The Philosophy, Psychology & Spirituality Of Success Ep 4

30:32

30:32

The Philosophy, Psychology & Spirituality Of Success Ep 4

by Nasseema Taleb

Rated

4.8

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talks

Activity

Meditation

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Everyone

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227

In this 4th episode, we explore the topic of shadow work, one of my favourite topics of all time! We discuss how we start identifying our shadows, how we understand our shadows, and we now start working with our shadows without resistance, but rather with acceptance and self-compassion.

Psychology Success Shadow Work Acceptance Self Compassion Emotional Awareness Emotional Release Emotional Healing Emotions Emotional Expression Dissociation Emotional Support Anger Spirits

Meet your Teacher

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Meet your Teacher

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Transcript

Arjun, Welcome back. It's fabulous to be back. You? Yes. Is this like number four? Are we at the four? I think this is number four, Yes. And it gets more and more and more exciting every time. What a journey we've come up. Absolutely. So last time, Last week, We talked, We started touching on shadow work after having spoken about changing beliefs. Yes. And we've talked about the three concentric circles. We spent quite a bit of time exploring that. Yes. And then we started discussing the topic of shadow work. True. And this morning when we met, I started having a conversation with you and I was saying, You know, I believe that I'm doing my work, I'm doing my work, I'm doing my work. But there are moments where something comes up, For example, A negative emotion that I do not, You know, That I've thought I've dealt with and it comes up and it comes up in different shapes and forms. For me, It comes up as a heat wave in my stomach and heart area. Right. And the moment it comes up, I'm like, Whoa, I see you for who you are. I mean, You know, I recognize it. Yes. And I feel it, You know, Physiologically I feel it. Yes. It almost comes as a shock and it comes as a shock because I thought that I've dealt with that part of me that needed healing. Yes. And it's great that you have the awareness that it is there and you're able to describe it so vividly. You know, You're giving it texture, You're giving it a temperature and even with your body language, You know, Articulating what this emotion is and that's awareness, Which is great. And our listeners need to know that that really is the first step to be aware that now this disempowering, Unresourceful emotional state, Whether it's anger, Irritation, Frustration, Guilt, Regret or depression is now starting to come into me and overcome me. So that's a great place to start. Yes. So please continue. So now, Yes. Yes. Yes. Now I recognize it. I sit with it. Yes. I let it play out. It's drama and I can see it play. It's literally as if I'm stepping out of my body and I'm watching it played out as drama. Excellent. My question is, How do I get rid of it completely? I mean, I have it less and less and less often, But I want to be in a state where either it doesn't come up or when it comes up, I'm able to open the windows of my heart and let it out immediately rather than it sitting latently there for, Sometimes for, You know, For 10 minutes and sometimes for half an hour and sometimes for the whole day. Tell me more. What do I do? Amazing. Amazing. My mind is buzzing right now because this really takes me to the kind of work that I do, That I know that you do in different ways with yourself and I know you're going to do this with hundreds if not thousands of people, Naseema. Is the area, Just to recap what we said about shadow work in the previous podcast, Emotions. So essentially let's say we have the happy emotions of glad and the, You know, Unhappy emotions of sad and we demean, We discredit, We debase these darker emotions and we put labels on them as if these are terrible things that we're not supposed to have or not experience. And therefore we get into denial very often and just to kind of put on a mask, You know, We were wearing masks even before COVID, Way before COVID and the mask was of pretending to be in a higher state of happiness and joy whereas on the inside we really weren't. And we were denying those emotions because we've been taught that those are emotions that we need to get over and the entire positive thinking revolution, As good as it is, Is misunderstood in that the interpretation often is that when you have these negative emotions you need to overcome them quickly. Shadow work does exactly the opposite. Let me use a metaphor, An example out here. Let's say you've had an accident, You're playing a sport, You've injured your forearm and you go to the doctor and he says, Listen, There's a fracture in the arm, The bone is a bit broken. But, You know, We're in the 21st century, We have advanced technology and we need to put your hand in a cast and your hand needs to remain in a cast for a period of six weeks approximately, Give or take some heel faster, Some slower, But that's the average amount of time that it takes for you to recover from a broken bone and just using a forearm in this example. And you remember in school there was always somebody, Maybe, You know, It wasn't you or it wasn't me, But there was someone who had a cast, You know, On their leg or on their