Bill: Welcome to another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching Podcast with Marty Kettlehut, Dr. Marty Kettlehut and Results Coach Bill Tierney. That's me. Hey Bill. Hey, how's it going? Good, thanks. Going 20 seconds later. We've already been, again, in a robust conversation and, I said, hey, wait, wait, let's hit record because this is, and what we're talking about is that

Bill: developing this skillset that many of us never were even introduced to until we were of the ability of taking that attention muscle and using it to focus inside. How? So an initial question is, how do you do that? And another question would be, why do that? And another question would be, what's the consequences of not ever knowing that you can do that?

Bill: Oh, gosh. Yeah, there's so many places to jump in. And the 1st thing I think I want to share if you don't mind is a story from gosh, how 30 years ago. I can, I can hold that, so I'm just going to hold this story from 30 years ago and give you a chance to say your initial thoughts about this .

Marty: It is fascinating. It's a very good question because, we're sort of trained through our schooling, I mean, grade school, high school, everybody's education is training us to be outward focused right to to try and get the world to be the way we want it to be.

Marty: On the outside, so that then we can relax and be happy and safe and turns out we don't really have any control over the outside world. And so there's no happiness. There's no safety down that tunnel at all. And that's all we've been given. And it wasn't until I got out of school, There are people who are raised in spiritual communities who probably get some of this training early on, but a lot of us don't and because the external world is transient and we have no control over it, we can't find happiness that we can't find the stability that we're looking for.

Marty: We can't find the joy that we're looking for, because as soon as you latch on to that, you know, bottle of gin. Then it becomes something that doesn't work for you to keep you happy. Or that person who's gonna be the answer to all of your prayers and then they die of cancer.

Marty: Like, what do you do? So you really need to learn. We all need to learn to connect inside with ourselves. There's an infinitude inside there to like, you can connect through yourself to the everybody else and everything else in the universe if you go deep and are a patient, but that's where the real fulfillment is.

Bill: I'm glad I slowed down and asked because obviously you have a lot to say about this. That's great. Thank you for sharing all that. And it's a nice start. As you were talking, you might have noticed that I was somewhat distracted and that distraction was because I wanted to grab a quote that I think is going to be perfect for this conversation.

Bill: That's from Viktor Frankl. I bet you know which one it is. Go ahead. Lay it on me, baby. Between stimulus and response, there is a space, and that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Beautiful. That space is in here somewhere. I'm pointing to my chest.

Bill: It's in here somewhere. It's in my inner space, my inner world. So if I don't know how to take my attention from you and everything else out there, including you and bring it inside to notice what's happening in here, I don't have a chance to get into that space. That leads me to my story.

Marty: Uh huh.

Bill: Great. I'm in my second marriage. My first wife died of a brain tumor. I had been sober seven years when that happened. And everybody around me in my community of recovery thought I might drink because of that, but it never occurred to me to drink until somebody said, are you thinking of drinking?

Bill: And it just wasn't appealing to me. Whatever had happened in those seven years had kind of wiped completely out the idea that drinking would be a good idea and in any circumstance, and I can't imagine a worse circumstance than that. My wife died and I've got an eight year old son and a nine year old daughter and now I'm going to raise them and she was the mother.

Bill: She was basically doing both parenting jobs. I had given myself credit for going to work and earning a living and that was enough for me. So I wasn't much of a parent. And now she's gone and all the help that had been around for the last 14 months, supporting me and my two kids and her while she was dying was gone.

Bill: They'd gone back home. I was in just a tremendous amount of pain and had very little conscious awareness that I was in pain. All that I knew was that I couldn't be busy enough and all of a sudden now I'm looking at women everywhere. I'm noticing that I'm really attracted to all these women.

Bill: And that wasn't happening when I was married, but all of a sudden, now that my wife has passed, I'm looking everywhere. And as I'm looking, they're looking back some of them. And so I find myself in very quick relationships with these women that I'm finding around 12 step meetings. And then very, just almost as quickly, I realized, oh, what a mess this is.

Bill: What a complete mess this is. I don't want to be in a relationship. And so I would get out and then there'd be all kinds of drama around that. And in the middle of that drama, then I'd find myself in another relationship. And this happened five times in a row over the course of two years.

