
Practical Spirituality
Join this fascinating discussion between Kim, a behavioral specialist with a deep curiosity about spirituality, and Gareth, a spiritual channel of Michael, as they address and explore the biggest and most meaningful questions we face in our day-to-day lives. Featuring direct, open and informed conversations about the things that impact us the most - from self-love and self-acceptance through to channeling and spiritual understandings. Discover new ways to connect to the deeper meaning of the world around you and understand the one within you. Become a Supporter at https://www.garethmichael.com/ to join our community and get early access to new episodes, answers to your personal questions and so much more.
Practical Spirituality
Trusting Self
In this episode of the Practical Spirituality, Gareth and Kim explore how developing self-trust can unlock hidden potential. They discuss how early conditioning often teaches people to doubt their instincts and rely on external validation. Through personal anecdotes, they challenge the idea of a “normal” path, and emphasize that each person’s journey toward self-trust is unique.
The hosts assess the shift from seeking external approval to building an inner compass that is guided by intuition. They introduce the concept of “dating oneself,” suggesting simple steps like journaling to deepen self-awareness and increase focus on self. They emphasize how supportive environments and introspection can help individuals overcome self-criticism and judgment, ultimately leading to a stronger sense of self.
They break down the journey to self-trust into manageable steps, paving the way for significant, lasting change and a more empowered, fulfilling life.
Become a Community Member at https://community.garethmichael.com/ to join our community and get early access to new episodes, answers to your personal questions and so much more.
Welcome back to the Practical Spirituality Podcast. We are so excited to have you on this journey with us, where we explore all elements of mind, body, emotions and soul through the lens of everyday life. Hello, gareth.
Speaker 2:How are you doing this morning?
Speaker 1:I am well this morning. How are you?
Speaker 2:Good, I'm doing good. I'm looking forward to this conversation Great.
Speaker 1:I wonder where you're going to take us.
Speaker 2:Well, for this week's episode, I want to talk about the journey of learning to trust self.
Speaker 1:Okay, Any experience with that?
Speaker 2:No, completely out of my ballpark but I will give it my go.
Speaker 1:Yes, I've had quite a few years experience learning. I don't know if I've gotten to the trust myself part, but I definitely have done the learning part I think it's an interesting topic to dive into, or at least from this angle.
Speaker 2:If you look at anyone's life, you could argue that from the moment someone's born right into adulthood, they've never really been given the opportunity to trust themselves. And the spiritual angle that you could take for the reason behind that is because when you're not able to trust yourself in mind, body, emotions or soul, it then exposes you to a lot of experiences that end up sculpting you into the person you're meant to be and leads you into the whole life journey of uncovering what those lessons are. That's the spiritual journey within itself. So obviously, that's a very quick synopsis, right overly simplifying it here. I think this is why we all go through periods in our lives doubting ourselves, questioning ourselves. Is that the right thing to do? Burying our emotions, burying our mind, you know, hiding under the covers? I just think that's something that's so universal for majority of the 8 billion people on the planet, and it's interesting for any of us to look at our individual journeys on how we begin to learn to trust ourselves in mind, body, emotions, as we grow on this path.
Speaker 1:Well, I agree wholeheartedly. You know like, for most people who listen to us, you know if they haven't already been woken up to the fact that we're here to tell you yep, this is the whole part of the game. We get messed up so that you can un-mess yourself up.
Speaker 1:Or try to At least give it a go so you can find out who you're meant to be. I do think it's trust. This is especially that in trust, yeah, I mean, I think by the time a child is 12 months old, how many times have they already heard no, don't do that. And been taken away from certain things? You know, because kids just want to learn and they're just present and they have no fear and yeah. So they're told so many times by the time they're a year old not to trust themselves. Just that alone would be enough for the rest of your life. I mean, but oh yeah, we have school too, then we have church, and then we have family and then we have all that fun stuff.
