MMM 20210727 - Podcast
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[00:00:00] Brad Brockbank: Guys welcome, I'm up in the northwest right now connecting back to my roots.
[00:00:06] It's been an interesting experience going around with my brother You And going and seeing a lot of old neighborhood things Angel and I have moved back here lots of times, but he has not returned back here for almost a decade. And that last time that he was here was just a quick pass through.
[00:00:28] So we've actually been going back to some of the stuff that he really hasn't seen since just shortly after graduation. And it's been an interesting experience going back and thinking through those times, those experiences that have been formative in my life because of the different things that now I'm 40 years old versus when I was 17, 18 in high school, and I look back and see how those things have played out.
[00:01:05] And that's what I want to talk a little bit about today is going back into our history. And when we talk about the Ace Your Life process. We're looking at the first part of that is a acknowledge your past and acknowledging your past is critical to your ability to move forward into the future because Our past carries our anchors.
[00:01:36] It's where we build our thoughts. It's where we come up with our crazy ideas that end up derailing us later in life. I've talked with a number of you about parenting. And it's crazy because no matter how hard we try to be perfect parents, to raise our kids without any issues and like [00:02:00] help them see the future and think through it, it seems you try really hard in one way and it misses.
[00:02:08] completely in another. And you're like, Oh, man, I've shared openly and my daughter's been open about it, but she has anxiety. in my hope and desire to help her be a really well rounded young woman. Somewhere along the line, she picked up an idea that she needs to have perfect performance on the things that she does.
[00:02:39] And if there's not perfect performance, then she feels like she's let people down. And that wasn't my intention at all. It was just to help her get really good at Being the best that she could with what she has. And there were other factors. She had a teacher that, bless her sweetheart, this teacher just adored her and would take her assignments and hold it up in front of the class and say this is the kind of work I'm talking about.
[00:03:08] This is what it's all about. Well, that was fifth grade, fifth and sixth grade. And then she got into seventh grade and junior high where nobody cared, nobody put gold stars. Nobody said a word about the hard work. So she felt like she didn't do a good enough job. So she needs to work harder. So instead of writing a three page paper, she'd write a 12 page paper.
[00:03:33] And then the teacher would get after her for not doing the assignment correctly, and it created this cycle, right? And that's what happens in our lives. We get these things where we have certain thoughts or expectations of how we should be, how the world expects us to execute. And we strive for that.
[00:03:58] We truly [00:04:00] absolutely work to show up in really good ways. I don't think anybody on here ever thinks, eh, I'll do it. I'm going to just be mediocre. We really do try to do good. I know there are times, and as we get older, we do start to realize I don't have to be perfect at everything. And mediocre oftentimes is sufficient, but I want you to go back into that childhood and look at and assess, are there things that are tied to perfectionism?
[00:04:35] I think for me the ADD and having that as my crutch, Angel can tell you that I've crutched ADD. Oftentimes, as an excuse to not perform to the best of my abilities, and I've excused myself. So now as an adult, that becomes a problem, at least it becomes a problem in my pursuit for excellence.
[00:05:03] Because I want to be excellent in business. I want to be able to make money. I want to be able to have a well rounded relationship. I want to be able to all the things we know all the check boxes, but I want you to think about in your own world, is there things that are going on that are tied to ideas that formed back when you were young
[00:05:30] I wish I had a picture to show you guys where I grew up. My parents, when I was eight years old, purchased a funeral home in Vancouver, Washington. And it was a nice funeral home. It was called Evergreen Staples Funeral Chapel. And after my parents split, my mom turned it into an event center.
[00:05:49] Brad Brockbank: And it was a pretty cool event center. It had some cool stuff. But they ended up losing the property with a bunch of legalities that were [00:06:00] really tragic. And it is now a Sikh temple. It is bright sky blue. Like I want you to think of the Crayola colored pencil sky blue, like that color. And it's interesting to drive by and see that was where I grew up But driving through the neighborhood, I remember bullies that I had, I remember we were talking about experiences that we've gone through.
[00:06:30] Do you remember this spot? Do you remember that? And a lot of those things were formative to who I am today. And a number of those things I've also had to work, had to let go. Because when we go back again, ace your life is acknowledge your past. And we calibrate the future, we set goals and who do we want to become, and then we engage and we got to get to work, but it's going back and acknowledging that past.
