Reframe to Thrive - Building Emotional Agility for Life-Changing Work

 Real Skills Workshop - Community Event


Reframe to Thrive - Building Emotional Agility for Life-Changing Work

Real Skills Workshop: Lifestyle Design

Hosts: Rick Wilkes (@Rick) and Cathy Vartuli (@Cathy)

Recorded Tue Aug 27 2024

:point_right: Replay is below

:point_right: Get your Circle Membership Here


Emotional Agility is essential if we want to do life-changing work. But our primitive brain is rigid. It sees narrowly. It insists. It blocks and stops and criticizes.

The skill of reframing builds emotional agility. How ELSE might we see this situation? How ELSE might we feel about ourselves, our gifts, our gaps?

There’s an energetic magic when we land on a reframe that works for us. We’re… freed! A useful reframe embodies a choice to see the world in a way that neutralizes and soothes negative, fear vibes and accentuates the energy essential for building a thriving life.

Join us to explore this skill together. It can be so much fun!

Before this session:

  1. What is a perception that depletes your energy or stops you from moving forward?

  2. What are three alternate ways of seeing it? (You can try on different personas if that helps - The Wise Sage, The Fool, The Explorer, The Curious, The Free & Powerful One)

  3. Is there a re-perception / re-frame that makes me feel neutral? Is there one that gives me energy?

3 Likes

I was framed! So were you.

We all were.

Were you also looked at through the Frame of COMPARISON? Compared to siblings, other students, other players? Whether you compared favorably or poorly, comparison is… stressful. Seriously dis-ease provoking.

Was family life seen through the Frame of Struggle and Scarcity? Or the Frames of Gratitude and Abundance?

Our Inner Life Interpreter requires frames of reference. They help us make sense of the world. They act as filters… and they also act as limits.

If we evaluate our lives based on the Frame of Success and Failure, then we won’t even see all the ways life can be Re-Framed as an Adventure, an Exploration, a Mystical Journey of Discovery of Our Gifts.

See what I mean?

Rather than having our life “framed” for us, Reframing frees us to choose the frames that serve us.

Oh, and that “It’s Either Right or Wrong Frame” — yeah, that is one of those 79 cent black and white plastic ones from the Dollar Store. Not useful for Thriving.

Cathy and I will be exploring reframes that better serve our emotional well-being tomorrow (Tuesday). Reframing is a skill. We’ll be looking at frames so many of us have and how when we perceive (and re-perceive) our life through more flattering (and useful!) frames, we GET energy rather than lose it.

Consider joining us.

:point_right: Replay is below

1 Like

Reframe to Thrive - Building Emotional Agility for Life-Changing Work - Session Replay

:point_right: Get your Circle Membership Here

We welcome your insights, ah-ha’s, and sharing. Please! Click [Reply]

We covered…

  1. Embrace reframes as a powerful tool for emotional agility. Notice how shifting your perspective can create more lightness and range of motion in your life.
  2. Recognize that your current frames may be survival-based. Gently explore new frames that support your thriving and align with your deepest intentions.
  3. Practice using the Discernment Frame rather than the Harsh Judgment Frame. This shift can open up new possibilities and help you navigate challenges with more grace.
  4. Explore the frame of “human being” rather than “human doing”. How might this perspective nourish your soul and enhance your relationships?
  5. When facing criticism or self-doubt, ask yourself: “How can I be Useful here and now?” This reframe invites you to recognize your unique gifts and contributions and how they can be activated NOW.
  6. Explore viewing your life and work through an Ecosystem lens. How does this frame help you see the interconnectedness of your efforts and their ripple effects?
  7. Cultivate emotional agility by consciously switching frames. Notice when a current frame isn’t serving you, and experiment with alternative frames that energize you.
  8. Use tapping to support your reframing process. This physical act can help your body and mind integrate new perspectives more easily.
  9. Parenting and relationships grow and deepen with frames of Curiosity, Kindness, Generosity, and Appreciation… even when addressing challenges. How might this shift your interactions?
  10. Practice seeing situations from multiple perspectives — Re-Perceive! This “emotional cross-training” builds your agility and resilience in facing life’s complexities.
  11. Celebrate small shifts in perspective. Each reframe is an opportunity for growth and a step towards the thriving, purposeful life you’re building.

Remember, Dear Builder, these reframes are invitations to explore, not pressure to change overnight. As you listen to the workshop, notice which aspects resonate most deeply with your heart. Allow yourself to play with new perspectives, knowing that each small shift can lead to profound transformations in your life and work. You’re already on this journey of growth – let these reframes be gentle companions as you continue to build and thrive.

Resources Mentioned

  1. Free EFT Tapping Guide

  2. Thriving Now Emotional Freedom Circle

Click for Computer Generated Transcript

Reframe to Thrive - Building Emotional Agility for Life-Changing Work

[00:00:00] Reframe to thrive, building emotional agility for life changing work.

[00:00:04] And I am so excited for this real skills workshop because in emotional freedom, Oh, an expression I had never heard. I’d heard freedom growing up, but I’d never really heard about emotional freedom. And when I heard that, I was like, Ooh, what is that?

[00:00:21] And I discovered far along in my journey that EFT tapping, one of the tools that Actually has reframes built into it. It’s a component part of emotional freedom work, and we’re going to take it to the next level today. really look at how we can turn this into something that gives us more range of motion, more lightness, uh, agility to use that term, especially for those of us that are.

[00:00:49] building something that matters to us. doing the life changing work to change our ancestry and how, our children and other people that we interact with engage with the world.

[00:01:01] Reframes are an incredibly powerful way to do that, and I’m delighted Tonight, uh, in this workshop to be co creating this with Cathy Vartuli from Thriving Now and the Intimacy Dojo.

[00:01:13] Cathy, what’s been your experience with reframes? How are they useful?

[00:01:18] Oh, well, I, I mean, I really kind of discovered them with EFT when I first found EFT, what was 17, 18 years ago now, but I think. They’re so powerful because when we have trauma and we all have small T or big T traumas, we tend to get stuck with a frame.

[00:01:36] I’m a bad person. All snakes are bad. Heights are always dangerous. Um, I can never eat, uh, anything with tomatoes in it. We get some kind of belief that we’re stuck with and it’s very black and white, very hard and fast. And then we’re living our life. With this big picture frame kind of stuck to us, and we’re trying to fit through doors, and we’re like, oh, that doesn’t work.

[00:02:00] It just, our life is very limited, because, and we don’t usually just have one frame. We have a number of different picture frames kind of stuck around ourselves, and we’re trying to navigate around the world. And it’s like, awkward. There’s not freedom. There’s not agility. We’re just very awkward when we’re traumatized and stuck with a viewpoint.

[00:02:21] And I love the fact that with tapping and with hanging out with people that are willing to try different perspectives, we can realize that, Oh, this picture frame may work really well sometimes, but I don’t have to carry it with me and wear it all the time. There’s times when it’s useful and it looks nice and I want to have it.

[00:02:38] And there’s times when I want something else. And That ability to relax and feel safe enough to try something new, that’s part of healing. I think that’s, I think it’s a, a natural part of the healing, but as we build the muscles and focus on it, we can accelerate things. We can kind of turn the knob a little bit more like, oh, I don’t have to stay stuck in this one perspective.

[00:03:03] My parents might’ve had trauma or, recently taught you must have this viewpoint and I never considered anything else. I don’t have any neural pathways for anything else, but Huh? What if I imagined what if I thought maybe that might possibly be possible? I get with more tapping. We do that a lot of the time, even if even though I have this viewpoint.

[00:03:24] I can love and accept myself, or I can imagine a world where I might love and accept myself, or I might imagine a world where someone else might love and accept me. Like we kind of, even if we can just crack that door a little bit, all kinds of magical possibilities flow in, and we can see avenues that we never even glimpsed before.

[00:03:46] So it’s really, to me, it’s incredibly powerful. For a freedom oriented person like myself. Um, that word you said, possibilities, uh, is one of the things that tells me that I’m not in my primitive brain. There are frames of reference that have been passed down from generation to generation to generation for survival, and many, if not most, are very control oriented.

