends to be what women have been taught is you should always put other people, or in the western bit of the society we live in, should always put other people first.
You don't matter. You have to come last. And it's not about service, as in, I want to support people or I want to do things for people. It's the fact that an idea. I feel horribly selfish if I ever do anything just for me.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's.
That is something that.
Sorry. That is something that I think is really, really prevalent, this idea that doing something for ourselves is selfish.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: It is. And yes, I would sound horribly pejorative, but I don't think boys think like that.
They're very good at going, I would like to do this. And they go and do it. They don't think, what will I be taking away from someone else by doing this or by putting me first? What am I not doing? Because I was thinking about this before Christmas and I was going, how do I treat myself with the same time, care and attention as others I love? More to the point, why don't I?
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Do I really think I have a similar matter?
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I had a similar thing at the end of last year, which was if I spent the time wondering what other people thought of me, telling myself that I was just fine as I am, instead of worrying about.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Totally whatever I might have been worrying about. Back to thinking. And one of the things we wanted to do about thinking and thought in this one is if you want to change something, because we've been looking at change and transformation and why it's difficult.
One of the first places you need to start is looking at, why do I think that? Because most people come up with great resolutions, get to the end of January, if that far, and have failed them and therefore believe they failed and therefore they believe they're a failure. Right. And that then supports perhaps narratives in their lives they've been told. But if we go back to that narrative and go, what is it?
And for me said, it's always this difference between, is this something I've been taught to think about myself now or is this something which actually has been good for me in evolution because my brain is a predictive organ and it's going, I'm trying to predict stuff. I mean, this is where that, the discussion we've had around where if I've been taught to fail because I didn't get 100% when I was at school, that's something from this lifetime I've attached to an acquired skill, something I've learned in this lifetime I'm attaching to a non acquired skill, as in a programmed behavior, from how my brain works. Because my brain is predictive organ. But if it's been taught to fear, or every time it did something it was told it was wrong, it's now attached that to a fear mechanism which I can't do that.
So it's this whole thing. But in this bit of why do I find it selfish or why do I feel really uncomfortable? Putting myself first or doing anything for myself is something we've been taught. It is not. Because, for heaven's sake, we'll go and eat. We'll go and keep warm.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: So it's a subtle programming. It's this idea of, as you say, you got to put everybody else before you.
You've got to make sure that everyone else is taken care of before you, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just depends when you're applying it.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: It is. And if you're applying it and no one else in your life is, you will always be lost.
And I think that inherently can make people very angry.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: I think so, too.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: No one notices me. No one cares. I do all these things for other people. Why does someone never do anything for me?
And instead of getting angry about other people not putting you first, I think the challenge would be, why don't I put myself first?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Right.
And this is the thing, isn't it? Right.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: It's the power of thought.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: So there's the comfort of change, which is one thing that we can all agree change is a really uncomfortable thing. And then it's the power of the thought. Yeah, it's that to change, totally.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: And if you want to change anything, it actually means putting yourself first.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: It really does. And it's painful. Like, let's make no bones about it. It is painful to interrogate yourself, to consider behaving in a different way, to recognizing that when we talk about our behavior, we're talking about things that we do consciously or unconsciously, fine. But when we recognize that it's not cool to do it, the act of saying, I'm going to not do that anymore, I'm going to interrupt myself if I find myself doing it again, I'm going to offer apologies to those people who I have hurt doing it in the past. If that's why you're changing or if I've hurt myself, I think it's why.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: You'Re changing in that way.
You've hurt yourself.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Sorry, Paul, can I also, sometimes, if you've always put other people first, sometimes you've inadvertently hurt them, too by not trusting that they can look after themselves or that they can take care of themselves.
Because there is the flip side to I've got to take care of everybody is because they can't take care of themselves.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: I think that's actually vacation. Okay.
