Episode 50: Your TOT Checklist for Engaging With Others

[00:00:00] Well, welcome back to The One Thing Podcast where we all get to usher in the new age of humanity

[00:00:22] beyond homo sapiens, which Laurie and I call homo spiritus by practicing dancing with the One Thing that individuals, communities and countries have yet to try on mass.

[00:00:35] That One Thing is the connection to the higher self part of our true self anatomy that people call by various different names and whatever your name is is welcome.

[00:00:45] Our Prime Directive above all else is to make and constantly return to taught connection day in and day out, and breath in and breath out as our first step in dealing with everything in our daily life rather than viewing problems as things we can solve separately from taught.

[00:01:06] And this episode is called your taught checklist for engaging with others and will unpack that bit by bit, but over to you.

[00:01:16] Okay, sounds good. Juicy conversation, and of course we're not going to be covering every single thing on the, you know, like included in our checklist, but we're going to cover the ones that seem important to start with two us anyway.

[00:01:29] And so first let's frame this up. We want to talk about having conversations not only with our self, but with people in person and then also in the online space and especially social media because I know it can get kind of sticky there.

[00:01:47] And we're really talking about the value of engaging with others as it can only be as healthy as our own connection to our higher self or higher presence or whatever you're choosing to call that.

[00:02:03] And this is the one thing that we haven't actually tried in mass right because human opinions in and of themselves disconnected from the source of life don't mean much right there it's just a recycling of history.

[00:02:18] And we all know how that has gone. So we're really trying to do our best sales job to invite you to, you know, first and foremost engage in that connection connect with your higher self.

[00:02:32] And then from that place have healthy engagement, you know, with people in your world and online.

[00:02:38] And what we want to kind of frame at the front end of this episode is the notion that being engaged or thinking we're engaged with the one thing while being being disengaged from ourselves is impossible.

[00:02:59] If we're if we're truly connected, then there's automatically a connection between internal connection and connection with higher love, higher wisdom, higher power.

[00:03:11] And so you know thinking thinking we're connected when we're not is where the breakdowns happen first that's where they start.

[00:03:23] That's where we disengage from others.

[00:03:27] Yeah, good point. Good point.

[00:03:29] So we're going to go through you know like I said this little checklist and we're just thinking of them as guidelines and practices for, you know, establishing and maintaining and curating you know good relationships and connections and restoring our connection with our higher self while we're interacting with others.

[00:03:49] And of course, we have to say that this first requires us to be you know having had some practice with this constant connection with our higher self.

[00:03:59] I heard something last Saturday that was talking about how important the governance of the human is and it's kind of along these lines.

[00:04:10] It's like how what does this mean to govern ourselves? Well, it means to be having to me anyway.

[00:04:16] It means having a connection between our head and our heart, between our higher mind and our lower human mind, between our heart and the person that we're engaging with heart between our being our system and life.

[00:04:31] Right? Like we can call life nature. We can call it the cosmic life force. It doesn't matter. But it's being in a conscious, aware connection with that as often as we can possibly be. And if that that of course takes practice.

[00:04:46] It sure does. It's not it's not even anything close to a one and done.

[00:04:52] An ongoing merging practice. And I love that you added the word curating because that's really juicy. And before I share a story, I would love for you to share with our audience. What you mean by curating?

[00:05:10] Well, oftentimes we hear that word curate when we hear of a museum putting together you know a new arrival of art.

[00:05:18] You know, maybe it's coming from Europe or whatever wherever it's coming from or even in our gallery curating a new art show.

[00:05:25] And we can expand on that and consider that we can actually curate our lives. We can curate our connection with ourselves. We can curate our connection with others.

[00:05:36] It just means being to me anyway, it means being consciously on purpose and intentional about how we would want you know like a gallery owner hangs a piece the pieces is the way he or she would like them to be seen as people walk through. That's a conscious curation.

[00:05:54] Of the body of work in his or her gallery. So if you want to say more on that, that's how I see it. So we're just being we're being using our are are will are choice as a human being to elevate and curate our consciousness.

