014a Connect the Dots from Elizabeth Moxie

Stephen and Loura share their thoughts about how hard it is to get to know your true self and what you really want, not what you are supposed to want.  They talk about how they have both addressed trauma and other takeaways from the episode with Elizabeth.

​Links:
www.inspiredinteraction.com
lsanchez@inspiredinteraction.com
stephen@infinite.fm

​Transcript

​Stephen Christopher  0:03  

Hey, I hope you're having a great day so far today, Stephen Christopher here with my awesome co host, Laura Sanchez, for today's episode of the exciting unknown, connect the dots, where we recap a little bit from our conversation with Elizabeth Moxie, what we learned what we're implementing, and any other cool things that we took away from it, Laura, what's up?

Unknown Speaker  0:26  

He What's happening?

Stephen Christopher  0:28  

You are looking at it, my friend. And it's so it's interesting, whatever it is, it's awesome. So it's, you know, it's interesting, we're start we're continuing to hear this word trauma show up with the people that we have interviewed. And I know for me, we talked about it in our interview with Greg straight as far as just kind of like, what's the definition of this word trauma, because I know, at least for me, personally, I've always leaned away from trauma one, I didn't really believe that I had any trauma in my, in my childhood or in my, in my upbringing.

But what I've learned is that we all have trauma, based on these newer definitions that we're hearing. And these traumas shape, all of us that shapes who we are, what patterns we follow, who we become, how we have conversations, how we show up all of this kind of stuff. And so just this continued conversation about trauma has helped me feel more open to exploring it, looking at ways where it's actually impacting my life currently based on, you know, what's happened in my past, and being able to kind of choose how I lean into the future. So it's cool to hear this come up, consistently.

So that at least I know me personally, I can look at where it might be showing up for me addressing it a little bit more directly, and not having this big, lingering like black cloud around the word, trauma. So it was cool to have a little bit deeper, or an additional conversation with Elizabeth about that. And, you know, one of the things we were chatting about for hit record that you mentioned is don't go looking for it. So I don't know, there's this fine balance, right about being aware of it, being okay with it. But at the same time not going sitting there and doing, you know, hundreds of hours of sitting there thinking about oh my gosh, like this one time, in fifth grade. I remember I colored outside the lines, and my teacher, shamed me for it. And that's, you know, now that's why

Unknown Speaker  2:31  

I do these.

Stephen Christopher  2:32  

Yeah, exactly. And so we don't have to necessarily go back and look for all of this past trauma, we don't have to necessarily know exactly what it is. But just being aware that we are influenced by it. It's just been really eye opening and helpful for me over the course of the last episodes or people that have talked about this, yeah, what would what did she say something about it's not that trauma Olympics?

Yeah. Oh, my God, like, Hey, I have to compete in every version of the trauma Olympics, I was abused as a child, I was embarrassed in school, I was maybe sexually harassed. I mean, whatever you perceive, it's not like, Oh, I have that one. And I have that one. It's more of a wait a minute, or their blocks? Or is there a behavior for you that you think is maybe holding you back from doing something that you want to do or be as fulfilling or pursuing something? And then say, Okay, wait a minute, why can't I do this? that might lead you to then? Okay, there is some type of trauma event that occurred. But she also then talked about, you know, that we heal through experiences.

And so, yes, that trauma occurred, you know, like, I think about, I was kind of like you in terms of I don't think I had a lot of trauma. Did shit happen to me? Yeah, should happen. And some of that some of the things that happened, those experiences were significant experiences. You know, my parents were divorced when I was 12. That's a very formative age as a girl. And so how I responded to that, and that experience certainly has impacted how I've showed up in life for a long time. So I can't undo that experience.

But if I go back and think about what that experience was, and how I handled it as a 12 year old, and then say, Okay, well, if I was doing it now what I handled it differently. Yeah, I would have done things differently. And I would have felt differently and I would have seen it through different lens, which now allows me to be like, okay, but this is who I am now. And if that's how I would do it. There isn't a correlation between continuing to behave the way I did then just because I did it as a 12 year old. Hmm.

So do you still have Are you more aware now, in the past, I don't know. A couple months since we've been doing this and people have been talking about about it or whatever work you've been doing prior to that, around how something like that or other similar experiences as a child shape the way that you think in the moment and in a certain experience, and then like, do you catch that now and an act differently? Or? I would absolutely say yes, there is a heightened awareness. And I think for me, a lot of the work has been around. I want I want to be to the point where I don't even have to catch myself anymore, right?