Marty: Wow.

Marty: A lot of wear and tear.

Bill: Just imagine the wear and tear for me, but what about all these women? And the impact on them. And what about my eight and nine year old now nine and 10 year old? I was going to

Marty: say, what's up with them in the meantime?

Bill: They're seeing these women, this parade of women in and out of my life.

Bill: I have clients today that talk about being children of parents doing what I was doing. And every once in a while I'll get this rush of shame or guilt and remorse about, about the way I conducted myself. But, that was 35 years ago. I've done a ton of work since then.

Bill: Some of that work began when I was shown that there is that space. So, I remarry two years after my first wife dies. We didn't play well together. We were really hard on each other. And we were almost constantly, even before we got married, we were in marriage counseling. We were almost constantly in therapy.

Bill: Hopping around getting different therapists who had different solutions and different approaches. And one day we're sitting in front of a psychologist and my wife says to the psychologist, I think Bill It's depressed. What do you think of putting him on antidepressants? Can you imagine that scene?

Bill: I'm sitting in the room. There's the psychologist, John, and my wife, and my wife's having a conversation with John about me, who's sitting over here on this side of the room, and they're diagnosing whether I have depression, and what they should do about it. I just remember feeling furious that was even happening.

Bill: So John turns to me and he said, Bill, what do you think? Do you want to give antidepressants a try? And I said, F no. He said, why not? I said, I'm a sober member of this 12 step program. I don't do drugs. He said, yeah, so listen, Bill, this isn't the kind of drug that you're going to get addicted to. This is a chemical that can make a difference in your brain so that you're no longer depressed.

Bill: And I said, who said besides her, who said I was depressed? He said, are you depressed? And I said, no. He said, how would you characterize what you're experiencing? And I said, I'm pissed. I'm really, really angry. That kind of unraveled a little bit, and we came back to it. And finally, the end of the conversation was, Bill, if you need antidepressants, using them will provide the evidence that you do.

Bill: You'll notice a difference. It'll, things will get better. If you don't need antidepressants, then we'll just take you back off of them again. Finally, I just said, fine, okay, fine. That's what we'll do. So, I don't know, I might have been on one, I can't remember which one it was, but I was on an antidepressant for maybe just weeks.

Bill: And I started noticing something that I'd never experienced before. And that was that when something out here happened, that triggered me to feel upset in here, in the past, I would just be upset and react to it. The stimulus and the response was just like that. But now what, when something out there happened, and usually it was my second wife saying something to me, that would make me feel upset inside, there was a pause.

Bill: There was a space. There wasn't a space that Frankel was pointing to. That's what Frankel was talking about, uh huh. And in my mind, I saw it as an intersection on a single lane highway that I'd been traveling on my entire life. All of a sudden, an intersection shows up. And on this intersection, it turns out it's not a one lane highway, it's a two lane highway.

Bill: And there's a stop sign, and it's a four way stop, and I can turn left, turn right, go straight ahead, go back, or just stay here for a while. I've got choices and options for the very first time in my life. Wow. So I'd stayed on antidepressants for about two years and then I think I got really mad at my wife one day and I said, I'm feeling controlled by you.

Bill: This is part of the control as you have me on drugs. It's your fault. I just. Cold turkey went off the antidepressants. Not a good idea. If you're listening and you're on antidepressants and you're thinking of cold turkey doing that, please don't. It felt like for about two weeks, it felt like I was walking about three feet behind myself in the withdrawals, and it finally normalized again. My fear was that I was gonna lose that space when I went off the antidepressants. Interestingly, I never lost it. It stayed there. I stayed at that intersection. So there's my story. Thanks for indulging me and letting me tell it.

Marty: Yeah, so I think it would be good to talk about, you know, how do you know, what are other ways that people can get that to that intersection where you have choice again, you're not just like a mechanical reaction to the stimuli outside, or your own thoughts about those, those things. For me,

Marty: it started with a transformational program. The landmark forum was where I first got to see my own thoughts and have a choice about them that there are programs like that. There are other things that are similar that will begin to show you how you can be in more. I was going to say more control, but that's not the best way to put this.

