Episode 20: Belonging Part 2 With Nancy Haboush

Join Nancy Haboush and Cassie Burton as they discuss journaling, Meditation, running, loving yourself, forgiveness and unbecoming everything that you are to become what you want to be. Learn to stop fighting the flow of energy that is positive, loving and affirming. Stop listening to the I'm not good enough, must keep running, keep helping others, and looking for the answer in everything else. We have to do our own work to find ourselves.

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Curious Cass and this is Curiosity Junkie.

Today's episode is part two of Love,

Acceptance and Belonging with Nancy Habouche.

Join us as we dive into unbecoming all you are so you can create the you you want to be.

All right,

So going back to belonging and you find this path that led you to the spirituality and opening up to it's not that restrictive religion piece.

It opened up a bigger world for you.

And I think during this time you've been journaling the whole time,

Right?

Like you're a avid journaler.

You actually gave me my first valuable journal that I still have and I love it.

It's beautiful.

So let's talk a little bit about that.

Like what's coming up in all of your journaling and the process and where did that kind of take you?

I think the cool thing about journaling is that the stuff that is heavy on your heart doesn't just come out in everyday conversation,

Right?

If you have any kind of a journal or meditation practice,

Which I'm going to make a little side note on meditation.

When you're a personality like mine and someone says you should sit in a corner of your room and be quiet for 15 minutes.

Without a drink,

Without a person to talk to,

Like alone.

Silence?

That 15 minutes lasts.

It's like a half a day for most people.

15 minutes feels like a half a day for me.

I am not good at the sitting still and meditating.

I'm really not.

And the hard part about that is that how do you ever hear your inner voice or the voice of God or the voice of the universe,

Like whatever that is for you.

And I call that God.

And so it's like I have learned over the years to again,

Quit trying to measure up and do what everybody else is doing in meditations.

And I advise a lot of my clients to meditate because it works for a lot of people.

My meditation is way more active than that.

I can put on a song and within 10 minutes I feel so much more connected to myself and to God that the answers reveal themselves of whatever I'm stuck on,

Where I'm at music,

Where it works for me,

Or I need to go for a walk and I need to be in nature or I need to go out on the water.

You know,

You've,

Um,

You know,

Take a paddleboard and go out on the water and just be alone with your thoughts.

But I have to be doing something like I just cannot do it stationary.

And I finally quit beating myself up about that.

And if I'm journaling and I'm writing to me,

That's a whole thing.

Like I have this great little space in my room with a yummy chair that I love to sit in and the colors are great.

And I have,

You know,

Some,

Um,

Wonderful essential oils that are smelling up the room and a candles lid.

And I might use Oracle cards to help me meditate and focus on something in particular.

And all of that together has become a ritual that really means something to me that both centers me back to who I am and opens me up to what am I missing?

Where are my blind spots?

Who needs me today?

What do I need today?

And I do think that we all have to find that for ourselves,

Whatever that looks like,

Because we're so busy and we're running at her miles an hour and you can't,

You can't run from it forever.

It will catch you and tackle you and take you down.

And it hurts.

It hurts when it happens like that.

Mine is,

You know,

A little mini breakdowns where I literally hit a wall and I tell my family I'm out and I leave for three days and everyone worries that I've gone off the deep end or I'm going to drive off the cliff.

I've done that a couple of times in my life.

And when I,

When I let it get that bad and it goes that long,

That's always an indicator that I have poured myself out again and again and again for other people and completely ignored my own needs.

And I haven't taken very good care of myself when I get into that space.

Nobody else's fault.

It's totally my fault.

And it's my tendency.

If I just do more,

If I just do enough.

If I just make a difference for enough other people,

Then somehow through osmosis,

It'll get in.

But you can't do your work by working on other people.

I mean,

That's what I think some people think that that's true.

It's like,

Oh,

If I help enough other people,

Then it'll help me.

Like even back in the day of Dell Carnegie,

A couple of other people get where they want to go.

You'll get where you want to go.

Well,

That's kind of true.

Like there is joy.

And like when you opened up and said,

You know,

That one of your mentors and helped you get,

Like there's nothing that brings me more joy than knowing I made a difference in somebody's life and it helps open the next door for you to find out who you are.

I love that work,

But I can't discover me and your work.

Like I have to do my own work to find me and oh my God,

It took forever.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I would say that,

Yeah,

Go ahead.

I was just going to say,

And that's,

That's a huge message is,

And that's,

That's the reason I spent so much time in and around self love because until you go inside you,

You spend time there,

You figure out what are your triggers?

What is still bubbling there?

What does that child need to hear that it never got to hear?

What,

You know,

When you start working through that stuff,

It's amazing how your relationships change what you attract changes like completely amazing how different it is.

And the way you feel.

Yes.

Right.