I don't want to have to be like, Oh, this is because of that. But But being able to really release or heal, heal that hurt that happened as a little girl, and be like, Oh, wait a minute, I made these choices. Because I wanted approval, I wanted love. And, and that was okay. And I deserve that as a little girl. And I did it. But today, I'm a fully grown woman at 50 something and I don't have to do it that way anymore. And so I think it's just learning. It's accepting that experience, and then saying, Wait a minute, I'm not defined by that anymore. And that is a part of awareness in recognizing it.

But at some point, I don't even think you start making the correlation even. Did you just come who you are now, not who you were, then? Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting thing to pay attention to. And something that I've certainly been paying attention to more and more in the last few years. And I think it's such an important point. Because there's a lot of things that I didn't want to go back and look at that, you know, I thought I could just kind of power through them.

But some of those I actually did have to go back and look at because I wasn't able to necessarily make the changes or make the correlations and act a little bit differently, or at least feel a little bit differently. So I did have to go back and look a little bit deeper at some of those. So it's this, like, it's this, this thin line, right, that I think you just have to learn. I think everybody has to learn on their own. And each experience is different. Yeah, each experience is different. Each person is different, right? There isn't a one size fits all.

Unknown Speaker  7:19  

Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Christopher  7:21  

So go ahead. Sorry. No, go for it. Um, you know, I thought that her the discussion that we had about the use of psychedelics, in terms of integrated therapy, it's fascinating, right. I mean, I think that whole area is fascinating. And there's so much being done out there. But her sharing the, the trial results that they were doing, and, and the fact that the use of psychedelics in a controlled environment, right with therapy, the results of where people got were significantly significantly faster than if they were doing more traditional methods of talk therapy, or some of the other things.

I think that's really exciting for people out there, particularly those that suffer from significant traumas, and being able to work through that and get to that point of being healed. That's pretty exciting stuff. Yeah, yeah, I'm pumped for it. I mean, anything that we can use as a tool, and use it intelligently supervised by somebody that has a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge and a lot of deeper understanding is fantastic.

You know, if we can get if we if we can have a similar effect with a couple sessions, that are like integrated therapy, psychedelic assisted, something like that, that can shortcut what would normally take 234 or five years, or even be more effective, like, absolutely, and it's really cool that this stuff is I'm gonna probably mess up the way that I say it, but Google it and make sure that, that it's that it's exactly like this if you're interested in it. But basically, FDA approved testing, right.

So this is, you know, these things that are happening are FDA approved and implemented by licensed professionals. But I agree with you the the results that we're getting are so amazing that it's something that we you know, it just can't simply be ignored. Yeah, you know, what, what's interesting is it again, it ties to some of our other guests and our discussions about depression and mental illness and how significant that that is in our society.

And there are a lot of people out there that would say it is the number one issue that we have in the world today is mental illness. And that then correlates to depression, acts of violence, all of those kinds of things. And so if there is an opportunity for us to have a neutral that normally we haven't accepted in society that can aid in healing and helping those people overcome that. That's world changing, which is amazing. Yeah. Yep.

One of the other things that she mentioned, was just knowing who your true self is. And I think that that is, that's huge. I mean, that's something that, I mean, you've you've known, I've been working on that for at least the last several years, if not even a little bit longer, but just slowly, as quickly as possible. But it's a slow process, sometimes peeling away the layers of the onion to find out Wait, who truly am I? What do I truly desire? What do I truly want, and getting more clarity on why I'm doing the things that I'm doing and taking the path that is absolutely the most fulfilling and the most aligned in alignment with my true self.

And it's just it's, it has allowed me to experience much more fulfillment and happiness and joy and connection and all that stuff at a much faster level. And so I think we should all be working on finding out who or allowing our true self to come more to the surface. And I mean, I know like for, for two of the coaching clients that I work with one on one, one of the big exercises we've been going through is a journaling exercise of What do I want? What do I really want and sitting with us on a blank page for, you know, at least 30 minutes, if not a couple hours, some days, to really starting to get down? A few layers deeper?

