Do One Small Act - Session Replay
Get your Circle Membership Here
We welcome your insights, ah-ha’s, and sharing. Please! Click [Reply]
We covered…
1. Small Acts Are Powerful, Especially When Big Feels Impossible
We’re often taught to chase big wins, but thriving is built on tiny, doable acts. Even when the mountain of tasks feels overwhelming, just lifting one “bale of hay” matters. We don’t need to move the whole barn. One kind, mindful act is enough to start shifting our energy and our life.
2. The Old “Push Through” Model Depletes Us
Many of us learned to run on adrenaline and pressure — “Faster! Get it all done or else!” But that’s not sustainable. Our nervous systems crave sustainability. When we’re not in survival mode, that old push actually puts the brakes on. Healing means learning to move forward without self-inflicted pressure.
3. Intimacy with Ourselves Comes First
We can be intimate with our projects and others, but real thriving asks us to connect with ourselves first. If we’re not present with our own feelings and needs, we can’t truly connect or create in a way that nourishes us.
4. Be With What Is-Not Just Where You Want to Be
The “black belt move” is to pause and be with yourself, exactly as you are, before trying to change anything. Instead of rushing to fix, just breathe and notice: what’s true for me right now? From there, you can choose the next small act that actually feels good and aligned.
5. When Frozen, Start with the Smallest Voluntary Movement
If you feel stuck or overwhelmed, don’t force yourself into action. Start with a breath, a blink, a toe wiggle… any tiny, voluntary movement. This reminds your nervous system you’re not truly stuck, and it’s a compassionate way to break the freeze.
6. Tapping and Emotional Freedom Work: Meet You Where You Are
When you feel resistance, rebellion, or overwhelm, tapping (EFT) gives us a way to honor those feelings instead of fighting them. We tap through the “I can’t” and “I won’t” with honesty, inviting self-acceptance and movement, no matter how small.
7. Choose Just One Project-And Notice the Urge to Multitask
Our brains love to pick 20 things at once. Gently bring yourself back to one. Just one. Breathe with it. Notice any frustration, confusion, or “shoulds” that arise. This is where real clarity and transformation begin.
8. Feelings Like Hopelessness or Failure Are Often Just “Candy Shells”
Sometimes, what stops us isn’t the task, but a hard shell of hopelessness or fear of failure. These feelings can hide the real project from us. By naming and tapping on these emotions, we soften the shell and invite creativity and new solutions.
9. Differentiation: Their Feelings Aren’t Yours
Many of us were taught to fix everyone else’s feelings before tending to our own. Differentiation is the skill of letting others have their emotions while staying connected to ourselves. It’s okay if we don’t agree or if someone we love is upset. We can care without carrying.
10. Appreciate Your Past and Future Self
A small act today-like putting a mug in the sink or writing down an idea-is a gift to your future self. When you notice and appreciate these acts, you build an “emotional bank account” filled with the energy of self-kindness and resilience. Let’s celebrate even the tiniest things we do for ourselves!
11. Progress Isn’t Linear-Honor the Helix
Growth is not a straight line. Sometimes you’ll feel less resilient or like you’re going backwards. That’s normal. We’re all on a helix, circling deeper with each round. Take breaks, come back to your breath, and trust that each small act-especially when done with awareness and self-compassion-builds your capacity for thriving.
How to Apply This Wisdom
- Pause and notice: What’s one tiny act you can do right now?
- Breathe with your feelings: Let them be, without rushing to fix or change.
- Try tapping: Even a few rounds on “I feel stuck” can shift your energy.
- Celebrate every small win: Thank your past self for every little bit of past care that you notice now.
- Practice differentiation: Let others have their feelings, while you honor yours.
- Return to now: If you spiral into overwhelm, come back to your breath, your feet, this moment.
We’re not here to drive ourselves harder-we’re here to build a thriving life, one gentle, savvy, emotionally honest act at a time. You’re not alone in this. We’re walking it with you, and every small act you take is a seed for your future ease and joy.
Resources Mentioned
Click for Computer Generated Transcript
Do One Small Act
[00:00:00] Rick: One small act. One small act. Isn’t that too small, too trivial, not meaningful enough, not enough dopamine for me. Why bother? So yeah, if doing one small act can contribute to our thriving, then maybe there’s a skill to work on and some emotional work to do that would make that skill. Uh, easier to access in all circumstances.
[00:00:28] I’m Rick from Thriving. Now I’m here with Cathy Vartuli from Thriving Now and the Intimacy Dojo. Weren’t you also taught to do big projects, make, you know, make a, make a mark, make an impact?
[00:00:39] Cathy: Why bother with the small little steps? Like just must change the world to grab the axis and shift the world today.
[00:00:46] Otherwise, why bother getting out of bed? It’s just not worth it.
[00:00:50] Rick: And I see you like with a big, uh, load of hay showing up and it’s like one small act is, is lifting one bale of hay. And, but
[00:01:00] Cathy: there’s thousands of them.
[00:01:01] Rick: There’s thousands of them. What are we gonna do? Um, yeah. And there, there’s a different kind of ramp up right in the face of something that has to be done where the survival of your, of you and your family and your animals are needed.
[00:01:16] There’s a boost of, um, me, you know. Well,
[00:01:21] Cathy: we also have my dad going, come on. Faster. Faster. So there’s lots of adrenaline going on.
[00:01:26] Rick: Exactly.
[00:01:27] Cathy: It wasn’t very mindful and it wasn’t easy on our nervous systems.
[00:01:32] Rick: And one of the cool things about emotional work for me is that you get to a place where that doesn’t work unless it really is a survival circumstance.
[00:01:41] The push, the pressure, the the like actually the breaks come on. Why? Well, because the part of us that has been healing knew that part of why we were so depleted and strained and stressed and for me almost dead was because I was using that I gotta get all the hay and do it myself.
[00:02:07] Cathy: Yeah.
[00:02:07] Rick: Right. Um, I used to, my, one of my
[00:02:09] Cathy: favorite things was I’m gonna be fired if I don’t get this done, which was blatantly untrue.
[00:02:15] But it kept it like, oh, the driving, because I never learned the skill of gently stepping through a project.
[00:02:23] Rick: Yeah. So, so there’s this, this place, and I. We have talked many times about yes to, yes to yes and baby steps and micro steps and nano steps. And, um, why do we keep returning to this, do you think? Why, why is this something that over the years that we’ve been coaching, that we come back to it over and over and over again rather than just like, oh, this is it.
[00:02:50] We’re done.
[00:02:51] Cathy: We’ve been working together like 18 years and I know we’ve been doing that the whole time. Um, and I just wanna introduce, 'cause some people watch this, these videos on YouTube, they find us. I’m Cathy Vartuli from the intimacy dojo.com and thriving now.com. And Rick Wilkes is the amazing initiator of all this from thriving now.com.
[00:03:09] And I work with a lot of, we both work with emotional freedom and the intimacy dojo abouts playing and practicing and learning how to be better at intimacy with ourselves, with our projects, with other people. A lot of that is learning these skills to step into small projects. And this is not taught. We live in a society where it is go, go, go.
[00:03:32] I took hundreds of thousands of dollars of classes. I did Landmark and all kinds of marketing classes where they were like, people were jumping up and down, they were rubbing us up. They were like, you gotta go. Just push through. Just push through. You can make it happen. And I burnt myself out, like really toasted myself.
[00:03:47] I got a lot done, but it wasn’t good for, it’s not sustainable, and it was also not intimate with me.
[00:03:54] Rick: Mm-hmm. I was
[00:03:54] Cathy: being very intimate with the people I was supporting and somewhat with the projects, but I was not being intimate with myself. And connection is about everyone connecting. If I’m not really there, if I’m on my adrenaline rush, I’m not really gonna be able to connect with people in the same way or with life in the same way.
[00:04:12] So this is one of those. Fundamental skills that if someone’s brought up with a mindful family, they probably learn from infancy and it’s just natural. But that doesn’t happen very often in our society, in my view. So it’s like a, this is like a, B, c. If you don’t know how to read, if you don’t know what the letters are, you’re just not gonna ever thrive in the same way.
[00:04:34] Rick: Well, and you know, I read books about breaking a project down into, you know, into small, manageable chunks. Mm-hmm. But it still was about taking a, a big project and breaking the project down. So projects have an end, end point, um, driving
[00:04:54] Cathy: to the finish.
[00:04:55] Rick: And, and maybe that’s true for you. If you’re watching this, you have a project and that’s why what brought you here and there’s nothing, um, wrong with that of course.
[00:05:04] Um, but one of the interesting things in my life, as I revisit this, there’s an awareness that I’m thriving. Includes small acts that don’t necessarily have this, oh, we got it done right? Like, there are four of us in this house. I’m the only Virgo. And if, you know, like I, I clean as a coping strategy and I, I love space and things, but I’m the only one.