arm, Etc. And you remember we used to write messages of get well soon on that cast to them, Etc. And we knew that they would have it for a few weeks. We also knew that it's not going to come off in a few days. And if you tell the doctor that, Listen, I need this bone to heal in 24 hours, The doctor is going to say there's nothing I can do because this is science. Your body is going to take that amount of time to heal. So you must permit it to heal and while it's healing, These are the precautions that must be taken. That's how the body is now with emotions and hurt and pain and the darker emotions that we experience, It's essentially the same things. We must permit it to remain in its place until healing has taken place. So shadow work is extending validity to emotions that cause us pain. So rather than running away from the painful emotions, We run towards the painful emotions. We invite the darker emotions into our life when they come. Now, Someone listening to it might say, Yeah, But what if I'm in the middle of a meeting? Yes, Granted, If you're in the middle of a meeting, I agree that it is inconvenient. And we have spoken about in the previous podcast, Those five ideas, Things you can do with your body, Your mind, Etc. , That you can apply immediately. Think of it this way, You have a headache, Take a Panadol right now because you need to make an important business presentation. But the reason you're getting a headache is because you have a food allergy and you've got to identify what that food allergy is. Now, Outside the meeting and outside of work, You can take the time and effort to discover what your food allergies are so that you do not get those headaches coming in at those inopportune times. Okay, So now we understand what I'm talking about. And so here you are, You have the darker emotion. Let me just talk to you about men and women, Particularly with a number of women I've worked with who have had a challenging past and have come to me, Have literally the world on their shoulders, Wearing an armour, Taking on the world, Family life, Personal life, Professional life, Money, Health, Friends and so on and so forth, Fighting the good fight and doing a damn good job at it, I might add. And also working on themselves to make sure that those darker emotions don't come up so that they can perform at their best in every sphere of their life. The challenge with that is at some point in time, The unpreferred emotions are going to come up and take over and cause havoc in that person's life. And this is why we need to do shadow work where we need to deliberately allow that dark emotion to come in. So the example that I'm thinking about, It was sadness and depression about what had happened with her and her former relationship. And she held that within her and had a belief system that if she, It's not okay to cry, Crying is a sign of weakness. It took me two coaching sessions to literally convince her otherwise and I had to sit down with her and say, Listen, If you don't do this, Don't come back to me. She said, What do you want me to do? I said, Here's what I want you to do. Think of it this way. Let's say you've gone out and you've eaten something and do you know what food poisoning is? Do you know? Yeah, Yeah, I know what food. She said, I know what food poisoning is. So if you have food poisoning, What do you do? Rush to the hospital. Great. Now what's the first thing that the doctor does when you're experiencing food poisoning? She said, Oh, Well, Think of it. Medicine. No, What's before medicine? A drip, A saline. No, What's before that? Well, He actually asks you to vomit or gets you to vomit and stimulate yourself so that you throw up what's inside your stomach. That's a horrible thing to do but it's necessary to get the poison out of your system first and only after that administer any medication so that you can commence the recovery process. Now with the depression that comes up from the memories of the past, You must give yourself permission to go through this exactly like food poisoning. And she said, How do I do that? I said, You need to give yourself permission to cry. And between now and the next week, And I'm going to see you one week from now, I told her, I said, I want you to do five sessions, Five sessions without me of 20 minutes each. That's 100 minutes. Five sessions of 20 minutes each. What do you want me to do? She said, I want you to cry for 20 minutes nonstop and do that on five different days. You've got seven days so you choose the five days. I prefer you don't do two sessions on the same day. And she started fighting with me, Arguing, Debating almost like, Hey, I'm not going to do that. I said, Okay, Listen, Here's what I'm going to do. Let's do three sessions of 15 minutes. That's my last price. I'm not going below that. I cannot possibly offer you a discount greater than this. So I've brought it down from 100 minutes to 45 minutes. And if you don't do this, Don't bother coming for the next session. All right, We're done because I know that this is required. So, You know, Begrudgingly she walked away and I asked her for accountability and she said, How do you know I've done it? I just said, I don't know. I don't know if you've done it or not. So she has two kids, Got her kids involved in the process. They've grown up, Confided in them and told them that a professional coach has asked her to do this and came back to me the next week. Having done it, I could see from her body