There's this thing in that which is you are justifying why you put other people first because you think they can't do it for themselves. And it's not that you hurt them, that's how you logically justify how you behave, because they can't. It's more about giving them the space to do it. So it's not that you've hurt them, you won't have hurt them by looking after them. What you will have done perhaps, is not allow them to grow certain sets of skills but these are handed on over generational things. So I still know today because my daughter tells me that people who rock up in her life, boys as well as girls, but mostly boys, don't seem to have ever cooked a meal by themselves because their mums always did it right.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: And it doesn't mean they can't and you didn't hurt them by doing it but what you did is you do it to justify why you do something you've been taught. And that whole justification is based in how the underlying myth and philosophies that we carry with us which boys can't look after themselves.
Of course they can but I would.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Argue that the word hurt fits there because it's not like a pain hurt. You've hurt their growth, you've hurt their.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: I don't like hurt. Can we use stunt or reduced or. I don't think you actually there's a disservice been done. Yeah. Because I suppose for me hurt means you did it on purpose and I don't think any. No, I don't think anyone in that respective is on purpose.
I honestly believe everyone does that for the best intentions. But what we do and how we.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: I agree how we do it is different.
Absolutely. No, I 110%. I think we can do things that hurt people completely without meaning to. And sometimes even as an act of love it can have an effect that is never what we wanted that effect to be. And one of the ways that we can look at ourselves and think if I change this, what might happen, which is really scary, is if we do it as a really basic level. If I don't cook supper two nights a week at home and my partner and children have to eat, who is going to make that happen? Because I'm going to join a choir or I'm going to go and do a watercolor class or I'm going to go and learn how to play the piano, I'm going to go to the gym.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: They work it out for themselves.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Right? And that small thing, that small thing of everybody will be fine because it doesn't all rest on my shoulders. Can make you go one of two ways really empowering, actually, or possibly both ways really empowering. Freedom. I get to do something I want to do. What's my place here? Am I needed? What's going to happen if I leave? Will they find somebody? Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. And maybe if you're really going to change, right, you're going to ride both waves because you recognize you've got to do it. But the wave bit has still got to be ridden to the shore. The shore is your nirvana, your oasis, your place of. I did this thing for myself, but I've got to get there, which is a bit hairy and I'm not the greatest surfer, but I'm going to try, or I'm just going to stay here, actually, because I don't want to face that. The discomfort of change, the power of thought going back into the. This circle.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah, because it's those two things that can go forward, which is because that takes us back to one of the first things we talked about, group attachment. I need to be needed because if I'm not needed, you're not going to do the things to look after me that I require. But because that's a really ancient evolutionary thing in a group. The thing is, most people, because of the way the world is structured today, can survive by themselves quite happily, quite easily. You can earn your own money, you can put a roof over your head, you can put food on your table.
But the deep seated desire to be needed means that, again, that's the thing. Like fear, you can't change. But we've been taught to layer over the top of it, a certain way of thinking about ourselves. And for me, this is like being in an amphitheater of your own head, where the programming is your self talk. And you get two layers of that programming. First on the bottom layer is all the evolutionary stuff keeping you safe. But then the top bit is this bit that we've been taught in our lifetime, and the two go backwards and forwards permanently.
But the interesting thing I think you brought up about that one is discomfort, as in it feels uncomfortable.
And it does, because you're inherently risking changing a status quo that isn't killing you.
Right. It might make you feel not very great about yourself. You're not dead, so your brain does a really insidious thing at this point. It'll go, but you're not dead, so therefore why are you doing it? And it sort of prods you and makes you feel, well, I'm going to make you feel uncomfortable because you don't like feeling uncomfortable. And if I make you feel uncomfortable, you're going to stay where you are because you're not dead. And in the end, the way the brain is programmed is to keep you safe. It's predictive engine and if it goes forward and goes well, I predict because of all the things you're telling me and all the things I've learned in this lifetime, that if you do things, you're going to increase your risk of dying, which it isn't really, it's just the way the program works. You're going to go, oh, no, I'm not going to move anything. So the biggest thing we need to be able to start to teach ourselves is how to feel uncomfortable, how to.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Get comfortable and discomfort.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Totally. But to stay there and there are very, very few things that we do now and actually we teach our kids now which go feel uncomfortable.