[00:07:04] It's journaling and writing about experiences that you felt had an impact on who you are, how you feel, how you react. If you have a weird reaction to something and you're like, I don't even know why start digging into your past and your childhood and you'll probably come up with something that may have been an experience.
[00:07:29] That will be tied to it. And then you can look at it now with your experience, your logic, your brain saying, it is weird that I do that. How do I want to react and start creating the path to move forward from, but until we acknowledge where that might be coming from, we can't, it's an anchor. It literally is like a rope.
[00:07:54] that holds us back from moving forward. And many times all of us have all been [00:08:00] in situations where we'll say, I don't know why I do that. And if you can dig, find what might be the trigger, then you'll be able to start looking at what do I want to be? How do I become, and that's the calibrate the future and let's get to work.
[00:08:19] Let's engage. What about you guys? Do you have any of you had adult experiences where you can tie it back to your childhood and you can say, yeah, that was definitely something that had occurred and I have this reaction in it now, but I was able to change it. Has anybody had any experiences like that, that they'd be open to share?
[00:08:43] Clay: Yeah, I've got one. I hesitate to share too much of it and I want you to see my dad in a great light and the great man he is because there's actually a chance that Brandon and I working on him, he might eventually join us as a trial and error kind of thing.
[00:08:58] But our dad is this man who was given a childhood that Looked like this and gave us a childhood that looked like this, right? This man that I view will be celestialized because of the improvement that he gave in life, that he is shown in life. But he's still, man, I wish he was here so I would feel more comfortable saying this so he could laugh and agree as I say it, but he's he's a stick in the mud sometimes.
[00:09:27] And so I just got done backpacking with him, with one of my clients over the weekend. And it was an exhausting weekend, a great weekend. And I saw my dad frustrated multiple times people taking three hours to pack their bags and get on the trail. And so I saw him frustrated and I was just super proud of myself for being able to manage that frustration and not let it affect me like I had before.
[00:09:57] As a kid his [00:10:00] His frustration level would get to me. I mean, Brandon and I have multiple stories. We're out riding motorcycles. Once again, he's taking time that he could do what he wants with, and he's dedicated time to his kids and we're out riding motorcycles, but the motorcycle won't start.
[00:10:18] And he can't get it to start, and he's getting frustrated, and he takes off his helmet, throws it in the desert, and shoots it six times with a revolver. That there's a lot of stories like this about my dad. And so, for me the first time that I was able to control how he Interacted with my emotions was right after my mission and we're getting ready to go camping and he's getting upset because young our older brother has changed his mind three or four times and so he's taking the front the backseat out of the suburban and putting it back in and out.
[00:10:50] He's getting frustrated he's starting to throw things around in the garage. And I was standing there going, my dad is throwing things around I would normally be peeing my pants right now or running. And instead I look at him and I said, dad, have I ever told you how sexy you are when you wear shorts? And I'm just like totally joking with him.
[00:11:10] And he looks at me like with this shock, like normally you would run from me when I'm mad and you just made fun of me. And it was so that was the first time when I was able to recognize it and I've gotten better and better at it now of still respecting my dad for the monument of the man he is.
[00:11:30] But being able to recognize when his emotions are leading to choices that I need to avoid, to interaction with me that I need to avoid. And it's been awesome. Like, I legitimately enjoy being around him, even when his temper's going off, because I just get to smile and go, you He's come a long ways. And I don't have to let those choices affect me.
[00:11:56] And so, yeah, I've just really enjoyed time with my dad this [00:12:00] weekend. And because I was able to enjoy the time with him, even though he was upset, it actually almost attracted him out of that to the point where he was asking me some pretty genuine questions. about his emotional intelligence about his temper, but anyway, man, I wish he was here so that I could feel comfortable talking about this because it would, I would say the same thing if he was here, but anyway yeah,
[00:12:31] Brad Brockbank: yeah, no, I appreciate you being willing to open up and share and guys that's just it. We have to be comfortable to acknowledge the things that, that truly were. We can't change it, right? I talk a lot about the past. Can't change it. Can't go back and make it something that it wasn't in the past.
[00:12:56] in the moment of truth of acknowledging it. However, there is power in rewriting what you wish had happened and who you were going to be had it happened the way that you wished it had happened. Why do you want it to be different? Who would that have made you be today? And how are you going to be that person?