Marty: But to have more choice is what I'm trying to say, to have more choice in how you conduct your life, then you think you've got, and so that's 1 thing. But the king for me of ways to get in there and start to have a relationship to your own. Your own system, your own nervous system, basically your mind and your body, your emotions is through meditation. It doesn't have to be, it's crucial to not have some preconceived notion about what this means, because, everybody's experience of it is different, but the key to what meditation means in any of these different contexts is that you have perspective on your own thoughts.

Marty: It doesn't mean that you obliterate thinking that you get to this blissed out state that lasts forever that can happen after years. But that's not what that's not even what we're going for here.

Marty: What we're going for here is. You know, something happens, and instead of just being an automatic reaction to it, then you have a choice in the matter.

Marty: You've got that intersection, that space to say, okay, what would be the best way to react to this? Can I bring some love in instead of Just being hatred or can I bring some wisdom in instead of just being mechanical that though you get that.

Marty: I remember I went to the school of practical philosophy in New York city. They're located in other parts of the world too, not everywhere though. And it was really basically a course in meditation, starting from beginner. I think that, frankly, I think every junior high should require every kid to go through this program, frankly.

Marty: And I remember it's so simple. It's not the only way, but the method I was taught was to use a mantra. It's one syllable, and it's a sacred syllable. You can pick one of your own if you want, but you want to pick something that it has a good vibe to it, so to speak, right? It's something positive.

Marty: You don't want to meditate on hatred. You don't want to meditate, you know, on poop. You want to meditate, you pick a syllable that has a high spiritual value to you or at least clarity and I first I was like, how is this going to make me happy? Just be repeating this in my own mind.

Marty: Nobody else can hear it. I'm just going over and over, over and over and over and over. But I trusted these people and I practiced and sometimes the mind waters, but then you bring it back. And within a few weeks, I could sit for 15 minutes straight doing nothing but repeating that mantra and yes, I could hear things going on outside me as the mantra is going on inside and a thought might come in.

Marty: Oh, my gosh, I forgot to take out the trash this morning, but I was still repeating the mantra. Right? That's the key is that you have this intersection as you're calling it this place that's not just swept up by whatever emotions or thoughts are going on. And it got to the point where I started having these moments of creative bursts, because there was this clarity.

Marty: I wasn't completely inundated. Like a person who collects things, you know, what do they call a hoarder, right? Somebody whose house is just full of stuff that there's no room for a new thing to come into the house. That's what my brain was like. And now it's starting to empty out.

Marty: Because of the mantra and I started using it all day long as much as often as I thought of it. I would repeat like walking down the streets. I was living in New York City and there's so much going on. So I chose to repeat the mantra as I walked down the street. And it got me to be better aware of what was coming at me.

Marty: I was, cause I had a clear mind. It wasn't cluttered up with, Oh my God, what's that? I don't know what to think. And do I look okay? And all of this stuff. I had a clear mind. And somebody else didn't notice that there was a big, something coming at us. And I was like, we got to get off the sidewalk.

Marty: Oh, how did you know that? Cause my mind was clear. I could see things coming. And so I just really got to the place now when I'm coaching. I'm doing my mantra. Nice. Not thinking and you know, emoting and, and and preoccupied. My mind is. Down to a flatness so that everything the client's offering in terms of gestures and tone and words.

Marty: I'm getting it all because my mind is still.

Bill: You might say that you've generated an internal environment that is spacious enough to receive what you're hearing from your client. And in that case. That's right. Exactly. Whereas if your mind were traveling on how to fix them, or how to figure them out, or whatever you were going to have for lunch, when you're done with that particular session, you wouldn't have room for them.

Marty: That's right. That's right. I'd be thinking about my set. And that's what most people you see them when you're talking to them. They're fidgeting in their purse or, you know, Yeah, They're biting their lip or you can tell like they're thinking about what they're thinking about. Not what you're saying.

Bill: Yes. Yes. So many times guilty.

Marty: So mantra repetition is something that anybody can do. It's very, it's simpler than simple. And it's worked and it definitely works. What's

Bill: an example? Maybe don't give us yours, but give us an example of a mantra that you would use and how you would use it.

