Who Runs Your Life - The Kid Or The King?

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Shine On,

Bringing you healers and dreamers and people who want to make life richer.

It's your time to shine on.

Hi it's Casey.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Shine On.

Happy holidays.

So listen for the new year,

Let's make a pledge that we don't get triggered or let's make a pledge that we become aware of our triggers.

That's probably more reasonable.

Our guest today,

Shasheen Shah,

Has written a book called The Kid and the King.

And if you take to heart the lessons in this book,

You will have fewer bad days.

If you can understand how to navigate what triggers you,

One little thing won't ruin the whole day.

You know what triggers you.

Come on.

Let's think about what triggers you as we talk to Shasheen Shah today.

I love this guy.

He's the CEO of Coherent Strategies Consulting and Coaching.

He's been giving successful leaders advice all around the world.

And there's even more wonderful things to share about him.

But I'll tell you about that at the end.

You're going to fall in love with him on just his conversation today.

So we're talking about getting triggered Shasheen.

I want to share this story with you,

A true story from here in Radio Land.

So here in Radio Land,

The friendly neighborhood baker sends us bagels every Wednesday.

And usually the bagels get delivered right to the studio that I work in.

Last Wednesday,

They took a detour and floated around the building.

And then when they finally made their way to the studio,

Someone in the studio got so angry,

Totally triggered.

And they were saying,

I am so annoyed and I have a right to be annoyed because these are our bagels and they should come to our studio.

And what is going on with this?

This is just terrible.

I mean,

It was a beautiful example of being triggered Shasheen.

I'm so angry and I have a right to be angry.

These bagels get delivered for us.

And look at somebody already took the best bagels and it spiraled out.

And I'm like,

Dude.

But there was a time in my life where I would have been right there with him saying,

You are right.

I too am angered and this will ruin my day.

What is that all about?

I know the most simple version is I think that we really don't operate from the book,

The Kid and the King really talks about living an outcome driven life.

And I think that where we get tripped is that we kind of go through life with expectations and they seem like reasonable expectations,

Right?

But with all kinds of people,

You know,

With all kinds of backgrounds,

With all kinds of experiences,

With all kinds of circumstances,

Having expectations,

We're bound to run into,

You know,

Our expectations not being met.

And that's really all it is.

And we react to things in ways that end up running counter to living our best life and we don't recognize it.

And so the opportunity is to really,

I think,

Learn about why is it that I find myself getting triggered and under what circumstances am I getting triggered?

And when I get triggered,

I have to begin to see that I become less effective and people tend not to want to spend more time with me.

And I often end up feeling alone and misunderstood.

And so when we get into that place,

The doorways open to,

I think,

A discussion about the power of learning how to master your emotions and to lead a more,

I don't know,

Outcome driven life to experience more joy.

And now I get to sound like Pollyanna and be happy and free.

It's one of those lovely things that I think we really do want for ourselves and the loved ones in our lives.

Right.

But this is such a crucial element.

What you talk about an out,

What do you say,

An outcome driven life.

So should we start each day with an outcome in mind and then not let anything else get in our way?

Should that be the intention?

I think,

Yeah.

And I think the artistry is developing outcomes.

I think that's a great way of putting it.

Yeah.

Why not?

Right.

Why not start the day with,

You know what?

I'm going to have an outcome today.

So today I'm going to get up and I'm going to go out on the mountain today.

One of my outcomes today is to connect with a new person today on the chairlifts and to be open to interactions,

People,

Connections,

You know,

Take time to appreciate,

You know,

Mother nature to enjoy,

You know,

My environment.

Yeah.

Those are outcomes.

Right.

So why not start with those days?

I think the idea that somehow by doing that we become immune to triggers is,

Is I think a misunderstanding of the concept because I don't believe that we can actually become trigger.

We're going to have an opinion about something we're going to like or dislike something.

I mean,

That's just a part of the human experience.

We're going to,

We walk through life with judgment.