[00:13:22] Now that's the power of cutting an anchor. That's how we let go of bullies, how we let go of labels. It's how we let go of unreasonable expectations that we were raised with. You can be anybody that you want to be. The power is inside of you, but the key to unlocking that power is inside of your past. And it's by shutting down the stories that we play over and over in [00:14:00] our head that have been derived from past experiences that the reticular activating system utilizes to say, I have evidence that this is truth.
[00:14:12] And as we work through that process, We can literally reshape our lives, choose who we want to be and make our lives, what we want it to become. And then the only thing you have to do is show up that way, be that person. That's it. It's, it is seriously one of the most powerful processes through which I've been able to change my life.
[00:14:40] Like clay. We all have things that our parents generation was a much heavier handed. I don't know. If you look back to three generations and you think about how hard life was, and they're just trying to do better, just like we're trying to do better with our kids.
[00:15:00] We want our kids to turn out better than we are. And so we try to operate and just act under a set of circumstances and rules that we think are the right direction and they're going to help them and counter what the world is throwing at them all the time. So when you're working through that, when you're working through those things, the reason that we work through the full ACE your life. Is getting those things that may be the storylines causing you to be who you are at times when we're not as intentional, right?
[00:15:42] It's our reactionary responses that we look at and say, Oh, that's my past acting out again. But then being able to change that through setting goals and getting clarity. I went through An exercise yesterday, and it was all about setting up the [00:16:00] rules of who I am and how I'm going to be my non negotiables we got to do the routine again and trying to make sure that we set the routine up, right. And that we're looking at what's urgent. What's not urgent, what's important, what's not important, all those different classifications of how do I block my day out and pursue what I need to be pursuing.
[00:16:29] And as I looked at it and looking at how I struggle with structure, how I do struggle with some of the routines, making sure I do them consistently on time, I wish I could say I was perfect at it. I'm not, I do want to be able to be the greatest example of the proof.
[00:16:54] I want to be the proof that my teachings, work. And I am proof, To a large degree, but I want to be proof to the life that I know these things lead to by fulfilling on them, executing and showing that like the true balance of not just relationships and joy and positivity, but also financially success wise and having anything that you want.
[00:17:26] I want to be the example that I can prove. That actually works, not because I feel like I need to prove it to myself or anybody else, but because I'm so convinced we can create the life that we want through our thoughts and through the processes of letting go of anchors, letting go of things that are blocking our success.
[00:17:53] By going through these processes, it truly works. It is taking us in the direction we want to [00:18:00] go. The way that our past gets in front of us, though, this is what I want you guys to be able to recognize.
[00:18:07] It's in fact, clay being clinically trained. Is it okay for me to ask you from a clinical standpoint to share with us just a little bit about our past and how it can affect us or different techniques that you've learned clinically?
[00:18:25] That can help some of the people working through this.
[00:18:30] Clay: Yeah, absolutely. So I would begin with understanding the difference between our logical mind and our emotional mind. And this comes from a a dbt skill code that we call wise mind. And you guys know what a Venn diagram is, right? Whether like this and then where the inner, they, where they intersect is where we want to be.
[00:18:53] So that when my mind is both logical and emotional, I'm. being wise. And this, I mean, if you want to talk about the anatomy of the brain, you have the cortex, which is your logical center, and you have your amygdala back here, small little guy, that is your emotional center. And interestingly enough, The amygdala develops much slower than the cortex does.
[00:19:22] So if you're Annika's age, they're sitting by by Emily, her cortex is probably about half to two thirds developed, but her amygdala is 100 percent there. So, she has the ability to feel as, as effectively as an adult does, but to think maybe not as able to slow down that amygdala enough to think, right?
[00:19:48] And so, from our infancy, we learned to function more off of our emotional brain than our cortex because the cortex doesn't come online until a little later in life. [00:20:00] It doesn't fully solidify and become effective until you're 23 years old. So we form addictions to our emotions that we don't really get over until we really learn to humbly use our cortex.
[00:20:16] I hope that makes sense. And so our past is definitely connected to that amygdala. Because when my dad would throw things around in the garage. It was terrifying, right? My amygdala was just shouting at me going danger. And I didn't have the logic to, to like, look at this and go, my dad loves me.
