A Mindful Perspective
Welcome to my podcast! I'm Nick Levesque, and I'm on a mission to help you navigate life's challenges with a mindful perspective. Join me every week as I dive deep into the realms of mindset, spirituality, and personal growth. Drawing from my own experiences, I want to provide you with tools, strategies, insights, and inspiring stories that will help you go from where you are now, to where you want to be.
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A Mindful Perspective
5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Healing Journey
In this week’s episode, we’re exploring the lessons I wish I knew when I started my healing journey. I’ll share 5 key insights that can save you time, frustration, and heartache as you navigate your own path. From understanding that healing isn’t linear to the importance of self-compassion and trying different approaches, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and encouragement. If you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed in your healing process, this episode is for you.
Hello everyone and welcome to A Mindful Perspective. I'm your host, nick Levesque, certified Spiritual Life Coach, and I'm here to share insights into my journey of mindfulness and self-discovery. Each week, we'll explore mindset, spirituality and personal growth to help you navigate life's challenges with practical strategies and inspiring stories. Let's dive in. In today's video, I want to talk about five things that I wish I had known when I started my healing journey, when I really consciously made the choice to dive in. Okay, because, for me personally, I was at a point in my life where, you know, I really hit rock bottom and I didn't really know where to start or how to what to expect as an example, right, how to start, where to go, what to expect. And these are things that I wish I would have known before. And, of course, each individual will have their own subjective experience, their own wounding Okay, it could be, as an example, that you've, you know that you are aware of your childhood trauma, that you're understanding that at this point in life it's really impacting you, right, it's really impacting your life, your ability to be present, your ability to plan for a future. It's impacting your relationships, and it could be you know different things as well. It could be that you have lost a significant other in your life right, it could be, as an example, your partner. It could be the loss of someone in your family and you're grieving and you know, maybe it's been a while and you're still having a lot of difficulties, which is very understandable, okay, but you, maybe you feel like you're not seeing that light at the end of the tunnel. So in this video today, I really want to share some tips that you know I've learned along the way with my own journey, with client work as well, in hopes to help you get to that next level on your healing journey.
Speaker 1:The first thing that I wanted to share today is very important. That is, that healing is possible. Okay, I know that sounds very simple and it really sounds very simplistic on the surface, but I want to plant that seed of awareness into your mind right now, because I think for a lot of us you know, speaking from my own experience here, when I was at, you know, when I was going through my dark night of the soul, when I was going through what I would consider to be my rock bottom at a certain point in my life, which I've shared my story before I really couldn't see that light at the end of the tunnel, right, and I thought, you know, I've been like this for so long that there's no way out for me. Okay, there's like like legitimately no way out for me and I'm not even sure how I'm going to get through this, right, so in my mind, like healing wasn't possible. Right, and this is something I've noticed with clients as well. It's, you know, at the beginning they reach out and you know they don't know where to go, they don't know what they're saying, they don't know what to do, okay, and they think that it's not possible for them. Right, maybe there's a lot of factors here. It could be that they're too old and I, you know, you're never too old to start healing. I just want to be very clear about that. It could be that they're feeling too old, or they've got too much wounding, or, you know, they've never done this type of work, so they don't know what to expect.
Speaker 1:As an example, right, all very, very valid, and I think for a lot of us as well, a part of it is that we think that we're broken, we need, we think that, you know, we're some kind of project that needs to be fixed, and sometimes because we think that we're broken. I want to speak from my own experience here. I had a lot of trouble reaching out for help. Okay, because I was like, well, I don't want people to think I'm broken. I don't want, like my therapist, to think like I've got all these different issues. So I kept a lot of things to myself, right, and you know that's the furthest thing from the truth.
Speaker 1:I think asking for help and reaching out for help is the bravest thing someone can do, like I. For me, personally, I have trouble even putting this into words, but like when someone, like when a client has reached out to me for help as an example, I think that is the most courageous and bravest thing someone can do. Right, where you're at a point in your life where you're like I, just I can't take this anymore. I really want to lead a better quality of life, I want to unconsciously stop bleeding on other people and I just want an overall sense of peace in my life. Right, and I think that is the bravest thing someone can do to really decide and take the step and reach out to someone and ask for help. So if you're listening to this and you're on the fence about it like please and I'm going to talk about this later on as well but please do reach out right, because, again, you are not broken at all. You're not something that needs to be fixed. You're a human being. You're going through an experience and that is completely valid and that is completely okay as well.