You need to know what uncomfortable feels like when you're doing something. So when you try something new, people get frightened. Yeah, you're going to feel it.
I didn't do this with my daughter, but my generation are responsible for trying to take all their risk out of their kids lives.
If you take risk, no one knows out of someone's life, how the hell are they ever going to learn about being uncomfortable? We're not, no.
But conversely, all you're trying to do is keep them safe.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Yes, I think predominantly we can safely say that a lot of this comes from a place of love.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Oh, huge.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: From a good place.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. But if you don't, and it's this, everyone gets panicky when they risk something, but just your brain.
No one.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: So when we talk about. Sorry, no, go ahead. When we talk about thinking, right, and we've talked about the power of thought, we understand conscious and subconscious thoughts.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Well, we understand they're there.
Remember your unconscious one, like your ability, your own inherent risk quotient you don't know about. So unless you being taught about it, you will have no idea what your own inherent risk quotient is and therefore why you find change or transformation difficult or hard. I know, I'm quite risky, right, I've got this. I just am Marheen, if we were videoing this, Marhin is smiling at me.
When I go risky, I am brave. I will try have. I will literally go, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'll eat this or I'll go that. In fact, my idea of purgatory is to be made to do is to do the same thing over and over again, whether it's food, whether it's an action, whether it's an agenda, whether it's a way of looking at the world.
I am inherently a reasonably high risk taker, but I know that about myself because I do this work, and I know when that. But also by the virtue of me breathing, speaking and acting a certain way, I can physically make other people feel uncomfortable because they know that's who I am and my physical fact of being in the room, because I honestly believe we understand this about other people.
Literally, people go, I'm going to talk to her. That's going to be because she might say something that's going to challenge the way I think. And if I start to challenge the way I think, that means I have to change all these other things I don't want to change. And your brain and people's brain says, you don't want to do that. Sounds safe. Want to keep you safe.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: I've definitely come up against that a few times in my life, and I understand why.
If you're not somebody who interrogates yourself or your thoughts, particularly, then, gosh, what a quiet, lovely life I think about.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: That must be a problem. So I think one of the easiest ways to understand your own risk quotient is to ask yourself, if you were to spend your own time and your own money, what you do, are you prepared to risk your own money and your own time?
Example, going on holiday, would you rock up at an airport? Sorry. For those people. I've been told rock up's not understood by everyone. Patty.
It means just to arrive probably slightly disheveled and with little.
I mean, my idea of heaven would be to rock up to an airport, throw a dice, and it comes up 6th, and we take the 6th flight. As long as it's not a war zone or it's somewhere, which would be stupid to go to, like, Russia at the moment. Right, war zone. Then I'd probably quite happily get on the plane and go.
But that is.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: I love that idea.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Would you do it?
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Well, I recognized why I would do it in the sentence that you just said, because you use the word we. So I'm absolutely going, if it's we.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I'd actually do it by myself as well.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: If someone said to me, you're getting on the 6th flight, and you'll go and you're off.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Together.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: And you'll get there and you'll work it out and it's just you, I would be like, okay, what do I pack I'd start to.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: You can buy. Think about it. Yeah, I know. But the thing is, you can arrive anywhere these days, usually, and sort everything out. Okay?
[00:26:46] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Right? I know I'll need my contact lenses. I'd know I'd need my HrT drugs. But apart from that, do you know what? I can go anywhere. And guess what? If I don't like it, I can come back.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Well, now, here is the thing. This, Ginny, this is the line that changed my life, okay? This is the line that changed my life. This is the line that started to undo my programming.
And it wasn't a line I was given as a child, and it was a line I was given this past year as an adult that really changed my life.
And it was literally that. And if you don't like it, you can change it.
If it doesn't work out, you can stop doing it.
If it doesn't go to plan, it's okay. Like this, that little nugget of resilience, right?
For me.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Because I came from, you have to do this and you have to get the perfect grades. You got to go to this school. You got to do this. You got to do that. Right?
