Serenity Wellness Podcast E11: What's Your Lens?

Identify what lens you use, I’ll help you decide if it’s effective, and share tools to write your story using a clear lens. Throughout our learning and exploring together so far, you have gained an understanding of and connection with the impact we have on our full-body system. Continue to develop your understanding and expand your wellness toolbox to heal your mental, emotional, and physical body.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast.

My name is Nicole White and I'll be your host.

This podcast is dedicated to helping you tap into your full potential of how you can heal and balance your mental,

Emotional,

And physical well-being.

Together,

Let's explore our inner self,

Connect to our strength,

And manifest your true nature,

One full of love,

Purpose,

And passion.

Welcome to Episode 11,

What's Your Lens?

Thank you everyone who continues to join me each week and welcome to those of you who are new.

Thank you for spending some time and space with us today.

I hope you're continuing to work on building your own wellness toolbox and whatever that means for you,

As well as finding some time and giving yourself permission to fill that joy center and feed your soul.

It's amazing how when we give ourselves the time and space to do that,

How it starts just intricately working together to make magic happen in our lives.

So I hope you're starting to experience and enjoy some of that and we'll talk a little bit more about that actually in just a few minutes.

Today we're going to identify the lens you use.

I'm going to help you decide if it's effective and share some tools that you can use to write your own story using a clear lens.

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning of this podcast journey and working on developing and integrating some of these tools together,

You might have already started to notice that idea of what I was talking about in some episodes about how it starts becoming a way of being or a way of living.

You might have started to notice some of those changes that are beginning to happen both within as well as within your relationships with others around you.

So the within yourself areas of change you might start connecting further with and noticing are the areas of increased presence.

So your ability to connect more to the now and be present in what you're doing.

The ability to re-anchor and you know re-establish what's happening right in front of you instead of getting caught up into that monkey mind that we've talked about or building those trees that we talked about and not in the healthy grounding and rooting exercise we did last episode in the tree in connection with the tree and earth energy but in those trees we talked about in terms of the deep emotion rooting and getting lost and splintering out into the forest.

You might also have noticed within that more ability to be compressive that quieting of that monkey mind or you know less of the distractions that you can get looped into.

You might have also noticed an increase in your awareness.

Your awareness and some of those thoughts that you might get looped into some of those words that we talked about that we use that make us get stuck or increase those emotions that we've discussed as well but you might have also noticed within that awareness,

Awareness in your body system,

Some of those areas that we have been working on intention awareness,

Some of more awareness of your breath and how you're breathing and how it's enhancing or regulating emotion and also with the improved awareness that you might be noticing you might have also noticed that you're having an increased ability to connect back to presence then or to get out of that thought loop by using some of those other skills that we have started to build upon.

So noticing within yourself this increased ability to be present,

The increase in your awareness and the ability to get more out of those loops and use some of the skills that we've been developing.

You might have also noticed some change within in terms of increased motivation,

Little sparks of increased motivation or little sparks of excuse me increased creativity or even maybe connectings to some passion that you forgot you had or activity that you forgot made you laugh so much or really bring that smile in some of those ways we talked about in that make your body smile episode.

So these connections within this increased presence,

Awareness,

Ability to get out of loops,

Maybe some increased spark in motivation,

Creativity,

A little more pep in your step if you would.

In what you might have noticed in how this becomes a way of being and finding some changes in these experiences in terms of in your relationships with others especially if you practice those skills that we talked about in terms of the active listening and connecting and conversation.

It's when we talked about active listening to music was the other example.

I apologize again I don't remember what episode I talk about things in but in those episodes when we talked about that stuff especially if you have been excuse me practicing that you have potentially noticed an increase in your communication abilities of active listening with others.

You might have also noticed in these relationship changes it has allowed you not only to listen more actively but have a different experience in that listening with an increase in acceptance,

Acceptance of people for who they are and for where they are.

Acceptance,

Letting go of judgment,

Letting go of our expectations of how everyone else is supposed to be.

When we start doing these things we're working on it starts changing and shifting that.

It's beautiful.

And with all of these you might have noticed an increased connection,

An increased connection to self and an increased connection to others.

So those are some of the things you may have already started to notice and as we continue along this journey together it's going to continue to also enhance these things and help you connect further to the recognition that physical pain is starting to leave your body,

That your health is starting to improve.

And this has to do with many different areas some of which we have started to lightly touch on and we will go much deeper into.

I just have so much information I want to share with everyone and I'm trying to kind of sequence it out just paying attention to my intuitive guidance and letting me put these podcasts in the order of wherever I'm guided but down the line we'll be getting much deeper even into these areas that we started already touching on in terms of the science and research related to physical manifestation in our body.