Speaker 1:And this leads me to my second point, which is that there is no such thing as being fully healed. In my personal opinion, I truly don't believe that there's anything like being fully healed, where we reach a point in our lives where we are a hundred percent healed, we have no issues, all these different things, right, and I think for a lot of us this is something I've heard before we stop ourselves from kind of living life because we're not fully healed it Right. One thing I've I've I've heard from clients and just from other people is like, oh yeah, I'm healing right now and you know, I'm not going to get into a relationship with someone until I'm fully healed, right. Well, in my personal opinion, like you're going to wait forever, right, because I generally don't think that there is such a thing as fully healed. I think, obviously, if you want to do some inner work before getting into relationship. I think that's beautiful, but I think a relationship will also act as a mirror, allowing you to further understand yourself, your projections, all these different things, right, and I think it could be. You know, I think it's. It can serve as a catalyst to your growth, for both partners, right. If you come into a relationship, consciously together and you're like, hey, I've got wounding but I'm working on it, that person also has wounding but they're working on it, and then you work on it together, I think there's that's an accelerated amount of growth that you can do right now.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it's not always easy, but I'm just saying that you don't need to be fully healed, and I think the thing about healing is that it's a journey. Okay, and like any journey, it's linear. I think of it like a hospital chart, if you will right, like it's up and down and up and down. In our healing journeys we will have ups and downs, we will have good days and bad days, and that's completely okay and that's what you need to expect as well. Okay, and I think the problem sometimes can be that we think that, as we're going through our healing journey, we're going to get to a specific destination where we are permanently happy, okay, sometimes, like a term that I've read a lot about in different books that I've read is like enlightenment, right. So being fully enlightened, where we don't have to worry about anything else. A lot of like spiritual teachers are enlightened and they're like it's basically making it sound like a hundred percent healed, right.
Speaker 1:Personally, I don't really buy that perspective and I also don't think it's very realistic for 95% of people, right, in my personal opinion, I don't think anyone can truly be enlightened and, secondly, I think kind of it could be very misleading for a lot of people, because then we think like, okay, well, if I do this inner work and I do all these different things, then I'm going to be a hundred percent healed, I'll never have any other issues, right, and that could be further from the truth. I think what happens is that we become better equipped, right, so we've got kind of a tool belt or a toolkit, whatever you want to call it, and as we go through a healing journey, we learn about ourselves, we learn about what we need to let go of, we learn about new techniques and regulation modalities, all these different things. Right, we get more tools on our toolkit and then, of course, when something happens, we're better equipped to handle those situations. But I think that it's just.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it can be very misleading where people think that you're going to reach a permanent state of happiness, and for me personally, in my personal opinion, I don't think that's the thing at all. I think that you will still have moments of sadness, you will still have moments of anger, of frustration, all these different things, but I also think that's what makes us human. For me personally, I couldn't imagine living in a life where I never experienced sadness, because I think sadness is what brings meaning to happiness. Right, you don't know happiness if you've never been sad, and vice versa, okay. So I think that these things are all part of a normal human experience and I think sometimes what can happen as well, especially in our societies, we've kind of labeled emotions, if you will right.
Speaker 1:We've got good emotions, we've got bad emotions, we've got negative emotions, all these different things, if you will right, We've got good emotions, we've got bad emotions, we've got negative emotions, all these different things. So, and a lot of us and maybe through childhood we've, you know, we were thought that anger is bad. We've suppressed our anger, but just the overall talk sometimes, I feel like, is like emotions are negative and they're not negative, right, anger is very important. Anger is an extremely important emotion that you can learn to channel creatively. It helps you be able to assert yourself, to stand up for yourself, right, it doesn't mean that you hit someone, but it's allowing you to be more assertive as an example, right.