Speaker 2:It's just loaded on of all the reasons of why we can't trust ourselves. But I think that's why when you lay it out like that, in its simplest form, then it's not a mistake. Right for all of us is that we've been exposed to so many different experiences, yet we all have access to our mind, body, emotions, so we have a lot of things that are overlapping. Yet each of us have such individual, unique perspectives and unique journeys along the way that shape us and who we are. And yes, when we talk about these kind of topics, there is overlap in certain human experiences, but at the end of the day, only each individual can really untangle the reasoning behind why they're on the journey that they're on. And that's what I personally love about when we do talk about spirituality is just really how unique it is and how it's not a cookie cutter approach, it's just impossible.
Speaker 2:So, therefore, when you begin to explore what does actually trust mean for any of us, or how we distrust ourselves, the people around us, religion, spirituality, schooling, like where do you stop in naming?
Speaker 2:all the things in this world that you can distrust. I think, when we dive into it, of understanding why it matters, what are the barriers towards even trusting ourselves, and maybe some of the things in which how we can start building a better relationship in those different areas that you could argue, as I said earlier, that we were shown and taught not to be able to do or have from a very young age for sometimes the right reasons, but it takes a long time to go to do the full circle of being able to see that as an adult exactly, and you know, I think anybody that really is on a spiritual journey and has at least started listening to us, I think, has already started questioning some of the things that we've proposed in the past.
Speaker 1:Wonder that so many people get lost when they're doing the mainstream or they're looking at all the different spiritual books that are out there. Because I know my own personal experience is oh, this is very cut and dry. You just do this, and I was like, well, if you've been told for your entire life that the way that you think or the way that you make decisions, or the way that you react or the way that you are moving through the journey of life is wrong, it's not so simple to go, just do that, as we've talked about many times in the past. And so it is no wonder that people don't necessarily know how. Sometimes, what fascinates me are the ones that do trust themselves completely and I just go you're like a Martian from Mars for me, like how does that happen? And I'm bringing that point up on purpose, because there are those out there that, for whatever reason, have reached that pinnacle within themselves at a certain point and they just keep going forward. I just didn't happen to be one of them. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:No, it does make sense and I think it's even kind of continuing from the previous episode in some ways, when we did dive in deeply into the conversation of being in the present moment or living from the present moment and even how both of our experiences evolved and changed over the years.
Speaker 2:When it comes to even just talking about that topic alone and I think if you, if you and I, were to talk about learning to trust self, you would definitely paint interesting pictures of how that has continued to evolve and change as the years have went by.
Speaker 2:So even when we talk about, say, spirituality, all the different books out there, all the different religions, all the different approaches as we often talk about, it's very hard to say that any of them are right or wrong, because it's never that clean cut. So when you and I talk about our spiritual understandings, our experiences present day, that's because of our experience and exposure that has been true to us, that we have literally gone through. So sometimes if you can't relate to the experiences as far as experiences that you and I have gone through and it's a theory, then it's much easier to argue with the theory because you haven't had the overall experience of how it has impacted us in mind, body, emotion, soul, exactly so. That's why I'm never trying to ignore you, trying to convince anyone or try to convert anyone into the things that we talk about, but it's just being open enough to have the conversation of the evolution, of how all of these definitions and understandings continue to evolve and change, thus through exploration and exposure and experience. That has a huge impact on this spiritual journey.
Speaker 1:So, having said that, what definition are we basing trust on today, like what is our general definition, that we're saying learning to trust ourself. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Looking at trust with myself and my journey with it is that I think from a yearly age, as we were talking about, you're taught to trust a lot of different things externally in order to understand how to survive and how to grow in this world and how to adapt to external events and scenarios.