So we have like the emotional spiraling right and then we have the mental dialogue,

The monkey mind,

Those things we talked about along with other stuff we haven't gotten to yet.

And then we have the physical manifestation,

Physical pain in our body when we store emotion related to these areas that we've already started talking about in terms of inflammation cycles in the body,

In terms of serotonin and dopamine regulation input,

Development,

How it spreads,

Elevates or decreases,

Cortisol,

Adrenals,

Adrenal fatigue,

Digestion,

When we get into anxious body cycle,

All these things that we've started talking about.

I don't think I touched on this part yet but it also has to do with vitamin and minerals,

How well we can absorb them.

So lots of stuff here,

Lots of stuff in our physical body and by doing some of the things we're talking about and working on and when we're decreasing these anxious cycles in our body or these automatic loops and the things that we have been discussing and how we have started to gently also touch on the surface of the science and research related to what I just went through this physical body of stuff.

And then also there's a whole other pocket of information we have not even started into yet and that's the energy body and emotion storage within our energy body,

The subtle energy body system and how it manifests into emotional and physical disease.

So that's a whole another series down the line and I love talking about that stuff and look forward to sharing that information with you also.

But for today before I get us off onto a tangent into a different direction I'm going to refocus,

Zoom myself back in here.

So I was mindfully aware that I was about to go off on a tangent of a different topic and so I'm mindfully bringing myself back to the now as I'm trying to stay focused as best I can in these podcasts on the topic at hand.

So with that I'm now going to move into today and these lenses.

What lens are you using?

I'm going to talk about three different ones today.

I'm going to just gently or gently,

I'm going to just tell you what each of them are,

What they mean and I'll give you an example and then I'm going to tell you some quick and easy tools that you might consider adding to that wellness toolbox that you're building.

So the first one is a mental filter.

This is when we only look at certain types of evidence.

It tends to be negative evidence that we're only looking at.

We don't really tend to use the mental filter and look for all the positive joyous things as an automatic.

We can train ourselves to do that but as an automatic we tend to use this as more of a cognitive distortion and only look at certain types of negative or self-defeating information which will keep us down,

Cause anxiety,

Depression,

Make us feel worthless,

Make us feel stuck,

Hopeless,

Helpless,

Move us away from goal setting,

Make us feel like a failure,

Bring all kinds of judgment,

Catastrophic thinking,

Mind reading,

Some of these sounding familiar?

Well for those of you who have listened to the previous episodes you'll know what I'm saying.

So this mental filter we only start looking at certain types of evidence and then it starts bringing in some more of those cognitive distortions to help keep us stuck there.

Then we have the disqualifying the positive.

So with this one we first will pull in all the information and actually even maybe sit with the positives,

Maybe even dance around a little with accepting it,

But we will then start trashing it,

Throwing it away,

Maybe not literally but we'll start throwing it away.

We'll start telling ourselves the yeah buts.

We will discount it as evidence,

Start throwing it away one by one or in little tiny piles and before you know it we're just left with the negative.

If you remember when we talked about all or nothing thinking it's like that but without the all,

It's just the nothing.

So disqualifying the positive we might start looking at all the evidence and then before we know it we are only left with the negative or self-defeating creating those same plethora of different emotional experiences I just explained with the mental filter.

And then the next lens is emotional reasoning.

Emotional reasoning is what I feel must be true.

I feel anxious therefore there must be a crisis,

Something's wrong,

Something's wrong,

I feel depressed therefore my life must suck.

So we get this lens and then if you remember in other episodes when I talk about this like seeking kind of behavior that we do at times so we have these three lenses these are just three examples there's other ones too but for today we have these three different lenses and it becomes how we view and what we filter through.

You can think of it in terms of like we'll put on that pair of glasses and that detective hat and we will go seeking and searching.

If I am feeling anxious I'm going to go with the anxious glasses on and my anxious detective hat and I'm going to go looking for all the things that make me feel anxious that support or give me evidence that I should be feeling anxious same with depression etc.

So we have this lens we put on this hat and then we go seeking searching for the evidence to support that.

And an example that you can think of or that I'm going to share with you to think of in terms of these three lenses is if you have to give a presentation maybe you have to give a presentation at work or at school or in the community or maybe you don't have to give a presentation you're just going to pretend with me right now as I explain this just so that you know what I'm talking about.

So you have to give a presentation and you have 20 people who are listening and at the end of the presentation these 20 people are going to fill out feedback cards and with the feedback cards 19 of them give you great results.