Speaker 1:Even things like shame and guilt, right? Obviously, there is a talk about toxic shame, where you know toxic shame is being very detrimental to yourself and that's not necessarily good, but toxic shame can also be kind of an eye opener and an indicator that something needs attention, right? So that's what I'm saying Like, all our emotions are there for a reason, they're guiding us for a purpose and they're they're asking us to look at something. If, for example I'm just going to give a hypothetical scenario If, as an example, you have cheated on someone, okay, which I personally don't agree with cheating on people my, again, my subjective opinion here but if you've cheated on someone and you feel guilty about doing that, but you also feel ashamed that you've done that, to me personally, I think that is healthy guilt and I think that is healthy shame, right, and I think that is pointing in the right direction, that, hey, maybe you did something wrong there, right, and then you own up to that. You take accountability for that as an example. So this is really what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:But again, healing is a very difficult thing, right, it's a very difficult thing, and I want you to understand that. I want you to be prepared for that. It's not, it's not a simple thing and it's not something that you're going to do depending on what you're working on and working through. It's not something that you're going to do in two months If, as an example, you're 40 years old, you've never worked on your childhood trauma which is completely okay, by the way. But I'm just setting a realistic expectation here, right, don't expect to heal everything in two months, right, that's not realistic. A realistic timeline for depending on what it is that you're healing, could be a few years as well, Okay, obviously, each individual will have their own healing journey, and this is another thing as well.
Speaker 1:Right, healing is hard, but you cannot rush the process, because healing looks different for everyone, and sometimes I feel like we, you know, we can compare our journeys to someone else as an example, right, like, oh, they've gone through that, they've already healed. Why am I not healed. I must be broken. All these different things. Just don't compare yourself to everyone else, because your experience matters, right, whatever you've gone through or went through okay, is valid. It was your subjective experience and whatever you're feeling is completely valid.
Speaker 1:And sometimes I feel like people you know, I've heard this before they de-minimize their trauma. They de-minimize their situation, their circumstances. Right, it's like, oh, it's not that bad. Well, you know what? Maybe it is that bad, right, maybe it's time for you to truly acknowledge and own up to the fact that, hey, this was very traumatic, right, but now I'm aware of it and I really want to work through that. Okay, but again, healing looks different for everyone and you really cannot rush the process. Don't set yourself a timeline to heal. Okay, there's no timeline here, but be realistic. That it can take longer, right, because that's the whole part of it. And again, sometimes I see these things like heal in like two weeks or two months, and you know these kind of different things.
Speaker 1:I generally don't agree with that, right, I think doing inner work will ask a lot of you, right, I'm just being very real with you right now. It asks a lot of a person, but the rewards at the end of it are, you know, extravagant, right, they're amazing because at the end of it, no, you may not reach a state of permanent happiness, but I truly believe that your baseline on how you live every day will be better, will be improved, you'll be more happy, you'll be more at peace, you'll be more joyful if you will, a lot more than you were before. Right Does not mean you will not experience moments of sadness, moments of anger, all these different things, right, and that's. We have a full spectrum of emotion in one day. You can be happy, you can be sad, you can be frustrated, you can be tired, like all these different things, right. Like everything happens in a day sometimes, right, like.
Speaker 1:What I'm trying to say is like emotions can fluctuate a lot during a day as well. So this is what I'm trying to say it's about being realistic, right, because when you're going through this like I said, it's going it can be very hard. It's not about sunshines and rainbows, okay, it's tough work and you will be, you know, forced to face yourself. You'll be forced to face uncomfortable truths that maybe you've suppressed or repressed for a long time. Right, it's kind of like almost as if you are, you know, let's say you had a closet, okay, and for 10 to 20 years you've kind of just been opening that door and you've been throwing stuff in your closet, but you're never really looking at what is inside the closet. Ok, and then at one point you're like, hey, you know this closet might be overflowing, but you're kind of afraid of opening the door because you don't know what's going to come out. Right, there's so much things in that closet that you're afraid, if I open the door, what's going to come out? Am I going to come out? Right?
Speaker 1:And a lot of us, we, you know, and that's the thing, right, if a lot of things have been suppressed or repressed, well, it can be very hard to start, you know, peeling back those layers, like I've mentioned this a lot before. But one thing my coach told me was we human beings are like onions, right? So once we start peeling back layers, we find more layers and all these different things, right? So this is why it's so important to take your time with healing, right, there's no destination to get to, it's not a. You don't need to rush the process, just please take your time with it.
Speaker 1:But I just want you to be understanding of the fact that, personally, I don't believe there's anything as fully healed, but again, you become better equipped with better tools and then, when something happens in your life because again, this is the other thing as well right, there are other things that you have not yet experienced in your life that will happen at a certain point. That will, you know, demand your attention, right, maybe it's going to be a significantly hard event that you're going through all these different things, but now you're going to be better equipped to handle those situations, right? So, again, that's number two that I want to share. In my personal opinion, there is no such thing as being fully healed.