But if it doesn't work, don't worry. You've got this. There was never another option.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: I didn't have another option.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Right. So when I came into life and failure happened.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Hold on. Can I take that negative away? It's not failure. It's the fact that what it wasn't is you couldn't create those things you were told you needed to create to be perfect or what someone else would tell you is perfect. They're actually talking about safety. So I think especially, absolutely, you and I know that a lot of first or even second generation immigrants are taught that x will give you safety. And in the end, absolutely, that was all done for the right way. So they didn't hurt you. They might have not, but what they didn't do was because I always have this thing. If someone else isn't taught to do it, how can they teach you? Right.
We haven't created the environment where they learn those things. So I don't do blame. I think it's complete waste of time.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: No, me either. It was more that realization of what I don't have in my brain is, okay, that didn't work out.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: So what?
[00:29:10] Speaker B: So what am I going to do instead?
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Yes. So what?
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah, so what? And what instead? No. It is absolute crushing.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: And it has taken me with it. So if I look back at things that I didn't get the first time right.
I have generally not gone back to try it again.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing, because I've never thought like that. And I think this is sometimes how your inherent behavioral risk structure can actually override what we are taught in our lifetimes. Because I think the only reason I am damn well rocking up to doing all of this stuff here is, in the end, I never believed it all, but I kept on being told it, right. So there is this thing where someone keeps telling you something. It's a bit like gaslighting. You start to forget. And in the end, I still wouldn't be here doing this if I honestly believed all of that.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Well, it was my therapist who said to me, you gaslight yourself, you do it to yourself.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Yes.
But again, I think that then relates back to. And what people need to look at is, do I really like risking things, right? Or where do I fit in that bit? And if you find out you're one of those people who, to be fair, and there's nothing wrong with this, remember, none of these things, none of these behaviors are better than anyone else's because they were all brilliant for human evolution. Was I actually just like watching other people doing stuff and I do things last? Right, great. You're fundamentally hugely important within human evolutionary process because you literally would write the rules of how we now take this wonderful thing we're doing and make it part of our culture, our society, our memories. Right? And how do we make sure everyone then continues to do it over time? That's hugely important. So if you think, I found my best place to go on holiday about 20 years ago and I love it, and I go there for the same two or three weeks every year and we see the same people and I eat the same food, excellent. But then don't beat yourself up for not want not having. Finding change and transformation really difficult.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: It's this thing. Sorry, gone.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: I think also we can shake in a little bit of nuance with the recognition that people have had very different childhoods, they've been exposed to incredibly different starts in life. So for some people, change is incredibly traumatic if they've had a childhood that.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: Was not, again, consistent, learnt in this lifetime. And this is that bit of really when you react to something, trying to understand this is something I've just been taught, or is this really me? Is this a relief? Which bits me, but it's going back to what you said at the beginning, think exist in that space between I said feeling, I feel something I think something I behave, instead of immediately going to behave, exist between feel and think.
Now I'm going to. Sorry, go on.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: I think that's where change exists.
It's the pause. Right? So we have this thing.
Those who've listened to our podcast before will know I'm muslim and we have a teaching.
Before you speak, what you say must go through three gates. Is it true, is it necessary and is it kind?
And if any one of those gates remains closed because it doesn't pass the test, you don't say it.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: I love that. As long as true isn't being culturally defined, as long as true is literally about truth.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: And I think true would literally be a case of are you telling for me, I understand it is, are you telling the truth? Because the next thing is then is it kind?
[00:33:30] Speaker A: But is it kind to.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: That would become a case of nuance.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Making the decision, being kind to you.
For me, it exists in a space of learning to be uncomfortable. I'll bring that one back together because people feel and they think and then they believe that they can't be uncomfortable. So therefore they behave in a way that stops them feeling uncomfortable.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah, do the old thing, even if it hurts you. You do the old thing and hurt.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Is, again, it could be view.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: You don't like this word?
[00:34:05] Speaker A: I really don't like it.
I'm really happy with it.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Funny.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: To hurt something to me is to cause it distress.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: But I can only speak for myself. But I would look at my life and some of my behaviors and think I have caused myself distress.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: I would have said, yes, you have to you. But the thing is, again, I suppose for me, hurt is something that someone probably chose to do, whereas I'd much rather you went. And I just don't like the connotations with the word that you.