We were going to say,

That's good,

That's bad,

That's right,

That's wrong.

You're good looking.

You're not.

I prefer this.

I look that chocolate vanilla,

You know,

Whatever.

We're going to work on.

I do that automatically.

The brain does that.

That's its function.

It is taking in sensory data,

Processing it through its filter and it's in that filter.

I think that there's a discovery process and that there's something to be learned about how did that stuff in the filter lead us to interpret the events of our lives and the circumstance of our life in a particular way.

So yeah,

We're going to do that.

Now the question becomes,

Like,

What am I mentioning?

Like Shashi,

I don't ever want you to lose your incredible power of discernment,

But I just don't want it to get in the way of you living a life that you love.

And I was like,

I got it.

Okay,

I understand.

And so I think we're bound to get triggered.

I think we're bound to get into situations that are not meeting our expectations.

We're going to run counter to what we believe.

And so the question is,

How do we show up in the face of a contradicting opinion or a contradicting expectation or a different idea or person or set of circumstances that wasn't planned?

How do I show up?

Okay.

And that's where I think the outcome is.

The book is called The Kid and the King,

The Hidden Inner Struggle High Achievers Must Conquer to Re-Ignite and Re-Engage with Life.

So you go out on the mountain today and your outcome is that you want to connect with people,

Connect with nature.

Let's say,

You know,

The people that you speak to aren't interested in conversation and then,

You know,

It starts to rain and nature doesn't cooperate either.

How,

What is,

What's your go to first step when we're not met with the outcomes we're looking for?

Love it.

So I'm in the mountains and we're going to talk about OCEAN.

And OCEAN is the acronym that I use to help me remind myself of the emotional mastery process so it breaks it down into five steps.

So the first question I'll ask is,

What did I observe?

Okay?

So this is just like the dragnet,

Just the facts.

So let's just take your first example.

I get on a chair and I'm like,

Hey,

How's it going?

And I see a beautiful day and I get nothing.

Okay?

What did I observe?

I said,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And this person said nothing.

That's what happened,

Right?

That's what I observed.

That's my observation.

The second C,

What did I conclude?

Now I can conclude a lot of things.

Oh,

He's just some young punk.

He's not interested.

He doesn't like brown people.

He's having a bad day.

Or I might conclude that,

Oh,

I wonder if he has earphones on on his head and he can't hear me.

Maybe that might be the case.

I don't know.

That's what I conclude.

So it's in the conclusion.

So based on my conclusion now,

What you want to start to recognize is that E stands for emotion.

And that emotional result will happen.

Emotion will happen.

Because if I believe that this is some person who doesn't like brown people and he's racist,

I will be on edge and become defensive and become a little bit agitated and probably just get a little bit huffy and not have a good – and I'll start to feel upset and angry and kick in some existential angst of being brown and blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

I can go down that rabbit hole.

And if I go to that emotional place,

Well,

Then the action that I take place,

The A in ocean,

The action that I take place will be just to shut down.

And or maybe try to confront this person and show him how to be more respectful about it.

I'll tell him,

I'm a local here,

You know,

And give him the riot act.

For what?

Observing something that I was really,

In my mind,

Polite,

That hello,

He didn't respond.

And I concluded he was blank.

And then I had an emotional state from that conclusion.

And then my action that I took was in concert with that emotion.

And then the N is what was the net result of that action?

Did it move me closer to or farther from my intended outcome?

Right,

Right.

And then the question,

Then it brings us back full circle to your question,

Like,

Well,

What was my effort to connect with this guy?

And so in that moment of that trigger,

And this is how quickly this stuff happens,

Like,

Bam,

Is it higher?

How are you doing?

And they're like,

Nothing.

Oh,

My God,

I can kick in.

No one likes me.

No one cares about me.

Or he's rude.

And he's horrible.

Or what I'm skiing down and some guy comes flying across and comes a little too close to me.