Speaker 1:The third thing that I want to share is that self-awareness can be a double-edged sword. Now, I want to be very clear about this, right. So self-awareness obviously is, I think, one of the most fundamental tools that we can give ourselves right To understand ourselves, to understand our beliefs, to understand just our values and everything about ourselves. I think is very important to understand our trauma, to understand, you know, what we want to heal, what we want to work on, all these different things. I think self-awareness is such a powerful thing, a powerful skill that we can learn and implement in our life. But one thing that I've noticed with myself and other people that I've talked to I made a post about this a few months back and I, you know, I had a few messages about this is that sometimes with self-awareness, self-awareness can lead to being self-conscious, because the more self-aware we become, sometimes, the more we think we're broken or the more we we think that there's something that's wrong with us or that we need to fix. So once we start digging deeper into ourselves, right, we start, you know, we start collecting information about ourselves. So I'll give you my personal story about that. But basically, I've shared this before.
Speaker 1:But when I really started to dive into healing and trying to, you know, understand myself better, the problem was I started collecting all this information. I was listening to podcasts, I was reading books, I was doing all these different things and at a certain point it was like this just, you know, overwhelming amount of information that I was collecting and I was collecting, I was collecting, and then I was like, wow, like this person is saying do this, don't do that, and then you're reading a specific book and all these different things, and then it just made me feel like there was all these things wrong with me, right, like all these things that I need to fix, and I didn't even know where to start and then I got super overwhelmed, right? So that's my, just my, my caution to you. Once you start diving into self-awareness, I think sometimes and just not only self-awareness, but just the healing journey is that sometimes I think we start diving into this and then we just go into kind of like a deep dive of collecting information, which I think sometimes can be used against us, right? I just want you to be very careful when you're doing that, because, again, this is what I mean by self-awareness can be used as a double-edged sword, right? So sometimes, yes, it's important to collect different information, to get to know more about yourself, right, like I did a lot of different things. But if you want to do this properly, right, without going into a spiral of shame, like I did and this is what happened to me, right, it was like I was I was going through all these things, I was reading books, listening to podcasts, and then, all of a sudden, I was like okay, like I just said, right, I think I'm broken, I think there's so much wrong with me and I started spiraling into the shame. I was like I've got so much self-awareness in myself, but yet I'm holding onto so much shame, right, and once I, you know, once I really dove into that, one thing that truly helped me was approaching everything with curiosity and self-compassion.
Speaker 1:I think that curiosity and self-compassion, I think that curiosity and self-compassion is something that I talk about all the time, and it is for good reason, because once you're diving into the depths of yourself like your shadow parts and all these different things, right, kind of like those skeletons in the closet I was talking about earlier it can be very difficult, right. You don't always know what you're going to find, and then you're forced to face parts of yourself that maybe you didn't want to own up to before. Right, you're going to ask a lot of deeper questions. As an example, right. So maybe, as an example, you're always numbing yourself with weed or with alcohol and such. So now you really have to have that radical, honest conversation about what's keeping you to the bottle, what's keeping you always reaching for that joint, what's keeping you doing these shadow behaviors that you know that aren't good for you, for example. Okay, now, these are all different things that we can do, but if we can learn to approach that with curiosity instead of shame and then self-compassion. Obviously, I think this is where you start winning, right? Because for me personally, this is what happened is instead, when I started diving into this, I noticed, like this feeling of shame that was always coming up for me, and I started, just, you know, as I was diving into this, there was things that I loved finding, and then obviously there were things that I didn't like to find. But something just came over me and I was like I need to start looking at this more curiously, like I'm attacking myself, but I'm just trying to get to know myself, like why am I attacking myself? Right, and of course, the inner critic can come to play in all these different things, but the thing that I'm trying to say here is the way I kind of viewed this and the way I kind of looked at this. All was basically okay.
Speaker 1:When you meet someone for the first time, let's say like romantically I mean right, when you, when you meet someone for the first time, you're interested in someone maybe you're going out on a date with someone you start to get very interested in that person, you're curious about that person, you want to know that person, right, you want to get to know. You know about them what, what are, what do they like to do for fun? Where do they work? Uh, you know, what do they do on the weekends? All these different things, right?
Speaker 1:When you start dating someone, you're generally curious, you generally want to get to know that person. So why can't we do the same for ourselves? Why cannot, why can't that be reciprocated towards ourselves? And what I'm trying to say here is basically I kind of started dating myself quote unquote, right, and I was like, okay, if I can give that attention to someone else, right, and that level of curiosity to someone else, I'm going to give that to myself and that's for me. When the entire thing changed, right.