And what do I actually want, because so much of what we typically in a day, say we want is filtered through ego and past programming and all this other stuff. So it takes a little bit of time and a little bit of effort to start to figure out who you know, who am I really who's my true self? And what do I really want. But there is a lot more fulfillment when you start to do that. And when you start to just not necessarily listen to what your ego says you should want.

Yeah, and I thought that Elizabeth was great in pointing out that, and there are a lot of tools to help you do that. Right. Whether it's journaling, it's meditation, it's psychedelic work, it's Yeah, there's just a many tools that can help you get to that point of Okay, really, what is my true self? Because I think that it's somewhat disingenuous to say to people will just show up as your true self, when most of us don't know that we're not showing up as our true self. Right? I may be like, well, this is who I am. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, right? you get you get all parts of me, which begs the question, which is okay, is that really who you are? Or is that because you've been conditioned to show up that way?

You've been trained, your your scripts that are running in the background are saying, well, in order to get love, you have to show up this way, in order to be accepted. You need to dress this way, behave this way. Is that truly who you are? And I don't think you can just say, Oh, no, I'm not. I think you have to have tools to help you get there. Yeah, it's an uncovering process. I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna mess up where this stat came from, but I think it's like the American science Association.

That sounds really legit, Steve and I like that. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's, it's a, I believe it's a government site, I can't remember. But anyway, point being is that, by the time we are 35 years old, 95% of our programs are created and running. So 95% of what we do, what we think, you know, all of that kind of stuff is just programmed based on what we've learned up until the age of 35. And we, you know, we have somewhere around 60,000 thoughts per day, of those 60,000 thoughts. 80% of them are negative. And 95% of them are the same as we thought yesterday.

So, to your point, about a lot of us don't actually really know how to even begin to identify who's our true self, those statistics would absolutely back that up and prove it because 95% of what we're doing and thinking about every day is the same as it was yesterday. And it's just all programmed. So you have to actually start to learn some some awareness in order to say, Okay, wait a minute, what am I actually thinking about in this moment? And what am I actually doing and why am I doing that? You know, why do you drive the same way to work every day that you've always driven? Why do you you know, whatever.

Why do you do the same routine at the gym? Why do you have the same conversation with your spouse? Why do you? Why do you like pizza? Maybe you still like pizza, but you actually don't really like it that much anymore. But you've just never thought about it. And it's just a past program. So just starting some sort of awareness practice even right? Yes to start becoming more aware of why are you doing what you're doing? Actually, Laura, we could dig up the we did that. We did like an hour long training on awareness.

I don't remember it was a while ago, but maybe that's something good for the show notes too. But just starting to cultivate something around a different level of awareness to start to uncover who your true self really is. Right? Right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, if you look at those numbers, I was like, just jotting them down. And it's like, Okay, if 95% is pre programmed, there's still 5% that you get to play with To begin, right. And, and I'm sure that there is some for getting really scientific and numbers here. There's at some point, a tipping point, where you build up enough awareness enough intention, like Okay, wait a minute, why am I doing this, that then it becomes like a right now, those old tapes, those old programs are going away?

Oh, there's a nice siren now, and all kinds of noises here today. Um, sometimes at some point, those become less and you get to have more freedom and more awareness of Okay, wait a minute, my true self is actually making this decision based upon what I know today, not what I knew. Eight years ago, or 40 years ago? Yeah. Yeah. Cool stuff. Yep. Awareness is powerful. And, yeah, Elizabeth episode was really, really good. There was a lot of great things that came out of it. If you have interest in learning more about things like therapy, ifms, therapy, psychic psychedelics, in use of medicine as a tool to unlock certain things. I believe she gave us her website, you can go check out our website or talk with her.

But there are some people out there that are doing, you know, FDA approved clinical trials that are licensed and understand how to work with this type of thing. And you know, Laura, you I think you mentioned earlier, but people are starting to talk more and more about it. So making sure that you go somewhere that somebody actually understands what they're doing, if you're, if you're going to go down that path, right. Awesome. Awesome. All right, everybody, thanks so much for hanging out with Laura and I for today's episode of connect the dots with where we recapped a little bit more about our interview with Elizabeth Moxie. And I guess that's about it. I just hope you're having a really good day. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. Make sure to tune in for the next connect the dots are the next episode of the exciting unknown podcast and until next time, embrace the exciting unknown.