[00:06:12] Yes. And that's why I wanted you to say a little bit more because I was realizing that the word curation is not often enough used in the context of relationships.

[00:06:26] And so I love introducing curation into the essence of how we are in our relationships.

[00:06:35] So before we start unpacking the checklist itself, I first want to just share a story. Some of you may have heard and maybe many of you have not which is a story about relationships and spirituality.

[00:06:52] It's kind of a warning story and there are of course as with all of these teaching stories, there are a bunches of different variations on it. But the version I'm going to tell is this one.

[00:07:03] There's a monk in ancient China who who decides to leave his village and to go onto a mountaintop outside of the village in order to attain enlightenment.

[00:07:18] And he's there for a very long period of time and over time, he develops this kind of reputation for being enlightened or becoming more enlightened and people start to come and visit him to ask for his sage advice and things along those lines.

[00:07:37] And after this fairly long period of time, the monk decides that he is complete with his time in isolation on the mountaintop that he's attained enlightenment and he comes back down off of the mountain into the village.

[00:07:56] And within a half hour of arriving in the village, he's in a fist fight with someone.

[00:08:05] And the purpose of the teaching story is really at least from my point of view, it's alerting us to the fact that we can attain altered states of consciousness on our own.

[00:08:20] We can attain a state of enlightened consciousness on our own in our in private.

[00:08:30] But the real test, the real measure of enlightenment, the real measure of our spiritual evolution and uplifting is in how we are in our relationships with other people not how we are on our own.

[00:08:47] And I'll go one step further, it's how we are in our relationships with other people when things get tough.

[00:08:56] Yeah.

[00:08:57] And that's the point of sharing the teaching story and the context of this episode.

[00:09:04] Yeah, good, good, good story.

[00:09:07] Good talk.

[00:09:08] Good talk.

[00:09:09] We laugh about that.

[00:09:11] Yeah, so one of the things to consider having on your checklist is a very clear sense of what it feels like for you to be in your center and that, you know, that still point of peace, which is probably where the guy on the mountaintop was.

[00:09:29] And then what does it feel like when when you feel triggered like it's it's a very distinct there's distinction between those two feelings in my system.

[00:09:40] And, you know, I tend to use this idea of when when I'm triggered it feels like someone has put a pencil or I have put a pencil in the fan and it's like the fan is getting all weird.

[00:09:53] So that's my cue that I've lost my center, I've disconnected and that I can I can come my first order of business as far as I've learned is to is to come back to center so that I can have whatever conversation or whatever needs to be said next or not be said next.

[00:10:12] And then I can be assisted and guided by my higher wisdom, my higher intelligence that part of all of us that that sees a broader view and knows, you know, knows truth knows a higher higher level of truth.

[00:10:30] And then I already know the difference in your in your system. This is beyond your head. This is like the tension of the trigger or the column of the center, like you, you know, we want to know those places in ourselves so that we can recognize when they've when when we've gotten out of balance.

[00:10:47] And I like that, that the tension of the trigger and the calm of the center. Yeah.

[00:10:56] Another item on the checklist is whether we're in a state of openness receptivity or whether we're in a state of defensiveness and and so when when I'm open,

[00:11:15] thinking about what's the next thing I'm going to say or what's the retort that I'm going to offer up in a discussion.

[00:11:24] I'm present, I'm not just centered but I'm in a state of receptivity or openness in contrast to being defensive or in relationship research it's referred to as impervious to influence.

[00:11:41] If I'm in a state of connectedness with the one thing, I can hear anything from anyone no matter how different what they're saying is from my perspective and not be triggered not be thrown off center not not to lose my openness.

[00:12:02] So if you think about open as the ideal state and think about a continuum between open and two extremes that are equally unhelpful at one extreme instead of openness is impervious to input and at the other extreme is the opposite of impervious to input input.

[00:12:26] It's where we're in this and indiscriminate sponge, we just absorb anything anyone says and make it turn ourselves into a pretzel to make it be true for us when it's not true for us.