You knew your information,

You had great presentation skills,

You were able to answer questions,

You kept them engaged and interested in the presentation and then there is one card that gives you not so great feedback.

They say things like you didn't seem to know the information,

You were very anxious,

They couldn't really hear or understand what you were saying,

That you seemed unprepared and scattered.

I don't know something along those lines in those examples.

And so you get all these cards back and if you are if you are looking or using the lens of the mental filter you're going to get that one card that gave you that not great feedback and you're going to put it up on your bulletin board or write that message on your whiteboard.

Maybe not literally but you know what I'm saying.

It is going to be the highlight of what you look at,

What you take as the feedback and everything else doesn't even matter.

You might not even read the others.

It's like oh look at this.

Well you'll read them because you'll look for the other ones that also support that.

But anyway you'll take this one and you'll put it on your bulletin board or you write that message on your whiteboard.

Maybe not literally but it's going to stand out as the feedback and evidence that you aren't doing it right,

That you failed,

You're worthless.

The things that people say to themselves are so critical and so mean so you get the gist of what I'm saying and you might use much harsher words towards yourself.

I hope not and if you do think about some of the other stuff we've been talking about in previous episodes.

Don't make yourself moldy.

So mental filter you're going to put it on your bulletin board or write it on your whiteboard.

The disqualifying the positive in this example you're going to maybe embrace all the feedback maybe you'll even like yeah like hey I did all right and then the yeah buts start coming in yeah but I must have not appeared so calm because this person gets how I was anxious so anybody who said I'm calm nope throwing them out again maybe not literally you get what I'm saying you're not going to pay attention to that calm feedback anymore or they said that they couldn't really understand what I was saying and so whoever said I kept them engaged in the presentation well that can't be true they said I didn't know what I was talking about so whoever said I knew my information and was prepared well that can't be true so you take it and suddenly start throwing everything else away until again all you're left with is the unkind or not unkind I don't I don't want to say that you know the feedback that is just one direction it's just that mental filter and the reason I take back that word unkind is because feedback is great I appreciate feedback in all forms because it helps us grow right and so you you want to try to embrace it all and not just filter out what is you know that's you know that the lens that you're choosing at that time or that hat that you're using in that moment so don't leave yourself with just the nothing again you know in that all or nothing framework that we talked about before that third lens that third lens excuse me with the emotional reasoning is with this example I feel anxious therefore it must be true so I'm just going to look at the evidence out there that is supporting that I am appearing anxious so it's going to direct me and guide me just to that card that says I appeared to be anxious the rest nope they're wrong they're either wrong or they're just being too polite or they were just like zoned out and don't even know what I was saying or doing and they just fill out the card to get points to say they were present at the presentation who knows we bring in all kind of nonsense in our mind and to help us filter out and only hang on to the things that unfortunately help keep us down or stuck until we become more aware and we change and write the story through a clearer lens so how do we do that so these lenses these hats we wear to try to maybe navigate us in a direction that depletes us keeps us down causes depression anxiety worthlessness brings in some of those other things that we've been talking about in the other episodes judgment catastrophic thinking fortune telling mind reading shoulds coulds woods right all that stuff so what do we do so here's some more tools that you might consider adding to your toolbox the first one is to focus on filling your gratitude tank you might already be noticing that happening through mindfulness practice in practicing daily mindfulness we really begin to elevate our gratitude for the things around us just the simplest of things the way the sun is shining the way you can see the rays of the sunshine sometimes coming through the clouds literally you could see the rays the way the clouds are moving so gently through the air the way the breeze feels even when it's chilly the way the heavy rain sounds the way that the squirrels are running the rabbits are hopping our children are laughing etc so just by practicing daily mindfulness and being more in the present of the now it's automatically filling this gratitude tank but trying to be more actively mindfully aware of more ways you can fill that gratitude tank taking in the things you notice around you that you're grateful for even in the most stressful of days there is gratitude there is gratitude in everything around us we can find ways to be grateful you're breathing right something right there to be grateful for so thinking of ways in each day that you can focus and fill your gratitude tank it allows us then to regulate more the natural ebb and flow of life life is not always smooth sailing every emotion changes none are permanent we will talk much more about that when we get into discussions about emotion we haven't really even started down that avenue yet but emotions they're all temporary none of them are permanent and so when we fill in or fill up this gratitude tank when the natural ebb and flow of life happens we go through it more regulated we're able to manage ourselves a little differently because our gratitude tank is full we're filling up the second one is look for the exception so look for the exception of whatever this story that you're telling yourself to deplete yourself is look for the exception when's that time when i you know shared this information about this new idea i just learned with someone else and they found it really useful and gave me good feedback when's a time maybe i even gave another presentation and i felt really confident about it when's a time when i felt really anxious and i realized that there wasn't really anything around me that was really making me feel anxious that that that emotional reasoning that i was doing was not correct or when is a time that i really built up my anxiety about an experience and i went through it and realized that it was not anywhere near what i thought it to be so looking for the exception and then lastly asking yourself two questions so one important part of this is you have to be aware right you have to be aware of where you're at and what you're thinking before you can ask two questions so that's kind of uh with many of these tools it requires awareness and that's you know one of the reasons why i hope have a whole separate section on mindfulness with the monday podcast that i put out because awareness and and practice of presence and being now and mindful in the now is very beneficial to us in all of the ways that i've talked about but as i've mentioned before there are also a little bit of an anchoring of different tools that you learn down the line because we need awareness to do this so to ask the questions these two questions you have to be aware of what you're thinking so in the awareness then you're going to ask yourself is this true is this absolutely true so don't just stop it is this true because we can easily convince ourselves yes yes this is true but you know often it's not so is this absolutely true lets us go just a little deeper and let yourself get curious curiosity is a wonderful tool in helping us to investigate learn understand and heal ourselves internally so get a little curious with that second asking of the question we will build much more upon that actually too when i get uh down the line when i teach or share with you um a little bit more advanced skills but for now just these two questions is this true is this absolutely true so with that i hope that will give you some more things some more things to consider in terms of awareness again maybe helping you to increase your awareness of what's already happening as you build upon these tools within your connection within yourself as well as your connection with and within your relationships with others and find some of these tools to be useful in that for you as a reminder on the week of the 11th we have our free week of balance we've got some free yoga classes happening monday at 5 30 tuesday at noon thursday at noon free meditation tuesday at 6 45 and free reiki circle on thursday at 7 please register if you plan to join us as space is limited and if you want to learn more about me the other practitioners at serenity wellness center or any of our classes or workshops please check us out online at serenitywellnesscenter.