language, Nasima, Her hair was looking better. Her skin was glowing. She was walking tall. There was a genuine smile on her face. That vomiting had happened. The poison from within had been released, Or at least most of it, Because she gave herself permission to expunge, To expiate, To release, To remove that which was within her via the process of expression. And I asked her about it. She said it was very difficult to start. In fact, She asked me also, How do I start? I said, I want you to go back to those memories. Look at those photographs. Play those videos from the times in which you don't want to remember. I want you to remember the painful past so that you can cry. And when someone starts crying, We need to do this with our friends and loved ones as well. When someone's crying because they're experiencing pain, The worst, Very, Very worst, The most terrible, Horrible, Awful thing to do to that person is to look at that person and say, Don't cry. Don't do that with your friends. Don't do that with your family. And don't even do that with your kids. Rather, You want to lean forward and if it's appropriate to hug or touch, You want to tell them it's okay to cry. You're teaching them that this crying thing is valid. This is how the human physiology and psychology releases the stress that has been built up within that has come from these painful memories of the past. And so the emotion of depression and all its counterparts, Whether it's sadness or a feeling of disdain or loneliness or even fear, Is released via the process of permitting yourself to cry. And in this example, This illustration that I provided with the lady who I coached, I put a metric to it because she resisted it and I wanted her to be accountable to me about doing that. And from that process, Once we did that internal house cleaning, Then we could start building on happiness in general or even goals or her dreams or her life purpose. Whereas she was trying to build all of that without having cleared this mess out in the first place. So this is really at the root of shadow work and I've just used an example of sadness where you're allowing yourself to feel that emotion. But yeah, At an introductory level, Naseema, This is what shadow work is. Excellent. I wouldn't have a problem with crying because I spend a lot of time crying. Sometimes I don't know why I'm crying. And that's fabulous. It's brave when we cry. It's not weak when we cry. And especially with the men I coach, They are attuned to not cry. I've had a multitude of sessions with men where I've eventually gotten to a place after a lot of, I guess, Logical persuasion to just get them to give themselves permission to allow those tears to flow. And sometimes, You know, It's fun to do it. Even when you're in a healthy emotional state of mind, It's fun to watch a movie that makes you cry and just allow yourself to cry. It is therapeutic, Very much like a body massage. Just like there is validity in going for a body massage and science shows now that that is so healthy for the tissues of the body or a yoga class or just a walk in the park barefoot. Even a good solid cry is therapeutic and healing, Very, Very healing. Your body feels different after a good cry. It does. It feels relief, I think. Liberated and emancipated. Yes. And did you notice that once people start to learn to cry, Then it becomes more natural for them to do it. And it becomes less judgmental and it becomes. . . There's almost a sort of pleasure in allowing yourself to cry. True, True. Because you are, As you said, Expunging, Using your own words. Yeah, And do it in private. Again, Don't come back to me and say, Hey, But I can't cry in front of. . . No, You don't have to cry in front of so and so. Lock yourself in a closet if you have to or drive out into the city somewhere and just isolate yourself and have that experience. Just do it once and, Yeah, And just tell us how amazing it was for you because I've done this with scores of folks, Maybe even a few hundred folks and the results are magical, To say the least. Beautiful, Beautiful. Arjun, I'd like for us to pick an emotion or a state and explore it further. So we've talked a little bit about sadness and depression and the example that you've talked to us about. There are certain emotions which lead sometimes to a more physically violent. . . It manifests itself in a more physical way. So there's things like anger and jealousy, Even jealousy for example. Talk to us a little bit about the emotion of jealousy. Yeah, Absolutely. So let's kind of look at the scale of emotions, All the way from the bottom to the top. Right at the bottom is despair and depression. One rung above that is guilt, Shame and regret. A step above that is jealousy and envy. And when we come above that, We now get into the domain of rage and revenge. And the moment we go from say guilt, Jealousy into rage and revenge, We have now transitioned from the domain of static emotions and into dynamic emotions. So depression and sadness is the most static of all emotions. Typically when someone is sad, Depressed, In despair or even fear, Lonely, That's all part of that sadness, Depression, Family of emotions. One tends to sit still. There isn't much dynamism with regard to the physiology. As we move higher up this rung, Starting somewhere around envy, Jealousy, But more now once we get into the rage, Our flavor of emotions is where the body now becomes dynamic and you're moving. Now after rage and revenge