[00:05:44] And so, um, maintain, like if I view cleaning the house as a project, I’m, I,
[00:05:58] I can’t even talk about that. Like, that’s not even a thing that, um, feels true. And notice the breaks came on. For me, like you could probably, if you’re sensitive, you felt the breaks come on. Oh, I, I need to, I need a project for cleaning the house and I need to break it down. Um,
[00:06:23] I can’t even, uh, I can’t, my brain, my heart, my being won’t let me go there anymore now. But order and space and tending and stewardship, so like, stewardship of our nest, our shared space is like, as soon as I say that, I start softening, but it can feel like, wow, there, there are at least 10,000 things on that list.
[00:06:56] Like if I made the list, I assure you I could come up with 10,000 things. That’s a lot of things. Mm-hmm. So what’s a small act now? Whether you’re working on a project, like I know people that are working on a book, right? Like that’s a project that has an end point. Your book is off to the publisher, um, whatever, whatever the small act is it, we’re gonna be taking you through a, a process here, and Cathy has asked our, our workshop participants, uh, some things in the chat in case you missed that.
[00:07:37] Um, we’d love to get your input. Um, but the do one small act as a skill for thriving is going to look and sound different. Then if you read a book about project management or procrastination mm-hmm. As well, what you need to do is find a micro step and you need to do that micro step and use some willpower to push you through the micro step.
[00:08:09] And you know that, that actually works. Just, it’s not unwise. It’s a, it’s a pro, it’s a skill, you know, to push through just the micro step and then gain your momentum like, you know, being at the top of a slide. It takes a little bit of a push activation, sorry, kidding. And then gravity starts working. And if you’re that type of person that all you need is just a little push, you probably, um, you know, know that about yourself, but you may be getting to the place where pushing yourself to do it is just not working the same way.
[00:08:46] And I’m excited to have you here because that is true for me, and it’s true for most people that want. Um, freedom and thriving.
[00:08:55] Cathy: Yeah. I think we’re talk, we’re talking about taking it to the next level. I, one of the things I’ve noticed about projects is part of what they do is we want to be there. They don’t talk about, they may say, what issues do you have here?
[00:09:07] But it’s not about being with yourself here. And I, I, again, I’ve been doing a lot of study around Buddhism and the, just this starting with, I’m gonna be with what is first and just be okay with what is, or just tune into what is as a way to like. Move forward. That’s not something that’s generally taught, and I think that there’s so much like we’re going to, we’re gonna be so dissatisfied and unhappy.
[00:09:35] We’re gonna thrust ourselves forward and get this thing done, and the project is to be not here. Versus if I can be, I think that a black belt move is if, can I be here with myself first with what is, and then say, oh, okay, this is what is. And now I want to try to find something that would make it a little more pleasing to myself or to the, to the people if we’re tending other people or what would be a little more pleasing to myself from what is, versus I’m gonna just like try to push away and pretend it’s not happening and try to get to overhear where I’ll feel okay about myself.
[00:10:12] And to me that’s like, that’s like a different layer. Like we we’re healing around this helix. Not everybody’s ready to hear that. Um, my mother is not ready to hear that. She’s gonna panic when people come over and try to stuffle things away. That’s where she is. Just this, it’s all okay. Um, but it’s not how I choose to live.
[00:10:30] I find it very hard on my nervous system. I find that I’m not present with myself or my company when I’m doing that, versus like, I try to be like, okay, you’re here. This is my house is not where I would like it to be and I’m gonna focus and being with this person. And then I can say, okay, another time I’d like to, like, how could I make this place more pleasing to me?
[00:10:49] So it’s just, it’s taking it down a level for people that are ready to hear that. Um, because when we push, when we’re actually where we are. We steer in a more organic and aligned direction for ourselves versus I’m scared and overwhelmed and I’m gonna use adrenaline to push off. It’s kind of a little like I’m just pushing off in whatever direction to get away from this versus what way really feels good to me?
[00:11:15] Where do I really want this cup to go? Where do I really want? Do I need this in my home anymore? Or if we’re talking about tending the house, as Rick was talking about.
[00:11:28] Um, I love that there’s someone Sheridan here. Sometimes my, I need a small act of moving a toe or imagining getting myself outta bed just to even help myself get outta bed or let alone even thinking about a project or a thing I need to do. And I just wanna, that’s often when that’s happening. Our sys nervous system may be in a state where we feel frozen, which is nothing wrong.
[00:11:49] We all go through that. That’s a natural response to things sometimes where we may have old traumas that are triggering us there. One of the things that we can do whenever we’re frozen is see, you know, just breathing. We’re moving a little bit. If we can be present with our breath, breath, even if it’s, I love, um, one of the people I follow talks about, even if you’re going, you’re like, don’t try to change it.
[00:12:12] Just be with it as you’re doing it 'cause it’s actual movement. Or if you feel like you’re really frozen, like even if you can’t move your fingers or your toes, can you move your eyes? Can you blink? So that’s, that’s an act of volition of choice. Breathing is not really volition. We can choose how to moderate it, we can choose to be present with it.
[00:12:30] But one of the really powerful things is if we can get a little voluntary physical movement, whether it’s a blink of the eye, a twitch, you know, like if we’re like, I’m gonna grimace, um, I’m going to wiggle a toe or a finger that reminds our nervous system that we’re not stuck, we’re not, we’re not that rabbit in the bush.
[00:12:47] It helps start breaking that freeze pattern. So it’s really powerful when you can start, you know, sometimes I’ve had moments where I, all I can do is be mindful of my breathing and let it be what it is, and that naturally will slow it down, usually over time. Um, but as soon as I can start, I’m gonna blink on, um, because I choose to blink.
[00:13:07] I’m gonna move this finger because I choose to move this finger. Okay? Now my nervous system has a little bit of traction that I’m not actually in physical danger right now. And I can start. Moving. So I think I love that, that question that, that they shared that, because that’s like the, the very baseline, if we can’t even move, it’s hard to do a task.
[00:13:27] Um, I can imagine a lot of tasks, but like hyperventilating or something. But if I can just get a little voluntary movement in there and I can choose to be with myself as I’m going through that, that’s really powerful.
[00:13:42] Rick: In fact, um, and th thank you for everyone’s commenting. There’s, there’s some things showing up, and one of those is this, Hey, I can be aware of a thought or a belief that comes up, but I, I stop there.
[00:13:59] Like, um, someone says, I sometimes I can’t even get beyond a feeling of failure to get started. And another person shared that. There are a lot of things that, um. You know, my husband before he had a stroke would be the one to take care of. And my inner rebellion gets activated when needing to do the tasks.
[00:14:23] Um, and I know it’s because I’m tired and overwhelmed, but the inside itself doesn’t help me move forward. What if there’s, and Cathy, you, you shared a nano act, you know, like the smallest, tiny, I’m going to do something with my body that isn’t trying to get started, um, on the task. So like if you asked AI outline this task and you had it, break it down into steps that are 20 seconds or less, right?
[00:15:03] Um, you could have a very long list, but the first one wouldn’t be blinking intentionally. It wouldn’t be, um, stretching your jaw. It wouldn’t be making a raspberry at life like,
[00:15:22] right. Like I don’t are putting your hands on your hips and going like, I don’t your foot. Yeah. But from an emotional freedom standpoint, a, when we talk about do one small act, there’s, there are things like that, that it doesn’t get the dishes put away, it doesn’t get this done, it doesn’t have that, it’s not the start of the conversation that we don’t want to have.
[00:15:51] It isn’t a yoga pose, but maybe it is. Maybe the raspberry at life becomes my first yoga pose is right. Um, at massage school, our first. Um, body movement that we did was hissing at all four corners.
[00:16:21] Now that’s a, that is actually a movement that some, uh, Qigong and other types of practices, uh, have as, as part of their consciousness. Um, but it does fit in there. It fits in there between awareness and getting out of the, the freeze rebellion. I don’t want to, but I’m pushing myself. 'cause if you really just don’t want to, it’d be like, oh yeah, I’m not gonna do that today.
[00:16:50] Well, I think, yeah, matter of fact, that is, I’m. No, no, I, I’d love to do some tapping. I’m not doing that that way
[00:16:57] Cathy: because I think that a lot of us are, like, we’re socially, like people are sharing, like, I found myself volunteering to do this extra thing, or I’ve been volunteered to do, or this has been put on my plate.
[00:17:08] I’d love to do some tapping on, like, I feel like I have to, um, then I’m trapped because if we feel trapped, we might automatically put on the brakes. Um, so is it okay if I just do a little tap? We do a little tapping on that?