Marty: I have a buddy who uses a Christian mantra. He's a Christian. And so for him, his mantra is Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, straight from the mass.

Bill: Kyrie

Marty: eleison, Christ have mercy.

Marty: Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Christ has mercy. He repeats that and sits for up to an hour sometimes. And when he comes out, he's just, you know, you can tell

Marty: he's in

Bill: this world, but not of it. So it can be a syllable. Or it can be a phrase or anything in between.

Bill: That's right. That's right. Okay. Okay.

Marty: Just to round out the picture here. Some people use the breath simply the breath. And so now this for me, this is harder. But for some people, it's easier to just be very aware, put your attention on the whole sensation of and you don't have to do anything like make it make your breath, different, but you just you focus on what it feels like coming in and filling the body.

Marty: And what it feels like, as it comes out again, and there's this whole chain of sensations. And so you're being in the present where the breathing is actually going on. Your attention is so focused on it that other thoughts. You know, float away, basically. And if they do come, they go again because you're focused on the breath.

Marty: So that's another very organic, simple. It's not mysterious. It's not weird. It's built into your body that you're breathing all the time that you're alive. And so you could focus on that and it'll clear your mind so that you can be more present.

Bill: How much of this are you talking about in your leadership coaching groups?

Bill: Marty?

Marty: Oh, it's key. The 1st break in the wall of leadership. If you ask me, say more about that. Leadership is about a relationship. If you're just relating to your own reactions to people, you're not leading. I was just on a coaching call earlier today with a woman who leads a company as she, she's hired a new operations person, a COO, and so they're going through the, you know, that initial getting used to each other and he getting used to their culture kind of thing. She was like, oh, well, when he said this, I thought that, and I don't know if he knew it, but when he stomped into the room, I felt this and blah, blah, blah.

Marty: It was all about how she was reacting to the situation. And so I said, let's meditate. Get her out of her head and then and so we did it was just a short 15 minute meditation. We did together on zoom and when she came out of it, I didn't even have to say a thing. She's like, oh, my God, I've been so focused on myself and he's new here.

Marty: I should be focused on him and his needs and what he's going through and help him understand better how we work here. And I didn't even have to say a thing. She saw it herself.

Bill: Nice.

Marty: Wow. Wow. A lot of times, you know, if I have a client who's like in the brainstorming, like, I got to come up with an idea for my newsletter or how to market this product or something.

Marty: The 1st thing I'll do is say, well, great. We'll work on that. Let's meditate 1st. And then when we come out of meditation, I don't have to, we don't have to brainstorm at all. It's all there.

Marty: There's infinitude inside of us and we barely tap into it. I agree.

Marty: That's what I hear. Another really good book, Viktor Frankl is good. Another really good book on this topic are Michael Singer's books. The last one being Living Untethered. Before that, it was The Untethered Soul. And before that, it was the surrender experiment, because surrender is a key to this whole process, right?

Marty: You're surrendering your mind, not being as not being nearly as bought into your own thoughts. There's a neighbor of mine has a bumper sticker on his car. It says, don't believe everything you think. That's one of

Bill: my favorites.

Marty: And that's what this is about. It's surrendering like, okay, I might have all these thoughts, but that doesn't make it true.

Marty: Like that's not what's really going on out in the world. Those are my thoughts about the world. And so by surrendering them, you get much more effective and productive. I don't, that is the key when I have a client came to me. He's solely to get coached on his productivity and we spend three quarters of our time together meditating and his productivity has gone way up.

Bill: The magic elixir huh? Sounds like.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: it is. I want to read you something from an exercise that I co authored. This exercise is going to be in a practice book for those that are interested in learning how to use IFS. And this part, this exercise is called distinguishing parts. I would like to just read you four very short paragraphs, or at least parts of them.

Bill: Dedicating yourself to learning how to apply the IFS model to your life can help bring conscious awareness to your internal family of parts.