comes anger and after anger comes irritation, Frustration and arrogance. And one step above this now is hope. Okay and hope is the beginning. Now I'm using the shorter version, There are a multitude of adverse, Un-preferred negative emotions. Let me just use that label negative emotions here that fit in somewhere on this ladder of emotions. Let me just say that. And the reason I say ladder of emotions is because there is an ascension process. When you start off with the emotions or let's say you are having the emotions of depression and sadness and let's say for the most part you are experiencing depression and after a little bit of work on yourself, Now for the most part you are experiencing the emotion of anger. That's actually progress because you're higher up the ladder and you've moved from the domain of static emotions into dynamic emotions. And when your emotions are dynamic, They're easier to steer because you can't steer a parked car. If your car is pointing in the wrong direction, No matter how much you move the steering wheel, We're not going to be able to correct the direction. But if you start moving, Even if you are moving in the wrong direction, You now have the opportunity since you are moving to take the next exit, You know, Go around the handle and take a U-turn. So therefore it's actually a good sign when someone comes to me with the emotion of anger because or they say I primarily have the emotion of anger, I'm thinking great, You know, You're not dealing with the lower rung emotions and you're in a better state than those who are going through depression and sadness. One needs to really understand this and rather than say things have gotten worse, Understand that things have actually gotten better if you now start experiencing anger. Now it's entirely possible that you go through depression and you don't really experience anger for too long and you come out of it, Yeah, That's fine, That's okay too, But let's assume, Let's look at this just for the purpose of discussion in a linear way and I will tell you that these things are anything but linear, But the hierarchy remains as I have mentioned earlier, Okay? So now we're at the emotion of anger and now we've got a dynamic emotion. The way we dealt with depression was giving yourself permission to cry. The way we deal with anger is when anger is dynamic, Instead of trying to slow down the anger, We increase the anger. Tell me more, I'm curious. There you go. Let me just pause out here because you know those of you who are driving might just want to make sure that you pay attention to the road a little bit more and I'm going to tell you how and then I'm going to tell you why and I'm also going to tell you I have done this with enough people to know that it works, The caveat being and this is the caveat with all coaching that for coaching to work, You've got to want the coach, So there's the coach is the person providing the coaching, The coachee is the person being coached, The coachee must now submit to the process and as I said submit to the process, Must be open to exploring this idea, Discovering this idea with their heart, Doing due diligence to the process before judging it and saying no this won't work or it doesn't work. You know the old adage you can take a horse to water but you can't force it to drink. The extension to that is that you can put salt in his oats and make him thirsty. So hopefully I'm putting some salt in your oats and making you thirsty regardless this will not work for you unless you are thirsty to discover this properly, Don't just try this in content, Try this also with intent. So let's talk about it and I need to say that otherwise a lot of folks give this a half-hearted attempt and come back and say it doesn't work or there could be a case where somebody does it just to prove to me that it doesn't work and I tell them you will succeed in proving to me that it doesn't work because you have a belief that it doesn't work and your beliefs are way way way stronger than my suggestions. However, If you permit yourself to put yourself into the driver's seat of this paradigm and just try it out just like trying out a new flavor of ice cream or a new kind of cuisine just try out a new sport you allow yourself those experiences that's neuroplasticity allowing yourself to have those experiences allow yourself to have these experiences as well and I can pretty much assure you that you will not harm anyone or yourself because your cognitive mind will not permit you to. So let me give you a very basic example and this was a gentleman recently who I coach on and off sent me a message saying that I am angry right now, I'm really angry and he actually said pissed off and angry. So one of the first things that I teach people, I encourage people to do is with language. I say instead of saying I am angry say I'm feeling anger or I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling frustrated or I'm feeling irate or I feel revenge and the difference is for example if I say whose spectacles are that? Seema you'll say my spectacles. Whose laptop is that? That's my laptop. Whose mobile phone is that? My mobile phone. Whose home is this? My home. Whose car? That's my car. It is yours but it's still different from you. But I can't say you are your spectacles and you can't say I am my laptop. I am my car, My mobile phone. You and that entity are separate. When you say I am you are that thing but you are not your laptop, Phone, Spectacles. You