He's reckless.

How dare you?

That's dangerous.

Right?

His son could be at the bottom in the hospital.

Who knows?

Right.

Or it could be a reckless gear.

He could be a beginner.

He didn't even know.

Yes.

That person that didn't bring the bagels,

You know,

Oh,

My God,

What happened?

Yeah,

Could have been a number of things could have been a number.

Somebody was just really hungry.

Right.

And they took the bagels and they forgot to bring,

You know,

And I think the key here is,

Observe,

Make your conclusion.

And before you dive into an emotion,

Don't take it personally.

Yeah.

And even better,

Right?

So now the real practice is if you really want to take this on,

And I think there's no better thing in the world,

You practice these five questions,

You will get your life and you will live a happier,

More fulfilling life because here's what we do.

I guess what I got to do,

I mean,

This morning I was triggered.

My goodness.

Leave it to moms and dads and family members holidays to just start triggering you right off the bat.

Right.

And here we go.

The more you can understand how predictable your emotional reactivity is,

The circumstances that typically will cause that,

The unfairness of life.

I mean,

We just,

There's just a handful of triggers typically that really bug us,

Right?

There's tonalities that bug us,

There are kinds of people that bug us.

It's predictable.

So ultimately emotional mastery in my mind looks like you become so familiar with your past conditioning.

You know that,

Yeah,

Shasim,

When you were a kid,

You were an only brown,

Skin kid and they made fun of you.

Yeah.

You know that you're prone to thinking that everyone thinks that you're brown and no one likes you because that's what happened to you when you were 10.

And you think,

You see the world through that lens and that's in that filter.

And it's so predictable,

Shasim,

That that's what's going to show up for you.

Well now,

After time in the saddle,

Really what I know now about myself are the circumstances,

Are the situations,

Are the people,

Are the kinds of people.

And I can see it coming.

It's like playing baseball and watching a pitch going high and outside,

You know,

Young baseball players will start swinging at it.

And like,

You know,

The older guys are going to be like,

Nah,

Don't swing at that.

You know,

The serenity prayer.

I mean,

What a simple prayer.

Gosh,

You know,

All I ever really need to learn in life is the serenity prayer.

Accept the things you cannot change,

The courage to change the things you can.

And have the wisdom to develop the wisdom to know the difference.

But boy,

Isn't it easy to take the bait?

Yes.

It's just easy to take the bait.

My God,

We're like trained,

Like,

You know,

But the more we can see this,

The more we can practice this,

The more we can say that,

Wow,

You know what,

Every time I take the bait,

I get a hook in my mouth and it feels yucky and I don't like it.

Even though I just spit back at this person,

It doesn't really get me where I want because now I'm alone.

I'm upset.

I'm in a bad mood.

I'm unhealthy.

People don't really like to be around me.

I'm miserable.

I talk to myself in negative ways.

I'm not taking care of myself.

I'm not taking care of my loved ones.

And I don't want to keep doing this.

And I'm a victim of the world.

Yeah.

And I'm seeing this more and more and more.

And I think that the more we can normalize the fact that there is nothing wrong with getting triggered.

But I think that the real goal in life is to learn how to manage the intensity and the duration of those triggers.

And if we take,

Like,

You know,

The spiritual teachers,

What they have an ability to do is to detach themselves from these things,

Right?

They unhook themselves,

The Buddhist,

Right?

I mean,

The difference between me and the Dalai Lama is that the triggers for him,

It's like,

How interesting.

He's like,

Hmm,

That was interesting contrast.

Wow,

We're going to let that one work,

Right through.

Like,

He did,

Like his ability to move through.

But his initial filtration system will indicate on the most fundamental level that I thought food was coming and food didn't come.

Hmm.

Right?

And then the trained mind will say,

Huh,

Instead of going right to a victim consciousness,

Right,

He then can go to curiosity.

I wonder what happened.

Is everybody okay?