[00:04:22] They are meant to provide, um, a control structure, a frame of reference, a way of looking at yourself and your relationship to, to your family and your community and your, and your spirit that are, um, but take the question out of it. So imagine a frame that you always look at things with, with a critical eye.

[00:04:50] So imagine that my glasses are the frame of my glasses are the frame of a critical eye. Now, some people really value that that is something that they look at the world through a critical eye. Um, that is a frame of reference

[00:05:16] and you could probably feel in your body if I imagine never looking at anything with a critical eye. So there’s a, there’s an apple on the tree and I’m hungry. I’m really super hungry. Now that apple. Could be covered with something that really isn’t good for me.

[00:05:44] If, if I look at it without any kind of critical eye, I could impinge my survival.

[00:05:55] Imagine though, you have a fresh bowl of apples. You’ve already done the sorting, the rotten ones and everything else. You’ve washed them. It’s really quite, quite a lovely bowl of apples sitting on your counter. And you look at that bowl of apples with the critical eye. Oh, that one’s got some green around it.

[00:06:14] And you know, uh, that one’s misshapen. It’s not perfect. Um, now if I take the critical lens off and I put another frame on the frame of abundance, now that that’s a. It’s not unknown in human history, there were harvests and, and feasts and other things at times to celebrate abundance.

[00:06:48] But in the process of becoming more emotionally agile, being able to notice, okay, it’s now time to look at These apples from a sense of abundance because what does that do? Wow. I have so much choice, huh? Wonder which one calls to me right now The the lens of scarcity if I now put it on is like I must eat as many apples as I can Before they go rotten before the, before the bears take them before, you know, whatever I must protect them, make sure nothing happens to them.

[00:07:31] If, if one of them goes rotten, it impacts me because I’m looking at that. Those apples now through the lens. Uh, scarcity. We’re going to look at things through different lenses. We do. By making it conscious, now we have emotional freedom. We say, oh, you know, I am definitely looking at my life through the lens of scarcity.

[00:07:59] I wonder if there’s anything abundant about it. You can try this on if you’d like. It’s like, I wonder if there’s anything abundant. Now notice I started tapping my collarbone. Why? Well, I just touched on scarcity. I’m switching my frame and by gently tapping, I’m sending a signal to my primitive brain.

[00:08:25] It’s okay to switch gears. We’re safe. We’re, this is good. And. This is attached to, uh, this is part of the kidney meridian, uh, anxiety. Uh, this is my favorite, my favorite point, not everyone’s, but it’s one of mine. And so I will start tapping and I wonder, I wonder if there’s anything abundant in my, my life.

[00:08:48] And you don’t repeat after you’re just, no, it’s more like an inner. And we invite you. To share in the chat. If you’re here with us live, if you’re on the recording, maybe make note of, you know, if I put on a frame of reference around abundance and I invite myself to look at my life that way, is, is there anything that’s come up today and right before the session, what just came up by tapping was my daughter and my partner were sitting right as I was going to work, they were sitting on the front steps.

[00:09:26] eating popsicles on, um, a summer evening, the lights on, and I could just feel the energy of love and connection between them. Now, if I’m, if I was looking at my life through a different kind of frame, can you imagine that I would miss, I would miss that and I’d never come back to it. And the good news, I think about our energy field is that A reframe helps us re perceive.

[00:10:02] We do have things that we notice. We see this even Cathy and right in trauma healing, it’s like, I’ve cleared away a lot of the, the pain, the suffering. And I collect some wisdom, uh, from the experience. And sometimes that happens naturally. And sometimes we, as coaches, um, like, is there any way that it’s, That you feel if you look at your life and who you are and what has become something that matters to you, that that trauma really made it very clear.

[00:10:42] This matters to me. So if you look at an experience as what, what clarity did I get about what matters to me, that changes it. Now you can try to do that prematurely. You’ll feel a lot of resistance. Good. That’s your body saying we’re not there yet. We still need to look at it through. I’m I’m needing to honor, like looking at a trauma, um, as something that needs to be kept secret because it’s shameful.

[00:11:11] That’s a frame of reference. And honestly, it feels like one of those survival things. I can remember what it felt like to look at my traumas as something shameful that had to be kept secret. And then the frame of reference can become, you know, this is really what, what here is asking for healing. And witnessing and moving the energy.

[00:11:39] And they’re giving me the perspective as that healing progresses. What can I share that would help other people heal? What could add richness? Like, Oh, someone else can not feel so alone. Someone else can have some hope they can get through it. I do think we can get really stuck. I was brought up with like, do, do, do.

[00:11:57] Get stuff done all the time. And there’s like some trauma, like a very fixed frame. And I was just thinking, I was really touched by this, you talking about a deer and gem, just being on the porch, eating those popsicles, enjoying the summer, but I can see like when I was younger, I would have like, Why are they just sitting there?

[00:12:16] Come on, there’s stuff to do. The trash has been taken out. The yard needs rather than, Oh my God, what a blissful moment. That’s like a memory that I would like to just be with and cherish. And I think all of us were looking for a balance. Agility is a lot about a balance. How can I balance myself in my world?

[00:12:34] How do I keep my balance? So it’s not about being. Super rigid or super like it’s like where can I find a good balance between things like Someone shared they’d never thought about that critical eye of being good But it is it’s useful to evaluate things and judge things There’s times when that’s really useful but we don’t want it to be a hundred percent of our world because then it starts being like Oh, they’re sitting on that porch, but I forgot to paint that bench.

[00:12:59] And look, there’s a leaf on the thing there. And then one of the grass things is a little bit longer. We start getting caught up in that versus, can I now put it on the perspective of just like enjoying life a little bit? Can I have the flexibility to turn? I think of the perspectives kind of as different facets in a crystal.

[00:13:19] Can I rotate easily? Can I see different? Can I imagine what different perspectives might look like and then find ones that, you know, are really good fit right now. Can I enjoy the fact that they’re loving that summer evening and bonding and having that popsicle and maybe that’s a sweet memory to carry forward.

[00:13:42] Someone asked, I would love to reframe that I am wrong and bad. And I think that that fits with, um, survival, particularly like who’s defining wrong and who’s defining. bad. And if you think about in a tribe that relies on each other for protection, for food, for water, for mates, um, there’s a lot that our primitive brain has as frames of reference.

[00:14:15] Unless you’re doing things exactly how the tribe sees the world and sees you and adapt to that, it was either adapt to the tribe or die. Now my primitive brain gets that. So if I look at If I were to look at my community here, as my tribe, and I, and I look at me through the lens of how am I out of step, how am I doing it wrong, compared to, uh, how all of them are doing it.

[00:14:50] Now, all of them, again, is a primitive brain thing, but it, it’s the binary. How is everybody else doing it that I’m not? Oh dear, I immediately see myself, Rick, I start seeing myself as wrong and bad because my frame of reference is a tribal one that I’m trying to do it their way. As I imagine, as I imagine it really is.

[00:15:18] But for example, the way that they party, um, the way that, um, where they send their kids to school, um, the sports that they’re into that I’m not. Right. I’m wrong and bad. What if, what if, as a man, I have a wide emotional range and I own it all? Oh boy, I feel so wrong and bad. Seriously, like, I’m like, oh dear, I’m.

[00:15:50] I’m really in trouble here. My face is turning red, I feel embarrassed, and I’m just trying on a frame. Now if you inherited this frame from great great great great grandma and it’s been passed down from generation to generation, guess what? When you look in that, in great great grandmother’s mirror, you’re seeing yourself through that frame.

[00:16:13] And I think part of the invitation is, I wonder what other frames there might be. I wonder how else I might see. Myself, I think that there’s, oh, you’re going to do some copying, okay, I think that when something is passed down generation after generation, and we’re kind of raised in that environment, the consistency of the, the frame that we’re told, it gets really embedded.

[00:16:38] It’s like, we’re constantly like mom and dad, like everyone, grandma, the grandpa’s all saying, this is the right frame. And so it gets, to be part of our identity in a way. It’s never, there’s no one ever shifting the frames around. They’re kind of like, if I wore these glasses for, you know, 50 years and never took them off, then my skin might even grow around them or something.