[00:12:40] So open versus defensive or impervious or an indiscriminate sponge is another item on the checklist.

[00:12:49] And the next one is the consideration of just being in this inquiry when you're engaging with another person is am I am I holding the space for there to be a win-win experience between all parties involved or do I need to be right.

[00:13:08] You know, there's a in the course in miracles, which is a spiritual text. There's this idea of if you can either be right or you can be happy.

[00:13:16] I was talking about that one time years ago with a patient and she says but I am happy when I'm right.

[00:13:23] It was so funny anyway it's the difference between cooperation, you know and finding finding a broader way that that everybody gets to win and more, you know, being right.

[00:13:35] I think falls under the umbrella of more like competition and that's an old paradigm. That's energy that is that is sizzling away from our from our constructs as we know them to be.

[00:13:48] And so the more of us who are who step up with win-win and with cooperative, you know systems and ideas and thoughts and words and actions.

[00:14:00] The quicker will actually find ourselves in a collective that is more cooperative than competitive.

[00:14:08] And I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about eliminating healthy competition where we strive to be better because of a person that we're running against or swimming with or whatever.

[00:14:21] You know what I'm saying about that but it's more just the not trying to win over.

[00:14:27] Yes, yes absolutely and kind of a variation on that or maybe a drawing out of certain parts of win-win versus being right is coercion versus collaborative.

[00:14:43] So in coercion I'm focused on converting you over to my point of view or the solution I'm advocating or my position or whatever that might happen to be.

[00:14:56] And collaborative is the state of connection with the one thing because with the one thing a variation on win-win is that we have the humility that says I'm probably see parts of a larger picture that are important to include.

[00:15:22] But I'm humble enough to know that neither I nor any other single person or single group sees the whole picture.

[00:15:31] So of course I'm going to offer my part of the picture into the into the conversation.

[00:15:39] And in a collaborative mindset the humility part is I'm offering my part of the picture because you're going to be offering your part of the picture too.

[00:15:51] And when we combine the parts of the picture that each each of us is more attuned to we collectively start to see a whole or more complete picture.

[00:16:04] So top connection is about collaboration as a form of creating win-win solutions.

[00:16:12] Yes beautiful beautiful it's funny because David and I sometimes watch this HGTV House Hunters International.

[00:16:19] And it's just so interesting to watch how the couples you know usually its couples that are looking for a place somewhere outside of the US and there.

[00:16:28] There's a little bit of a tug of war between which place they're going to get and often the couple will one part of the couple will say oh he or she is going to win this one.

[00:16:38] You know as if as if the other one has to sort of give in and give up and that kind of thing there are there are couples who do what David just said where they kind of expand the capacity to collaborate and then there is no winning.

[00:16:52] There's just the you know the cultivation of something good that works for all parties so anyway we'd find that funny to watch.

[00:17:01] Okay so the next thing on the checklist is the difference between self disclosure and telling another about them which tends to put the other in a more defensive position because you know I actually.

[00:17:15] I do this a lot I think I'm a little bit better I mean the only reason we have this list is because we know them because we have our own you know tripping and falling with them and hopefully getting better so.

[00:17:28] We're not by any means presenting this information as if we're experts you know or perfect at it but I remember I was really afraid to sort of have self disclosure or speak speak my truth and and I didn't know I could trust myself to not be you know like rigid and harsh so I started practicing years ago with customer service

[00:17:51] and I was just trying to represent representatives on the phone and I thought well if I just by practice being calm and saying what's important here you know if you're calling customer service you're usually complaining about something so or you know hoping for something to be better.

[00:18:05] And then and then that went okay it was like okay I can actually do this and the roof doesn't cave and then I started doing it to you know people who were in person like grocery store clerks or anybody I would exchange with you know in the world that and I figured well they don't know me.