Right.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

You know,

Someone's coming at you like,

And like,

Like all of a sudden,

Instead of taking personally go like,

Wow,

Wow,

Really irritated right now.

Are you okay?

Hmm.

Hmm.

Shashi and Sha is our guest,

The book,

The Kid and the King,

The hidden inner struggle achievers,

High achievers must conquer to reignite and reengage with life.

What I'm hearing you say,

The parts of this makes me so sad,

Because so many people go through their whole life,

And maybe I'm talking about myself with a certain set of triggers.

And it's like,

Oh,

You know what hit me hard today?

These are my triggers.

I'm pointing to the other person and saying you,

You,

You,

But it's my trigger.

They're not triggered.

The problem is not within them.

The issue is not within them.

It's all mine.

I know,

Just like self responsibility and growing up thing is such an inconvenient thing.

It really is.

It really takes forever for me.

But here's the thing,

Though,

Here's what's exciting about this.

I think that the model that I present in The Kid and the King allows for that part of us to get triggered.

I called the kid,

That little boy inside of me,

Which I called Bobby,

That went through walking into my dad's office getting a 99 and him berating me for not,

You know,

You're like,

What did you get wrong?

And I didn't know,

Right?

Or the kids running around and bullying and,

You know,

Julie,

Who like rejected me when I asked her out and all of these different little stories of like my childhood experience that when they were experienced by my 10 year old self,

When they were experienced at 7,

8,

9,

10,

11,

12,

All those years,

I didn't have the intellectual,

Emotional,

Like,

You know,

Or mental capacity to process those experiences in healthy adult-like ways.

And so if we take this model,

And again,

This is,

You know,

This is just a simplistic version I've literally made up to help me make sense of the world that I live in.

And the idea that rather than trying to fight with that part of that scared part of myself,

Or try to squash that scared part of me down,

Or to make,

I've just got to control myself,

I've just got to write like nothing,

But to actually give that part of myself the ability to coexist in my life to just say yes,

Gosh,

If Bobby,

The one that went through all that stuff,

Shows up to this conversation,

Oh my gosh,

No wonder he's going to get reactive.

No wonder he's going to be scared.

No wonder he's going to want to defend or protect himself.

No wonder.

Yeah,

That's really predictable.

And I'm surmising in the book that like,

What if it's true,

That there is inside of me this duality of this child-like,

Wounded,

Vulnerable child that is just needy,

And needs to be seen and loved and coddled,

And just this kind of narcissistic child that exists and coexists with this part of me that I call the king,

That is astute,

Intelligent,

Sincere,

Directed,

Outcome-driven,

That has been able to accomplish things.

What if that there's just this switching of characters that are going on,

And what if I just distinguish those two as separate but equal parts of who I am,

But instead of leading with the kid in those predictable situations,

Or understanding that in these situations,

The kid is likely to show up and start to train and develop myself to say,

Hey,

Buddy,

I got this.

We're not 10.

It's okay,

What's our outcome here?

What's our outcome here?

We want to have an enjoyable day.

No one's out to hurt you today.

And again,

We can make the argument,

If that was the case,

Well sure,

That part of our limbic system would kick in and we have to fight and defend ourselves.

There are instances where that is appropriate.

But I would argue that 99% of our time we are not in physical danger.

We are just trying to survive emotionally.

And the mechanism that I articulate in the book is this child that I just wrap up in whatever,

Child work,

Kid work,

Inner child work,

Freudian child work,

Whatever.

It's all wrapped up in the one giant bundle called fear,

Anxiety,

Worry,

That is,

As we know,

A part of the human experience.

So the book's plea,

The point of the book is to end this adversarial relationship that we have with that part of ourselves.

Stop trying to feel badly about it.

Stop trying to control it or to squash it down.

Pour some love,

Pour some compassion in.

Here's my Pollyanna,

Right?

Pour some love and compassion into that space.

Recognize that that was a real part of you and that part of you isn't going anywhere.