Bill: In this conversation that I had this morning in my group using after I'd read that, someone raised their hand and said can you make some more sense of this is a group that's called Introduction to IFS. Make some more sense of that for me. Yeah consider that that within you you have a family that's made up of what we call parts these subpersonalities Each of them with their own values their own beliefs their own missions their own concerns and when you are Blended with One of those parts of you that has somehow gotten activated with what's happening out there, you feel what they feel, you think what they think, and you do what they want you to do, if you're not consciously aware.

Bill: If there's no space between you and that part, the part literally hijack you. You doing their will. And we know what

Marty: that feels like. Oh, my God. I'm screaming at my wife. What is what is up with me? We've been in that place.

Bill: And what a great example of being overrun by parts of being so externally focused.

Bill: Yes. Parts don't, many of our parts, not all of them, but many of our parts do not have access to the resources that help us show up as the highest and best versions of ourselves. And they don't have, they don't have access to those resources because the resources exist in the present moment only.

Bill: Many of our parts are still stuck in the past.

Bill: They can't access the resources until they get into the present moment with us.

Marty: They're still suffering over something that happened 20 years ago, and that dynamic isn't present here, but they think they need to defend or protect or whatever that same situation, and it's not here.

Bill: Exactly. Let's say that the glasses that I'm wearing are this year's prescription.

Bill: These glasses are from 20 years ago. When a part takes over and I put on 20 year ago glasses.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: things look dramatically different. And I feel a lot different inside as I view those things. Great analogy. Yeah, good.

Marty: I just I don't want to interrupt you. But I just want to say that I think this is the beautiful next step from the big picture of going inside recognizing that you don't have to be.

Marty: Now what you're bringing to our conversation is once you get inside and you start to see you have

Bill: parts. Without awareness, I'm going to read a little bit more, without awareness and an understanding of what happens inside, your attention is on what is happening outside. You might notice that you're suffering inside, but you're probably noticing that you're suffering on inside and assume that the reason you are is because there's something out here that's happening that's causing that.

Marty: That's what we always assume, yeah. It's them, it's that thing, it's this phenomenon, it's all out there and I need to change those things in order to be happy.

Bill: That's right, that's right. I need a different wife, I need a different life, I need a different job, I need more money, I need a different car, I need to hang around that person because I get upset every time I'm around them.

Bill: I need to change professions, I hate this profession, makes me feel bad inside.

Bill: Something happens out there and you react to it with thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Bill: It's easy, it can easily appear that what does or doesn't happen out there causes what happens inside. You just said that. But this perspective leaves you at the mercy of circumstances. Yep. And earlier you said those circumstances we have zero power and control over. Most of the time that's true.

Bill: And to be at the mercy of things that we don't have any power control over leaves us in a state of 12 step talks about this all the time powerlessness. That's right. And I have often said, and I still believe it's probably true that for me, the emotions related to a sense of powerlessness are the most painful emotions.

Bill: I've ever experienced.

Marty: Oh, God, those are my nightmares are about not being able to change the situation I'm in and just being like trapped. Yeah.

Bill: Yes, yes, yes. Your brain's busy at night trying to work that out. Yeah, exactly. But this perspective leaves you at the mercy of circumstances, and that's not really what's happening.

Bill: We're not really at the circumstance, at the mercy of circumstances. We are only if we think we are. If we believe that circumstances out there cause what is happening here, then we, yes, we're at the mercy of them. But it's not an accurate perception. That's the good news. We can actually change our perception.

Bill: And get it aligned with reality as Byron Katie would say,

Marty: and back to Victor Frenkel. What perspective, what wherewithal it took on his part in the midst of a concentration camp to recognize that he could create different circumstances from within, like he focused on health and being helpful and friendly and all these other things.

Marty: And that's what got him through it all.

Bill: Yeah, that's right. That's right. It was unfathomable circumstances. Cannot even imagine.

Bill: One more paragraph. By bringing awareness to your internal experience, you will begin to realize that what is happening externally can activate internal reactions, but does not cause them. And using the IFS model, you can begin to understand what's happening in there. applying the model to yourself is, could be considered shadow work. What's happening, what's been happening unconsciously and automatically can be brought out of the shadows and into the light. And now something can be different.

Marty: Lovely. Beautiful. So what's the exercise already? Oh yeah. You want to do it?