[00:17:22] Rick: Yeah. And if you’re new to tapping, welcome. Uh, this is, this is a physical act. It, we use words, okay.
[00:17:29] And we use things, but we’re actually voluntarily tapping on natural comfort points on the body. We have a free course, um, thriving now.com/tapping in the chat. I wanna put it on the, the video too. Yeah. Thriving now.com/tapping. Um, and, uh. And I think that’s one of the reasons that tapping works for these things like that failure or like the, the rebellion, if you wanna weave those in Cathy.
[00:17:59] Yeah.
[00:18:00] Cathy: I’m gonna try to, I’m gonna actually do a few rounds 'cause I wanna kind of weave a few things in karate chop. Even though I feel frozen.
[00:18:08] Rick: Even though I feel frozen,
[00:18:09] Cathy: I’m really stuck
[00:18:11] Rick: and really stuck.
[00:18:12] Cathy: I am not moving forward on this.
[00:18:16] Rick: I am not moving forward on this.
[00:18:18] Cathy: And part of me does not want to,
[00:18:20] Rick: and a part of me does not want to.
[00:18:23] Cathy: You cannot make me,
[00:18:25] Rick: you cannot make me.
[00:18:27] Cathy: I cannot make
[00:18:29] Rick: me. I cannot make me.
[00:18:30] Cathy: They cannot make me,
[00:18:32] Rick: and they definitely can’t make me.
[00:18:35] Cathy: I’m choosing to be with myself and all my feelings right now.
[00:18:40] Rick: I’m choosing to be with myself. And all my feelings right now.
[00:18:46] Cathy: Top of that, just this,
[00:18:48] Rick: just this.
[00:18:49] Cathy: I brow all this rebellion.
[00:18:51] Rick: All this rebellion
[00:18:52] Cathy: under the, all this resistance.
[00:18:54] Rick: All this resistance
[00:18:56] Cathy: under the, all this procrastination.
[00:18:59] Rick: All this procrastination,
[00:19:00] Cathy: and then those, you cannot make me do this.
[00:19:04] Rick: You cannot make me do this,
[00:19:06] Cathy: Jen. I cannot make me do this.
[00:19:09] Rick: I cannot make me do this
[00:19:11] Cathy: Cabo. I have all these feelings bottled up about it,
[00:19:15] Rick: and I have all these feelings bottled up about it
[00:19:18] Cathy: under them.
[00:19:18] I feel like I should do these things.
[00:19:21] Rick: I feel like I should do these things.
[00:19:24] Cathy: Copy that. I feel like I have to do these things.
[00:19:26] Rick: I feel like I have to do these things.
[00:19:29] Cathy: I, bro, I feel like I ought to do these things.
[00:19:32] Rick: I really feel like I ought to do these things
[00:19:34] Cathy: outta the eye. I said I would do those things.
[00:19:37] Rick: I said I would do those things under the, they
[00:19:40] Cathy: expect, yeah, they expect me to do these things.
[00:19:43] Rick: They expect me to do those things
[00:19:45] Cathy: under those, I expect me to do those things.
[00:19:48] Rick: I expect me to do these things
[00:19:50] Cathy: and I better get them done perfectly and quickly, or I’m in trouble
[00:19:54] Rick: and I better get them done perfectly and quickly, or I’m in trouble.
[00:19:58] Cathy: Cabo, there are so many response
[00:19:59] Rick: I learned that one,
[00:20:01] Cathy: I have so many responsibilities on my plate.
[00:20:04] Rick: I have, I have so many responsibilities on my plate
[00:20:08] Cathy: under my, under there. Oh my God. No wonder I’m overwhelmed.
[00:20:11] Rick: Oh my God. No wonder I’m overwhelmed.
[00:20:13] Cathy: Copy that. And I don’t wanna even start,
[00:20:16] Rick: and I don’t even want to start.
[00:20:19] Cathy: I bro, if I start, I’ll have to get them all done.
[00:20:25] Rick: If I start. Don’t I have to get them all done?
[00:20:28] Cathy: Side of the eye. I’m so far behind.
[00:20:30] Rick: I’m so far behind
[00:20:32] Cathy: under the eye. This is not very kind of talking self-talk.
[00:20:37] Rick: This is not kind self-talk.
[00:20:40] Cathy: No, no. Would I do this to a trusted friend?
[00:20:43] Rick: Would I do this to a trusted friend
[00:20:45] Cathy: Jen, or a loved child
[00:20:47] Rick: or a loved child
[00:20:49] Cathy: color one?
[00:20:49] Hopefully not.
[00:20:51] Rick: Not too often
[00:20:54] Cathy: under the end. What if I picked one project?
[00:20:59] Rick: What if I picked one area
[00:21:01] Cathy: top of the head and tuned into whether it’s right for me or not?
[00:21:05] Rick: And tuned in to whether it’s right for me or not,
[00:21:09] Cathy: and to invite you to take a breath. And I’d like you to pick one project, and if you’re like me, I’m gonna pick 20.
[00:21:18] Please just pick one. And when you notice 20 go, Nope. Pick one. You can pick another one later. You can listen to this call again if you want. And what I’d love for you to do, if you can, is just breathe with that one project that you’re thinking of and just be with just this notice, the frustration, the confusion, the I should haves.
[00:21:38] Just be with what is, and just breathe for a moment. Just be with this thing, your feet on the ground, just as it is. Not how you wish it would be how you wish something else would happen or someone else would take it over just as it is
[00:21:56] Rick: and what comes up for you. And someone shared, I, I can’t get past just the feeling of failure. This is what we’re doing here by.
[00:22:14] I saw someone mention three or four things that they felt like they needed to do, and, um, feelings hide in, in crowds. The deeper feelings that we move and energies that we move with tapping, you can tap on. I’m overwhelmed, I have too much to do, and you might feel better. And, um, you might just go back to distracting yourself and not actually doing one small act.
[00:22:48] Mm-hmm. That can be helpful. Um, someone said sorrow and sadness, um, feeling hopeless. And then this is, so those are several of them. I’m gonna, I’m gonna choose one hopeless.
[00:23:11] The do one small act asks us to identify something that’s useful,
[00:23:23] that there is hope. Okay? If, if I’m looking out where I’m hopeless, I’m actually hope, there’s a lot of things I’m hopeless about. Like there’s zero hope that I’m going to directly impact some of those things, okay? And if I want to make my my Bo, I want to help my body feel a bit more vital or express some aspect of my creativity.
[00:23:59] Someone said the emotion that comes up. If it’s sadness, he’s like, oh yeah, I’ve got some grief around this area and I want, you know, hopeless to me is a block. And again, like if you’re looking at it and the hopeless feeling comes up, but it’s not actually hopeless. Mm-hmm. Um, that’s, that’s a clue. It’s like the feel feeling of being a failure.
[00:24:33] That feeling for, for many people, that used to be my comfortable couch. Yeah. And the fact that it had bedbugs and everything else didn’t matter. Matter. Right. Like, feeling like I wasn’t good enough, you know? Uh. And that I was just gonna fail anyway. What’s the use? That was my comfortable emotional couch.
[00:24:55] A
[00:24:55] Cathy: hard candy shell around the outside of the thing you wanna do? Yeah. Like I have to, I have to do this, or I’m a hopeless, or I’m gonna be a failure. You’re not actually looking at the project. You’re just like, there’s this indigestible shell that you’re looking at as a whole. There’s no creativity, there’s no room for looking at it a little differently or solution like being creative.
[00:25:17] Rick: Right. And um, and someone said, you know, if your heart on yourself mm-hmm. Where you, there’s no small acts once you get started and you feel like you, you have to do what you promised to do. I
[00:25:36] Cathy: promise I’m gonna do it.
[00:25:37] Rick: Yeah. Um, this applies in the middle of that too, because we pause and we pick a small act that allows us to.
[00:25:48] To be with that small act a little deeper rather than driving forward. Right? Like I, I was assigned a whole bunch of tasks and um, as I started it, I was feeling like, well, I really want to get all these done right? I’m leaving in a few days for a family trip, but there was this one where I could have just pushed through to do what I said I was going to do.
[00:26:18] But the small act of pausing and reflecting
[00:26:26] that helped me get clarity about what was off in the whole, in the next step.
[00:26:34] Cathy: You weren’t in, you weren’t looking at as a whole, you were in the candy shell, like, I have to get this done and trying to digest the whole thing. You were looking at it and going, is this right for me? Yeah. What’s, something feels off
[00:26:46] Rick: top of the head.
[00:26:51] It’s okay to feel what I feel.
[00:26:53] Cathy: It’s okay to feel what I feel
[00:26:56] Rick: eyebrow. And if I’m pressuring myself
[00:26:59] Cathy: and if I’m pressuring myself
[00:27:00] Rick: side of the eye, I’ll feel pressure.