But at the same time,

When it comes up,

Just meet it where it is and be like,

Oh,

That must be my kid.

You know?

I mean,

You could ask yourself,

Who's doing the talking?

Is it the kid or the king?

Is it the kid or the queen?

Wow.

Wow.

Shashin,

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

So fun.

I love it.

And you know,

The kid has a right to exist.

We can't squash him.

We got to love him.

Yeah.

We got to love him.

You know,

There's,

I'll just finish with this in the empty.

There's a letter writing exercise in the book and it says at the end,

It's an opportunity for you to write a letter from the king or the queen inside of you to the kid.

And the last lines of their letter are,

Hey,

Little Bobby,

I'm not kicking you off the bus.

I love you.

But for where we're going,

I'm going to have to be doing the driving from now on.

I'm so excited to show you all the incredible places we now get to go.

I love you.

The king.

I'm going to stop you right there.

I have chills.

I want to give you a round of applause.

I think you're the greatest thing in the world.

Thank you so much for your time today.

I wish you a beautiful day on the mountain and I hope you come back to the Hudson Valley soon.

Thanks again.

Lots of love,

Everybody.

Bye bye.

Shashi and Sha.

In the something,

His book is called the kid and the king,

The hidden inner struggle high achievers must conquer to reignite and reengage with life.

Know your triggers,

The outcome oriented.

What do you want the outcome to be?

Well,

Don't go down the crazy rabbit hole,

Right?

Now let me tell you about this.

Shashi and Sha,

A philosophy major from Colgate University,

One of Tony Robbins exclusive certified platinum partner and business results coaches.

He's worked with Tesla,

LinkedIn,

Hewlett Packard,

IBM,

Barclays,

Toyota,

Monster and so many others.

And now he is the CEO of his own coherent strategies,

Consulting and coaching.

Now here's the best part.

He briefly lived in Cold Spring when he got out of college and his family.

He has family in Croton Hudson.

Hello to the Shas.

We are all joining the Shashi fan club.

Love that so much.

Okay.

I hope you are not being triggered this holiday season.

I bet some of you wish you'd listen to that before you got together with your family over the holidays.

Right.

Speaking of the holidays,

New year's weekend retreat coming up,

Sign up at Casey.

Co and big news on the.

Com story.

I've been looking to get a.

Com because my marketing person says I need one and all the good Casey.

Com's are taken.

So after last week's show,

Frankenberry,

The engineer who mixes down the program,

Like I give him the audio and then he puts it into a magic box and I don't know,

Turns it into a radio show.

Frankenberry says,

You know,

The first thing I thought of when I was listening to you is Casey's place.

And I'm like,

Casey's place.

And then I checked with Violet,

You know,

Violeta.

If you come to one of our zooms,

You'll meet her.

She's great.

And I have to run everything technical through her.

And I'm like,

Vi,

What do you think?

And she gave it the big thumbs up.

So I bought it.

It cost a penny.

It did for the first year,

One cent.

But we're going to make this a popular spot.

Casey's place.

Com coming in the new year.

And you know what else is coming in the new year?

My certification to be a restorative yoga instructor.

I know crazy land.

I always said I didn't want to teach,

But then something shifted.

Restorative yoga,

Not the whole big teacher training thing.

Maybe one day,

But for now it's just restorative yoga.

You know,

The one with all the pillows and the bolsters and the snoring.

I'll sign you right up.

All righty.

Hope to see you soon.

Our thought for the day is from Louise Hay,

Who said,

Loving your inner child helps you remember your innocence and recognize how much life loves you.

Ask the child within,

What can I do for you today?

Shana.

You've been listening to Shana on the health and happiness show for your entertainment only heard Sunday mornings on 100.

7 WHUD and 9 20,

12 60 and 14 20 a.

M.

All in New York's Hudson Valley.

Subscribe to shine on on iTunes and SoundCloud and catch a show anytime at Casey.

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