[00:18:20] I'm probably will never see him again so I can just do my best and if I you know if I make a mistake or if I trip and fall or don't say the right thing it you know it's okay well all of that taught me how to how to be you know in a in a engaging relationship with someone and speak my truth and hopefully you know not not push against what they're doing and and and tell them what they are doing or how they should do it or anything like that because

[00:18:49] that doesn't really foster an openness on behalf of the other person but rather just talking about how how things are landing for me you know and how we might come about it in a better way so I don't know if you want to say anything more about that but self disclosure versus telling the other person about them or yeah or spouting philosophy or telling another person how I think it should be.

[00:19:14] I mean I'm always watching myself on that.

[00:19:19] Yes and the only thing I'll add because I love how you've worded that is variation on what appears to be self disclosure and isn't and it's it's the famous I feel that you are blank blank blank.

[00:19:40] Oh I'm just telling you how I feel no no that is the pretense of self disclosure that's actually an attack on or a judgment about the other person and judging the other person is not personal transparency saying that when when you said blank blank blank what what you know got activated in me was sadness or fear or shame or guilt or things like that.

[00:20:09] That self disclosure versus I feel that you are a judgmental person is not self disclosure.

[00:20:16] Yeah good point good good addition.

[00:20:20] So the next item on our checklist is focusing on positions or premature solutions versus disclosing deep concerns and high intentions so what we mean by that is that in a top disconnected state.

[00:20:37] What we end up in is these arm wrestling matches where I keep telling you about my position or a solution that I'm advocating instead of a form of self disclosure that that looks underneath or that that shares what's underneath the position I'm taking or the solution I'm advocating by telling you about the deep concerns and or high intentions.

[00:21:06] That I have that led to the position I'm advocating or the solution that I'm advocating so this is a little bit tricky because people can think that if they're if they're stating their positions or the solutions that they're advocating that they're actually doing self disclosure and that's not self disclosure.

[00:21:31] That's go ahead no you finish that what that is is a hiding of self disclosure it's it's it's not a top connected state because if we're actually doing self disclosure like I said a moment ago what we're disclosing is the deep concerns and high intentions that led to those advocated positions or solutions.

[00:21:56] Yeah and this is tricky and I would like to tell every person listening that David is exquisite at this and if you want to learn more you could go to his Facebook page and just look at some of the comments he makes to other people he walks this line so beautifully and you know it's just a great way to learn how to at least notice the difference between

[00:22:24] you know hiding behind self disclosure he does a very good job at this so thank you he's masterful so I recommend you learn from him.

[00:22:35] And I have a whole training program on how to have difficult discussions about touchy topics in transformative ways and the centerpiece of that is learning how to identify and disclose deep concerns and high intentions.

[00:22:52] Right right it's so beautiful I recommend you guys do that. So okay so the other thing is to discover inside yourself like this is a noticing a witnessing a self observation piece without judgment like where do you where do you leave your taught connection and you're just watching yourself like at what point you're connected you're connected you're connected and then boom you drop out and you're just watching this so that you can

[00:23:21] find inside of yourselves ways to do that less and less you know and and you'll see this you'll want to watch this in yourself when you're engaging with someone whether it's in person or you know in a social media scenario but watch for like your own energy you're watching for aggression maybe even rage obviously that means you're triggered.

[00:23:46] Our source our higher presence does not have the need to be aggressive or to go to places of rage in order to be effective watch where you give up your power right like you abdicate your power your sense of empowerment notice if you're rebellious if you're if you're someone who can easily go to a rebellious path and other places to look for is where you feel helpless like your David uses the term learn.

[00:24:15] He uses the term learned helplessness and or being a victim of anything because you know from a from a connected place there there really are no victims kind of thing and I'm not talking about war torn land I'm talking about you know I mean that's another conversation but right now we're talking about how we engage with another person and so we just want to watch that we don't slip in because it's easy these things happen so quickly we can slip into victim and not really recognize it and then we're doing it.

[00:24:45] Disconnected and we're you know we're engaging in ways that may not be helpful and watch for any unworthiness undeservedness to be having a conversation with high intentions I like how David says that watch your entitlement watch your your your your your quick possibly quick thing to ways of wanting to blame and shaming others or self right like we say can easily

[00:25:15] shame ourselves blame ourselves shame or blame others so those are some places to just watch those tend to be common land mines if you will for human beings.