[00:27:03] Cathy: I’ll feel pressure.
[00:27:05] Rick: I would’ve
[00:27:05] Cathy: thought.
[00:27:06] Rick: Lot of pressure.
[00:27:07] Cathy: A lot of pressure
[00:27:09] Rick: under the nose. Not small pressure,
[00:27:12] Cathy: not small pressure
[00:27:13] Rick: chin. And I know how to turn up the pressure.
[00:27:15] Cathy: I do know how to turn up the pressure.
[00:27:17] Rick: I just demand that I do it.
[00:27:19] Cathy: I just demand that I do it.
[00:27:22] Rick: I create repercussions.
[00:27:24] Cathy: I create repercussions
[00:27:27] Rick: under the arm and I inflict them on myself
[00:27:29] Cathy: and I inflict them on myself. Little,
[00:27:31] Rick: that’s, that’s sort of a clue. I’m not in small acts that matter.
[00:27:36] Cathy: That’s sort of a clue.
[00:27:37] I’m not in small acts that matter.
[00:27:43] Rick: Uh,
[00:27:48] a small act shows a lot about where I am.
[00:27:52] Cathy: A small act shows a lot about where I am
[00:27:56] Rick: and the things that habitually stop me,
[00:27:59] Cathy: and the things that habitually stop me. Yeah, I just feel drawn. There’s someone who shared a couple times that they, they promised they have to do it and they have, it seems like they might have, and I, maybe it’s just me projecting 'cause I do this, I’m like, oh, there’s a problem.
[00:28:14] Let me fix it for you. Um, as opposed to, oh, that’s your problem. Good luck with that. Um, and that’s something I’ve been studying recently too, is differentiation. People that were brought up with families that didn’t, their parents didn’t know how to separate very well. It’s very hard to see someone else’s problem is their problem and let them have their own problem.
[00:28:34] It’s our problem because that’s how we were brought up. Mom’s upset my problem, dad’s angry, my problem. So we tend to carry that along. And the small act might be, you know what I said I would do this, but I’m realizing it’s, I, I committed to something I didn’t want to do. Um, and that’s hard for me. Like, that’s like, it feels like I’m like wrenching myself, but baby steps, I practice on small things and I find that okay, you know, I said I’d do that.
[00:29:03] It felt really good in the moment thinking about it, it just doesn’t work for me. Just letting you know that it’s back on your plate, your problem. Mm-hmm. So just a thought that the pro, the small act doesn’t mean that I’m driving towards a solution. It might be like, do I actually want to do this project?
[00:29:20] Because you look like you’re in,
[00:29:21] Rick: how, how do you, how do you, what’s your, dropping in a little deeper here because we’ve been asked about this differentiation and tapping on that. What is, what’s your clue? I’m not really differentiating. And what’s, what’s your pause process for helping you get clear about what your small act that you, you want to do that would be good for you, that you future yourself would thank you for.
[00:29:51] Cathy: I’m glad to share, and I just wanna be clear that I’m still in the process of integrating it for myself because I always understood you can be like, you wanna be balanced between being too close and too far away from people. Like you’re, it can be enmeshed with someone or you can run away and be a avoidant or you can be somewhere in the middle.
[00:30:08] Kind of a balance for yourself. Different, that’s different than differentiation. Differentiation is saying, I, I can care about you, I can wanna be close or wanna be far away either way, but you’re a different person than I am. You have, you get to have, you get to disagree with me, you get to agree with me, you get to be happy or sad about what you like.
[00:30:29] You get to have your own feelings that are not mine or my responsibility. That doesn’t mean I can go up and punch you in the nose and have it not be my problem. But most people, like I take on, I can take on everything. You could have just walked in the door, I could have not seen you all day and you’re upset and therefore it’s my problem to fix it.
[00:30:48] And that’s like, oh wait. Maybe I can offer because I choose to, but my, my go-to is to take a breath and say, did I actually cause this? So for a long time I thought if there was a tsunami in Hawaii, it was my fault and I’ve gradually gotten better and better. I’m like, okay, tsunamis are probably not my, I probably didn’t cause them most likely.
[00:31:10] Um, and if someone just walking through the door, maybe I didn’t cause their upset or what they’re feeling, I can breathe first and say, I am me. I’m feeling what I feel that person is, feeling, what they feel. I get to choose whether I wanna support them or not. And they’re still responsible for their feelings.
[00:31:31] Now, little kid’s a little different. You know, our job is like caregivers is to be there for them, but they’re still having their feelings. And it doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person. If a deer is upset 'cause I cut her sandwich the wrong way, or I gave her the wrong color grapes, like, oh, I’m so sorry.
[00:31:47] You’re upset. I can be here with you, but I don’t have to, it’s not my responsibility to change that. So to me it was like, it’s still something I work on really hard, but it’s been really powerful. Like if Rick and I disagree about something, it used to be like the world is falling. Because like Rick and I we’re very similar people and we have very similar beliefs and anytime something was not flowing smoothly, I felt like I failed as a person and realizing, oh, we can disagree and we can still love each other and we can still be okay.
[00:32:18] It was like, what? This is not something I was ever taught before.
[00:32:22] Rick: I was never taught that.
[00:32:24] Cathy: Yeah. I was never taught that.
[00:32:27] Rick: You wanna tap?
[00:32:28] Cathy: Uh, yeah. Side of the eye. No one ever taught me this.
[00:32:32] Rick: No one ever taught me this
[00:32:34] Cathy: under the eye. I thought I was responsible for their feelings.
[00:32:37] Rick: I thought I was responsible for their feelings
[00:32:41] Cathy: under the nose.
[00:32:41] Can I feel good? If you’re sad,
[00:32:44] Rick: can I feel good? If you are sad,
[00:32:46] Cathy: then that’s not what they taught me.
[00:32:49] Rick: That is not what they taught me.
[00:32:51] Cathy: Collarbone. I have to make you happy before I can feel happy.
[00:32:56] Rick: I have to make you happy. In order to be happy.
[00:32:59] Cathy: Yeah. We have to agree on everything before I can relax.
[00:33:04] Rick: Yeah, we have to agree on everything.
[00:33:05] And there’d be no problems. Oh, I’m starting to feel hopeless. Top head. What’s a clue?
[00:33:15] Cathy: What if their feelings are just their feelings?
[00:33:18] Rick: What if their feelings are their feelings?
[00:33:20] Cathy: I wrote, my feelings are my feelings.
[00:33:23] Rick: And my feelings are my feelings.
[00:33:25] Cathy: Saturday I, and we can all be okay even if we have different feelings
[00:33:30] Rick: and we can all be okay even if we have different feelings.
[00:33:33] Cathy: And the, I sometimes my parents couldn’t handle their feelings.
[00:33:37] Rick: Ooh, sometimes my parents couldn’t handle their feelings and it felt like they were my
[00:33:42] Cathy: under the nose. They made it my problem,
[00:33:45] Rick: made it my problem.
[00:33:47] Cathy: And I was just a little kid.
[00:33:49] Rick: I was a little kid.
[00:33:50] Cathy: However, when I didn’t know any better,
[00:33:53] Rick: didn’t know any better, and I didn’t, I couldn’t differentiate, have that skill.
[00:33:59] Cathy: Now I can start practicing being a different person than them.
[00:34:04] Rick: I can start practicing being a different person than them
[00:34:07] Cathy: top of the head and letting them be adults and take care of their own feelings.
[00:34:15] Rick: Letting them take care of their own feelings.
[00:34:19] Cathy: Yeah, just take a breath and see what this may bring up a lot. This is a big tip for a lot of people. This is like really a big step because it’s just not something we talk about in our society,
[00:34:30] Rick: right? And we just spent a few minutes, right? Like that was less than seven minutes, including what you were sharing.
[00:34:38] And guess what? I believe your future self is gonna benefit from just opening the door and exploring this while physically moving and, and tapping on yourself. Is it gonna be night and day? Differentiation is a skill, especially with people that we, that matter to us deeply, that we want them to have a thriving life, that we have aspirations, that we all be thriving, find ease, not have disappointments, all of that stuff.
[00:35:09] And. To the small act of any kind of pause, tapping, um, differentiation To use this word is like, oh, you’re, you have big feelings right now and I have some feelings of my own about you having big feelings, but they’re not actually the same. So if, if there’s a meltdown happening in my space, differentiation says there’s a meltdown happening in my space, and that’s a person I love and I would love for them to co-regulate with me and make it easy and to be there.
[00:35:51] This, to be a good experience. And that’s not working there. That’s being actively rejected. No, get away. Um, hiding under pillows. The screaming under pillows affects me even more, um, energetically. The differentiation says, I’m having reaction to other person’s feelings. Does that make sense? Differentiation adds a layer of like, oh, I’m having my own big feelings about this being so devastatingly disappointing.