Bill: Maybe. Okay. So to set the exercise up, I want to read you three statements that I'd like you to consider. Okay. For one, noticing the influence of a part is the first step in unblending from that part. Got it, yep. Unblending means creating space, there it is again, between you and the part so that you can see it versus be it.

Bill: Two, noticing a part begins the process of building a relationship with it. Building a relationship with the part is important because this is the first step in healing the part. Okay. And then three, as parts heal, They gradually realize that they can trust self with a capital S, that's your essence, your core, who you are, to provide them with loving and reliable leadership.

Bill: They begin to relax as they realize that they're not alone with their concerns. Parts think they're all alone. Alright, so the step, first step in this exercise is to describe, think about a recent circumstance that produced a noticeable automatic reaction within you.

Bill: Let me know when one comes to mind. Okay. Okay. Do you feel comfortable sharing it or do you want to just keep it to yourself? Either way works.

Marty: Yeah, I don't mind.

Marty: I'm just trying to remember exactly how it went. A friend of mine, I'm trying to remember exactly how it got, like, I, I have let go of it, but she said, she said to me that I took personally. Okay,

Bill: so go to that moment when you took it personally. Yeah. What happened in your body?

Marty: Like, you know, like a glam that

Bill: snapshots construction tightening up. Yeah. Okay. And then what were the physical sensations and internal reactions that you noticed that so there's, it's like a clam shutting up. And then what did you, if you can take yourself back to that moment when you took a personally, what was going on physically?

Marty: Like, I'm burning inside. I wanted to throw balls of fire at her. Oh, okay. You're wrong. You got it wrong. You

Bill: don't understand me. All right. So you've already answered several of the other questions just with that response. The next question is what, what emotions did you feel? It sounds like you felt a lot of anger.

Bill: Yes. Balls of fire anger.

Marty: Insulted, angry.

Bill: And what were the thoughts? You just mentioned two or three of them. What thoughts did you have? I, I just, I wanted to throw fire at her. Yeah. And kind of an, like an, how dare you type thing or?

Marty: Definitely.

Bill: Yeah. You don't

Marty: understand me that you, I can't believe that you would

Bill: think that of me like that.

Bill: And so those were the thoughts, and those were the emotions, and those were the impulses that you had. If you had balls of fire to throw at her, you would have had the impulse to throw them at her, right? In other words, you had an impulse to want to somehow hurt her back. Yes, right. And we didn't mention it, but hurt's in there too, right?

Bill: You felt hurt. Definitely, definitely. Yeah, right. All of this happened automatically. That's the whole point of the exercise. Notice that all of this happens automatically. Those thoughts, those body sensations, those impulses. Those emotions all happened automatically. You noticed them, you experienced them, but you didn't, you, even you didn't cause them.

Bill: She didn't cause them and neither did you. It was the part. And parts are you. You are your parts. You are the sum total of your parts plus a little bit more. And that little bit more would be referred to as self, but there's some debate about that. Am I just my parts? My answer to that is yes, others in the IFS community would debate that with me and say no, there's parts in them themselves.

Bill: Yeah, Richard Schwartz wrote a book called greater than the sum of our parts. Yeah, that's the way I would think about it. Yeah. Yeah. And the way I think about it is that I am the sum total of my parts, except here's the nuanced difference. My parts in their burdened state, unhealed, still stuck in the past, are missing something.

Bill: They're missing the core essence of who I really am. When those parts are helped by the core essence of who I really am, then they now join us in the present moment, gain access to those same resources and qualities. And now the parts are now I'm greater than the sum of my parts. I see. And we can go beyond that.

Bill: Because now I'm in a state of greater than the sum of my parts. I am creative as you've described that comes out of meditation. I'm open. I have insights. I see things I couldn't see before. And I want to say that that has me tapping into power that is not contained within this skin bag of mine. I agree.

Bill: Not local. It has happened into something that we all have access to if we can find our way there.

Marty: This is what I think is so important. This is why it's harder to talk about because that some that's greater than it's, you know, no matter you can't just like, say, well, add do a B.