Speaker 2:Whereas, especially when I started questioning was on the spiritual journey and met Michael, it became more of an inward and internal journey of being able to trust myself that, no matter what life presented in front of me, I will always have the. It also goes back to that spiritual understanding that my energy brought this in front of me or as a part of my path in order to grow from it. So if it was designed by me and for me, therefore I will have that strength within to be able to get through it, because it's for me, by me, versus when beforehand, if it was always having to trust other people to get through it, and people are constantly letting you down. When you're relying on them, that was always a much harder thing to be able to grasp or for it not to get heavy in mind body emotions. So it was the evolution of you're still engaging with the world, but you're actually investing in yourself and trusting that there is a reason behind it, and the journey is to explore that present day.
Speaker 1:For me. I was taught that I'm meant to trust the outside world because they know better than me, and so in the beginning, all my trust was put on external experiences, just like you said, an external input from other people. And what I understand this journey of learning to trust self means is turning that around and finding my own inner compass. And so, even though we know that we have spiritual contracts and even though we know that these things that are coming at us, if we learn to really rely on the inner compass, then, as we're navigating whatever is showing up in our life, then we're going to have a completely different result than if we're still externalizing and still looking for it in somebody else, or feedback from somebody else or something else, or whatever that might be. That's what I'm saying Agree 100% with what your definition of trust is. For me, it's like that inner compass. 100% with what your definition of trust is For me. It's like that inner compass. And then it's having the ability to rely on my own inner compass instead of looking for it externally.
Speaker 2:And I think that is maturing and growing on this journey, and we still have to, of course, no matter who we are, engage with the world and engage with people, and there's always going to be different systems and different things out there. But I think the difference is being able to question it, now more than ever, and continue to educate ourselves in the different ways and using our own experience, instead of constantly doubting ourselves, pushing away our emotions, pushing away the mind and immediately saying nope. As you said, everyone else has it and I must have it wrong, especially when the numbers are piled against us in certain scenarios. So I think that's where it becomes interesting of how do we continue to trust in our instincts, more trust in our mind, trust in our emotions, trust in our experience as we continue to grow in this world, because that does have a positive impact in our ability to live day to day.
Speaker 1:And I also think it comes down to intuition. It's intuitively trusting the guidance that we get from ourselves, even though our mind is screaming and yelling something different. It's about knowing. Oh. So a little story I'll tell about.
Speaker 1:That is when I first started doing some of this work and I was going to the long-term substance abuse center and I would be working with clients that suffered from addiction there and we would sit down. There would be two practitioners together to work with this particular person and we'd both be asking questions of the person so that we could, you know, help them move through something. And inevitably, the other practitioner would always say okay, ready to go, I'm ready to go. What's wrong with you? Why haven't you got enough information? And that was one of the first places that I started to realize oh no, I know I don't have the right information.
Speaker 1:I can feel that in my body I have to keep asking questions. And when I get to the right question, there is a definite change internally for me I don't want to say it's just physically, because I think it is mind, body and emotion and then I go oh, this is where I need to go. I have my direction. Now I'm ready to move forward. So that's what I meant when I was saying that, which is exactly what you you're saying as well, and we've spoken about when we've talked about intuition. That is our own inner guide point, wouldn't you agree?
Speaker 2:it's also there's reasons behind of why at times we're able to follow our intuition, why other times we weren't able to or not allowed to, and that is all part of our energy guiding us, depending on the experiences that we were meant to have or going to have, but that goes back to even the spiritual contracts, or why certain events do fold, in which the way they do, and because sometimes it isn't a clear cut formula, I think is why there is distrust in our intuition at times, or in within our emotions or mind, because it's never just a clean-cut formula.
Speaker 2:So therefore, that's why it does get very confusing of how can I trust myself if every time I go back to trying to, it changes, the goalposts move, which I do think is most people's experience, because we're used to everything being very logical when it's come from other people and that's why it makes it trustworthy, because it is just some level of consistency there. But when it comes to ourselves, it always just feels a little bit noisy internally or loud, and often it's hard to place trust into that to make big or small life decisions. So it makes sense to why learning to trust self can be a complicated journey, but yet the journey keeps pointing us back to learning how to yes it does, and I find, personally, for many, many years it was a very confusing journey for me.