[00:36:29] Mm-hmm. And my disappointment circuits are kicking in. Right. Like, I’m disappointed that this is disappointing. Oh, okay. Yeah. So my small act is that I’m disappointed that this is disappointing and it is loud and uncomfortable, comfortable inside of me. Notice I brought it back. I brought it back to inside of me.
[00:36:55] Yeah.
[00:36:56] Cathy: Someone shared that I took it. Oh, go. Oh, someone shared that. Dr. Sue said if the person appears, do you send all your energy to them or do you keep some with you? So when we stay connected to ourself and the other person that’s a, like, it doesn’t mean we don’t, we can’t connect with the other person, but we don’t have to, like, I would often, like I have no awareness of my own needs until the other person is tended to.
[00:37:19] And then, then I might allow myself some presence. But am I being present with myself? Am I connected with myself still? That’s what that just what you were saying, like, can I be with their disappointment? Am my own disappointment, or am I just taking care of their disappointment first? Yeah. Um, I thought someone said about letting your, your adult children have their own problem is very hard.
[00:37:42] And one of the things that helps me when I, I don’t have adult children, but I have people that I love that are adults now and I wanna rush in and fix it. But I’ve used the analogy pretty help effectively for myself is if someone, you’re always picking someone up, like they fall down. Like when they’re little, you help them get up.
[00:37:59] But if you keep picking them up, they never learn to stand up on their own. So like letting them face their own problems. Yeah. It doesn’t mean I can’t offer to help, but it is like they have to, they have to struggle a little to get up in, in order to learn the skill and that’s helped me some to not, like I’m actually depriving them of a skill if I’m always jumping in and trying to fix it.
[00:38:25] Rick: We,
[00:38:29] we know that in energy space things happen that are not just the physical manifestation. Let me put that in a little different terms. If I look at a problem that two people are having as something I need to solve or they need to solve, that’s the big deal. That’s like the problem, the project. But what can I do in energy space?
[00:38:57] Do one small act. I love them both. They’re so precious to me. I just did a small act. I happen to know the adults that are involved in this. You know, like I have such admiration and respect for ways that they’ve shown up in their lives and with their family that the problem that they’re having, while significant, I’m not saying it’s not significant.
[00:39:26] The small act is tuning myself, and I know that how I tune myself changes the field. It, what does it, what do I mean by that? By the energetic connection between us. If you’ve ever thought of someone and they call you right away, there is. There’s lots of synchronicities and I’m, I do not believe that we understand this, even the slightest bit compared to the vastness of what it, what is there.
[00:40:03] But it makes me really curious to notice that, um, you know, in the morning, my morning meditation, one of my clients will come to my mind and I’ll, I’ll be like, oh, I feel them more peaceful. And I’ll get an email 35 minutes later. Yeah, I’m getting some space to recalibrate now in my new location, in my new job.
[00:40:28] And while I’m not all the way there, I can tell my body is, is unwinding from the trauma of my last work.
[00:40:42] Do one small act. If we include just tuning ourselves in a way that feels, I. Authentic to your heart. Um,
[00:40:56] there have been times when to use something that’s very obvious, like a, a kitchen, right? Like I do a lot of dishes. We, we, I work from home. There are four of us, two kids. It’s not like when I was growing up where we ran the dishwasher after every meal. 'cause there were 10 of us. Um, eight kids, two adults.
[00:41:21] Um, that’s in addition to a lot of hand washing. There are times when the do one small act looks like
[00:41:38] in a couple of hours, there’s a version of me that’s gonna have the energy to, to do this. And I appreciate that. He’s gonna, he’s gonna take care of it and I don’t have to right now. That’s leaning on our future self. Um, earlier today I was about to head to the kitchen and I saw that my coffee mug was sitting next to my, my computer, and I, I grabbed it and I took it.
[00:42:08] And as I was walking along a, a, a dish, um, um, was there on the table and I took that in. I did not clean them. I did not wash them. I just put them on the counter. That was a gift to my future self that I, I used that and when I did wash them, because we’re practicing, I’m practicing this, do one small act with mindful awareness.
[00:42:32] I’m aware as I, as I shared in the newsletter this morning, there are little tiny energetic acts. I am much more capable of doing than physically getting up and doing something. Does this make sense? Mm-hmm. Um, and there’s a reconditioning that I’m doing inside of myself of, oh, why I used to have a huge why bother?
[00:43:03] Right? That’s the, the hopeless, like why that was my version of hopeless was why bother? And, um, over the last 20 years of tapping, when it comes up, it changes form a bit. And, and now there’s more of a yearning, like, but I really want the dishes. You know, there’s kind of a whiny yearning like, but I. I really want someone else to do the dishes or I really want to have already done the dishes and the small act can be, I’m just, yeah.
[00:43:37] I really wish they were already done.
[00:43:39] Cathy: I really wish they were already done.
[00:43:40] Rick: I really wish they were already done.
[00:43:42] Cathy: I really wish they were already done.
[00:43:44] Rick: The truth is, I wish they were already done.
[00:43:46] Cathy: The truth is I wish they were already done
[00:43:47] Rick: and they’re not.
[00:43:48] Cathy: And they’re not.
[00:43:50] Rick: And I wish that they were already done
[00:43:51] Cathy: and I wish they were already done.
[00:43:53] Huh. I wish someone else would do that.
[00:43:56] Rick: Yeah. Now that changes it a little bit. Yeah. Sometimes. But that’s a small act.
[00:44:02] Cathy: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:04] Rick: How is that different than just, you know, how I might like be in the, why bother? I’ve acknowledged a feeling that was, that was building up what Pressure, building up stress if I do that.
[00:44:28] If I tend to that future self of mine that doesn’t want to do the dishes, angry, stressed, resentful, which I can do, Virgos can do that, and most humans can. We can do things stressed, overwhelmed, and resentful and angry and disgusted with ourselves and like, but the gift to ourselves of like, yeah, I wish it was done.
[00:44:54] And there’s a, I know it’ll get done. I know me. It’ll get done.
[00:44:59] Cathy: It’ll
[00:44:59] Rick: get done at the right time. It’ll get done
[00:45:01] Cathy: at the right time. It’ll get done.
[00:45:03] Rick: Yeah. And what have I done? I’ve projected some respect for the me that’s gonna show up and do the dishes. And that seems
[00:45:12] Cathy: easier than our nervous system. It’s not driving.
[00:45:14] It’s like, okay, I am where I am acknowledging the discomfort and like trusting ourselves. Like maybe this is not quite the right moment. I don’t have to like flagellate myself until I get done on adrenaline and feel exhausted and worn out afterwards.
[00:45:32] Rick: Here’s a little, here’s a, a profound trick savvy. When you project something like that for your future self, like respect or trust, um, acknowledgement of their reliability in, or that it matters to them, and there’s maybe not the time and energy right now, but it matters to you that it matters.
[00:45:58] There’s, you can collect that energy later.
[00:46:04] It’s in an energy depository. Kindness and encouragement. The loop, it’s like a love letter written, self-love. We talk about self-love and oftentimes it’s like, oh, I’m gonna massage my arm and things, you know, uh, yeah, that’s part of the picture. But self-love to me says, you know, I just finished my savoring list.
[00:46:34] A few things that I just, I want to my brain and my nervous system to embody and integrate overnight. Um, and as I go to the kitchen and I make sure the dishwasher’s on, I’m about to turn off the light, and we only have one of the pitchers of water that’s filled, and I know that Rick’s gonna wake up early before the rest of the family.
[00:47:02] And if I fill the water and then fill the tank. I’m gifting. Hey buddy. Good morning. I’m gifting that to me now if I’m mindless and uncaring about my, my past self, who brushed my teeth and wiped my butt and filled the water tank, if I really don’t care about him at all, I’m not collecting any of that. And it starts petering out.
[00:47:28] The bank account goes negative.
[00:47:30] Cathy: Put some appreciation. Oh my goodness, this is done last night. I love it. Uhhuh.
[00:47:35] Rick: Yeah. Oh, these clean underwear. I remember the me that did that.
[00:47:43] Cathy: Oh my lec electricity is still on. Thank me. Thank you. Me. That set up. I paid the bill. Yeah.
[00:47:50] Rick: Yeah. Ah, so this is as, this is energetically and emotionally savvy that I was never taught.
[00:48:04] You were, you were supposed to appreciate other people uhhuh
[00:48:09] Cathy: and beat yourself. And
[00:48:09] Rick: that kind of external reference is a, a is useful for surviving right? Respect and appreciation of others and getting it for yourself. Like doing whatever morph job you need to do to make sure that other people appreciate you and value you.
