Lose your SH*T, find YourSELF | Own Your Mess - Catalyze Your Brilliance

Aloha, welcome back. Episode six. It's six, right? I think it's six. Masterful Listening Podcast. If you're tuning in for the first time, welcome to the world's first Super Rad listening school that you will really love to attend. That's the intention. And if you're back, welcome back. Today's topic, today's story is uh connected to a mantra that I I think came up with. Yeah, I don't think I heard someone else say this. Sometimes I've been saying things for so long. I think, did I invent it or did someone else? And really, who cares? Point is it's lose your shit, find yourself. Lose your shit, find yourself. To

me, that mantra has had many meetings. A, because I actually lose a lot of things. Like actually physically, I lose things. Anyone who knows me very well thinks it's quite funny. I've had to get to the point where I'm actually okay. Now, when I lose something, I think, gosh, well, A, I will find it, I guess if it's meant to be mine. And B, hopefully, if someone else found it, they'll really enjoy it. But I'm not actually talking about losing physical things or material things. I'm talking about what is it like when we literally feel like we're losing our shit, right? Like that phrase I think

has been around for a while. I don't know where it came from, but the idea is, gosh, I've had times in my life where I feel like I'm completely losing my shit. Meaning I am not thinking clearly, I am not acting in ways that are fully aligned with kind of, you know, the best version of me. And by the way, I think this happens to everybody. And it's cool to just be real about the fact that we as human beings sometimes lose our shit. Considering the fact that we live on the planet that we uh live in right now. I think there's plenty of reasons to

be losing our shit. And yet, what I found is anytime I've really lost my shit, I've gone through such a hard time that I don't even know who I am. I don't like who I am. I'm confused. I find something. It's like that diamond amongst the shitstorm. You know, I would say often in the last decade when I was going through very, very, very dark times, that it feels like I was in a house and suddenly I discovered that there was a basement in my house that I didn't even know was there. And so I ventured into that basement, accidentally fell down the stairs, and ended

up literally in a basement full of shit. And I couldn't get out. But as I was wading through that shit, there was some part of me, a little diamond in there, that I was like, oh, wow, I needed that. I wanted that. In our shadows, we find some aspect of our light that I think is so powerful that as a person who spent over a decade searching for happiness, now I'm way more interested in holding my own hand and holding other people's hands as we together walk through the darkness. Because in the darkness, in the shadow that I think is often thought of as the bad,

it's just the things we don't yet know. So much of our life is determined by our subconscious. We don't know what's in there. And it's often in control of our reactions, of how we show up, of how we speak, of how we uh listen, right? So I'm gonna tell a story about a moment in my life where I felt like I completely lost my shit, but found a profound part of myself that now is sort of a guiding light for me. So that when I do feel like I'm in that shit spiral, and I call a shit spiral, you know, those times where you might find

yourself really upset or sad, and then you're kind of like, oh, why am I sad or upset? And then you're angry at yourself for being sad, and then you're anxious about your anger about your sadness, right? The shit spiral. How do we go from the shit spiral to the love loop? How do we switch gears, right? It's like if you're on a mountain bike and you're flying down a mountain and you want to go the other direction, the first thing you got to do is slow it down so you can turn around, right? It's the same thing in our mind. So, what does it really mean

to find yourself through losing your shit? All right. So I'm gonna tell a story, but before I get to that, here's how I invite you to listen. First of all, as always, first step to masterful listening is making sure that you actually want to listen to this and that you have the time to listen to this and not be distracted. Okay. And it's totally fine if now's not the right time. If you're not in a place where you really want to listen to something for the sake of learning, listening. And I think you'll find it uh meaningful. Hopefully there'll be some lessons in it for you.

But check in. Can I actually listen right now? And by the way, please do this in your relationships, right? I do this with a lot of people now. If someone calls me and wants to talk to me and I can sense it's important, but I'm not in a good place to listen, I'll say, hey, can we talk about this at 5 p.m.? Because I'm actually a bit distracted right now and I want to give you my full attention. Or I'll ask, hey, uh, what do you need from me right now? Do you want me to just listen so you can vent? Or do you want the

coach to ask questions, right? Just designing things with people is so important. I'll do a whole other episode about what it means to design our alliances, which is a coaching term that I uh learned in my coach training like over a decade ago, but that I apply to my personal relationships and business relationships, it's super useful. But for now, A, check in. Are you ready to listen? B, level three listening, masterful listening. What does that mean? You're listening to everything, the words, my energy, my pausing, my tone. What am I saying? What am I not saying? What's really there energetically? Because remember, a lot of what

we say isn't even what we say. It's how we say it. I feel like there's also so much in what we do not say. So is there any part of the story that you notice your mind going, hmm, hmm, that's that's interesting, that's confusing. Oh, I wonder what else there is there. Just notice that. Come back to listening, right? The best way to train our mind to do anything is to just keep trying, keep trying, keep trying, because you're probably gonna get distracted and you're probably gonna get into your own head. That's totally normal, very human. Come back. All right. And then at the end, I'm

gonna give you a little exercise uh that you can practice between uh this episode and next. Here we go. So when I think of losing my shit and finding myself, a lot of uh times in my life come to mind. But this one in particular comes because it is just such a visual that I remember. I remember those moments. Uh I remember the feeling that I had in those moments. It was so hard. This was probably about, I don't know, maybe five years ago. And I was just entering into another very dark, I'm gonna call it another dark night of my soul. I was dealing with