[00:16:57] And my hair would like, they become part of me. So the idea of shifting that can be really painful and very like, no, you are wrong if you are not using my frames. Like you must, It becomes really embedded in our identity and the identity of people in our family, even our society. So that’s, I think it’s important to notice that some people can get really reactive when we start changing perspectives or deviating from what they think is okay.

[00:17:26] It doesn’t mean that we have to accommodate them, but it does help to like those people are really scared. We’re like shifting something they didn’t think could be shifted. They like believe it as like, you know, gravity or something like, this has got to be how it is. And it can be scary for them to even see anything different.

[00:17:43] So. Did you need to send some tapping on that? Because that feels alive for folks. Invite you to take a nice deep breath. Feel your butt in the chair, your feet on the floor. Karate top. Even though I have some pretty embedded frames. Even though I definitely have some embedded frames. And other people do too.

[00:18:05] And other people do too. And it might be really scary to consider shifting them. And it might be really scary to consider shifting them. I might be okay. I might be okay. I might even like it better with multiple options. I might even like it better with multiple options. And a classier frame. Even though other people get very reactive when I consider something different.

[00:18:35] Even though some people get really reactive when I consider something different. I’m okay with them having some distress.

[00:18:47] I’m okay with them having some distress. Or maybe not so much okay with that. Or maybe not so much okay with that. And maybe it’s a good thing for this kind of shift to happen anyway. And maybe it’s a really good thing for this kind of shift to happen anyway. Even though sometimes we become pretty stagnant.

[00:19:08] Even though sometimes we become pretty stagnant. I’m open to some emotional agility. I am definitely open to some emotional agility. And that means letting go of the rigidity. And that does mean letting go of the rigidity. Top of head, I’ve held on to this frame for a very long time. I’ve held on to this frame for a very long time.

[00:19:30] Eyebrow, it’s part of my identity now. It’s part of my identity now. Side of the eye, it’s how I see myself. It’s how I see myself. Under the eye, I wonder if I might be okay to see myself a little different. I wonder if it’s okay to see myself a little differently. Under the nose, what if I can see the world a little differently?

[00:19:53] And what if I could see the world a little differently? Jim, I like the idea of having new possibilities. I like the idea of having new possibilities. Collarbone, I like the idea of not being so stuck. I like the idea of not being so stuck. Under the arm, and I don’t have to shift everything all at once.

[00:20:14] And I do not and cannot shift everything at once. Top of that, but I might crack the doorway. I might crack the doorway. And see if some fresh air can flow in. Let’s see if some fresh air can flow in and just take a breath and notice what comes up for you because it is really scary like the more deeply held our belief is the more we’re holding on to it to like this is how the world is.

[00:20:37] Don’t you dare shift it. It can be really scary, but I’ve also found from my own life experience and through coaching other people that sometimes it’s those really deeply held us held ones that are keeping us stuck the most that are holding us in a place we don’t want to be. for having me. So if we can start getting a little movement there, there’s a lot, there’s a whole bunch of things that can come into being.

[00:21:02] So I have a frame of reference that I use, a reframe. Um, if I’m becoming more and more frustrated with something, I am looking at it through a narrow critical frame. So that’s, so the apples, cleaned them, pick them. If I continue to look at them through a critical frame, you would notice Rick getting more and more tight.

[00:21:31] Uptight tense and feeling overwhelmed. And if you happen to come along and said, Ooh, apples. You might hear something really, like, weirdly critical if you’re looking at them as, Ooh, look, beautiful bowl of apples. You might hear, Yeah, and there’s not a good one in the whole bunch. And you’d be like, What do you think?

[00:21:55] What do you say in your beautiful apples? Those are crappy apples. Yeah, so one, one thing that seems to be is that if we’re looking at a situation and you start getting more and more frustrated and overwhelmed, that to me is a call to switch to another frame. And I wonder, there’s a book, I believe it’s called reframing your brain.

[00:22:26] Um, Uh, by Douglas, um,

[00:22:33] not Douglas Adams, Scott Adams. He does the Dilbert comic. And one of the things he said, which is a beautiful reframe for me, is that reframes don’t have to be perfect or true, or they have, they’re useful. So that’s one of the things I talked about when I introduced the workshop. There’s a skill in saying, is there a way to look, is there a frame of reference that I could look at?

[00:22:59] Reperceive the situation that serves me better than the frame that I’ve been using or overusing. So if I look at things through the eyes of perfection, um, either I get a, like a spiritual flood, like, You

[00:23:22] Or I start getting angry that it’s not. And if I switch a frame to, well, is there anything about this that I appreciate? Or, um, that didn’t, that activates me to build something a little better for me and my family or for the, my community. Do you see, like, if I, if I look at something with a frame and then I put the, I want to do work that matters.

[00:23:52] I do. Is there anything in here that matters to me enough that I’m willing to do some work to make it, um, more useful, to serve better, um, and if I look at, if I look at myself, or I look at an external situation, there’s a quality of empowerment and activation. When you find a frame that works for you, it, you can start feeling those tingles.

[00:24:22] Now you, you may have to step your way. If you’re in a very control survival, um, like criticism, critical, the critical eye, the criticizer is trying to stay safe by controlling things. That’s a. I’m pretty sure it’s not 100 percent of the time. Some people just may enjoy, get great pleasure out of criticizing, but the energetic that I’ve experienced around criticizing is I’m trying to stay safe by seeing problems, criticizing them and making them different, controlling them.

[00:24:59] Oh, control frame. Yeah, yeah. Even though I’m a mad scientist and I want to control everything. Yeah, even though it’s really hard for me to look at things uncritically. Even though it’s really hard for me to look at things uncritically. There is harsh criticism. There is harsh criticism. There’s unfair criticism.

[00:25:22] There’s unfair criticism. There’s criticism that’s not even accurate. There’s criticism that’s not even accurate. What else is there other than criticism? What else is there other than criticism? Top of head. Aren’t I supposed to always look at it critically? Aren’t I always supposed to look at it critically?

[00:25:41] Eyebrow. I can always be better. I can always be better. Is that an indictment or an invitation? Is that an indictment or an invitation? Under the eye. I can always be better. I can always be better. Under the nose. That was used through the frame of indictment. That was used through the frame of indictment.

[00:26:01] Chin, and I do it to others. And I do it to others. And then I indict myself for not being better. And I indict myself for not being better. What an old crappy frame. What an old crappy frame. It doesn’t build intimacy. It does not build intimacy. It does not support thriving. It does not support thriving. I wonder what other frames, frames might serve me.

[00:26:26] I wonder what other frames might serve me. Like there’s a frame that I remember using one time when I was just being really super critical. And the frame was, okay, looking at this guy, is there anything about him that isn’t totally shitty?

[00:26:51] Now, if you, if you answer about yourself, that there’s nothing, then you’re really dysregulated less. You go for a walk as my invitation, maybe, um, do something that, you know, can bring you back because I don’t know any human that everything about them is totally shitty, but that’s a frame. It’s like, okay, I’m going to use my critical eye and I’m going to find the things that.

[00:27:18] Are not horrid, horrible, and just disgusting. I think some people get hooked. I’ve, I’ve had the experience of being kind of hooked on that. I’m a shitty person. There’s nothing good about me. And I, for me, I found there’s usually a purpose behind it for me when I was being abused when I was little, if I could make myself not worth anything, be like something really bad, then it wasn’t, didn’t hurt so much that I was being abused.

[00:27:47] Because it was like, Oh, this is just happening to something awful. It was a way to manage the situation. And for me, I had to appreciate that that was there for good reason when I was little. That’s a survival frame, isn’t it? Like, yeah, it’s a survival frame. Yep. It’s a frame like the I’m there’s something wrong with me.

[00:28:06] I’m at fault. Like if you look at everything through the frame of I’m at fault, you can look at the weather. And like, uh, it’s getting hot again because it’s, I must’ve done something wrong. Like, and, um, it works. It’s a survival frame for abuse. It’s like shaming yourself over things that you don’t shame others for.

[00:28:34] Um, that you, it’s not a violation of even your values, but you feel ashamed. Like. Um, Oh, I felt angry the other day. Did you, did you beat on the person? No. Did you yell at them? No. Did you call them names? No. Well, yeah, but I felt angry at them. It’s all my fault. Not okay. Okay, that’s the frame of reference that anger is, inside of me is never okay.