[00:48:25] Um, okay. That feels very primal. Like it lives right here. My heart sort of feels like whatever we have to do, like that’s the, you know. Okay. Anything, um, but small acts for your future thriving and acknowledgement. I did that. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. You don’t have to, like, there can be, like I, I knew myself in the morning.
[00:48:58] I often have a hard time coming up with an idea. I have an idea and I wrote it down. Yeah, I went to sleep on it. That was a gift. Oh, the kids got up early. I didn’t have time to write it, but it was still sitting there. And when you, when you close the loop on that, what you’re doing is your, your past self is being acknowledged.
[00:49:28] Your present now is appreciating you and your future self benefits from this becoming more how you, how you use your energy.
[00:49:47] Um,
[00:49:47] Cathy: I, yeah, I think it’s, it’s really, really important to like, take a break soon. Yeah. So one, I wanted to just, uh, people were asking more about differentiation. I would, I’m gonna suggest Rick and I, were gonna come up with some call ideas for next month. I’m gonna suggest we do a, a full call on that because it’s really, it’s part of this topic, but I don’t wanna spend the entire call on the topic.
[00:50:08] But I think we could easily spend several calls on this topic. Um, so just, I didn’t want, didn’t want people to think I, we were ignoring you, but I think let’s, if we can, let’s, if you can just hold on for a couple weeks We’ll, or three weeks when Rick gets back. We’ll, we’ll, if he agrees, we’ll do some stuff on that.
[00:50:23] 'cause I think it’s really important and we can explore it together. And I think we all learn as we do that. Um, two, as we go into our break, I would love you to pick one project I. Think about one small act and I’d like you to be with it. Try not to be with a hard Cody shell, a candy co shell. I have to do this, I promise to do this.
[00:50:43] Just be with the actual, like think of the act that you would like to take and just be with your emotions and thoughts around it. Break it down so you can see when we’re actually, where we are. We might find a whole new way to get something done. We might find out we never wanted to do it, or we find out some like, oh, I never thought of doing it that way.
[00:51:03] So over the break, we’d love you to kind of chew, just, you know, take the whatever one project and we recognize if your brain is trying to pick 30 of them, it’s a way to, to obfuscate. It’s a way to hide from what’s actually going on. You can pick another one later, just pick one right now and then just kind of be with your feelings about it and see, try on like one small act that you could do around it.
[00:51:25] But you’re not gonna actually do it over the break. You’re just gonna feel into it and notice like, am I trying to put that hard candy shell on it? Or what do I actually feel? And try to give yourself a little space to feel those feelings so that you can get some clarity on the other side. So we can, we can do some more work.
[00:51:41] And then we’ll have juicy things to tap on when you come back.
[00:51:44] Rick: Okay, we’re gonna take a break for seven minutes. See you then. Put it again. Welcome back.
[00:52:00] So
[00:52:04] one of the things about thriving that I’m noticing is that we can, we can have a, something that comes up, like someone said, updating my office skills as a small step toward getting a new job. Mm-hmm. But then all kinds of resistance come up. What if I, it’s too boring. What if I get a job I hate? Um, yeah.
[00:52:31] That usually to me as a coach says, um, updating office skills feels really broad and kind of boring. Like there’s, there’s not much. Um, there, there it’s very other,
[00:52:45] Cathy: it’s other fo very other focused. Trying to guess what they might want me to do versus what engages me. What do I like to do?
[00:52:52] Rick: Yeah. And for thriving, figuring out what’s the, what’s the yearning like if I were to do work that matters that I do get paid for as well, what’s a, what’s, what are some of the tools that are a part of that?
[00:53:16] Um, and how could I make that fun? Like the, the, if you’re a creative person, but you’re not applying creativity to this notion of skill upgrading, um, you know, that’s, that could be a small act. Like, oh, well what if I asked three people, what’s one thing that you really enjoy doing at work? Like if they took it away from you, you’d not be happy.
[00:53:58] Right. Um, that’s creative. It’s connecting. You could ask your yoga instructor, you could ask somebody on the internet. You could ask, uh. Someone else in the, the community
[00:54:13] Cathy: or just noticing what I like. I love to organize and I get, I can lo it’s such a geeky thing to confess, but I can get lost in Excel files entering data, like hours pass.
[00:54:23] And I’m like, what happened? Well, huh, maybe that’s like something I like doing. It’s like something that my system enjoys, like leaning into like if you love organizing or like find the things like that. And one of the things I’ve loved, Rick has taught me so much about like, and we’ve shared about um, ai, I will sometimes go to Chatt BT and I’ll just start talking.
[00:54:43] I’ll put my voice on. I’m like, well, I kind of like to do this, but I don’t like to do this. It’s real, it’s, its whole system is looking for patterns. So I’ll just talk to it for a while and you know, like, see, you know, what do you notice? What suggestions do you have? And I hit go and it’s like, you know, sometimes it’s not useful and sometimes even just the not useful is good, but most of the time it’s like.
[00:55:05] Oh, I didn’t know that. And then you can ask it to do like, what would be the best next step for me on that? And it can come up with some ideas so I don’t have to generate and don’t feel like I’m forgetting something or missing something.
[00:55:17] Rick: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:23] Cathy: Um, and so I also wanna, someone shared this process goes deeper and deeper. The more I look, the more I find I’m feeling a little nervous that I’ll, I’ll just get lost in the feelings. Um, if you can, you can take breaks. You don’t have to do this continuously, but I really do. The more I do this, the more I think it’s a lifelong journey.
[00:55:41] We’re just, we’re here to discover ourselves and others and interact with each other. It’s not, we’re not gonna be done. I used to think I would tap enough and I’d be done and I’d be all together like, ha ha, think, surprise. Um, I don’t think that happens. It gets easier. Our system gets more attuned to it, but we’re just always going deeper.
[00:56:01] We’re always finding like if we choose to, there’s more to discover and more to find, and there’ll be new feelings and new experiences, and that’s just life. Um, but. If we start feeling lost, come back now to the breath, come back now to your feet on the ground, take breaks from processing like I can. I’m, when I first found tapping, it was even just before I found Rick, I was tapping so much.
[00:56:26] I had found Gary Craig’s EFT, uh, dv. Uh, I was listening to 'em, I was tapping like six, seven hours a day, and I had sore spots and little bruises from all the tapping. Maybe that was a little too intense. I,
[00:56:39] Rick: I did suggest that you pace yourself a little bit, I think in that very first session. Yep. Um,
[00:56:51] um,
[00:56:56] I believe that there are guardrails that we can be aware of and that, like to say, I am, I am a little nervous that I’ll just get lost in the feelings. Um, I have that too. Like, there’s, there’s a life I want to be living. I want to, I wanna move qi. I wanna move my energy. I know that that’s a, I, I know at this point that the skill of being able to recognize, oh, there’s this feeling coming up, and I can be with that feeling.
[00:57:32] I don’t need to flinch off of it. Reflexively, maybe like I used to. And it’s okay to flinch off of certain feelings that you just don’t like? No. That, that one’s too much. Mm-hmm. This is where I think this whole idea of emotional freedom and do a small act as a skill. It’s like, you know, I’m feeling this.
[00:57:57] I, I see the grief and it. It looks like a tsunami, like the water is heading out past, there’s, oh, I didn’t know there was a, an ocean liner under the water out there as the tsunami pulls all the water out before it comes, you know, I hear that. I feel that. I think I’m gonna go to higher ground, that my small act is, you know.
[00:58:25] Yeah. There’s a lot. I’ll start tapping my collarbone because it’s a very powerful Yeah. There’s a lot to grieve about that, and I acknowledge that. And right now I’m gonna go, um, I’m gonna go for a walk.
[00:58:42] Cathy: I think if that is tempering myself, you know, they temper steel, they heat it up, pound it, cool it off.
[00:58:47] They repeat that cycle. We’re tempering our own emotional system. Yeah. We don’t have to just stay in the fire. 'cause then we melt and we don’t get the resilience that we need. It’s okay to dip ourselves in, do a little bit of tapping, quote unquote pounding processing, come out, let ourselves cool off. The process of stepping in and out is so powerful.
[00:59:09] It teaches our system to step in and out. It teaches us, okay, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I can step in, process, step out, self-care, do my life. 'cause life, like the day-to-day stuff matters too. Not just processing as much as some of us, like fingers pointed back at me. Like just process it all out now. Um. Just, I think when I remember I’m tempering myself, it gives my, my Capricorn brain likes to always be doing stuff.