Speaker 1:You know I have a lot of different things that have happened in my past and I can tell you from a very, very young age I was being told that I had no emotional resilience or that I had no capacity to deal with my emotions and so, therefore, I couldn't trust myself.
Speaker 1:Now, sitting here in hindsight, I can see that that was part of growing and becoming who I am and what I would have considered in the past as the biggest obstacle for me. That emotional resilience has become one of my greatest inner powers, because I know about the emotion inside and out where, if I hadn't gone through those experiences, I wouldn't. But having said that, a lot of people think when you have the emotional resilience, that's when you are going to be able to trust yourself more, when you either control your emotions or understand your emotions. And, like we've said many times, it's not even really that because they're going to show up and throw us for a loop every single time. I can guarantee you, every time I think, oh, I got a handle on this. Smack right back in my face.
Speaker 2:Right on cue.
Speaker 1:Thought I had a handle on it right. Yeah, one of the things that gets so confusing about this journey, because when you are out there looking at different things it sounds so clear cut. I don't know about you. That has not been my journey.
Speaker 2:If we are talking about the common barriers a lot of us face when it comes to self trust, it is number one.
Speaker 2:The voice in our head, like the negative talk that we often experience, that when it comes to making a decision it gets louder.
Speaker 2:We feel paralyzed by what this inner critic is saying to us in that circumstance and, of course, when that starts, then the emotions get heavy and we really doubt our capabilities to be able to make a decision.
Speaker 2:And that is easier to hand over responsibility to someone else. That is what often starts first, but then you have to look at that's linked back to past quote-unquote failures or traumas that we've been through from a very young age right up until adulthood. That is all deemed as experience that is guiding our ability or inability to make a decision in that moment. So when you start layering all of these different reasons to why it's so hard to be able to trust ourselves in those moments to make a decision, you can understand how it's not clear-cut and why it is a rarity, as you're saying earlier, for people just to completely trust in themselves and have that confidence to run with it no matter what, because more often than not people don't have a reason to trust with it, no matter what, because more often than not, people don't have a reason to trust their lives to date Because, as we were talking about.
Speaker 2:It's been too unpredictable and the formula has not been set to be that clean cut.
Speaker 1:And then we haven't even really talked about, which we both know is part of the experiences that we have to have. But all the various different relationships that we go through at the early stages of our life and how we interact with others whether that be family members, whether that be our early first stepping into school, and teachers and friends and everything our social interactions and everything that comes with that in those very first formula of years, social interactions and everything that comes with that in those very first formula of years, you know those relationships also pay a very big impact. You know I will share this with you that I have found fascinating on my journey. So, as per most people, I thought it was me that was the problem for many, many, many years and I know the experiences that I had going through school and the different points that were the most challenging points for me. Then I became a parent.
Speaker 1:I've moved halfway across the world, I'm raising kids and I watch my kids get to these different stages in their social interactions and seeing the exact same thing happening and I'm thinking to myself how can this be? We're two generations beyond, we have so much more knowledge, we have all of these things and we live in a completely different culture, country side of the world, yet these kids are going through some of the same social experiences that I went through, and that was one of the first times I woke up to. Oh, maybe we all have to go through these experiences, but how much they impact us at different ages of our life and what it causes us to feel during those stages, and even when I'm working with clients today, it's like clockwork. I can tell you the years where kids are going to run into the issue and I'm not mentioning them right now because's like clockwork.
Speaker 1:I can tell you the years where kids are going to run into the issue and I'm not mentioning them right now because so many people don't want to go out and prevent that from happening when we can't, as you and I both know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I just find it interesting that you know people think that there is a normal out there and that people do have these. They don't have to go through all the experiences, but I think almost all of us go through it at some level.
Speaker 2:Yep, in our own ways and but, as you were saying there, there is no stopping it, and I think it's that when you try to, it's that life just gets creative and bringing it up in new, different ways that you can't see it. And then it's kind of like when our parents say I'm going to raise my kids completely different to how my parents raised me, or I'm never going to become like my parents, uh-oh, okay.