[00:20:38] I know he's got control to never hurt me. He would never, ever hurt me. I could stand right in the middle of him throwing things around, and I'm probably just as safe as can be. But my amygdala is shouting at me danger. And I can't function. And so negative memories. get documented in our bodies, because our amygdala was so effective at the time and other areas of the brain were not connected to document anything else.
[00:21:11] So when I am able to bring out the inner adult in me, to bring my cortex online, to be present, To recognize what my amygdala is doing, whether it's addiction yelling at me, whether it's scared whatever emotion is yelling at me, if I can slow down and willingly be more aware to recognize what my emotions are doing, recognize the past.
[00:21:38] Then I am able to make a more sound decision of clearly my dad is not a threat. In fact, I can even make a joke about his skinny white legs and get away with it.
[00:21:49] Brad Brockbank: I love that. Thanks, Clay. That's really good. And you guys, that's just it. You talk about that amygdala and that amygdala is the fight or flight [00:22:00] response. I love what you're sharing with us, Clay, is that we kick into that fight or flight, and until we connect with the cortex, Which is that logical side, right?
[00:22:11] That ability to step out and say, hold on, he's up now. We stay in that fight or flight response of trauma, triggers, and things. And even though the cortex comes online, I'm making an assumption right now that hopefully you can verify for me, Clay. Even though that cortex comes online as an adult, because we've become so habitual to the fight or flight response, that will carry, oftentimes with us, and that becomes the response, despite the ability to logically look at our situations as adults.
[00:22:52] Yeah. So, so then, when we're looking at that and we're acknowledging that, okay, my fight or flight amygdala response is kicking in. We need to then start creating the new way. And you guys, when we talk about intentionality this has been something that I've been thinking quite a bit on the last few months, being more intentional about what.
[00:23:19] Brad Brockbank: You are doing intentionality starts with creativity. It actually requires us to sit down and say, this is what I want to be intentional about. This is how I want to respond in this situation. The number one argument, the number one struggle that people have in relationships. Is typically around money.
[00:23:46] So let's take that argument for just a minute, because a lot of us can relate to the argument about money and when we become intentional about, we can step back and say, okay, we're going, I [00:24:00] need to not respond the way I always respond. I need to respond X, Y, or Z by doing this. This is what I'm going to do next time that conversation comes up.
[00:24:13] I'm going to sit down. I'm going to breathe. I'm going to listen. I'm going to not raise my voice. And when the trigger word, gets pointed at me, I'm going to sit back, bite my tongue and take 10 deep breaths. Okay, now I've set out Intention, what my intention is, what I need to do rather than just waiting until it goes.
[00:24:43] And the biggest problem, we have with our responses is that when there is pressure, we go back to the old routes. Recently, Mark asked me, why is it so hard for people to make the changes when we study this, we read books. I mean, how long have I been working on this? And I still have things that I have to remind myself to not go down old paths.
[00:25:20] And we were actually, it was on the drive up here to Washington. And he asked me and for some reason, like I felt this rush of. Wisdom and inspiration rush over me. And I switched into my wise old Chinese man. I said when farmer carves, the canal and flood comes, river returns to river.
[00:25:44] So. What it means is when, if we have a river and you carve a canal out the side, the river, that water will run the route of the new path that we're trying to create. [00:26:00] But as the stress in life builds or the flood water rises, suddenly that canal doesn't have a whole lot of bearing on where the river runs.
[00:26:12] It goes back to the river and runs the course of the river, not the canal. Now, eventually as we run more and more water down our canal, the canal becomes wider and wider until it eventually could become the new river. And that's happened in my life in a lot of ways, because I run that new path that I decided through my intentionality and saying, this is who I am going to be.
[00:26:39] The path has become a new path. And the river will run that path. But if you're not there yet, and you're like, why do I keep going back to old habits? I've been here with Brad for over a year. I'm doing all these things. I'm practicing. I'm doing my affirmations my Sophie, we go on and on, but sometimes when the river runs too high, it just goes back to the original path and that's okay.
[00:27:14] Let the waters recede. And we return to building and eventually time and time again, it will become stronger for you. And the floodwaters will not return to the old path. They will return to the new path that you've carved over time. I want you guys just to realize in working through your past, it takes a little bit of time and it takes a lot of intentionality.