Com c-e-n-t-r-e.

Com and also on facebook and instagram and also our next episode we will be having the wonderful kevin briggs join us he's going to talk to us more about his work that he's doing on his dissertation on mindfulness with teachers and some cool ways that mindfulness is being practiced in practiced in schools as well as how he uses mindfulness in his life as a musician and a practitioner of meditation and yoga so he practices both of those in his daily life and so he'll get to give us lots of different perspectives in terms of research and understanding and what's happening in the field and how he uses those things also in his life and you might be able to hear the dog barking gently in the background the dog eddie murphy is sleeping and he must be having a cold dream of sorts because he's running in his sleep and that was him gently barking so just thought i'd share that in case you heard that in the background anyway that's what we have coming up thank you again so much for spending some time and space with me i appreciate all of you so very much and i hope that you're finding this useful for yourselves right now i don't have a comment uh area on my website i'm working on that down the line but for now if there's anything you would like to share as far as thoughts or ideas you have tools that you have found useful for yourself that maybe you want to share with others or if there's certain areas you're hoping i focus on before others you can even share that on there i'll see what i can do for sure like i said there's just so so much information i look forward to sharing with everyone we have just started touching on the surface of stuff and so i can't wait to continue to dive deeper but in the meantime if you want to share anything like that you can certainly do so on maybe the facebook posts that i do about each podcast or on instagram and you can also leave feedback on itunes thank you so much for those of you who are already doing that it unfortunately doesn't let me comment back and also thank you so much for the amazing feedback on insight timer and everyone who has reached out to me through that as well as messages i've received in all the different platforms from everybody i just really appreciate it and no i'm not reading your mind it's been it's been a question i've gotten from a few different people just keep in mind i've been a therapist for you know over 20 years i delve deep into this research and understanding through my education through my own life experience through continuing to work on my own self-development and through working with just so many different people in my life in my work with people as clients but also in my work with other professionals and the many different facets of my career so long or so far along my journey so yes i'm not reading your mind these are just patterns and things that we can get into and the more we understand the more it empowers us the more it empowers us the more it brings agent for change because all of us have it in us all of us can do this all we need to do is to learn right it doesn't mean it's easy by no means do i think any of these things are just like an easy one two three nicole said it so now let's make it happen but i promise you if you continue to work on it and don't give up you're going to find the beauty in all of this as well thanks again everyone i look forward to talking with you again soon and can't wait to talk with kevin on our next episode and hear what he has to share with us also have a good afternoon thanks a lot everyone for being here and please thank you for retracting slide

Reviews

Thank you so much for sharing your insight. Your tools have been so helpful!

Thank You!!! It was very helpful and I am going to try all your suggestions.