I suppose it's back to this thing of feel.
If you feel uncomfortable, you don't then have to behave in a way that takes the discomfort away.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: No.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: How you learn, and it's not a skill we're taught. So if you're not taught to high risk, be high risk because risk comes with inherent permanent discomfort, because you're in ambiguity permanently, because it's something your brain can't predict. And if your brain can't predict it, it's going to be ambiguous. Therefore you're going to feel uncomfortable. But if you don't sit with that in that space, it is practically impossible then to rewire your own behavior because you're not giving it time to create another path in your brain.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Right.
And I think that there is so much to be said that's positive about doing it, depending on what that thing is. Doesn't need to be pretty. And I think the reason I don't mind the word hurt is because what I feel, actually, what happens is that you get a chance to heal.
And I think healing is one of the most important things in the world. You don't live in the hurt, you actually live in the healing of it. And that's where you find real things. While you're healing, you find it.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: If we can determine healing as growing new stuff, which technically what healing is, it's not so much of, hey, I've got a cut and it healed. But the actual fact of healing grows new flesh. In the want of a better word.
I'm happier than if we look in the fact that, because that's about growing new brain pathways, new ways of doing stuff which technically is not changing or taking away a fact that something happened or it's the way you thought about yourself, it's creating a new way of doing it, which doesn't mean the old one was wrong or bad or what's it. It's just different. And it's understanding that your brain, being a predictive organ, doesn't like discomfort.
If you've been taught that discomfort is wrong as well, like we have, or to fear it, you end up in this boring, horrible little loop, which means you can't change anything because your brain tells you, if I'm uncomfortable, hold on. And the world has told you, you've got to get it right first time.
What, and this is what I mean is this huge challenge we have as a human race at the moment is the fact that if you take those two things, we're buggered, we're not going to do anything.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Right. Well, I can tell you that. I certainly can look back at some of the decisions I've made in my life and gone with a lot of grace now kind of looking back and going, I see what happened there, I see what happened. I get it. I get why you did that. I totally get why you did that. And as I've had to learn to do, say I love you anyway, like, you're all right, you're fine here, you're great as you are. But I see why 17 year old, 25 year old, 32 year old, 40 year old Mahin picked that and did that totally. Which is why did it?
[00:38:27] Speaker A: I'm not sure I read it to you, but I wrote this thing about accepting all the mes here are all the mes. And they all rocked up to the campfire and it was like, yeah, because that's that thing they were all desperately trying to be right at the time.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah. You did your best with what you knew at the time.
That phrase was given to me by a very dear friend during a particularly difficult time of my life. And she said, the most important thing for you to remember is that you did your best with what you knew at the time and the tools that you had available. So there is a part of forgiveness that has to come from within you to accept yourself.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Well, because it's really interesting to do change as well, which is, I think, so you've got to forgive. I find that a lot of these words really interesting, but that goes back to, you only forgive yourself if you thought it was wrong. If you just saw it as a progression, you wouldn't. Right.
It's this thing that we get maybe obsessed with, this thing that you can get 100% at life or you'll rock up. I often ask this people when I've done coaching before, and go, so do you suddenly expect somewhere in your life someone's going to sit there and mark you and go, there you go, ten out of ten. You've got ten out of ten at life.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Yes, you absolutely do. If you're religious when you die.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: But let me tell you, this is the thing, but it isn't that. Yes, Ginny, this is the thing that keeps, that drives those of us who have got this idea of a day of judgment and l, and all the rest of it going, oh, God, have I done today? Am I going to make it or.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: Am I not going to make it?
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Yes, there is a big clipboard in the sky, and there's a door here and a door there. And which way are you going to go?
[00:40:21] Speaker A: That is a method of control.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't disagree with you. My goodness. Sometimes it works and sometimes it, like with everything, it can be good and it can be horribly, horribly bad.
I have realized that that is a big part of my programming.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: I'm held accountable by something you'll never meet.
And technically, I think I will.