Speaker 1:You know that one right I do. Uh, no, I'm not familiar with that at all.
Speaker 2:Let's take a step back from this week's episode and share with everyone what we've been up to behind the scenes we're really excited to be able to finally offer the gareth michael community to each of you.
Speaker 1:The community offers a range of benefits, including access to our live events, weekly podcast episodes, articles, self-checking questions, as well as a community of individuals you can connect with and interact with along the way. It's designed to offer you support, guidance and a safe space on a day-to-day basis. We'd love to have you join our global community of like-minded individuals.
Speaker 2:That website address again is wwwgarethmichaelcom Now let's get back to that episode, shall we? So I just think it's interesting that when it comes to these kind of human behaviors and patterns that you see basically in everyone, it makes you question okay, if this is as common as we say it is, then it has a reason for its existence. There's a reason to how we are all exposed to that and there's a bigger picture or meaning going on. So I think at times it's that if we're able to explore that and understand why it is this way, it's much easier and it helps a lot with our level of acceptance towards some of these events or how these things are unfolding.
Speaker 2:Now it doesn't relieve us from these experiences, but that's where the individual journey is of being curious and wanting to question is a huge part of it. And exploring that mind, body, emotions, as it appears present day and it's only when you're actually willing and able to do that, depending on where you are on your journey if that's on your journey at all, everyone's different then that is the starting foundations of trusting yourself and building a trust with yourself, because that's very hard to do unless you're willing to educate your mind with the reasons behind why we distrust ourselves and where do those come from. So I know I'm starting at the very start, but I'm saying that is a huge part of it, because you have to do the ground work in order for it to be able to evolve or change. A lot of the patterns or behaviors that we're all running that continuously impact our decision making day in, day out, on our ability to regulate emotions or not.
Speaker 1:So I agree wholeheartedly, and one of the things that I would say is a lot of people would ask well, how do I shortcut this? And I think, as you've just said, said, there is no shortcut cutting it, and so then my next statement would be how do we know we're ready to start exploring that and and go in there and I'm saying this for a reason, because I go for me. It was when I started to become aware that I was continually looking for the trust externally, or that external validation, and how it would rip me apart on the inside, because I was like, well, every part of me saying I need to do this, but all of these voices out here are saying I need to do something completely different and I don't know how to make that judgment, that internal judgment, and it's not like there was a light switch that went on to do that. It's just like you said, I had to go back to the beginning and start to understand some of the experiences that happened to me, to understand some of the emotional.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like there's a saying out there that I keep thinking about while we're talking right now, and that is it's not what happened to us, it's what we do with what happened to us, and I think that's a very valid point, because that's that uniqueness, because it's unique to each one of us, whatever we do internally with that self-talk, the critic, the judgments we've made out of ourself, the level of shame we might've felt, even though we can't turn around and start to trust ourself, until we start to explore some of that, to understand and my favorite verbiage for this is you know what? These were coping skills that we picked up along the way and while they might have helped us get through it in that moment, they might not be valid today, and exploring them is what allows us to start to start this journey of trusting ourself.
Speaker 2:So I think that brings us on to the different ways in which we can start rebuilding and strengthening our trust with ourselves.
Speaker 1:It's often about taking the very small steps, like you and I've talked about so many times. You've talked about the journaling and how you love journaling and how that opened your eyes to understanding your past experiences in a different way. Correct, and that is always one of the key things that I have heard many people say. For me, the journaling was difficult because all my focus was always on was the negative and how I'd failed, and hearing that voice in my head of all the people telling me I couldn't succeed, until someone asked me to do an exercise of something completely opposite, and what that was was to sit down and write out a list of all the ways that I had succeeded in trusting myself, or I had even succeeded at anything, starting from the fact that I learned to crawl, I learned to walk, I learned to tie my shoes, I learned to read all of the things that I did or that I was able to do.