[00:27:43] Get intentional.
[00:27:46] Don't be afraid of your past. The past is only an image of what was. Think about that for a minute. Can't change it. And it doesn't have to have any bearing on who you [00:28:00] are.
[00:28:00] When you get present, when we look at the past and say, okay, the past is the past and you come to the present moment right now, who you are right in this very minute, you don't have to be defined by the family you were raised in. You don't have to be defined by your past failures.
[00:28:19] You don't have to be defined by any thing that anyone has ever said about you. You can let it all go. If that's what you decide. And say, here's who I'm going to be. Here comes the intentionality. We set our intention. We design who we're going to be. And then we go to work.
[00:28:43] That's it. We choose who we're going to be and we go to work. Are you going to be the guy or the woman that shows up with joy and patience and strength to uplift all those people in your life? Or are you going to be somebody who's reactionary? The power is yours guys. That's what I want you to realize. The power does not lie in the past. The power lies in the present. You can be, become, have, do whatever you want. Get intentional, get clear, go to work with your mind, go to work with your hands. Live and be that thing. And you will become it.
[00:29:35] You may not be perfect at it right now, It may take a number of tries over and over. Many of you were working through this process right now where it's like, why do I keep going back to this? Why? Because you haven't learned the lesson yet, but the lesson will come and it's through digging the channel and going through those experiences until [00:30:00] you either fed up enough, you say, no more I'm done with that path, or.
[00:30:08] You've carved the path deep enough because it's the one you want and it becomes the new river. I hope that makes sense. All right. I've talked a lot. Does anybody have any thoughts
[00:30:22] I have a question that you can hear me over my kids. So I'm curious when we have something come up right now and both of those sides of our brain that Clay was talking about are developed and we can deal with
[00:30:36] Emily: it. How do you go back to the past things using your developed cortex, I guess, to take care of the things from the past?
[00:30:47] Brad Brockbank: So for me, it's being able to unpack that experience, whatever it is, look at the situation and the factors involved with it, and then talking yourself through it on a logical basis you have the reaction, right? The reactionary, fight or flight amygdala part that you're thinking through.
[00:31:10] That's the carved path. But in this path, what you want to do is be able to look at it and say, okay, I'm an adult now. Do I need to operate in that fear? Do I need to operate with that worry or that feeling that's tied? To the thing that you're experiencing.
[00:31:31] Does that make sense? And Clay, I'd love your input on this too. Am I down the right path? I believe I am, but tell me what else we can do to enhance it.
[00:31:43] Clay: Yeah, and I think anybody could answer the question. I think, Just being willing to go there when you are in your logical mind, to bring your logical mind with you diving into that emotional mind, then anytime you can combine the two, you're going to have an [00:32:00] experience, even if it's not pleasant, but an experience where you get the two together and harmony can start to happen.
[00:32:06] I've got a client who had her son develop a, I mean, severe leukemia in between like, I think it was two years old and five years old really bad, just about lost him. And anytime we approach the subject, she doesn't want to go there. She's like, nope, that was too traumatic. We've left that one behind.
[00:32:28] And I'm going, we got to go there. We got to talk about it. You're safe now, you're logical now, let's bring it and put it together. There's a model that I like to teach when I have clients that have gone through abuse, like being raped or something like that. And it takes me a little while to teach it.
[00:32:46] Maybe I can summarize it a little quicker, but I draw a castle and we're talking about someone who has been traumatized in any way, but we've all been traumatized by our overreacted amygdala, right? So I call this model my dungeon girl and princess girl model.
[00:33:04] And so, whenever we go through something traumatic there's we're split in two. Like we become ambivalent, meaning I'm feeling two things at the same time. And one part of me says, this wasn't that big of a deal. Get over it, right? And so I climb the stairs of the castle. I go up, I open the windows and I'm up there singing.
[00:33:26] You can represent me as princess girl or prince boy. I'm singing with the birds. Everything's fine. The presentation that I'm going to believe and try to think and even try to feel is that life is hunky dory. I'm fine. It didn't happen. And the other half of me has climbed down the stairs. into the dungeon, closed the the creaky metal gate on myself, thrown the key, and is sitting on a bench, miserable, and demanding to be understood that this was hurtful.