I have that there as a truth.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: Right. There we go.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: So I've got that as a, okay, here's one, though, then.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: I've got my mum.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Come on. Yeah.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: I'm an asian woman. I have got my mother, who is absolutely looking over her glasses to make sure with that eyebrow up that I've absolutely delivered. I'm supposed to be delivering. And if I have not, why not kindly so I have a question for.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: You, young lady, because even with all of that, you've broken every rule in the book.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Probably because of all of that, you.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: Are a rebel, you are a risk taker. Because technically, even though you think all of those things, you've still broken every rule in the book.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Yeah, but I tell you, what's going on behind the eyes isn't necessarily all that quiet and all that peaceful, but you still did it.
[00:41:47] Speaker A: You still did it. I'll bring you back to that fact. You still did it. So there must be something in you which says. Which is why I think if I was putting you on a risk quotient, I'd put you on higher risk than lower risk says, yeah, nah, not really. I don't really think all of that. I know that I'll take it in the way I'd like to see it and I will shape these things the way I believe they need to be done. But if you really thought all of those things, you wouldn't have done anything that you've done.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: So, yeah, here's where you and I are incredibly similar, is we both ask why. A huge amount, right? And for a huge amount of my life, when I was asking why as a child, I wasn't given the answers outside of because I say so or because God says so, because that's the way it is. And that's not to put anybody down or say anything negative. I wasn't kind of necessarily given the answers, as it were, or given an answer that completely satisfied me.
And if you cannot tell me why I've got to do something, I am just not going to do it. It's just not happening. As an adult, I have sought out the answers myself and then if it makes sense to me, then I will not do it, or I will do it, depending on what it is. So obviously I know why I wear a seatbelt. Obviously I know why I wear a crash helmet. I know why I do very obvious certain things, the emotional reasons why I might take care about who my friends are or consider relationships and da love. Those sorts of things you learn through feeling and tension and emotion. And I think success and failure.
The why has always been my biggest.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: But that brings us has been the hurdle to why we're doing this. Because both you and I, well, we have probably been least unconscious of the people we know.
Not only do we always ask why, I mean, I take why to an extent. I don't think anyone else has ever done it, because then I'll go, why are my thoughts structured in this way? And who gave me that rule? And where does that myth come from?
I'm infeterate, you can't get me to stop because for me, the world I live in and the way my thoughts have been shaped and the way I behave is practically all received. So for example, really, apropos, complete nothing, most images of women in the past thousand years have only been created by men.
So I have no idea what it is to look at an image of a woman created by women with very few references.
And this is where gaze is really, the concept of gaze is really important because if you've only been taught to see yourself through the structure of someone else's thoughts and most of those are not your gender, that's a real challenge.
And what would that be otherwise? But then it goes back to one madly reading the other day is the jesuit versus native canadian discourses, which were written down mostly between 1717 60.
Is really interesting to see the beautifully constructed logical arguments of peoples that the western thought couldn't be logical because they didn't have greek underpinning or roman underpinning and wouldn't have any idea.
And some of what was beautiful about that is exactly, which is something we'll come on to another time because Marhin is going to just about metaphorically kick me under the what? Why is wealth power? Right? Because why do you have a concept of property? Why if someone has more than you, do you as a person think they know more than you? Okay.
And then you can see these things then being played out across the Enlightenment philosophy. But also for me, it brings up a really interesting point about, and again, I'm very european based because that's at the moment we're, of my historic knowledge is the origins of why the first World War actually stopped. Now, the first World War didn't stop because the English, Americans and French beat the Germans. It was because most of the german population went on strike and the Kaiser was deposed.
That is why it happened. And therefore that's people saying, I don't want this anymore. I do not believe because you've got more wealth than me, you are right, which is why you also, I believe, see the rise of the trade union movement after first World War because we suddenly realized that those people who'd been born into wealth weren't necessarily cleverer than us.
But it's these things of thought.
Just why is it structured this way and then being allowing yourself into that tiny, weeny, uncomfortable space.