Speaker 1:And then this is when self-compassion for me was kind of a byproduct of that, because here's the thing as well, a lot of people talk about self-compassion, but I think self-compassion sometimes can be a byproduct of just healing and understanding your story, right. And then I think you can start having that self-compassion, because sometimes I think, forcing self-compassion in yourself, like some people just don't know how to do that, right, and I think self-compassion needs to be something that brews up internally, that's very genuine, okay. So for me as an example and anyone that's going through this or whatever you're healing. Once I started to understand, like the story that I've been holding on to wasn't my own, or you know that things that happened maybe weren't my fault, or all these different things. That's when genuine self-compassion for myself came through right.
Speaker 1:So, as an example, if you're someone that went through childhood trauma and whatever happened to you okay, there could be many different things. You grew up in a very chaotic family dynamic. Maybe there was physical abuse, sexual abuse, all these different things right, obviously you know, first and foremost, if you did go through that, I'm generally very sorry to hear that. But also you know, after a certain point, when you start to understand that what happened to you wasn't your fault right, it genuinely wasn't your fault. You're a child, you had no control over the circumstances, there's nothing differently you could have done, then that's when self-compassion starts to brew into you and for that smaller part of yourself, right, that inner child within because then you're like, okay, well, there's nothing I could have done differently here. Right, there's maybe nothing and maybe in that point in time, obviously there's nothing you could have done differently.
Speaker 1:And that's when I think, for me personally, self-compassion starts to brew. It's when you get an understanding, a true understanding. Again. This is why self-awareness is so good. But to get that true understanding of like, wow, the stories that I've been holding onto isn't my own. Maybe my inner critic that I've been, you know, that's attacking me all the time isn't even my own voice. Maybe it's the voice of a parent, a caregiver you know, my brother, my sister, whatever it may be right, but once you start to dive into that, that's really where I think self-compassion is the key, right? So curiosity and self-compassion.
Speaker 1:So, if you find yourself over-consuming, right, just stop for a second. This is what I had to do. I was like stop and really rethink and maybe like, okay, am I using this at my advantage or is this actually being detrimental to me? Right, and even for me personally, again, I was over-consuming. I was trying to learn all these different things, but again, this was a form of bypassing. This is the other thing I want to say. I was reading book after book, podcast after podcast. I never did anything with that information, though initially right, initially I didn't do anything with that. So it's almost like I was just like okay, I'm going to heal myself through intellectualization and just reading and podcasts and podcasts and whatever. And then I collected all this information. I didn't do anything with it. So obviously you know that's that's not going to be very helpful for me, right? But what I noticed was that I was actually avoiding the work, because the work is hard, right? So, again, this is what I mean by self-awareness can be a double-edged sword, but curiosity and self-compassion will be your best friends and your allies on this journey.
Speaker 1:The fourth thing that I want to share with everyone is that healing isn't just emotional or spiritual, it's physical too. Okay, this is extremely important because the mind and the body go hand in hand. Okay, your mind and your body go hand in hand. And there is something that's always stayed with me from a book called Letting Go by Dr David Hawkins, and he said it is the accumulated pressure of feelings that causes thoughts. One feeling can literally cause thousands of thoughts. Right, and that is so, so true. And ever since I read that years ago, I knew that I was missing something with body dynamics. Right, like more somatic, if you will, because it's very true, sometimes we're overthinking. We've got all these different things right and, yes, of course, the mind work, if you will like. Mindset and everything is very important, but it's also about understanding that a lot of stuff lives in our body as well. Right, we've all heard the saying the body keeps the score right. So I think this is so, so, so important, especially if you have undergone significant childhood trauma, all these different things. Your body will store trauma right. So it's so important to.