Speaker 1:Now, that isn't necessarily about trusting yourself, but because my focus had been so narrowed in on the failure and the self-criticism I couldn't see anything good. So I had to start with this tiny little stepstone, and what that exercise kicked off was the curiosity that you're often talking about. Let me get curious why I believed all these other people. What were those experiences that I experienced and what did I learn from feeling like that failure for so long?
Speaker 2:And I think that's why there's so many interesting approaches to this, because, as you mentioned, I do love journaling and seeing what the subconscious and conscious mind likes to bring up, especially when we give it the opportunity to target a specific area of our lives. So, say, if in this instance, we're talking about our, our ability or inability to trust ourselves, I think it's interesting to see what memories of the pros and cons of the experiences that it wants to bring up and when it does that, that is our system guiding us to explore those different experiences with someone who is qualified and understands, and how to navigate that with someone on their specific needs. It becomes a very interesting thing to explore and a guide within itself. So, but I think, in even how we started this episode, it's really important for people to understand that we've all never been given the opportunity to trust ourselves from the start, and I think that's where the element of having self-compassion and, in some ways, forgiveness towards ourselves, that it didn't start with us before.
Speaker 2:We were actually, by design, not allowed to trust ourselves, because there was a number of experiences with other people and in this life that were required in order for us to become the person we are today, but it is our responsibility to understand that person. That is through questioning and the willingness to explore in a way that suits you and your needs today, because, as we often talk about, those needs change as we go through life. How Kim approached herself 20 years ago versus 10 years ago, versus today and even 10 years from now, it is a forever changing and evolving journey and that's where that self-compassion and having those small steps become very important when it comes to this exploration very important when it comes to this exploration and absolutely and one of the terms that comes to mind for me when it comes to self-compassion and forgiveness that I use a lot is this happened to me, not because of me.
Speaker 1:And again, that was because I was stuck in so much of the shame and the blame and what had happened to me, I thought, was because of me, not, that these were experiences that I actually went through.
Speaker 1:And I think the other little nugget is when you can have that self-compassion and that forgiveness and start to be kinder to yourself when you're exploring these things.
Speaker 1:It's easier then to identify some of the wisdom that you picked up along the way as you went through these experiences and that perhaps that would be one of the things if you could gather the wisdom from some of the experiences and start to write that down, that also starts to give you a whole new perspective on who you are as a person and your ability to trust yourself. And you know you're not going to just write it down willy nilly and say, boom, that's what you were talking about. We have somebody, a professional or someone who's completely objective, that has the ability to help us navigate that particular part of the journey and then, after a while, it starts to become natural, and that's when we start to talk about really then become natural, and that's when we start to talk about really then. Then, when we understand some of that past stuff, beginning to listen to our intuition becomes a little bit easier at that stage.
Speaker 2:There is no silver bullet when it comes to our ability to trust ourselves, especially if there has been so many years of distrust. So it is like dating ourselves over a period of time where you don't date someone once and then suddenly get married the following date. It takes time to believe and trust with another person. So if we haven't had the ability to have that trust with ourselves, we have to put ourselves through the same pieces of the same process, but with the curiosity of wanting to go inwards and to ask those questions of why the distrust is there to start with. And over a period of time it does begin to balance out little by little, but it does take a commitment to self to want to do that exploration.
Speaker 1:And I love that you said the dating self, because so many of us only look at the critical side, the judgmental side, the shaming side. We only look at what we have done wrong, so how? Of course we're not building a resilience or a bank of things that we can trust and very few people actually begin to get to know themselves. We're not encouraged in so many different ways to actually get to know ourselves. And especially in today's society, there's that new buzzword that's out there everywhere, which is the narcissistic word. You know.