are separate from it and the moment you say I feel anger it's like saying you know I'm feeling my laptop now, I'm touching, I'm feeling my car and I'm feeling my phone which implies pretty directly to your mind that your anger is not you. You dissociate. You dissociate versus associate so that's really at the first step. And once you've done that now let's, This is the response that I gave to the message that this person gave me and he said I'm pissed off, I'm angry. I said alright. So my response to him was scream out loud comma preferably using profanity comma. I am loving this. Here we go, Let me start again. Scream out loud comma preferably using profanity comma and if you can comma without hurting yourself or anyone else comma break something, Full stop, Send. So I waited a while, Get a call back no later than 10 minutes later and just like you're laughing he was in splits on the phone. He wasn't just laughing, He was chuckling, He was laughing out, He was the lol laugh out loud and he couldn't contain himself. He said after a while I was rolling on the floor laughing, I said dude what happened to the anger? He said you know the craziest thing happened. He said the moment I gave myself permission to feel the anger, The anger didn't seem to want to be there. The anger wanted me to not want it to be there and it wanted to fight back because that's what anger is. But the moment I embraced the anger and told it that I give you blanket permission to be whoever you want to be, It moved from anger to confusion and confusion is a different emotion than anger. In fact confusion confuses you. It's a different emotion. It's a different emotion in fact confusion now brings about, If there's dynamism it suddenly brings about inertia. Like you stop when you're confused, You don't go forward and you wouldn't want that anger to go forward. So paradoxically by permitting the anger to proceed you got it to stop in its tracks. Whereas in the past every effort by you to stop it has caused it to aggravate, To exaggerate, To exasperate, To amplify. And so that's one way, That's a tool that I've used a multitude of times and because this person trusts me and applied it wholeheartedly, It worked in his own words. He said I think it wasn't even minutes but it was seconds that the transmutation took place. And so this is a great way to kind of work with anger as well. An extension to this here in Dubai, I know we have this in other cities as well, We have these places called the Smash Rooms. And these Smash Rooms are places, Are great places for anger therapy. Phenomenal places. They dress you up with a space suit and eye goggles and protection gear and all that stuff and they give you things to smash and things to break. That's right, That's what they do. And I think you're, At least you're in Dubai, They give you a time limit of, I could be mistaken but approximately 18 minutes I think. I don't know why it's such an exact number but it is. And pretty much everyone who goes there says hey is that going to be enough? Trust me like 5-7 minutes into the process, You're sweating profusely, You're breathing, Which is great because you're getting a workout and endorphins are being released into your body. So now there's confusion because you started with the emotion of anger, Which is your psychology. But now your physiology is starting to feel joy. So imagine mixing hot water with cold water, The average temperature falls immediately and in less than 10 minutes you're panting as if you've had a good run, A workout, A swim. So you've had a release of the anger and you've had good exercise for the body as well and you've done that. For those places in the world where there isn't a smash room, You can actually create an environment where you could, And please wear protective gear when you do this, Where you could smash something or things. And I can already see some of the people who are hearing this cringe at this suggestion of mine. Yes, I know you're cringing. I can see you cringing. But I'm going to say it anyways because I have proof and you don't. You have a theory that this won't work for you and quite likely you might even have a belief that this won't work for you and I'm telling you now that if that is your belief then it won't work for you. I have evidence that this does work because I've done this with people over and over and over, The same person a number of times and a number of people a number of times also to know beyond doubt that this can work. And so this is the fascinating area of shadow work where suddenly we shatter paradigms, We expand our perspectives and we embrace this new idea that wow, This thing that I wasn't thus far allowing myself to even think, I'm now allowing myself to think. And growth, Any form of growth is nothing but giving yourself permission to think in ways that you've never thought before. And when you think in ways that you've never thought before, You will now start doing things that you've never done before and when you do things that you've never done before, You will have things that you've never had before. And that's the things that you will have in addition to peace of mind and emotional wisdom will be material comforts as well. So. . . Beautifully said Arjun. I'm going to check these places out. Sounds exciting. Thank you so much for yet another week of inspiration and fun. This has been so much fun. We'll see you next week. I look forward to it. Cheers. Take care. Bye.