Speaker 1:In my personal opinion, I think it's like a 50-50 split where you need to even I would probably say honestly, like 60-40, 60 being body work, 40 being talking really depends on the individual as well but at least a 50-50, I would say, where you obviously you need to talk about your stuff. Right, you need to talk about your stuff. You need to talk about your childhood trauma, you need to talk about what happened to you. You need to talk to get awareness and get an understanding of your story and again, like I was talking about earlier, that probably it's not your fault, that the story that you're holding onto isn't your own, and that you know, once you start to understand these things, then obviously that will be a significant part in healing. Right, talking is amazing that's not what I'm saying here, right, I'm not discrediting that at all but also, I think that body work needs to be included, right, the somatic therapy portion of that as well, and I think that you need to implement both in order to truly heal trauma, in order to truly heal anything that you're going through. To be quite honest with you, right, you need to do both, and this is what I want to talk about as well, where, yes, again, like I said, talking is good, body work is good. You combine those two together and boom, right, talking, somatic, boom, brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 1:Now, the other thing that's very important to learn and to understand, though, is that not everything works for everyone. Okay, as you're going through your healing journey, this is what I'm talking about. Curiosity, as well, is that some approaches will work for you and some of them won't work for you, so it's important to try different things. So let's say and this is what I want to say first and foremost Okay, so I've talked to a lot of people. A lot of people have told me something where, as an example, they've went to therapy or they've gone to see a coach. They didn't feel seen, heard or understood, and then they just stop. Right, then they just stop. Well, it's like, no, well, maybe that coach or therapist wasn't really meant for you, but it doesn't mean you need to stop, because you can be paired with someone else that truly understands you, truly sees you and truly wants to help you get through better things right and truly wants to help you go from where you are now to where you want to be so that you can live that quality of life. So please, just because something doesn't work initially, please don't quit on your journey, right?
Speaker 1:Another concept is meditation. Right, meditation, I think, is a brilliant practice. You know I can't say anything about meditation. I think it's a brilliant practice, but if I'm being honest, again, it does not work for everyone, right? Especially if someone is extremely going through a lot of trauma as an example, right, extremely traumatized is what I was trying to say Meditation can sometimes actually be dangerous for that person because they've never really sat with themselves, they don't know how to sit with themselves. They might be an extremely hyper-vigilant person. As soon as they close their eyes, there might be a lot of suppressed and repressed stuff that tries to come up. And you know, in my personal opinion, meditation, and something like meditation or any work that you do, should be, you know, it should be uncomfortable, but never too overwhelming. We're to the point where you could actually like re-traumatize yourself is what I'm trying to say, right? So there are different things that will work for different people. So this is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Again, you need to be curious, you need to look up different modalities and things that might be of interest to you, right? So, as an example, maybe for you meditation works, maybe for someone else it doesn't work, right? But again, meditation has different branches of meditations. There's so many different types of meditation. So just because one type of meditation doesn't work for you doesn't mean that another one won't, right? So it's really about trying different modalities and seeing what works for you, and then maybe you can incorporate a few of them, right?
Speaker 1:Some people like journaling. Some people don't like journaling, right? I think journaling is a great thing. Maybe you try meditation and then you do journaling, right? Maybe you meditate and then you journal on your meditation afterwards, or you know, there's many different ways that you can do this. But also, I think sometimes a combination of a few things can be very impactful as well, right? So it could be something.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've seen the term shadow work and that really kind of stuck out to you right, which is for me personally that's what it was and I think a lot of different things that we do when we're healing is all sorts of forms of shadow work. But you know, really I really kind of aligned and resonated with more young in psychology and that kind of stuff, so I really dove into that for me personally. So again, there's different things, right, for some people internal family systems, therapy, right, and maybe you've taught, you've heard about this parts work, right. So different parts of ourselves have kind of got like this internal family where we can talk to our different parts of ourselves. There's, you know, exiles, managers, firefighters, all these different things. It goes into a lot of depth. But again, for some people, maybe they don't really resonate with parts work, right, maybe like, eh, I don't like the idea of having different parts. Some people are like, hey, that seems like a really cool idea, let me try that, let me find out more information, right. But again, you can't knock it until you haven't tried it, right? So if you try it, even though you think, hmm, I don't know, and you try it and you're like you know what't, go like crazy, trying everything at the same time, like, just do a bit of research on different things that you could try. Like I said, there's many different things, but obviously you know if you really if you're really stuck somewhere.
Speaker 1:For me personally, as you all know, this reading right Reading is, I think, my number one modality. I will say so myself. I think reading the thing about reading is that you can find books to really address whatever it is that you're going through. Right, there are different things. Even if you want to dive into specific things, specific topics that you're going through, reading is just it's, it's amazing, right, because you, you can, you read the author's experience. You read the author's you know, let's say, as an example, like it's a psychologist that's had 40 years of work and you read through his book. He's got all these practical tips, all these different things right. So now you're learning about that from you know someone who's been doing it for 40 years. They talk about, you know, client studies and all these different things, and a lot of times it will give you good tools, good questions, and this is what I mean right To really help you work through that and incorporate that in your life. So, again, there are so many different types of things that you can do, so you need to get curious and you need to try different things, right? But again, just because one form doesn't work, maybe another form works.