[00:28:58] That’s a survival frame. If you grew up in an environment where if you actually let it show, um, bad things would happen. Your survival would actually be threatened and ruined. Or you believed it would, um, and I include emotional survival in there too. Um, we can say, oh, that’s a survival frame. And you can look at the way that you look at the world.

[00:29:23] It’s a, it’s, these are, I was exploring, Cathy, the, Like, what’s the difference between a belief and a frame of reference? And to me, the reframe is the re looking at something through a different perceptual framework. And some people get this, like they really feel that they’re a horrible sinner, and Occasionally, they get this sense that God doesn’t look at them that way.

[00:30:01] And that is accepting the energy from a reframe. A lot of the spiritual journey from survival and trauma and living a really hard existence to thriving and agility. I recognize that. This is for people that have done some deep work. They’ve, they’re ready to apply these reframes with, um, with savvy, with some skill, and even Um, so someone asked, like, what about a limiting belief?

[00:30:43] Um, a limiting belief would be, um, something like, uh, I could never be wealthy. I could never be wealthy, right? I could, I could never be wealthy. Another kin to that would be, um, all wealthy people are evil and greedy and do bad things to other people. And so, uh, I refuse to ever be wealthy. The frame, the frame of that is looking at the world, filtering out any evidence that wealthy people do anything that is kind, generous, and serving of humanity, and picking out the The wealthy psychopaths who use their wealth in ways that exert power over, where there’s a survival kind of energy there.

[00:31:42] Um, I feel that in my ancestry related to kings and queens and others that might behead me. Um, there’s a quality of caste system that’s, that’s there. There’s a cast system set of frames that we look at the world, um, through that lens for thriving agility is. Well, you know, looking at the, the lens of, well, how do I use my monetary energy now, and you look at like, Oh, you know, I gave that 2 tip to the guy who gave, who served the ice cream and it felt really good and I didn’t have to.

[00:32:24] It was an option. And I feel like some of the energy that I got from doing this workshop flowed to him. And now I don’t know where he’s, what he’s going to do with it, but that feels good. Someone was very generous with a donation, uh, to support the work of thriving now. And I feel like, Oh, I don’t know.

[00:32:44] They’re, they’re, Situation, but I can feel that money can have, like, what is the energy of money that’s flowing to me through me? What do I find? The lens of energy of money as energy is different. Then money is a number, a metric, a status symbol. Money’s a status symbol. If I look at the world through that lens, I feel poor of spirit.

[00:33:13] Like I’m immediately downgraded. It’s like, there’s such a sinking energy. If I look at money as stewardship. Facilitation, um, ways that we support and nourish ourselves and others experiences that the more abundance that we have means that maybe we have time to invest in things that really matter, relationships, um, presence, things that money can’t afford.

[00:33:47] Money can buy, but it’s really nice when it’s part of our kinship together. I do think that going like we were talking about the frames and limiting beliefs or limiting belief is a kind of frame of a way of, of perceiving the world. We acquired them for some reason and we’re holding on tight for some reason.

[00:34:10] Some of it could just be, that’s what I was taught. And I never had the effort. There wasn’t any flex. I wasn’t given role models to see anything different. And I was too scared to, to explore. Um, but sometimes we adopt them for survival reasons. Like we were talking about, like the belief that if we’re have been brought up in families and generations when there wasn’t the possibility of acquiring money, like in some societies, it was very caste system.

[00:34:34] And if you weren’t born into a wealthy family, you just didn’t get money. So just adopting the belief that I’ll never get money kind of is an ease, like, Oh, I don’t have to be jealous. It’s just not me. Holding on to it gives me an ease about it versus in our society. Now there’s a lot more access to information on how to build wealth and how to manage money.

[00:34:55] You know, there wasn’t a hundred years ago. You either kind of knew and you were educated at a good school or you were scrabbling to try to, you know, get enough to get by for a lot of people. If we can look at the reason, the value we got out of the, having that belief. I fit in with my family. I, you know, they, they were, they cared about me.

[00:35:16] Maybe they cared about me more. I fit in and flowed better by adopting their framework, or it was not safe to be angry around anyone in this family. So I adopted the belief that anger has to be suppressed. And I held onto that tightly when we acknowledge the value that we got, the reason that we’re holding on that kind of unlocks the frame and it makes it.

[00:35:38] So it’s a little easier to, to maneuver. If we. If we just blame it and push at it, like bad, bad person for having this belief, to me, that just locks it in place. Our brains adopt these frameworks, these beliefs for a reason. They’re there for a reason. We were not holding on just because we just randomly decided there’s like a survival mechanism there.

[00:36:02] It may not be logical. The things that we adopt, especially between, before three, four, five. Those are not necessarily logical adaptations, but they’re very reasonable, um, in terms of the kid going, I need to survive in this kind of crazy world that I don’t fully understand. This seems to work. I’m going to hold on really tight.

[00:36:25] So if we can appreciate our younger self, we’re like, Hey, that was really smart to pick up the idea that you can never be angry. And you’re bad if you’re angry, because mom and dad didn’t handle anger very well at all. So like smart kid, wow, good job. Now that the hands on the frame become a little looser and there’s more room to explore things.

[00:36:45] So if you notice yourself beating yourself up for a certain belief or framework, see if you can just take a breath and go, Hmm, why might I have held onto this? Why did I pick it up to begin with? And if we start noticing those things, I find it gives, it seems to give some leeways, some ways to like, you know, peek around the corner of the frame and see something different.

[00:37:07] Um, but beating ourself up, I’ve never seen it work. I’ve never seen anyone beat themselves out of a different, into a different frame of reference. I’m, I’m drawn to a little exercise here. Um, I, I suspect most of us know what the Mona Lisa looks like.

[00:37:33] So the Mona Lisa is a work of art done long time ago, and they have a frame around it.

[00:37:47] Now, imagine that we reframe the Mona Lisa with barbed wire and, and, and bits of cloth. Maybe even like, God, is that a bloodstain kind of thing? So here’s a woman that was painted and the frame around her is barbed wire.

[00:38:19] That changes our feeling, at least it does for me. Yeah, and so this beautiful golden frame around this person that looks kind of serene and slightly happy, it’s like, Ugh, what is this person experiencing?

[00:38:39] If I imagine them going to, like, the local, uh, target, And picking up a frame, a little nicer, a little upgrade. Right. And I, I take off the barb wire because you know, I’m the, I refuse to keep seeing the Mona Lisa through this. And I put this nice black, you know, lacquer frame 17 and 99 cents. I put it around this.

[00:39:16] This expression of art and artistry. Um, well now I’ve definitely, I’ve definitely changed it a bit. Have I? I’ve actually not changed the Mona Lisa at all, but the frame impacts it. Very much. And if we can allow our bones and our brain and our, our gut to recognize that if I, if I look at myself through the lens of do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do I look at, do I look at myself as a productive doer?

[00:39:54] That’s a frame. Was I productive today? Was I a good doer? Did I get it all done? That’s a frame of reference. We’re called human beings. How was I as a human being today? Did I experience life? Did I connect with people? Whoa! Suddenly now, we’re looking at the same day and the same actions with a different frame.

[00:40:29] If I look at the frame as If I’m on a journey, like there’s a, there are certain frames about life. Like it’s a journey on this journey. What would I like to memor memorialize within myself, within my notes, within other things, that’s a frame. And we can reperceive a single day, a single hour, a single experience of our lives through infinite frames.

[00:41:03] I’m, uh, someone said, this is kind of hard to do taking off my own barbed wire. Okay. Well then ask somebody else who looks at you without a barbed wire frame. How do you see me? Ask another person. Ask another person. And yeah, baby step by baby step. I, if you see yourself through a barbed wire frame, maybe experiment and explore.

[00:41:28] I appreciate that, that it is hard. Barb wire frames that are part of our self image. Um, what does barb wire do? We put it up to protect or contain or contain. Yeah. Keep in or keep out. And, um, the baby step is, is there any other frame that I would like to see myself that doesn’t feel like it is. Um, like if you’re used to looking at yourself with a survival frame, um, some people, it’s much easier if they jump to like a holy divine frame.