Speaker 1:And so if we want to get to know ourselves, isn't that being selfish or narcissistic? But we're not talking about like that. We're talking about really having a much deeper understanding of what is going on inside of us and how we're responding to life, each and every moment that life is happening and I love the fact that you said that, because I did. It was like I had to first find out who I was, then I had to become my own friend because, trust me, I wasn't a very good friend to myself, and then I had to start courting myself and nurturing myself in order to get to that place where I could trust myself.
Speaker 2:And I think that's what's kind of really and as you do that journey, what you end up discovering can be quite astounding as time goes on. Because, especially how a lot of us take ourselves completely for granted without meaning to or understanding, that's exactly what we do. So it's like we might complain that our partners, our relationships, our families take us for granted at times, but then when you actually look at the relationship with yourself, in what ways are you taking yourself for granted? And mind, body, emotions, and not even seeing the value or the reasoning of why you should explore yourself. So it's often not a very healthy relationship or foundation to start with, and it's often not a very healthy relationship or foundation to start with. And it's only when we begin to understand that it's that way can we begin to create those changes that are necessary to take enough of an interest and belief in ourselves to want to invest into ourselves.
Speaker 1:Which is a very important word investing into ourselves, and we're so quick to want to invest in everyone else. If we make that commitment, as you were saying because it is a commitment to really want to explore ourself, our journey, our mind, body and emotions Then when we turn that inward and start to have compassion with that, we don't give up on dating after the second or third round. If we're really interested in somebody, if we have that interest, we're going to pursue it, no matter what, even if the alarm bells are going off. So why are we not able to turn that around and pursue that within ourselves? And it does take that level of commitment, I think, and then it also takes. It does take that level of commitment. I think so, and then it also takes. I think the other important part about this journey is, if we have had a past where we have been hypercritical or blaming of ourselves, that we put ourselves in a very supportive environment and surround ourselves with people who are going to support that journey as we go through it, because it has a tendency to get messy from time to time.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you another thing that I found very interesting about this, because people have often talked to me how have I managed to go from where I was to where I am, and what drove that? And I don't know if I have the answer to so much. What drove it, other than I was meant to do that? But I do know that that commitment that you just talked about became very important to me, and I realized, probably midway through the journey, that I didn't have a clear lens that I was looking at myself and my life through, and so I had to find a strategy to be able to understand it better, without all the clouded stuff that I had from the past.
Speaker 1:So I coined this little term that whenever anything happened to me that I didn't understand, I would do an autopsy and so I'd sit down and I would lay it out and I'd go step by step through it and the verbiage I would use and I know this verbiage sounds a bit outdated, but I would say, okay, what is my part in this, what is somebody else's part in it, what really upset me?
Speaker 1:Because if there's something in this that really upset me or that I blame me or shame me or judged me for, then that is something I need to explore, and it started making it so much easier because it took it away from me being a failure or not being able to get it right, or all the stuff that my head would want to go into, to looking at it as if I was. I'm just exploring this logically so that I can find out. Okay, so let's look at that and what does that mean to me? So that's just a little tip. I mean I like doing it. It's always hindsight, because hindsight is really great, but that is how you learn, you know.
Speaker 2:But I think that's why it's actually interesting to look back and think yeah, Kim, 30 years ago didn't enjoy the idea of that process, didn't even want to engage in that process. But that just goes to show that it's the little baby steps along the way that create the biggest change longer term when it comes to building that relationship with self that we were designed not to have for many years of our life. But little by little, little, it does come.
Speaker 1:It does, and it's so worth the journey. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, then you might want to check out our online community. We built it to offer you the comfort of having a supportive community by your side, no matter where life takes you. Connect with like-minded individuals through our app. Navigate each step of the journey together with us by joining our Gareth Michael community. Here are a few of the things you're going to get. You'll get exclusive real-time access to live recording and events. Advance access to each new episode. The opportunity to ask questions directly of Gareth and I Input into what topics we cover in the show. Access to exclusive content not available anywhere else. To learn more about our community, please go to wwwgarethmichaelcom. Thanks again, and I hope you guys are having a lovely week.