Speaker 1:Another example is breath work. Okay, breath work. There's so many different types of breath work in the world. Maybe something doesn't work for you, maybe something else works for you, right, for me personally, just a quick kind of regulation thing. I've. You know, there's Wim Hof method, there's all these different things. I found those not too complicated, but I just wanted something simple. For me personally, box breathing is the way to go right Inhale for four seconds, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Right, it's literally a square. It's very easy to remember something I can do very fast as well. It's not like four, seven, eight or all these different types of breathing. Those are good as well. But again, you need to try what works for you, okay. So this is what I'm really trying to encourage you Find what resonates for you.
Speaker 1:Another powerful thing that I've done, which I've shared before I went to a men's retreat, right, especially, I think, for men. A lot of us know that for men it's hard to open up, it's hard to talk. Right, there's somatic retreats, not only for men. For men and women there's some for women only as well but being in a space, a safe container, with a lot of people that you can do somatic breath work with, that you can do different activities with um that encourage movement and all these different things, I think is phenomenal, right, and you're, you're also doing this in a space with other people that are going through similar situations, right, so they kind of act like a mirror, and then you're like, oh, my goodness, right, and it's nice to share. It's nice to be able to vulnerably share what you're going through and then realize how many other people are going through maybe not exactly the same thing, but similar experiences and how they're feeling as well.
Speaker 1:This is what I noticed when I went to my men's retreat. We were 18 guys. I'd never seen these people before, right, and it was just. You know, you go in there and then you share everything about your life and you, you know, and there's something definitely for men, right, speaking as a man myself, there's definitely something about being in a space with 18 men and being able to share everything, right, without any judgment, like men don't cry, and all these different things, being in truly embracing your masculinity, right, I think, as a man, true masculinity is being able to embody both the femininity and the masculinity side as well, right, and so this is what I'm saying try different things.
Speaker 1:Now, another important thing that I wanted to talk about as well is okay, so this is very important, right? If you don't know where to start, okay, maybe you're not ready for a therapist or coach yet, or all these different things. Right, reading is obviously a great way to start. You can journal, right, and journaling doesn't necessarily have to be specific questions. You can though there's obviously a lot of journaling questions online, but maybe you just start kind of writing, like in a diary format as an example. But, in my personal opinion, if you really want to start something with the healing again, body work, like I'm talking about, right, breath work and meditation, all these different things, they're body work.
Speaker 1:But go back to the absolute basics. Now, what do I mean by that? What? How are you sleeping? Are you drinking enough water? Have you drank enough water today? Right, how's your nutrition Right? Are you? Are you eating at least one nutrition, at one nutritious meal a day? Okay, when's the last time you went for fresh air in nature? When's the last time you went for a walk or did some form of exercise. Right, this is something I cannot stress enough and this is something in my client work is like a hundred percent. Like not no, sorry, it is a hundred percent mandatory. Right, it is a hundred percent mandatory, because how do you expect to fully heal when you're the vessel that you live in, the body that you live in, isn't properly nourished? Right. To me, personally, that is a whole like. That is the first thing I check with my clients.
Speaker 1:Right, because I want to know how you're doing on a daily basis, because sometimes, when we're feeling very depressed, lethargic, all these different things, we neglect the basics understandably, very validly so. But we also neglect the basics. Right, and I understand. Sometimes it could be that we're having trouble sleeping and all these different things. But if we start by making sure that we're drinking a few glasses of water each and every day, right, and then we're going for at least a walk outside in nature three times a week, okay, and then those things will help you sleep better, and then we're making sure that our sleep, you know that we're. Maybe you know, instead of doom scrolling at night, that we're putting our phone away at night, and this is something I recently did with my client is like okay, put the phone away, right, put the phone at the end of the room or put the phone in another room. Use an actual alarm, but make sure that you're not sleeping with the phone right next to you so that you can fall asleep faster, right, which actually very much helped her.
Speaker 1:So this is what I'm saying Go back to the basics. That alone, literally just going back to the basics, and I cannot emphasize this enough. But making sure that you're hydrated, that you're eating properly, right, and obviously you can have, like you know, your cheat meals and whatever you want to have. That's all I'm saying. But making sure that you at least have one nutritious meal a day, you know, and that you're making sure that your body's getting what it needs right, the nutritions that it needs, is really what I'm trying to say. That, in and of itself, will help you tremendously, right?