[00:42:11] I remember someone said, I just looked at myself in the, in the mirror one day and I said, well, God doesn’t make no shit. And then they laughed because they had just gotten up off the toilet. Right. Because sometimes our frame of reference. We’ll find us if we’re open to it. If we recognize that, you know, the Mona Lisa doesn’t belong in that.

[00:42:34] And maybe I’m not that kind of work of art. Cause I’m living still alive. I’m still growing and exploring. What if I looked at myself through the lens of an emotional explorer?

[00:42:53] What if I took one thing that matters to me and I looked at myself or the world through that lens? Yeah, one thing that’s helped me a lot when I’ve been stuck in a frame about myself like being a piece of shit or being bad is Imagine when I talk to my niece this way, when I talk to my, my dear sister this way, or my best friend, imagining how they would feel and kind of stepping into them like, Oh, my sister made a mistake when she did that, but I still love her.

[00:43:25] I’m not telling her she’s a pile of shit. I’m like, Oh, that really sucks. I can see why you did that. Let’s figure out how to fix it. So like, for me, that’s one way I, cause I couldn’t turn it on myself to begin with. My muscles for holding onto that frame of self criticism were so built up and so tight that I couldn’t imagine talking to myself differently, but I could imagine like, Oh, if this was my niece, what would I say to her?

[00:43:52] If this, I could imagine it for someone else outside of myself. Um, and also just realize that just by being on this call or hanging out with people that are talking about different perspectives, the survival brain is like, what, what is this thing you’re talking about? I do not understand. Um, and we are, most of us have numerous frames we use.

[00:44:14] We have some that are locked in place, but like I was using the example with Rick earlier is we have the, many of us have like, We put on, so when I’m in financial planning hat, I look at like, how can I save money? This is a waste of money. This is good. It’s all from the evaluation of what value am I getting for this money?

[00:44:34] Am I able to save some? And last week I went to a very, very nice dinner with a friend who was moving out of town. And if I was just wearing the financial hat, I’m like, Oh my God, that was a hundred dollars. That’s a lot of money for a dinner. And yet if I put on the beingness hat or the experience hat, it was one of the nicest dinners I’ve ever had.

[00:44:54] And I got to say goodbye to this friend who was really dear to me. And the food, I’ve never had Italian food that good. So like that evening was so worth that money. But then if I just put on the hat of experience, I might say, well, let’s go to that Italian restaurant every night. Let’s go. Why are we not doing this all the time?

[00:45:12] And the financial, the financial part’s like, oh, let’s find a balance here. I think healthy people have a balance of the different perspectives. It’s not about saving every penny and eating only peanut butter sandwiches every day for lunch. It’s about finding a bet. Like, how can I, Sometimes save money and be reasonable and also have really fun experiences.

[00:45:33] And it’s less black and white and easy to constrain. Like it’s, it’s more subjective and we have to be present with ourselves and mindful with ourselves and our overall picture for what we want for ourselves is more complex than just, this is good, this is bad. And I think when we’re traumatized, scared, or.

[00:45:55] Not very well resourced. We want to hold on to this is good. This is bad. I remember my grandfather talking about when he first came over from Italy. Um, it was very much Italians were very negatively viewed at that time in our, in our history in the U S and it was just, you know, like they were just like, Oh, Italians are lazy.

[00:46:13] What he used to tell me a whole list of things he’d heard, but people were just like fixated like this. There’s no good Italian. Like, huh. Anytime you say always, never all. So, you know, none, we’re probably looking through a very tight framework because most people, we were all in Gaussians. There’s some good people, some bad people everywhere, or like some people that have things we like and something things we don’t like.

[00:46:38] So, um, I just think it helps to like, realize that we’re all looking through different frameworks, different, different times. We’ll put on different frames. Like I see things differently when I’m at work generally than when I’m hanging out with my four year old niece, I’m going to focus on different things.

[00:46:55] So. Realize you already are changing framework some, but you want to have freedom for some that are really overwhelming the picture. Um, so you’re not completely broken if that helps, if you’re having trouble with one or two of them.

[00:47:12] So a reframe of being bad or being stuck. Um, those, if I look at that as a belief, I am bad. How, how do you land on, on that belief as this, As a frame of reference That’s a judgmental frame. I am judging judge and jury guilty bad person I am bad.

[00:47:46] We we have a judger in in our primitive brain. I say, okay Yeah, my judge is seeing it that way.

[00:48:00] How would and You could say something like, well, I’m guessing Cathy might see me a little differently. I, I don’t have to buy it, but if I were to look at myself, perhaps the way that Cathy might see me,

[00:48:27] what frame of reference might that be? It could be that, um,

[00:48:38] you spend time just say, look, this is, this is, these are glasses. I’ve had the, the glasses of self judgment and self criticism. I look at my life. Um, if I was really stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, I wouldn’t get out of bed. I wouldn’t, I just, I just, You know, never move. My cells would stop replicating.

[00:49:01] I would stop breathing. I’d be dead. That’s stuck. If I’m moving, I’m breathing, I’m from a perspective of a bio organism, you’re not stuck if you’re still breathing. And even after we die, we’re not stuck. We’re decomposing, right? Um, so I know that it’s a, it’s a pain point because, um, we can look at Um, ourselves as in the, in the progress frame of reference.

[00:49:34] Well, you know, have I reached my goal? So like goal setting as a frame of reference. Um, if you, it does not work for me, it works great for a lot of other types of personality types. For me, it’s disastrous to set a goal. So. If I set a goal, I automatically feel stuck and unaccomplished, no, no matter what. Um, so that’s a frame of reference.

[00:50:00] If I look at it, it’s like, what matters to me? Um, what feels right for me to, to put my life force in? This is about life changing work. I put that in there because it takes chi. And so a frame of reference is, this matters to me enough to put my, my life force toward it. And if you look at it from the frame of a long term perspective of doing work that matters, the doing work that matters is very different than achieving a goal.

[00:50:35] And try it on. It may not be one that you like. Go ahead. Oh, sorry. For if when I’m, I get it, I can get caught up in that. I’m a bad person. I’m a bad person thing. I resonate with that. One of the things I’ve started doing that’s really worked well for me is what am I bad for? What am I bad for? Because usually we’re defining ourselves or comparing ourselves to some imagined self or something someone else had.

[00:51:05] And if we were brought up and our family was always saying, this is how you’re supposed to be. This is what you’re supposed to look like. And maybe you look like this. Like this duck. You’re like, Oh, I’m bad. I’m a very bad stone. This duck is a very bad stone. This stone is really good for like a paperweight or a worry stone.

[00:51:25] It’s pretty, but it’s not very good to take in the bathtub. It’s just gonna sit at the bottom. You might step up, you know, lay on it. It might not feel good. This is just, you know, like what am I bad for? Why am I bad? Like, what am I comparing myself to? It’s very hard to fight. I am bad. It’s very general and it’s hard to like, okay, I’m bad.

[00:51:46] What do I do now? I’m just a bad person versus what am I bad for? And what am I bad compared to? And once we start getting specific, it’s like, Oh, I am a very bad paperweight. I am too light. I, you know, I, I float on water. I can get knocked over. I’m a bad paperweight, but I’m an excellent bath companion.

[00:52:06] Like I think when we can break it down to like, Oh, I’m supposed to be like this. Cause they always told me, no, I’m not. So I’m supposed to be me. Me doesn’t look like this. What am I bad for? What am I good for? When we get specific, there’s freedom. We can start breaking down those old beliefs. Because I think, often, people have ideals.

[00:52:27] Like, everybody should fit in this cookie cutter. And if you don’t, anything outside of that is bad. Versus, huh, I love how Rick and Jem raise Adira. It’s like, who do you want to, how do you want to express yourself? They’re not trying to corral her. or herd her into being a certain way. I mean, obviously don’t run in the road, don’t draw on all the walls, but there’s like an expression.

[00:52:50] She gets to explore who she wants to be. And unfortunately, many of us were not raised that way. We were raised that if you don’t look like this or act like this, you are bad. Versus like, who said? Like, who get, who, who define what the cookie cutter is supposed to look like? I don’t want to look like that.