[00:25:25] So and you're not you're not an observation of these places to be right yourself here you're in observation and you're witnessing so that you can

[00:25:34] you know create a plan when you get at that choice point of oh right in this moment I want to slip into unworthiness what are my other options but it's really important to think through those things ahead of time because you it's hard to have access to it when you're triggered.

[00:25:50] So the practice is oh I get triggered and go into unworthiness a lot what other choices might I have and think about that ahead of time and then play with your options when you do get triggered so you can see what works for you in order to stay connected yet.

[00:26:08] Yes so I think that's a marvelous symptoms list and I'm going to add to that symptoms list the stress responses styles so there are basically four styles of of reactivity when we're under stress at a level where the thinking part of our brain turns off and the reptile part of our brain the limbic system turns off.

[00:26:38] And those those four states that are taught disconnected states are fight flight freeze and faint so fight is you know you put up your dukes either literally or just emotionally and verbally you

[00:27:00] you know you have defensiveness and protective self protection yes yeah and flight is running away and freeze is deer in the headlights just paralysis and faint is playing possum where you essentially get invisible you roll over and play dead and hope that if you play dead for long enough the threat passes so those those are the four stress responses that are clued.

[00:27:30] And then there are some symptoms that were out of top connection and think of all of these symptoms the the list of symptoms that Laurie just mentioned and then these four stress type responses as your vapor trails vapor trails for spotting when you've left top connection when you're interacting with someone whether in person or online and what I mean by a vapor trail is that if you look up at the sky

[00:27:59] and you see this this trail in the in the sky and I'm not talking about you know contrails and things like that that's a whole other discussion I'm talking about the vapor trails that are left behind when a jet passes overhead and you can see the vapor trail but sometimes you can't even see the jet that left the vapor trail but you know the vapor that the jet was there because of the vapor trails left behind and we encourage you to

[00:28:29] get acquainted with your vapor trails aggression rage abdication rebellion being oppositional helplessness victim thinking unworthiness entitled blame shame fight flight freeze faint any of those which are your vapor trails that are your clue that when you're interacting with someone you have lost or disconnected from

[00:28:57] from the hot got from the one thing so that you know that that's a moment to do what Laurie is about to share that we recommend that that you do when you spot one of these vapor trails.

[00:29:11] Yeah, I love that term vapor trails well said and also you might want to be aware that you know you might be a fight person at work and you might be a freeze person in

[00:29:23] you know like your primary relationship and then you might be a fond person or a faint person in you know in your family it's not it may not be the same everywhere but what you're doing is just observing.

[00:29:34] And so what I'd like to offer is this is a tool it's it's a combination of a few things in Chinese medicine and heart math but it's very simply called the pause practice where when you feel that you have been triggered right you go you just take a

[00:29:50] break my moment you take a pause and you check into your body to where you might feel tension or the energy of the trigger where it might live in your body and you know initially you you know you may not.

[00:30:03] Figure that out right away but don't worry the more you practice this the better it you get at it and then you can either put your hand on your heart or not but if you and I say or not because if you're not in a place where it if it seems weird or something like that but if you drop your

[00:30:18] awareness into your heart that that's like one of the places to you know to pause into in order to stay connected and not go down the rabbit hole of you know the trigger so to speak.

[00:30:32] And you know then from a Chinese medicine perspective if you just invite your presence back into your heart you can invite your your higher self your spirit you know in Chinese medicine it's called Shen and when we get

[00:30:46] triggered and if it's too intense of a trigger we actually fly out of our heart you know where our spirit leaves our heart because it's it's a it's a it's a bad scene you know to indulge a trigger and this is what it means by the

[00:31:01] governance of the human we cannot be indulging triggers and expect for there to be peace in the world right we have to govern if we want better government in any country

[00:31:11] in the world we have to be a citizenry of self governed humans right that where we have a governance of our own systems and so you know I'm a big advocate of not expecting the government to do the work