Marty: C. See this process or you know, add up these things and you'll get it. Like it, it is this infinitude as I've been putting it inside. When we go within that, it just, it connects to the whole history of the universe. And that's hard to explain, but when you do it, you find it.

Bill: Yeah. I mean, even that is an explanation for

Bill: what you experience, I would explain it in a similar way, I suppose, but all of it. Our attempt to explain what we experience is conceptual. The actual experience is far greater than the words that we use to try to explain it Yes, when i'm in the flow I can say oh, yeah, that's how i've defined flow in the past.

Bill: i'm there again when i'm in love, oh, yeah the way i've defined that how this feels and there I am in it again How did I get there? Not exactly sure what's possible once I'm here. I'll let you know, I'll report and let you know, once I have had that experience, but I've completed it,

Marty: I love this, because it's a phenomenon that is, that lives beyond this binary world that we live, the programmed world that we live in the, all of the images and sensations and talk and books that we, Are consuming are they work in this logical way that what we're talking about now, it goes way beyond. It's, it just, it, you, the sum is not what the whole is.

Bill: Mm

Marty: hmm.

Bill: That's right. That's right. That's been my experience. And I can, now I can go back to, I think it was about 2001, 2002. I told a bit of my story earlier about the antidepressants and being in that second marriage.

Bill: My capacity for being able to tolerate that without doing something that would have put me in prison for the rest of my life And then exceeded for about two years practically by the time I finally left and I didn't come back So the marriage was over took about a year for the divorce to become final and I was in a lot of pain a lot of fear a lot of self judgment a lot of shame a lot of guilt A lot of anger, a lot of hurt, there was a lot of stuff happening inside of me.

Bill: I definitely wanted to put as much distance between me and that marriage as I could, because even though I intellectually knew it's not her, it's me reacting to her and what I make it all mean, I still, that's still the mechanics, that was still the way I was wired. I hadn't found my way out of that.

Bill: I'd read books, and even though people had told me that's what was possible, much like maybe somebody listening to this episode of the, of our podcast today might be thinking, yeah, logically. Okay. That makes sense. And I'm beginning to imagine maybe what you're saying is true and valid, but I can't even imagine how to get there.

Bill: That's where I was. And Byron Katie in around 2001, 2002, my friend, Alan and I drove to Seattle four and a half hours. And we went into a four hour workshop with Byron Katie. And I heard her say things that just blew my mind. And one of them was the bumper sticker. You pointed out. You believe everything that you think.

Bill: But the other, the other thing that she said, and she'll if you look up Byron Katie on YouTube or go to her website, thework. com, you'll hear her read that she says this still, anytime I have a thought that argues with reality, I suffer, but only 100 percent of the time. And she always says that to anytime I believe a thought that are so that's what I heard that day.

Bill: Anytime I believe a thought that argues with reality, I separate. I thought, what did that mean? What does that mean? And then my mathematical brain turned it around and made it made sense to me. Oh, that means that if I'm suffering, it's because I believe something that's not true. Oh. So I'm suffering right now.

Bill: I'm thinking about my ex wife, I thought, as I'm sitting there in Unity Church in Seattle, Washington. I think I'm suffering right now as I think about my ex wife and the next thing that she might do to me and the last thing that she did to me. And I'm here. She's not here, but I'm here.

Bill: suffering about something that's happened in the past and something I'm afraid is going to happen in the future and something I'm afraid might be happening now. Wow, okay, so my thoughts, my mind is focused on thoughts that are not based in reality and that means I'm suffering. Okay, Byron Katie, tell me what to do about it.

Bill: That day I became very teachable and what she told me to do about it was ask these questions. And in order to answer those questions, you have to go inside and report what you're noticing. You

Marty: do. That's right. Exactly. And then four simple questions, you know, but they open up the world of what's inside you.

Bill: So for me, that was a really great first step. Meditation did not work for me. I've reported to you in the past that I would make myself meditate up to three hours a day. And for my internal family, meditation was punishment. It was just grueling. It was difficult. And I just never was able to do it.

Bill: Now I have benefited from meditating before, but I've never been able to get and keep a practice going for me. And I love that Byron Katie said this too. She said, The work is meditation.