[00:59:34] It’s like, oh, I’m doing something. I’m tempering myself. I’m in and out. If that helps. That analogy helps you. I want to be well tempered, flexible and resilient and very sharp and powerful and strong. Um, yeah,
[00:59:50] Rick: that, that I think is a real key point about the small act because I believe that there are things that really do matter to us, and we can get into a place where, okay, I’m doing it and I’m still noticing that there’s, um, there’s a resistance there or a, um,
[01:00:19] I haven’t quite gotten the activation energy that I want. Mm-hmm. And. One of the small acts is noticing that and then figuring out what’s a smaller, what’s an even smaller thing. So for example, I’m, I’ve started, um, writing stories for Thriving and there is still a okay if, how do I get the story completed?
[01:00:57] Do you know what I mean? But this is an ongoing thing. I, I could do this for decades. I, so
[01:01:10] when I look at the small act, it can be, oh, I would love to do a story or a story about that. That might be interesting. That’s a small act. If I. Speak it aloud. That is an act of creation. If I type it down somewhere, that’s an act of creation. It’s in the ecosystem of stories for thriving.
[01:01:42] There is one act, which is a pretty big one where I have it, it’s rising in me, and I wanna start the recorder.
[01:01:52] And sometimes right there, I’m still feeling this. Ah, and if I tap there, like, ah, ah, ah, this, ah, feeling in my, eh, I really want to do this. Yeah, I really wanna do this. And, and there’s a, ah,
[01:02:17] and you notice. As I felt the feeling and I tapped on it, my reaction sometimes will be to yawn. Other times will be to to laugh, and I’m not laughing it off. Like it doesn’t matter. There’s just a rising release. Like, oh, I can also do an act of changing the context. I work with people that they feel like they don’t get any reward.
[01:02:46] Oh, it’s not a win unless the whole kitchen is done. It’s not a, it’s not a story for thriving that I can be proud of. I hear so many teachers, unless I have the idea, I work the draft, I get it to publication. I have an image. I even do the recording and I post it on all the social media sites that I wanna post it on.
[01:03:10] Can you feel like, no, I don’t want to ever do that again. I. Because I’ve just, I’ve made it so big. So the small act can be, I just start eight recorder and, um, I practice just saying I don’t know how to write. Mm-hmm. I, I just published a story. I don’t know how to write stories. I don’t actually, I don’t know the mechanism.
[01:03:37] But by starting the recorder, 10 minutes later, the story was there. Now, I did not just go to the next step if you allow yourself graceful pauses and even exits. So people want to be more creative and often think like, well, you know, if I start the painting, I’ve gotta finish it. And they might have, you know, they’re, they’re constipated with art that is un incomplete.
[01:04:09] In that the small act can be, yeah, this is incomplete, complete. I’m not returning to this and redo it, recycle it. Do something with it. Like that’s a small act. What does it do? It tells you in your energy, oh, the act of creativity is in the now. It doesn’t have to lead to something I’ve recorded. Um, if it, if it started as a story and it really is just for me, I call it a note, guess what?
[01:04:46] I started it as a story. Now it’s a note. And, um, yeah, I was, I, I recorded a note for myself. I don’t have to do anything else with it. I have a nice little path with ai. I call it a wisdom extractor. I can take that note. Beautiful AI generates the transcript and I read what’s there for me. Oh, okay. Is that complete?
[01:05:11] Yeah. Have I ever posted something from it? Yeah, but there’s no requirement. This is, like Cathy said, I if there’s the big emotional feelings and that’s again, where I feel like I need to address everything that happened in my childhood. Um, there are times for intense surgery or, or treatment, and those made a huge difference for me.
[01:05:38] I honor those and when you get to a place where you know, actually I’m in a good and sufficient place for thriving, then the past stuff that comes up will be like, oh, let’s just tap on that as our small act. You know, my mother would hate this. My mother would hate this. My mother, my, my father would not gr this at all, and he showed me that in a thousand trillion ways, he would not at all be proud of his son if he was still operating from that mindset.
[01:06:14] Good thing he’s dad. He, he sees things differently now. Yay. Thanks dad. Um, I’m done. Yeah, I’m done with that. That wave. It wasn’t a tsunami, it was a wave of Yeah. I don’t come from an emotionally savvy father, and
[01:06:35] Cathy: I love that you called it a wave though, because like if I try to, if I’m on the ocean and I’m dealing with all the waves that will ever hit me.
[01:06:42] Oh my God. I feel over, like someone was sharing about feeling all the day-to-day stuff, like taking care of the home or whatever. If I think about I have to brush my teeth twice a day for the rest of my life. I don’t wanna brush my teeth ever again. I just wanna have them removed so I don’t have to worry about it versus like, you like this is just too much.
[01:07:02] Oh my God, I have to buy How much toothpaste and how many tooth like we can get so far in the future that it’s like, oh wait, but I can mindfully brush my teeth this morning, or, you know, today and this evening I can be with the brushing of the teeth and the tending to my body. Um, so like at the wave, like Rick said, we deal with each wave as it comes, and when we start thinking about every wave.
[01:07:27] Our brain overwhelms because it doesn’t know is there tsunami coming or is it gonna be low tide? And it doesn’t know how to deal with all these unknowns that we have no way of knowing We can guess. I could buy toothpaste, you know, and a cupboard full of toothpaste and toothbrushes for the rest of my life, and I could get hit by a car tomorrow.
[01:07:45] Or they could find some miracle new toothpaste that like you brush once and now your teeth are good for the rest of your life. Like we don’t know what’s coming down the road. So if you notice yourselves trying to project too far in the future, realize your survival brain is trying to feel safe. And if you can bring a breath to right now, I am actually safe.
[01:08:06] I don’t have to solve this forever. I can take this breath. I don’t have to worry about the rest of the breaths for this hour or this year, or like, 'cause then I start getting really anxious, like, oh. How about this breath right now? Can I be mindful to it with it? And it’s another form of tempering. Can I come back to myself?
[01:08:24] Can I come back to right now? And I love the analogy, Rick, about the wave, like these emotions right now, I don’t have to deal with the emotions that are kind of, could come later. They may seem overwhelming to me. Um, if I look at now some of the things I’m dealing with now, like I’m processing old stuff sometimes and it’s like, oh my God, if I tried to imagine processing it 2010 years ago, I would’ve crawled in a corner and never come out.
[01:08:49] I’m much stronger now. I have better skills, I have great support. So like we, we, when we go too far in the future, we can’t, our brain just can’t understand what we’re doing and it just, it freezes. So if you’re fine noticing, just come back to hearing now. And then go ahead
[01:09:09] Rick: and someone shared. Yes. Just take one thing at a time.
[01:09:11] Yeah. Like that’s, that’s a layer of wisdom, which, uh, opens up, opens up our energy field. Like, no, I’m, I’m with this, this thing and I’m gonna feel very narrowly around this one thing. Mm-hmm. Um, and the, the aspect of it, which is do one small act, is that there is a point that there is the end of the act.
[01:09:50] And if you’re clear enough clarity that you’re clear enough, this act ends when the small part of the act ends. When I’ve done this. Um, to me there’s an opportunity for it to get out of the primitive brain, which tends to, like Cathy’s worked herself up about brushing her teeth. Like, to me that was a primitive brain response.
[01:10:25] I recognize, I definitely feel that. I’m like, oh my God, like asking you to do that. Um, but the one small act is, yeah. I’m just gonna ask, um, yeah. I don’t know anything about ai, but I’m just gonna ask it this question. That’s all I’m gonna do and just see what comes back. And then the act is over. If my next act is that, I’m gonna ask a follow-up question, that’s a different act, but the small act is, oh, there’s this new tool.
[01:10:58] Rick and Cathy are pretty using it, right? Like, I didn’t even know I could do that already. Um, but what I’m gonna do is just ask it one question that I’m curious about seeing what it says.
[01:11:11] Cathy: Can I share my example with the files? The, the files? Sure. So I’ve had, I have backup discs that I’ve made over the years that have different things on them.
[01:11:21] Some are super organized, some are old, some of them duplicates, and I’ve just, they’ve just sat, sat here for like, I have a, a little box of them and I have been meaning to like intending to putting pressure on myself to get done for. Over a year and I just stuck. Even when I had time to do it, I would suddenly realize the closet must be cleaned or some, like I had to watch the TV show, whatever it was.
[01:11:43] So I finally just turned on chat, GPT, and I told it. I just, I am so stuck. I feel like a fucking idiot. I cannot do this thing that everyone else should be able to do. I’m capable of it. Here’s the story. I have duplicates. I have like some that are organized, some that’s not, I don’t know what to do. Here’s blah, blah, blah, blah.
[01:12:02] And I hit go, you know, what do I do? And it broke, broke down, and it said, oh, okay. How long do you want to like, they asked me some que, I told it, please ask me questions. I said, I’d like to get this done over the next three weeks, but I’m gonna take some days off. It says, great. Now it gave me a whole project plan.