[00:53:07] I want to be me. And I think that specificity can help you break free a little bit. So, um, I wanted to do a little tapping, Rick, if, if, if it’s okay. Yeah, I’d like to take a break here. Um, yeah. Reframe. What am I good for? I was about to say that. And for me, it’s like. Well, how, how might I be useful in a way that, that nourishes me and others?

[00:53:38] Um, I, uh, the frame of good and bad feels very survival to me in a world of abundance and bless us, we have 8 billion unique individuals on the planet or more. Um,

[00:53:58] what, what is my hardest, like looking at yourself through what matters to me that I want to bring forth? Well, how is it enjoyable for me to be useful to others? The, the looking at life through what might give me a simple uplift. That’s very unique. People have to step through that usefulness, though, before they can get to the space of can I just be me and just enjoy the breath coming in and out of my body.

[00:54:29] Can I just enjoy. The light, you know, the smiles of someone’s face. I think there is something to just the beingness, but I have an experience that I can jump from, I am bad to being this. I think I have to go through the specificity first, if that. Yeah. That frame of I’m a human being, not a human doing, like how am I being, what is the vibe that I, I’m, Just in my breath.

[00:54:57] Um, so we’re going to take a seven minute break here. It’s a good, if you’re watching the recording, thank you for being with us. We feel all the people that would downstream are going to get a chance to, to look at this that aren’t here live. Many of them are in Europe, having a nice sleep, I hope. Um, and consider.

[00:55:21] Like, what is it, perhaps there’s a frame that you actually haven’t made conscious that supports your thriving. Because I believe that there’s a frame that got you to be here, a frame that got you to engage. And that’s a, that’s a thriving frame, in my view, in my world. Um, the, even if you’re suffering with your, only seeing yourself with barbed wire around your visage, um, there’s something about you.

[00:55:53] A frame of reference that allows you to keep going and to be here with us, and I’d love to hear some of that. If during the break you want to, um, to say some things in the chat, that would be great. And we’ll continue with our tapping. Uh, we’ll make it back. All right. I’m going to go ahead and pause.

[00:56:20] Welcome back. Um, you wanted to do some tapping and I I’ve got such a we’ve got such a great example of Frames and how they can serve us and how they can really leave us in a

[00:56:39] conundrum If we don’t agilely switch to other frames, so someone wrote very courageously. Um, I am bad for saying unkind things to my child when I am angry, and I am bad for telling my child how to improve her practice and work and performance when she doesn’t want to hear, uh, or do it that way. I don’t see how any of that is bad.

[00:57:06] So the crude frame of judgment of a mother that isn’t bad, how that isn’t bad, how I don’t see how any of that isn’t bad. Thank you. Right. So, if I’m looking at my parenting through the, the, the lens. of judgment. Judgment says guilty, innocent, guilty, not guilty, good, bad, right, wrong. It’s a crude kind of thing, but knowing you and knowing how much you want to be a good parent, see, good, bad, um, you’re seeing behaviors that through the lens of judgment don’t fit the good there.

[00:58:03] So

[00:58:07] there’s nothing inaccurate about that. If we can’t argue with, if, if you look at that and you see this is, this is bad, but notice it lands in identity, right? And that’s trauma. Yeah, that, if you have a pathway from, um, I said an unkind thing to my child, to I’m a bad person, I’m a terrible parent, that’s trauma, um, where most of the world has been traumatized enough that they have that pathway.

[00:58:41] That’s my view. That’s my perspective. The trauma lends on that. So what do we do with that? Okay. EFT emotional freedom says, what am I aware of? I, I have some reactions. Notice. Trauma informed frame says, I have reactions that kick off me saying unkind things. I’m aware of that. Tap, tap, tap. I accept myself that I have this reaction and what matters to me is kindness.

[00:59:13] Kindness matters to me so much. You tune into, like, and I’m going to start with being kind to me. I’m a human, a parent, stressed, have some significant challenges, um, and who really wants to upgrade from the way that she was parented, the way that, um, I am parenting right now. I want to continue to upgrade.

[00:59:42] Now, if that matters to you, is that good or bad? I don’t choose to look at it, go back to the judgment frame. I stay in the frame of I want to be, I want to teach emotional freedom to my kids. I want to teach, teach, I want to be kind and I’m not always. So awareness, acceptance, How might I adapt? If I say something unkind, how do I, how am I going to clean that up in a way that really matters to me, that feels like what I want to pass down generation to generation and share with other humans?

[01:00:21] Um, if I’m finding that I look at my child through the critical lens, um, Okay, of course I can look through my, at my child through the critical lens. I can look at my child through the lens of terror and fear for their survival. That’s a lens. And I can also look at the same situation through a different lens.

[01:00:43] What lens would serve me? And when you switch lens to something like, well, what matters to me here? And what are some next baby steps for me? What are some small ways that I can, I can, I can shift that? If it stayed, and I, I really do believe that, um, if we, if we recognize that, that our criticism comes from a lens of criti of control and judgment, and then it turns on ourself, and we switch to one of love, abundance, kindness, and forgiveness.

[01:01:22] Um, willingness, humility, like the lens of humility is different than the lens of I’m guilty or good or bad. Does that make sense? If I look at it like I’m a humble human doing the best that I can at parenting and I am not perfect and I have yet to find a perfect parent, um, that does not change the fact that kindness matters to my heart and my gut and my womb and my soul.

[01:01:49] And I want to have as much of that. And that’s something that I, that’s life changing work. It’s life changing for me as an adult. It’s life changing for my daughter to even be exposed to a mother who’s willing to do gut wrenching, life changing. See the frame? That’s a frame of the courage that you show by sharing this is life changing work that you’re doing.

[01:02:16] I, uh, I don’t have anyone else in my ancient history that I sense did that kind of work. Um, and so thank you for being that person in my frame of reference, moving, moving into, yeah, kindness really matters to me. I was, You know, these are the levels of kindness that I have, I’ve, I do when I go unkind. Uh, I’m working on that, actively putting work into it.

[01:02:49] Go ahead, Cathy. Yeah. I’d love to do because the same person mentioned that they’re going to be critical to themselves and to others. It seems to be a pattern. Um, and we’re holding on to something that I just like to just try it on just karate chop, even though I’m really afraid to let go of this critical pattern.

[01:03:06] All Even though I’m really afraid to let go of this critical pattern. I need to hold on tight. Don’t I need to hold on tight? I need to drive myself and others to stay safe. I, I need to drive myself and others to stay safe. Oh, that, that hits. Huh. I wonder if that might be a primitive brain reaction. I wonder if that might be a primitive brain reaction.

[01:03:33] I’m really scared. I’m really scared. And I’m open to trying. on new possibilities. And I’m open to trying on new possibilities. It sounds like my parents might have used this tool a lot on me.

[01:03:53] It feels like my parents might have used this tool a lot on me. I brought a lot of criticism. A lot of criticism. Side of the eye, this is how I show love. This is how I show love. Under the eye, I push you really hard. Push you really hard. Under the nose, I notice all the things you did bad. I notice all the things you did bad.

[01:04:16] Chin, I’m just going to push you because I love you. I push you because I love you. Collarbone. You won’t survive otherwise. I need to save you from yourself. I need to stop coughing up a parenting furball. I need to save you from yourself. Under the arm. That was the main tool they used. That was the main tool they used.

[01:04:43] Top of the head. No wonder that’s a tool I turn to. No wonder that’s a tool I turned to. Eyebrow, that was one of the only tools I learned. It’s one of the only tools I learned. Side of the eye, but beating myself is not making me kinder. Yeah. Beating myself is not making me kinder. Under the eye, and it’s really obscuring some of the things that are happening.

[01:05:05] It’s obscuring some of the things that are happening. Under the nose, I offer my kid direction because I care about her. I offer my kid direction because I really, deeply, and truly care about her. And I’d like to adjust the way I share that caring.

[01:05:27] I’d like to adjust the way I share that caring. But that doesn’t mean the caring isn’t there. Doesn’t mean the caring isn’t there. Maybe there’s more good in me than I realize.