Marty: It is totally. It is because you're gaining perspective on your own thinking. That's what I said is the core of meditation.

Marty: Exactly. Yeah. So I agree. I'm glad that we've given the listeners now a couple of different ways in, you can do IFS, you can do buy and kitty, you can do landmarks, you can do meditation on the breath, you can do meditation on the mind. So there are lots of ways inside. That's right. That's

Bill: right. Yep, absolutely there are.

Bill: We will list everything that we've just mentioned in this podcast episode. I'll make sure that we get listed in show notes so that if the listener wants to pursue any of these, paths, they can do so let's begin to wrap up given that we've got I've only got five minutes before I have a hard stop.

Bill: So what are we taking away from this? Maybe from this conversation that we didn't know that we were going to bring into it. What how would you answer that? What are you taking away from this conversation? Marty?

Marty: Well, I think 1st, this real, this dramatic reorientation from trying to change reality to be to my liking to going inside instead and working with my reactions to the way life just is.

Bill: Yeah, I just want to maybe add to that and say, I don't think there's more important. use of the attention muscle.

Marty: Right. Well put. Yep. There's no more important use of your attention than to go within.

Bill: At first, it might feel effortful. Like that means I'm going to have to do now yet one more thing to try to manage this life of mine.

Bill: And we were talking about that this morning in my group. It feels like there's that much more effort. And when parts of me perceive one more thing to do, then other parts are going to say, no way, I'm already doing so much. When am I ever going to have time? When am I going to have the energy? Is this something that one more thing that I'm going to try and fail at?

Marty: And your response to

Bill: that? From my higher state, what the way I responded to that this morning from a self led place, the response is, It is not more effort. In fact, effort is the opposite of what needs to happen here. Replace effort with a relaxed curiosity. If you can find your way there, and it's not easy to do.

Bill: It took me years to find a way to go to relaxed curiosity.

Marty: Yeah, that reaction like, Oh, another thing. That's the typical of this externalized living. It's, it's not another thing. It, that is exactly what it's not. It's about how you do everything you do already. Don't add anything to it. Just do it in this attentive way.

Bill: Why wouldn't you be able to do that? I know we're almost out of time, but I got it. I'm going to throw this into it because this is such a key point. If you're noticing, if you're listening to this and you're noticing, I'm not able to do that. I can maybe understand intellectually what it is that you're saying, but I'm not able to get myself to shift from, this is one more thing I have to try hard to do, to finding a relaxed curiosity.

Bill: Consider that maybe the reason that is the case for you is because there's not enough internal safety. There's not a sense of internal safety that is greater than the sense of internal fear. That if what's going on in your internal family is that you're dominated by parts that are more fearful, then that creates a sense of danger, really, inside.

Bill: And if you feel endangered, then you're not going to be able to relax. We're not wired that way. If you feel endangered, you're going to react in a way that saves your life.

Marty: Nothing

Bill: is more than that's another question is what can I do to shift from a 50 percent 51 percent or more dangerous state of being inside to a 49 percent or less state of danger inside that 2 percent can just tip it, maybe it's not even 2 percent but get below 50 percent dangerous and get above 50 percent safe.

Bill: And when that happens. When there's, and maybe for you, it's 60%. Maybe you need 80 percent safety inside, but at some point there will be a safety inside that makes it okay to take some risks and to do things differently, stop trying. And if you find it difficult to do that, it just means that you don't feel safe enough yet.

Bill: So the question becomes, what is it that you can do to feel safer inside? And that's another discussion.

Marty: Before we do close. I want to acknowledge you bill for the courage that you had to go, you know, with your wife to counseling and say yes to the drug that you didn't really need. All in on the on the way to creating space inside and then and then going to the Byron Katie and there have been many things, but you've mentioned these two where it took courage that safety wasn't there yet.

Marty: But you had the courage to go there and explore. We need more courageous explorers like you on this planet.

Bill: Wow. Thank you. That feels good. I'm just going to let that in. There's a part of me that wants to, to counter acknowledge you, but I'm just going to let that in. Let it in. Yeah.

Bill: All right. Till next time. Bye.