Like just the,

The difference of the feeling like your body is in chaos all the time because you're constantly fighting a flow of energy that's positive and life giving and affirming versus I'm not enough.

I'm not enough.

I'm not.

And keep helping,

Keep whatever,

But I'm looking out here,

It's always external.

It's like,

The answer's over here,

No,

It's over here.

And I must look like a crazy person half the time.

At least I feel like I must look like,

Or I hide it really well,

I don't know,

We just grew up.

The minute that you stop and actually hold court with yourself and can actually look at all that stuff,

It's like,

Whoa,

Yeah,

I missed that.

I missed that,

I missed that.

And you can see it,

But you will never see it if you don't slow down.

And so,

And that does not come easy for me.

I do not slow down well.

I would rather run,

Right?

Right,

It's hard.

It's hard,

It's counterintuitive.

Yes,

And that's for probably the last,

I would say solid four years.

I've been spending a lot of time in that self-love arena,

And just exploring and reading and talking to people and learning,

And I don't think it's something I'll ever stop doing because everyone does it different.

But until you can literally say,

I love you,

And feel it to yourself,

You're gonna struggle to really do good work for somebody else.

I agree,

And cast the last four years for you,

Like the difference,

Like it's so funny how sometimes we can't see our own growth,

But we can see growth in other people and then we can go,

Oh,

I have a little bit of that,

Like I can see a little bit of that,

But you're the peace in you,

Like you radiate joy and love and peace,

Where like collectively,

The two of us four or five years ago,

It would have been,

Woo-hoo,

Right,

And we're everywhere and there's nothing,

I mean,

I love that energy,

But the energy was coming from a place of panic,

Not from a place of centeredness,

And I think that's the difference.

I see it in you easily,

I just love how it shows up in you.

Thank you,

I love hearing that,

It's just,

Yes,

I do,

I feel completely different,

And it's funny,

I was just talking with my friend Richard last night,

And we were talking about that and how you do manifest,

Because your world is high energy or stress or just chaos,

You just naturally attract it and you don't even understand how or why you're doing it until you can slow down and really stop to think about what is it that I want in my life,

And then you start seeing it show up and it's a little,

I don't wanna say unnerving,

But it freaks me out every once in a while when I realize,

Like,

I'm actually bringing this in to my life because I've changed these things about me,

So now I'm attracting this,

Or these people are showing up in my life and they're calm and centered and grounded and I'm like,

Ah.

It's a little scary,

Isn't it?

Yeah,

It is a little,

It is a little.

And every now and again,

You'll find yourself,

At least this is true for me,

But still sabotaging it.

It's like,

Man,

I haven't had any good drama for a while.

I mainly have to do is buy a new house and try to work with landscaping and boom,

Drama appears.

Absolutely,

I start a podcast and a YouTube channel.

There you go.

It's not sabotage,

But I go,

I need,

There's still that piece of me that needs an energy outlet.

I call it creative,

Like I do have to have a creative outlet where I can pour that energy into something focused and specific and still keep me grounded and centered and at peace.

It works pretty beautifully together.

Yeah,

It is.

And if you imagine starting this podcast five years ago with where you work versus what it looked,

I mean,

It would have been fun.

It would have been different.

Yes.

And it would have been fine,

It really would have,

But it's even better now because you're coming from such a pure place that the context of it all is,

I mean,

It's just,

It's beautiful.

So it's cool.

It's that message of love.

And I love that you kind of touched on that,

That it just comes down to love.

And I think when we all get to that place and not all of us ever will,

But if you,

If I can encourage anyone out there to really find that piece that says you really get that it's about love,

Everything changes.

Yeah.

Just like you don't.

But to get there,

You gotta unpack all the things that get in your way,

Which is all the unbecoming,

Right?

Like if I believe this,

Then I can't also believe that.

So I'm gonna have to let go of that belief to hang on to the new one,

Right?

And I think that the growth and the pain that comes from letting go of what you know and what's familiar and what's safe and adopting something new,

A new way of thinking,

A new way of being.

And I mean,

It's not like you don't lose relationships when you do that,

Because you do.

Right.

You lose some of the intimacy,

You lose some of the,

You know,

I would say the other thing about belonging that's interesting is it's the likability.

It's for me to be liked by you,

I have to be this certain way.

And the relationship matters.

I mean,

Sometimes it's family.

And so it's like,

Am I okay pretending to be something I'm not so that you like me and I fit in?

Or can I be okay being around people that I don't have that much in common with and we don't believe the same things and feel perfectly happy not fitting in?

And that was probably the hardest,

To be able to go home and know that it's okay that I don't fit in.

Yeah.

And to fit in with me,

I'd have to let go of some things that are totally who I am.

And so fitting in would be wrong.

But I can love and I can accept and I can adore all of those people without having to be like them.