[00:31:25] that each of us individually are supposed to do so the pause practice just gives us a tool to so one is a three step thing one is well it's a part you know A before the one but you just notice

[00:31:39] your triggered right and then one is you notice where in your body you might feel the energy of that trigger to you pause you can take a breath

[00:31:49] and you bring your awareness to your heart and then three you just invite your presence your spirit your your source of energy back into your heart so you'll you feel connected

[00:32:00] this can happen you know in very three five seconds right so maybe not in the beginning and honestly if someone if you're pausing let's say you're in an intense relationship

[00:32:09] uh conversation with someone and and use pause and the person's like hey where'd you go oh you could say just give me five or ten seconds here I just want to come back to myself before I respond

[00:32:21] you know that's a very reasonable request it's you know I think anybody would would honor that yes yes and you know what I what I want to add about this is that this might sound

[00:32:37] quite comfortably simple so how could it possibly work well it's it's deceptively simple because it works and because it sounds easier when described than it is to actually practice this is a new set of muscles for a lot of us

[00:32:58] yes cause practice and so it doesn't have to be and in my bias it shouldn't be more complicated than this this is where self-government starts exactly and spirit is not complicated spirit is simple only our mind has a need to complicate

[00:33:19] things and there's a fair amount of research about a forty forty years worth of research from the heart math institute on what happens when we reconnect with our heart and we take that pause and we take a breath and you know they don't talk about the invite inviting spirit or the Shen part

[00:33:36] that I have added but it's it's the research is very very solid so absolutely ready to move on to take away yes yeah okay wrap it up here yeah okay so the takeaway I want to offer is that staying centered

[00:33:57] staying really centered in your personal power is a practice it's not a one and done it's a muscle to be developed so start small practice online first like Laurie said earlier in this episode if doing that in person feels too overwhelming as a place to start and if it doesn't

[00:34:21] if doing it in person doesn't feel too overwhelming then just go straight to that but what starts small practice practice in low stress situations reconnecting with the one thing and then as you develop that muscle your ability to stay connected to the one thing and higher and higher and higher stress situations will naturally strengthen itself beautiful yeah beautiful

[00:34:49] and I also would like to offer to any listener who feels a resonance with this a complimentary mini course on how to cultivate what we've been talking about so it's a it's it's a five day video course you can do it in as many days as you want but it's set up to be you know five parts

[00:35:12] and it's it's um it teaches it go every day goes through one thing so we start with grounding and then connecting and then being present and then being embodied and then being purposeful and those kind of build on each other and it's called the five day energy kickstart I think the link to get that for free is going to be in the show notes I highly recommend that you use it as a as a way of practicing it even expands on what David and I have talked about

[00:35:42] so use it as a way of practicing in my opinion the reason I created this is because it's foundational to every human being even you know people who are spirit centered and spiritual you know we forget those foundational pieces and so coming back to them on the regular is vital and I invite you to do that no matter where you are on your your spiritual path

[00:36:05] and just to be clear depending on where you're listening to this you might not see show notes so are you able to offer right on the recording the link.

[00:36:18] What would you mean by right on the recording right now as we're recording this oh just say that say that you are al you mean yeah yeah yeah let me get it right now it's WWW dot sacred health academy dot com it's kind of long

[00:36:34] slash kickstart one word dash not underscore dash your dash energy dash five dash day dash reset dash E sorry for the length of that.

[00:36:51] So do it again so it's sacred health academy dot com slash kickstart dash your your dash energy dash five dash day dash reset dash E.

[00:37:06] right and five is the number five yes that's correct good yeah and you can always leave a comment in our in our you know taught podcast at dot net or in the Facebook group if you happen to be a Facebook group person or in this one the one thing and ask for it if you can't find it.

[00:37:31] Yes good great okay so I think we are ready to wrap yes so we I it is it is come to our attention that our next episode is going to be more on the governance this this governance of each of us as a human being which is also I like to say it as the governance between our humanity and our divinity in order to affect governance in whatever country that we are in.

[00:37:59] So until next time remember to dance with your better half the one thing so that you can keep living more and more fully as homo spear to.