[01:05:42] Maybe there’s more good in me than I realize. Help with that. And I’m open to finding new ways of sharing that goodness and caring. And I’m open to finding new ways of sharing that goodness and caring. Just take a nice deep breath.

[01:06:00] I think that when we, we make it like this is bad and wrong, we tend not to see the good, the intention behind it. And if we can kind of stop, if we can kind of like look at the gray a little, if we can appreciate the things that are really in there, it gives us a lot more leverage. So if I’m just, that’s bad and wrong, I’m going to wipe it off the table.

[01:06:22] Wait, I’m throwing the baby out with the bath water. The core, the core drive is to care about this person and help them feel safe, be safer in a world that can be scary sometimes. I’m doing it out of love, but I don’t like how I’m expressing that love. The love I don’t want to get rid of. I just want to change the clothes it’s wearing and how, you know, the tone it’s using.

[01:06:44] So I don’t have to throw everything away. I’m not a bad person. I’m really caring. Wow, that’s wonderful. And I don’t have a lot of skill or role model for expressing it in other ways. And I can even tell my kid, Hey, that did not come out the way I meant it to. Thank you so much for, you know, you’re doing such good work and I’d love to help you with it.

[01:07:05] I know this is really important and I, some parts of me are scared for you sometimes, but you’re doing great. And I may mess up sometimes, but I’m going to role model that we can point at, like, notice something’s not right and tell other people and apologize and course correct, that is beautiful. Like that’s a gift that very few kids get.

[01:07:26] So I think the love and the care is all there. And if you can, rather than trying to throw everything away and just, I am bad, I’m, I, I should never criticize. I think it’s okay to say, Hey, did you notice you could have done this better? Would you like some help with that? There’s nothing wrong with that.

[01:07:45] But the tone and the quote, the clothes that the carrying is wearing might end up great from what your parents passed down. Well, that’s a frame, upgrade frame. Um, my, my first teacher of reframes. Um, Notice that my, my words were very black and white, good, bad, um, very dramatic, meaning that I was, I was, I, I ended up landing on one end of the spectrum or the other, and there wasn’t much nuance and, and the like.

[01:08:25] Now remember, um, she said, um, I’d like you to practice discernment. And I don’t think anyone had ever used that word. And I was like, what does that mean?

[01:08:45] So at the time I was, uh, the doctor said I was dying of a disease. And she said, pay attention to the sensations that you get. And in love, instead of labeling them as. unbearable, killing me, discern more of the range. It wasn’t a zero to 10 scale that we use in tapping a lot, but it was just discerning where it is, what, what sound it might make.

[01:09:23] What is its complexion? Is there anything that feels connected to these things that we ask ourselves in, in the work that we do with emotional freedom? And it was fascinating. If I, if I looked at my body through the eyes of someone who was dying that needed to be fixed in order to survive. Any pain is bad.

[01:09:45] The same body and really the same pain when I started. Through the lens of discernment, the frame, I re perceived my pain, I re perceived what was going on in my body, I re perceived how my body was reacting to anything that I took in, my perception, my, through the eyes of survival, um, everything seemed like it was harming me.

[01:10:15] Discerning more of a gradient changed everything. I could move incrementally toward things that gave me more pleasure, more nourishment that sat better with me, that felt like they were getting to the parts of me that were depleted.

[01:10:37] And I still do that. So the lens of discernment to build a deeper awareness, that is a reframe from fixing and what’s wrong with it. The critical eye. Um, I still have a critical eye and if I, if I switch frames to one that’s more useful, well then I. I build my life force. I get more energy. It feels like the cooperative components of the world.

[01:11:10] Um, there’s a lot of spiritual wisdom. Thou shalt not judge. Well, we’re gonna judge. What does that mean? Well, judging is not a particularly useful reframe, uh, frame of reference for ourselves and, um, our children. Um, discernment is. You used a term, the course correction. So if I’m a explorer navigator with some agility, resilient agility, um, well, if something’s not working as a parent or as a business owner, if, if what I’m wanting to build is, you know, if I’m building sandcastles and then they’re right where the high tide comes up, And it gets washed away.

[01:11:55] Ah, I can’t do this. I’ll never work. I’ve, you know, I’ve tried it 200 times. And a failure. Right, right. That’s seeing a business through the eyes of judgment and criticism and, and success, like success and failure. Was it a success? Was it a failure? Most of our media looks at that that way in a thriving business.

[01:12:19] It’s like, Hey, what’s, what’s nourishing me. Is there anything that’s depleting me? What is bringing in energy? Um, what are people responding to? Um, what feels congruent with my values? Those are discernments, questioning, discerning questions that if you look at what, you know, the life changing work that you want to do in the world and with yourself, uh, that it fundamentally changes what you get.

[01:12:48] Um, I think it can be really useful to look at things through different frames. Uh, I don’t know what the Mona Lisa would look like if it had no frame, for example. Like, what is the, the frame of, you know, raw and real? What is raw and real? And if you’re deep and close with people, as I get to be in my work and in some of my kinships, I could look at someone raw and real.

[01:13:20] Now if I throw judgment on top of it, that’s not going to be very pleasant. It’s not going to feel good. But when we look at things through these frames, um, I know I’m repeating myself. Because part of, one of my frames is repetition is part of how we as students learn and teachers share. Um, when you land on a frame of, a reframe that works for you, it won’t be the whole picture.

[01:13:55] We’re wise enough to know that it’s not the only way to look at it, but it’ll serve you. You’ll feel, and I, I believe that we can learn to feel the yes of a frame that works for us.

[01:14:16] Resonates like you said support. It supports your well being. Someone had written in an email before the call. They’re not going to be able to be here right now, but they were talking about their family and discovered something about them that they don’t approve of, or they think they won’t. The family won’t approve of.

[01:14:32] And it was interesting to notice that the email to me sounded like they were very much looking through the parent’s perspective. How do I know what, how they’re feeling? I don’t know what they’re feeling. How do I adjust to what they’re feeling versus how do I feel about this thing that, like, My family was not happy when I said, I’m dating humans.

[01:14:53] I don’t really care. You know, they don’t have to be male. I’m okay with dating other humans that want to date me. Um, they were not happy with that and it was really easy to get caught up in how do I make them happy? How do I. deal with their feelings, but like, how do I feel about how they’re reacting? I’m changing.

[01:15:10] I talk sometimes about the very large array of, uh, uh, it’s a microscope in, in, uh, in New Mexico where they have all these satellite dishes that looks out in outer space and you can kind of tune them, turn the dish to look other places. Can we turn it to ourselves? How do I feel about how they might react?

[01:15:30] How do I feel about this knowledge? That’s a different perspective than we often, I think many of us are tuned outwardly, how are they going to deal with it? Are they going to still love me? It’s like, huh, how do I feel about the fact? I’m not sure how my parents are going to feel about me. Are they going to still talk to me if they find out I I’ve dated women?

[01:15:49] Um, huh, maybe I don’t really like that they’re doing that. So I think that when we can. include several perspectives, like me, like, Hey, I have compassion. This is probably new information for you. You’re not used to dealing with it. And I can still be okay with myself. You’re like, this is who I am. And I want my own self expression.

[01:16:09] I don’t have to contort myself to fit into your worldview. But I can have compassion that this might be, you know, kind of unusual and new and give a little leeway. So I think it’s, I think it’s important to include the perspective of our own well being, our own self expression when we’re trying to deal with other people.

[01:16:29] And I think often we’ve been trained out of that. We’re so focused on, what is Rick going to say if I tell him this thing? Is he going to be mad or is he going to, you know, never speak to me again? Versus, you know, How would I like to respond? And how would I be okay with myself anyway? And can I give him some space?

[01:16:47] Maybe he needs to go and consider things for a little while and then come back and and talk about it. You can give us balance when we have multiple perspectives when we only have one. It’s like standing on one foot. And it’s really easy to get pushed over. Um, if we can let ourselves see, like, kind of, several different around us and we can have good friends that have, Hey, did you consider this?

[01:17:09] What if this happens? I love the collective because we can see things from, like, Rick’s gonna have different perspectives than me. And, you know, someone else might have other perspectives. So, like, we can put them together and borrow from each other and inspire each other. So that we’re like, Oh, I feel pretty balanced.