And when you get there for us, know that you will feel uncomfortable. There's nothing you can do to stop it because your brain can't predict it. So it's going to make you feel uncomfortable. And we've been taught that feeling uncomfortable and learning things new is wrong is something to be scared of. So you're going to be. But if you don't go and sit in that little space for a little bit and you can do it physically as well as in your head. And Mahin and I are putting, because we've been asked, you wonderful, amazing people have said, but we want to come and do this with you. So we will be building this year something where you can come and do that with us. And both on a thinking practice, feel uncomfortable and get into creativity in various bits, but also on a physical basis, feel uncomfortable. Because until you can walk in this and feel happy and safe in your own uncomfortability, that's a really. I'm going to have to come up with something better than that.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Then I've got one.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Go on.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Discomfort.
[00:48:19] Speaker A: Discomfort, yeah.
Yes. I suppose the tears. I think we need to invent a new word. I'm all into inventing new words.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: I quite like uncomfortability.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Uncomfortability. But it's the active bit of being in discomfort. Right.
We need to invent a word that's where it's physical, because it's completely physical as well as mental. It's mind body in exactly the same space and time. You talk about mindfulness, it is the ultimate mindfulness moment, because you can't get out of the fact that your body is telling you, oh, my God, and your brain's going, stop it. Because my body doesn't like it. So my body doesn't like it. I need to remove myself from it. What we need to do is sit there. It's not going to kill you.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Well, here's the thing. It's just a feeling. What you're experiencing. When you experience discomfort or whatever the emotion is that's coming as a result of what you're doing, there's a feeling it will not last very long and if you learn how to breathe. So we're going to go do a little bit of the somatic stuff here and a little bit of the stuff that we know that really works for us. If you know how to take three deep breaths where you hold them in, breathe in for three, hold it for four, exhale for five, and you do that three times or six times. When you're having the feeling that's after the salt, where you're trying to do something different, you come back down again. You start to regulate yourself. It shakes through your body sometimes. I don't know if you've ever seen a mouse when it's been caught or stunned and it freezes, or a deer where they're frozen, and then they have a shake. You watch their body shake it out and then they run off again. That's a totally natural thing. Humans do it, too. We freeze and then we have to shake it out. It's a release of energy, because we are electrical beings. We've got all these electrons and neurons firing around. We freeze and then we shake it through. Absolutely nothing to be scared of. No, but when you're having a feeling.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: Totally, and this is one of the things we will move into more at another time, is how to paperwork, how to do your mind body connection, where you've taken your two nervous systems, and your one, which does fight and flight, is now fired up, which is your sympathetic nervous system. And all you do is breathe in a specific way and you kick in your parasympathetic nervous system.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: So useful.
[00:50:43] Speaker A: And that's all it is. And final fact on breathing, it's the only thing we can control, which is absolutely, usually unconscious and autonomic. It's the fastest thing you can do to prove that you can control your own body is your mind body. It's amazing.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Absolutely amazing.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Oh, and I hear we've got a little flanky dog in the background.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: He's absolutely livid, because whenever a bird flies past, he has to let us know. Furious about every time.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: Furious. Well, absolutely furious.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: A leaf, a leaf. Leaf blows past. Better tell everyone there's a leaf gone past. A plane has the audacity to be in the air, fly past our window.
[00:51:29] Speaker A: Can you imagine? No.
[00:51:31] Speaker B: Everyone has to know about it.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: No.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: There was a squirrel in the tree. He told everybody about that for ten minutes. We were like, all right, we get.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: It, we get it.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Awful squirrel running around outside, just living its life, finding its nuts.
But, yeah, I think that for me, as intellectual as we can be about thinking and thought and change and programming and all that stuff, which is incredibly important, there is a physical reaction to all the things that we do. And without getting into the western philosophers, too much about the pointless pursuit of pleasure, where you will never be satisfied if you only ever go for feeling good all the time, it's actually a very empty life that leads you nowhere because there is no growth.