[00:33:59] It [00:34:00] affected me. And I don't want to feel better. I want to sit right here and struggle with the pain of what has happened. And the only way we're ever going to feel whole again is if They harmonize if they become one again, right? And so Dungeon Girl is emotionally and physically, spiritually incapable of going to visit Princess Girl to see validate her, right?
[00:34:31] She's not capable of it. So the only way we do it is Princess Girl's got to willingly, logically, walk down her stairwell, down to visit Dungeon Girl, pull up a stool, sit down and go, tell me about it. And there's some risk with that, right? That if Dungeon Girl goes down there to do that, we're afraid that Dungeon Girl's gonna get the key and invite herself into the dungeon and get stuck down there herself.
[00:34:59] So there is some risk with it. But Dungeon Girl's gotta do it with some help, possibly, if she's not capable of doing it on her own. But if she is capable of doing it on her own, then we're gonna go down there prayerfully. With a journal, whatever it is. And we're going to say, I'm going to give this 10 minutes.
[00:35:17] I'm going to sit with dungeon girl and I'm going to hear her out. I'm going to listen to everything. Nothing. Absolutely. Nothing is off the table. I'm going to go into every detail and everything that hurts everything that I suppressed. And I'm going to listen to her until dungeon girls got all their tears out, or at least I've heard what I could hear.
[00:35:40] And then I'm going to climb the stairs and I'm going to go right back up to my window. Where I can sing with the birds and really truly believe life is good and I move on for the day. And so, the way that I teach clients to get over the trauma is that we build a habit. Every day, you spend [00:36:00] ten minutes with Dungeon Girl.
[00:36:01] You go down those stairs and you listen. Whether that's talk with a friend about it, journal, go for a run and think about it, whatever it is, whatever your skill set is, but it's just a matter of intentionally doing it. But knowing that you're going to climb those stairs, having a plan, I'm going to do it right before I'm going to go mountain biking, because I know mountain biking lifts my spirits.
[00:36:22] So I'm going to do it right before then with the plan of the exit of getting up the stairs and knowing that I'm going to leave Dungeon Girl there. Anyway, as we do that again and again, they get a little closer. And Dungeon Girl eventually goes, you know what, I feel heard. I feel understood someone's looking at me and I'm willing to open the gate, start to walk those steps back up to the light and eventually a person can harmonize and reach their wise mind.
[00:36:54] Brad Brockbank: That's powerful. I love the visualization of going and visiting the struggling you and listening and just acknowledging if you guys ever had that experience where you just had somebody to listen and you just feel like you can let it go now that somebody heard you and validated you.
[00:37:17] That's, I think what Clay is saying is just getting to a place where you let yourself be heard and acknowledge that, anybody in that circumstance would struggle, would have a hard time, that it's okay to feel the way I feel.
[00:37:34] That's how we work through things of the past, set the intention of who you want to be, where you want to go, and move forward to that without the past. I love also that Clay said, leave dungeon girl in the dungeon, let her stay there, but now she's been heard. She doesn't have to yell trying to be heard now.
[00:37:59] She [00:38:00] knows she's been heard. But we become that. The princess or the prince who's at the top singing, living, striving for joy, and going and leaving our past down in the dungeon to be the past, not the definition of who we are.
[00:38:24] I wanted to just come back and revisit this because it's an important process that we acknowledge where we've come from. It also creates a contrast of who we've become, where we're going, make sure that we check in, that we are growing away from our past traumas, trials, and tribulations and saying, I am living a better life today.
[00:38:49] And I was then and I'm making new choices. I'm putting in higher quality words and having better results because of my choice to show up to change my stars and to be the person that I know I was born to become. And you guys, that's our opportunity to become who it is. We know we were born to become. And if you don't know who you were born to become, then we need to spend a little bit more time connecting to our inner purpose, ourself, our why, and what makes our heart sing.
[00:39:28] Because I've gotten the opportunity to know each of you. And you have an amazing soul and a purpose inside of each and every one of you. So I'll leave that with you today. I hope it's given you some thoughts and that you'll take those thoughts and turn them into actions. Because it's in the action that we take our lives to the very next level.
[00:39:55] I love you guys. You're amazing. Keep on rocking [00:40:00] it and let's get out there and crush it. Talk to you guys soon.