[01:17:26] There might be some surprises, but I feel like I’ve kind of seen this from some really good directions and kind of get it now. I feel pretty solid in myself and I, I love that freedom of like having agility means I have to be able to be balanced and not just pushed over. really easily. I can bounce from this idea to this idea pretty easily.

[01:17:47] So I want that for me. I want that for all of you. And I love the idea that we can practice with different frames so that it’s like, Oh yeah, this one’s not working for me. This is not making me feel good. And it’s not seeming to add, add to my chances of survival. So why am I wearing it? Why do I still have it?

[01:18:06] Why do I put it on?

[01:18:14] Hmm. Thank you. Interesting thing about this journey, this work that we do together, and the skill of even exploring it together, um, in a, in a world where there, there are lots of people who are, um, their frame of reference is the only frame of reference. I appreciate so deeply and completely that there’s more room and more spaciousness.

[01:18:49] For us together to look at frames that can serve us and serve our thriving and serve the work that matters. Um, there’s a lot that I feel right now that the world is calling to be built by the Freedom Kin. Um, we have lots of frames. that are around survival. Um, what frames do serve are thriving for our community?

[01:19:22] There’s a frame of an ecosystem, for example. And when that kid frame came to me, it started to encompass many of the little emotion, the, the emotional things that are a part of it. Things like generosity and kindness, presence, compassion. Even looking at a business that you might build as an ecosystem as a frame of reference of an ecosystem of which you are an integral part, and it’s a we space.

[01:19:53] So we space that you invite your clients. Um, it impacts the other people that you’re connected to, um, whether they are in your work or it’s, um, something that influences you. By the time and energy that you put into that we space if we try on the ecosystem approach, you know, there’s You walk out on a trail in nature and there’s all kinds of things.

[01:20:23] There’s fallen trees and fresh sprouts. There’s the first red leaf of fall that comes in August. Um, there’s so many things that are part of our ecosystem and agility when we’re building something that matters to us does include the ability to change our perspective, to look really deeply and closely.

[01:20:50] You might do that. For a particular relationship or a particular offering to, to really take the, uh, um, the microscopic closeness, really look at it, even the subatomic level, um, and then there’s the. The zooming out and taking a look at the ecosystem as it’s nourishing and flourishing or not, um, areas where the energy might be stagnant.

[01:21:20] Like I said, I, I think that any of us could look at our lives and say, well, what’s stuck and come up with a list. Yeah. If I look at what is calling for flow, what is calling for energy, What’s calling for a flush or just to, to move or reorient? What’s call calling for a reorientation, um, to accentuate something else as the season changes, um, our businesses have seasons, our businesses and the world has a climate that’s, you know, our political climates and other things, these are all changing.

[01:21:58] What do we, how do we want to be building and doing work that allows us to thrive too? To be agile, to find frames that deplete us and overwhelm us and shifted over to something else. Is that hard? I think it’s only hard because it’s not quite as natural. I believe that, that we’ve been doing that. Those of us that have done tapping, we, we include reframes and I choose to feel that’s a reframe, you know, um, we’re doing it.

[01:22:31] The more that we make it a skill that we celebrate, Oh, I see what you did there. You, you really saw this. Through a different frame of reference. And I can feel the empowerment that you get from that. Um, we have a community center thriving now dot center. That’s where the replay, um, is home. Um, invite you to share some reframes that have worked for you, things that you noticed and recognize this is not an obligation, but it is a way that we can build together.

[01:23:03] Uh, the kind of. of sharing of wisdom and reframes that work. Uh, I think both Cathy and I have humbly acknowledged. We don’t know what’s going to work for you or you or you or you Um, and I love the fact that i’ve gotten to spend thousands of hours of my life with people Exploring reframes and when they land, wow, it’s such a beautiful thing Oh, you can feel it You know, it’s like, ah, this wouldn’t works for me, you know, for now.

[01:23:40] And yes, for now thriving. Now find a reframe that, that, that serves you better. There are books, there are web resources. Um, you can even use AI to ask it, you know, how in the world might I reframe this one? Some of them might even give you a surprising answer. So, uh, and we are here. Our inbox is open supportathrivingnow.

[01:24:03] com comes to both Cathy and to myself. Um, and yeah, you’re welcome to use that as well as the public, uh, community center. Thank you, Cathy. Yeah. Thanks all for being here and exploring this. It’s a curiosity of trying on and I love that we can do it together. Bye everyone. ​

Great to have you on this journey with us!

1 Like

Thank you both for this presentation, I have been very successful at reframing many things in my life and find others tend to gravitate towards me for helping them and it usually ends up being a reframing job! :framed_picture: I am hung up on reframing exits (as you know, Rick)… .going to pick up the Dilbert guy’s book you mentioned and see if that sparks anything!

1 Like

Did you ever play any sports? I think about “practice is over, time to leave the court” as one frame for when our work is a practice with different drills. Even “Alright! Game over, tomorrow is a new day.”

Tennis players might use game, set, match.

So many reframes are possible! As Scott says in his book, finding one that strikes you as useful now is what matters.

Thanks, Rick, those are good ideas, but I never played sports competitively… I have always enjoyed bike riding, racquetball, jogging and yoga, but I don’t really feel like I have a good frame of reference in that direction… I feel like the answer or the solution is just out of my grasp and I really appreciate your helping me find it because I believe that once I do, it will be a game changer for meeeeee!

Any activities you do that have a natural spot where you can feel that something is over / done / time to leave?

I feel that when I am walking an out & back – there is a point where it feels right to pause, savor, and turn around and head back.

In a hot tub, there’s a point where I’m “done” and get out. Same with a shower.

A graceful exit is, to me, a place where we perhaps had expectations but they were not met – and it’s okay! Natural to recognize it and leave. A band we thought would be good – but really isn’t. A yard sale that looked like it might have things we want, but quickly shows it does not.

If you have resistance even in daily things outside your trading about “leaving” or “I need to stick it out” then those could be the super useful places to tap on what comes up for you. Developing the clear and graceful exit is the strongest tool in our emotional freedom (in my view).

Hey, I really appreciate this conversation! Out and back walk totally resonates for me as I do that regularly! I do know what my yes & no feel like. So that brings me to recognize that although I know what that feels like for sure and I also know for sure that I also feel that same feeling when I am trading, but I don’t honor it when I’m trading… I don’t understand it. I’m aware of it certainly and something in me overrides that feeling, but only when I am trading, if you could help me unravel this further you will be my hero, Rick!

“If I leave this trade right now, I will/might (what)?”

Doesn’t have to be logical.

Free association the first thing that came up is “ be safe “
Hmmmmm

1 Like

Solid association.

I love an easy drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Sometimes, racing up behind me is some person in a rush, willing to try and PRESS me to go faster.

To take a savvy exit over to the side allows me to let go of the direct impact of someone else’s “different idea” of where we are going and what pace is right. I get to return to the journey the way I want it to go.

It isn’t LEAVING. The exit is for the moment. To restore pace and clarity.

I also do this when someone is travelling absurdly below the speed limit. Take an exit, pause, meditate, instead of trying to make the journey work to my liking when it isn’t.

Empowering!
Rick

Thanks, Rick that is a beautiful analogy… I can easily apply that! I see you have a real skills on exits so I am going to check that out next!

You can’t change your past, but you can reframe it.
Find the lesson in it. Find the opportunity in it. Pull the teachable moment out of it and share with others. You can’t choose your history, but you can choose the story you tell about it. ~ James Clear

This seems to be my core practice right now. I am noticing frames that feel harsh in my body-mind, ways that I can by default see things that end up making me feel ick.

The Judgment Frame is always available.

It just makes any art or act of heartistry look like shit.

These five rules will get you started: Reframes don’t need to be true or even logical. Reframes only need to work. You can quickly test reframes in your mind and body. A reframe approaches a topic from a new perspective. If the reframe creates an advantage, keep it. ~ Scott Adams

This is core, for me, to Emotional Creativity. It is freeing to explore frames that are not “provable” – indeed, so many of the reframes that work best for me would be arguable! Still, my body, mind, and spirit say YES and savor the relief and empowerment.