Something that I've always thought is a really lovely way of looking at life. That really worked for me is this is very pertinent today is actually my birthday. When you were born, it was a bloody, messy, horrific, near death experience for someone, probably both of us, me and my mum or you and your mum or whoever it was. But it was an absolute mess. And at the end of it, something lovely is born and something wonderful happens and a whole new thing is here. And I think if we're paying attention, if we really want to give this, our little go on this roundabout, the best we can give it, we're going to have a few of those in our lives and they're going to be messy and bloody and someone's going to nearly die and someone's going to cry.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: And you might even shit yourself.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: But it's okay.
It's okay because at the end of it, you come out the other side and hopefully you're just a little bit healed, you're a little bit happier, you're a little bit more at peace, actually. Let's go for peace. Let's go for contentment. Let's go for healed. Let's go for grounded. Let's go for those feelings where we just. When we look at ourselves, we think, yeah, right. And that's going to happen a few times, I think, in our.
[00:53:38] Speaker A: So. But we'll close what we're touching today on thought being uncomfortable or the.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: Well, hold on a sec, because I've not done the thing we're supposed to do.
[00:53:49] Speaker A: Oh, dear.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: What's that?
I meant to ask you how we interrogate our thoughts.
How do we stop this programming? Ginny?
[00:53:58] Speaker A: Should we try and stick with our form? I think we've discussed a lot of that, which is sitting in discomfort.
So the thing you said quite personally, which is we all feel, and it's the feel that goes to the thought. But if you stop between feeling and thought and sit in discomfort, that's where you'll be able to start to change the connection between that emotion and that thought.
I think we've probably said a lot of it. We haven't said it as straightforwardly as that, but it's that. And see, sitting in discomfort, teaching yourself to just be uncomfortable, there are loads of ways you can do that from, as we've said before, going to go and sit in an ice bath, you suddenly realize you don't like it, but it's not going to kill you by literally doing something you've never done before, even if that's take a different route to work.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Yes, it could be the smallest, the.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Smallest things, or have something different for lunch.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: And I think when you do something difficult, when you start to dip your toe in the pool of discomfort because you're thinking about change.
The most important thing to do, I think, is to find what your reward system is.
How do you recalibrate from the decalibration for a moment?
How do you integrate the change into who you are? And it could be that it's something like a walk, it could be a cup of hot, sweet tea. It could be an affirmation. Well done. I was brave today. Those stickers work.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: They work for I'm much. Other people did something like the sticker thing or they work because of the way we were brought as children. But your own reward system can also be screwed. Let's put that right. So for me, yeah, I would just say one of the reasons I sometimes fight things, art is my reward system is definitely food based. Okay. And if it's not sweet, even though I'm not particularly fond of sweet things, I don't think I've been rewarded. It's hilarious. So that's something. One of those other things when you think, okay, but it's more of just, I think, celebrate the fact that you felt uncomfortable and went woohoo. Even if it was for 3 seconds, it's still brilliant.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: Well, I did it. I survived it. I survived the discomfort.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: I'm going to have a bath.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: I survived the discomfort.
[00:56:39] Speaker B: I'm going to do.
I tell you exactly. That's what it is, isn't it? I think that's why I mentioned like the cup of tea or whatever it is. It's because it feels like it really pulls out all of those fight flight free responses that we've got. And then you have to kind of calm down. And the way that you calm down could be a cup of tea, a walk. I like star jumps, which sounds counterproductive.
[00:57:01] Speaker A: But it really helps. Whatever it might be, it is amazing. It's that thing of whatever you need to do, turn on your parasympathetic nervous system and I think we're probably.
[00:57:10] Speaker B: And if there's.
[00:57:11] Speaker A: Go on. I'm talking again.
[00:57:13] Speaker B: If there's someone around who can give you a hug. Oh, Marhina, I'm telling you, they change the world. 6 seconds.
It's the reset we all need.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: Telling you.
[00:57:28] Speaker B: I'm going to be giving them out.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: Excellent. So wherever you are, if you want to reprogram, sit with being uncomfortable, and that's it, have a wonderful.
Whatever time of day you're about to go into, and we're very grateful. You sit and listen to us. All we ever wanted to do.
[00:57:50] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:57:50] Speaker A: Was allow people to think differently.