Yes.

Because there's nothing wrong with them and there's nothing wrong with me.

I love that.

That's beautiful right there is when you can recognize there's nothing wrong with them.

It's not about them.

And there's nothing wrong with you being different and who you are.

Yeah.

That's what it's about when you discover that.

And that is hard when you talk about belonging with family and being able to go back and sit in a space and have compassion for their beliefs and the way they show up and also have compassion for yourself.

And I think that is probably one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to belonging that people face.

We have the peer pressure and the societal belonging and that's easier to pull away from.

Yeah.

The family unit,

You're so bonded and connected as you grow up and their expectation is you're still that person you were when you left at 18 or whenever you left and you're so not that same person.

It's very difficult.

It is very difficult.

Yeah and sometimes I'm pretty confident I'm hard to love because you go from being girls are a certain way and boys are a certain way and I don't believe any of those things and I've always been too loud,

Too much,

Too opinionated,

Too stubborn,

Too whatever.

So I think understanding that I get,

I get that I'm probably hard to love if you don't and that I might not be appreciated for my strong beliefs and strong opinions.

So I'm probably more cautious about reading the room and being careful not to,

I know who doesn't wanna hear those things and if someone was actually open to a conversation about seeing a different view,

I'm the first one to be on board and now in an older version of myself,

Probably I'm a little more politically correct about how I do that because again,

I still don't think I have the only truth.

I don't think what I believe is the truth.

I don't think there's such a thing as truth other than love and I believe in the universal truth of God or Supreme being that we're not in this alone.

That's a truth for me but I also believe that's not everyone else's truth and so to believe that I have the commodity of truth,

Everything I believe is in this truth bubble and everything that you believe is outside of that,

I mean,

That would be a really shitty world to live in and I respect that some people do live in that world.

They do believe they own the truth and it's okay that that's what's true for them and so respecting that and knowing we're just never gonna talk about those kinds of things because it just doesn't matter and letting go of that rather than my need to convince or persuade,

You know,

I'm kind of an influential being and I like influencing people and I think what I learned is that there's a time and place where that's appropriate and there's other times where just loving people is all you need to do,

So yeah.

What would you,

Well,

Let's talk a little bit about your,

What you do for a living,

What your coaching is.

I know that's a big thing.

I have attended your Vision Journal workshop in Colorado and it's amazing,

I don't know.

That's my creation project.

Yes,

Yes,

And that takes a lot from you but you do it beautifully and you can,

You feel the love coming off of you and those,

So I'm sure that does feel amazing for you as well as all of us participating and I know you're working on a couple of other projects.

I don't know if you wanna share the stuff you're not quite ready to throw out there yet.

Yes,

Sure,

You know me,

I'm an open book.

So my day job is as a Vistage chair.

So Vistage is an international organization,

22,

000 members worldwide.

We do peer coaching with CEOs and key executives and our focus with that is to really help leaders become a better version of themselves at work and at home and so it elevates the conversation because you get to work with your peers.

So it's groups of 15 and it's the same 15 people every month working on their problems and opportunities and it's just such a gift.

I was a member of Vistage when I ran Mr.

Neat's Formalwear and it changed my life,

Changed my thinking because you have this great idea and then 14 people poke holes at it and you go,

Oh,

Okay,

Back to the drawing board.

Yeah,

I think maybe that's awesome,

Right?

Exactly,

But it made me better and so I know what it did for me and I love being able to provide the space for other leaders to get to have that same experience and that same growth through the work and then I also have a coaching practice,

212 Degree Coaching.

I named it that because the water boils at 212 degrees and it's that one little difference between 211 and 212 that makes every bit of difference in your outcomes and so I really enjoy working with people who are struggling with the gap between who they say they wanna be and how they're actually showing up.

It seems I also have a specialty around people who are stuck.

I'm pretty good with stuck,

For everybody except me.

Just kidding.

Although that's kinda true,

Right?

I think that's only for most people.

They're good at what they do,

Advising others.

That doesn't always mean it's their own thing.

Right,

The stuckness.

So I coach virtually.

I also coach in person one-on-one but that's any type of client.

I'm working with a couple of young people who are trying to figure out what they wanna be when they grow up and then I'm working with people who are in their third phase of their careers trying to figure out what's next and I love that work.

And then like you said,

The Passion Project,

I'm working with vision journals.

I really believe that if you can't visualize and kinda make a claim of where you're going and why you're going there,

It's really difficult to.

.

.

I do think,

I believe in manifestation,

You said manifest and everything I've ever written down or put in a journal seems to come true so I'm super careful what I put in there now because I have enough evidence that if you put it in there,

The stuff just kinda starts flying at you and you better be ready for it.

So yeah,

So I love that work and that way you do an annual retreat in person and then I do monthly check-ins online as well as in person for people who can and have buckets of stuff to build your books with and I believe in a journal versus a board.