[01:12:18] I didn’t necessarily need that, but it said, it said first thing, first label each drive with a name. I’m like, oh my God, that would be so easier. 'cause I’m like searching for each one, um, you know, plugging them all in each time. And I’m like, oh, the connector’s missing for that one. And then it said, make an Excel spreadsheet with the names and write down is it organized, is it partially organized or is it chaos?
[01:12:40] Like just def differentiate that. And then it said, identify the main drive you want everything to go to and label that. And I’m like, huh. I like, I didn’t read the whole thing. I read that part and I ordered labels that will stick nicely to my thing. And I took a break 'cause I had a, I was teaching a big AI class last week, so I was really busy.
[01:12:59] But I feel such relief and I actually feel like I wanna lean in to getting it done now because it’s like, oh, I have steps that feel good to my nervous system versus get it done. Um, so, you know, even when I was trying to break it down into small tasks, I was like, I’ll just do this one drive. That still felt daunting, labeling the drives and like, oh, that’s so I can do that.
[01:13:21] I’m excited. So if you find yourself kind of stuck asking AI or asking a friend to brainstorm, you might find a different approach that feels really aligned and excited for you. Um, and I, someone said, I, I just have a lot of compassion for this. What if we feel the opposite? Like we’re getting less and less resilient and less capable?
[01:13:41] Um, I, there’s times I felt that in my life and I felt like I was like, done all this work. I feel like I’m failing. Like I must have been in the wrong direction, or I’m incapable of this. If you can just breathe and realize that sometimes our nervous system will feel like we’re going backwards when we’re looking at things in a different way.
[01:14:03] I don’t know if your exact situation, but I. You know, getting a coach or someone to help you look at it a little bit differently can be super helpful. But I’ve also, there’ve been times when in the immediate moment it feels like I’m going backwards. I’m feeling a lot more stuff. I’m, oh my God, I haven’t had panic attacks in years, and all of a sudden I’m having a panic attack.
[01:14:22] What’s going on? We’re all in this helix, and it’s like we’re, we’re progressing around, but we’re seeing it from a different perspective and sometimes a lot can come up. Um, so that can feel like I feel less resilient in this moment. I had a, a couple weekends ago, I called Rick. I haven’t called Rick at three in the morning in forever.
[01:14:42] I called Rick and I’m like, dear Lord, I am, things are falling apart. It was just a big bubble of emotion that was going through. And I was just seeing I’d actually grown strong enough. My system’s like, oh, she can handle it now. Let’s give it to her. Um, you know, not my favorite thing, but it’s better. It was in my system anyway and I was processing it out.
[01:15:02] But I just, I, I have a lot of compassion for that feeling of like, I think I’m getting, I’m think I’m falling apart. I think things are coming apart. And often once I get to the other side and get a little perspective, I’m like, oh wow. I’m so much stronger than I was before. I just didn’t realize the process I was in.
[01:15:19] So, just some thoughts around that. Not saying it describes everyone. Um,
[01:15:27] Rick: there’s a,
[01:15:37] the resilience to, to be with certain types of situations. I. Um, does influence and carry over in other changing dynamics, but not, not perfectly. Like I am really resilient in a lot of ways, and there are some fresh ones. There are some fresh ones. Um,
[01:16:15] and the small acts,
[01:16:24] I’m, I’m in the process of becoming resilient to my daughter’s disappointment.
[01:16:35] It’s tough. I can handle my own disappointment a hundred times better than I used to.
[01:16:43] But there’s something about the energetic pathway that really just gets to me.
[01:16:50] Cathy: Well, she is this little adorable thing and she’s very powerful.
[01:16:55] Rick: Very powerful. And the one small act, I, I look for one small act. And if I can pause and in my heart say, I love you, I under, I understand disappointment and practice that I haven’t fixed anything.
[01:17:16] She’s not less disappointed. Assure you it lasts a while, like, you know, little Ricky. Um, and yet my resilience has, is, is building. I will say that that feeling of not being resilient. Um, was very alive. And that, I think is a call for those of us that want to be emotionally resilient. We wanna be responsive.
[01:17:48] We understand that anxiety is like taking gasoline and burning it. Um, uh, not in an engine, but just polluting the environment with black smoke and smell
[01:17:59] Cathy: in our own body with the, the toxic
[01:18:02] Rick: distress. Yeah. All the ramifications of that. I have shared vulnerably and real that, you know, I build resilience and energy for being who I am as a coach, as a parent, as a lover, by doing acts for my future self and making it conscious and acknowledging with.
[01:18:38] A hearty appreciation. Like after this meal, I mean after this session in a few minutes I have baby back ribs that I cooked. My family has already eaten. They’re not hangry by the way, you know, and I kind of knew my daughter. Guess this. I don’t like ribs. Like 80% of the time I had them deliver sushi. She ate it all.
[01:19:07] Just a grocery store. Sushi, right? Like she, how many? 4-year-old mom got one brother got one piece. She got the rest. Now, right now I am so appreciative of the me that was savvy enough about. Ah, everybody else loves ribs. She doesn’t like, oh, he really came through for me, you know, really came through, get outta college.
[01:19:34] I, I’m, I’m feeling like God, what a great guy. Now I, I need that resilience because in the push and pull of life, it, if I’m trying to get it from my kids, appreciating, you know, um, I feel forced. Like, tell dad how much you love your meal. I don’t love it. No, no. You need to tell dad. 'cause otherwise we’re not gonna have breakfast.
[01:20:01] I’m just gonna sit there and go. We’re not gonna have, that’s a lot of pressure to put
[01:20:06] Cathy: on a 4-year-old. Too lot of
[01:20:07] Rick: pressure.
[01:20:08] Cathy: Right? We want her to be honest, but lie too, you know?
[01:20:12] Rick: No, I want to, I want to, I want to complete the loop in an emotionally and energetically and spiritually mature. And savvy way, and this is one of those ways, by comp, by recognizing, you know, the me of the me of six years ago, um, showed courage in entering into this relationship saying yes to having children again.
[01:20:38] And that’s a big deal. That’s wasn’t a, wasn’t a small act.
[01:20:42] Cathy: You outta college, outta the house doesn’t start yet.
[01:20:45] Rick: And I can feel that, but that is not as energetically like, that’s like structural. The fuel that we can collect is, you know, I, I did this for myself and I’m, I’m harvesting it now in all of, and I’d like just
[01:21:03] Cathy: reframe what you’re saying.
[01:21:04] Like finding that one small act that you’re aligned to take, seeing the project overhaul and like picking small, one small act you’re aligned to and then appreciating the hell outta yourself afterwards. That’s, I mean, I just wanna kind of synopsis it. Make sure one, you’re like, be with where you are. Look at your project.
[01:21:22] Pick something that’s you’re aligned to, whether it’s tapping, breathing, being with the feeling, or like asking ai or actually taking some action and then really appreciating yourself. That’s, that’s like your, that’s the tempering process. And you’re gonna get so much more out of yourself, authentically without driving yourself on adrenaline and wearing yourself out.
[01:21:44] Rick: And, and, and let’s, I I, I love that someone shared this. And so I’m gonna, I’d like to bring our workshop, um, to, um, uh, the end of this act. Um, we’ll have more acts too, the end of all of our act. You know, uh, one of the people said that they, they wanted to, um, you know, develop those office skills and the office and, um.
[01:22:10] They suggested I have an idea to write a little story notebook and call it me and the Purple Dragon get a new job. That’s, she used her name, but, um, and I’m just so tickled by that because that is a, a done act. Having that notion like, oh, can you all of us, if, if we were going to get a new job with our purple dragon, like, I’m excited about that.
[01:22:39] Very curious. Hey, purple dragon, what are your skills? Oh, okay. Starting fires. Well, maybe we’ll be marshmallow roasters. Um,
[01:22:47] Cathy: well, and could you imagine asking a purple dragon to do boring jobs to just fly away or roast the plate? Like No,
[01:22:54] Rick: no. Yeah. Um, so like, see how just one person I. In this whole workshop who started with boring skills, office skills, I don’t wanna, and, and leads us, me at least to, oh, the purple and dragon and I get a new job.
[01:23:13] I, I am probably gonna use that somewhere. I hope if it comes out as a book or something that I can share, I will point people to it. Um, and that’s what we get to do with each other and for each other is we get to share the wisdom of, uh, this, this, um, the s savviness, these real skills. So yeah. Thank you Cathy.
[01:23:39] Appreciate you. Wonderful,
[01:23:40] Cathy: wonderful. I grabbed some ideas to other people’s suggested call ideas. I’ve grabbed them out. You all are awesome. Thank you so much for exploring these really deep thoughts with us and making your world and everybody’s world better. You’re amazing.
[01:23:54] Rick: Mm-hmm.
[01:23:55] Cathy: Thanks so much, Rick.
[01:23:59]
Great to have you on this journey with us!