Interview by Claude Silver: Silver Lining Podcast (Video: 50mins)

What Blocks People From Being Good to Great

It's all about emotional survivability. There are a lot of studies about the biology of the brain and how we go into this fight, flight or freeze mechanism. As humans, we're just trying to emotionally survive everything. We're trying to look good and gain admiration. We make sure we use the right words or say it the right way. That voice inside our head is just incessant.

Now, people deal with that part of the human experience in a variety of different ways. Some people can navigate it really well. They have it under control and they will go out and accomplish things. And others haven't yet developed the skill sets needed to navigate it.

This adversarial relationship we have with that part of ourselves is responsible for a lot of the reasons that we end up pulling back. We fight, flee, or freeze and we don't take a risk because we want to keep it together.

The Role of Our Past

We underestimate the extent to how our childhood is affecting us in our modern day world. And so, we need to understand how we got to be the way we are today. There's also the complexity of recognizing the depths of those emotional wounds. And part of the work is recognizing those patterns. Be familiar with the conditions, situations, the tonalities, the language, the environment, and your body, whether you're hungry or tired, whatever it might be, and the conditions under which that part of you is going to show up.

Understanding and Mastering Self-Awareness

People want a quick fix. But instead of evading and avoiding things to numb the pain away, try to flip the conversation. Know your triggers and know that what's coming is an opportunity for those to get resolved once again. Those voices will never go away. But what it comes down to is developing a new relationship with that side of yourself.

The idea is to come to understand how you got to where you were. What are the components? What are the stories? What is the wiring of your survival instincts? Then how do you look forward and create from a place of not the past, but from where you want to go?

3 hard questions to ask yourself:

- What do you want?

- Why do you want it?

- What are you willing to do to get it?

The Duality of the Kid and the King in You

Allowing both to coexist is the most loving thing you can do for yourself. There's a relationship between your younger self and your big self. And it comes out with the people that we have the greatest vested interest in – with our loved ones, our family, our intimate partners, or even our co-workers.