Speaker 1:Because sometimes yes, sometimes you're having a bad day and stuff, but sometimes it's like, okay, are you really having a bad day, or did you not just eat Right? Or have you been sitting in a chair all day and you haven't done anything Right? Or maybe you haven't had a glass of water in the last six hours, or maybe the last time you went outside was, you know, three, three weeks ago was an example, right, maybe the last time you moved your body was three weeks ago. And especially for someone as an example, uh, with, like, the associative tendencies, it's very important to ground yourself right, especially like with your legs, specifically to get yourself literally grounded back to the floor right. So going for walks, grounding yourself in nature, the gym right, doing leg day squats, all these different things will help you kind of put yourself back into your body.
Speaker 1:So this is what I'm trying to say, right, if you don't know where to start, at least start there. What's my basics looking like? Right? How am I treating my body? How has my body been? Because if, as an example, you've been going through this for a while now, like really you've been hitting rock bottom for a while now and you've been neglecting your body for months, then it's going to be very hard to get energy to do anything right. So start there, start at the basics. So this is what I really want to talk about in tip number four.
Speaker 1:That I want to share is that healing isn't just emotional or spiritual. A big portion of it is physical as well. And, last but not least, the fifth and final thing that I wanted to share today is to ask for help. Okay, please ask for help if you really need it. That is why there are professionals, that is why there are coaches and therapists, obviously, that do this for a living to really help people. Right, sometimes we're doing all the right things we're reading the books, we are reading uh, yeah, reading the books where you know we're doing the work, we're eating right, we're trying to get adequate sleep and such, but we're feeling, we're still feeling stuck in such. It is completely okay to reach out to someone for help. It is completely okay. And sometimes, if you're, you know, even if it just sometimes, a family member or a friend that you can talk to, okay, that in and of itself can be extremely healing. Okay, and maybe you do both. But again, it is completely okay.
Speaker 1:Asking for help is a sign of strength and not a sign of weakness. It's something I wish I would have done earlier on in my journey, because when I worked with my coach, obviously she helped me a lot. Right, I was someone who was already going into my healing journey, but I wanted to get a bit more help, right, I wanted to get a bit more guidance, a bit more help, and we did like inner child work, which is something I forgot to mention earlier as well in our modality section. Inner child work is also very popular and it's very well within good reason, because it's a very powerful practice. But again, sometimes they will, you know, they will make you see things that you've not seen before. Maybe they'll give you perspectives that maybe you haven't thought about before and obviously tools as well to help you, to guide you through your journey.
Speaker 1:But asking for help is so, so, so important and also just to retouch on something earlier that I wanted to share okay, if you work with a therapist or a coach and it doesn't necessarily go well, and that you don't feel seen or heard or understood, I don't want you to stop because you've had a bad experience. I've heard people tell me this before where they've had a bad experience with a therapist or someone they worked with as an example. Okay, but just because you've had a bad experience with someone, I don't want you to stop looking for help, right, Because maybe you and that person just, you know, just didn't pair up, just didn't match, or, you know, maybe you just generally didn't get the support that you needed and deserved, okay, but I can promise you that there's someone out there that generally does want to help you, that that will generally create that safe container, that space for you to open up your heart and to and you know, to really help you to go through what you're going through and to help you get from where you are now to where you want to be. Okay, so sometimes you need to find, or you need to try, a few therapists as an example, right To really land on the right one. But I know, for me, therapy has been great, coaching has been great, like it's. You know, again, you just need to find someone who you really connect with right, and someone that has a you know that you've got a good connection with because you're going to be working with these people for some time, so it's very important to establish that connection.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, again, these are the five things that I really want to share today. I hope these help and listen, there's. You know a million other things that I can say, but I really wanted to try to keep this, you know, short and simple as well, to the point, but also to really give you insights that I wish I would have had before, when I really started. So I hope that this helps and I hope that these can help you and guide you on your own healing journey. So, that being said, that's all I've got for you guys on today's episode. If you did like the episode, please feel free to leave a comment or review, share it. It really helps bring awareness to what I'm trying to do, which is really kind of you know, spread this podcast on a broader scale to really help people just navigate everyday life challenges. So, again, with that being said, I hope you have a good week and I will catch you guys next week. Thank you.