Like I think boards are fine.

Problem is they sit someplace stationary and they're static,

Like you create it one time and then that's it.

Where a journal is super active,

You're updating it all the time and so it kinda becomes part of this.

.

.

Like when I get stuff now or I'm struggling and I'm not feeling inspired,

I just open up my book and there'll be a page or two where I'm just like,

Oh my gosh,

I just love the way it makes me feel.

Like some pages are just about colors and energy and it usually just shifts my thinking in a new way so I love that work.

And then my new project that I'm guessing you're alluding to is when COVID first hit back in March and things just went bananas,

You had a little more time to think than I normally do and I woke up from this pretty lucid dream about I love these Oracle cards and they usually have a spiritual twist to them but I woke up with this idea that I wanted to create a leadership deck of Oracle cards where when I'm struggling with a business decision or an employee issue or I'm just stuck in my own head and have a hard time being creative but I could go to this deck of cards and I could intuitively draw a card and be inspired and help me move forward on a decision or a direction.

And so it kind of came to life that I was gonna do like these seven major characters that are things that are required of a leader and then all these traits underneath each one of those characters would become part of the deck.

And so it's passion projects with my son,

Jacob's doing the creative work on it so he's got all the artwork and he's doing the research on us getting the deck published and I get in my own way,

I write for days and then I stop and then I think,

Oh,

Who the hell do I think I am that I could do this?

That's one of those voices that's still alive and well in my head,

Who do you think you are?

And I heard that early on in my life and so that's another one of those dumb tapes that like,

You know who I am?

Take care.

Right,

So anyway,

We're hoping we get that done by the end of the year,

That's our target but I'm really excited about it just to be able to offer something creative and some insights and it's much more questions than telling so like the spirit of the card is about asking questions to make you kind of dig deep in where are you stuck in this one particular area so.

Yeah.

You know you'll be one of the first to get to see the deck.

I know,

I'm so excited.

I think it's really a great way to kind of combine those two worlds.

Right.

Because the business side of you is really who you are,

That's you,

You have,

You're so good at helping people in that business world level realm,

Whatever you wanna call it and now that you've kind of found that intuitive side.

Yeah.

Listening to it and helping other people listen to it when it comes to work like,

Ah,

I just think it's fantastic,

Yeah,

It's a great piece.

Well,

Thank you.

And you know it's funny because I just had a meeting with a client yesterday and I've been working with her for probably four years and one of her biggest challenges,

She's a CEO of a nonprofit and one of her biggest challenges has always been like who am I,

Like I'm not good enough,

What if somebody finds out that I know what I'm doing,

Like this isn't,

I mean,

Gosh,

Like I gotta be doing this wrong and she's brilliant.

She's absolutely brilliant and you know that voice in her head is so strong that in our session yesterday she said,

I finally,

I finally believe it.

Like I really,

I really am enough.

And I made her go back through,

I want the top seven things that have happened in the last year that have got you here.

Like give me the stories,

Tell me what happened when you had a reality check of,

Oh yes,

That was one,

Yep.

And at first she's like,

I can't think of it.

And she's,

Oh,

Well,

Hey,

This happened.

And you know,

That validated,

Like,

Look,

Gosh,

Holy cow,

They came to me.

Like that's a validation.

And after she kind of repeated these seven stories,

I mean,

Just watching her confidence,

Watching her like just kind of revel in this space of,

I really am enough.

Like it was,

It was better than that.

I had the greatest job in the world.

Right,

Yes,

You do,

You do.

You get to see people when they come to that moment of clarity and confidence and I am enough,

Honestly.

Yeah,

Cause now it's like,

Imagine what's next.

Now that you actually accept that,

What are you gonna do next?

And one of her first comments was,

I'm gonna take more risks.

And I mean,

She's gonna change the world.

Like it's the coolest thing.

Love it,

Yeah.

Yes,

Yes,

And I think that,

I just,

I always think of myself and go,

Yep,

Yeah.

When you get to that point,

You're just not afraid to take the step to do the thing that you think about.

You just do it and you're like,

If it works out,

Great,

If it doesn't,

I'm gonna learn something.

Yeah,

Worst case scenario,

I'm gonna learn something.

No such thing as failure,

Because at the least you learn and adapt and pivot and do the next thing.

Yeah,

So for young people or people who are in this phase of their life where they're examining and questioning belonging and who they are and fitting in,

What advice,

What would you leave them with?

I would say don't wait so long.

And,

Because I think,

It's all timing,

Right?

And there's a reason it took me this long and all the lessons and all the things that happened because it took me this long,

That's just how it goes.

And I would also say that the answer is not out there.

Right,

You have to spend the time doing the work inside.

And that means you have to.

.

.