a heartbreak. I was having some financial stress. As an entrepreneur, you know, there's times where I'm flowing with work and clients. There's other times where it's a little slower. So this is one of those times. It was also winter time. And I also find that my mental health definitely suffers a bit more when it gets cold and dark, which is not that weird because light actually is a very important part of us feeling better, right? So anyway, I was entering into this time and I had run into an incredible human being, actually, another coach, like a master coach, a coach that was trained at the same

school that I went to, the Coactive Training Institute. And he was a colleague of my first ever coach, David. What's up, David? I love you. You're still the best coach I've ever met. Uh, and uh this uh awesome human being, uh, we had a connection, and I kind of thought, yeah, it'd be cool to work with him one day. Now, a few months after that interaction, he had reached out to me. He said he just started working at a new company and he was in charge of doing all of their learning and development, and that he was looking for someone to join the team who would

head up and essentially run their onboarding. Now, onboarding is something that I've often talked about as such a critical part of what creates success in business for people joining companies. I think a lot of people focus on, you know, hiring and focusing on building culture, but then how are they onboarding people? Also, how are they offboarding people? But that's a whole other topic. Point is, I was very excited to be invited to essentially create an onboarding experience and then facilitate it. Again, I love facilitating, I love inspiring people. That's my gift. And yet, I was entering into a very dark time. I wasn't sleeping well. My

mind was lacking focus, I was lacking confidence, I was heartbroken, I was in a bit of fear, I was feeling such bad anxiety that for the first time in my life, I was having panic attacks. And as someone who'd never actually had one before, this is probably one of the scariest human experiences I've ever had because literally a panic attack feels like you're dying. I had a hard time being outside. All the noises freaked me out. I was very against medication, but literally my youngin analyst told me one day that if I don't take something for my anxiety, she will not be able to work with

me anymore because it's just so unhealthy. I mean, I literally was scared to leave my house at some point. So I was, well, I mean, I became open to taking some um benzos. So I think it was like clonapin at the time. And again, I want to make it clear I'm not suggesting or not suggesting anyone do anything with medication. I'm just sharing my story. But for those people who like me are not exactly fond of the idea of taking pills, uh, I feel you, and I was at a point where literally I needed help and nothing else was helping. So here I am. I'm being

offered this opportunity, and I go in to interview the company is called Ripple. Uh, for those of you who know uh Ripple XRP, uh, the cryptocurrency blockchain company. I mean, Ripple at the time. I'm actually not as familiar with Ripple these days because honestly, I wasn't really uh very uh uh informed of the world of crypto and blockchain. I was kind of aware of it because I was in the Bay Area and a lot of people were talking about it at the time, but this was not um a subject matter that I had expertise. My expertise was more in the culture building space. I spent over

a decade studying culture, working at other incredible um companies, and ensuring that people were hired and trained in effective ways. So I definitely had the background to do this, but my mental health was so shaky. However, when I interviewed, I put on a suit and I put on a brave face, and I went through, I think, five intense interviews with people who were so much smarter than me. I think of any company I've worked at, Ripple was incredible in that truly the people I met there were like the kind of geniuses that I mean, even beyond at Google X and Apple, these people were intelligent at

a level I couldn't quite understand because that's not quite my super strength. Uh at the time, what Ripple was doing was so profound, XRP was becoming, I mean, so sought after that we were even asked not to put um on our LinkedIn's where we worked because people were getting hacked. Everyone wanted XRP. And if you don't know what XRP is, you could look it up, but it's essentially uh a certain cryptocurrency. Uh so there I was. I got this contract. I couldn't even believe it. So the first thing I want to say is you never know what someone's going through. I was in the worst pain.

Just getting to the interview, walking through the streets of San Francisco was so excruciating. But I had to do it. I had to do it because I told myself, you gotta remember that you're capable. You know, when we're going through times of depression or anxiety, our mind convinces us that we can't do anything. It's scary, but it's not the truth. So this is almost a way of proving to myself and challenging myself to do something that felt unbearable and impossible. I get the contract and I start. Now I couldn't sleep very well, uh, which anyone who understands how important sleep is to just any health, physical,

mental, emotional, that's gonna mess up anyone. And then when I would wake up, I would have such bad anxiety that I would have to take a tiny portion of this medicine because I couldn't go outside without having a panic attack. So imagine this. I'm heading into create the onboarding, meaning I am the first face that some of the most brilliant people on the planet who are joining this company are meeting. And my job is to create a fun, interesting onboarding experience. And I could barely walk through the streets without having a panic attack. I think the worst part of this for me was also how I

knew that when I was well, I would have rocked it. And I was not, but I had to just accept that this was my best. I don't know if you just heard that noise that went off on my computer, but if you did, we're gonna move forward because clearly my focus mode messed up. But if you didn't hear it, cool. Um so my days at Ripple were, gosh, I don't even know. I would say profound and excruciating. Sitting at a desk felt impossible. Uh, I'm someone who usually, you know, for me to write an email to get up and speak in front of a room of

people is, I mean, beyond easy. I've never struggled, but now I was so anxious that I was rereading every word. I was so nervous. And this man who hired me met me when I was in my kind of, I'm gonna say normal energy. And I was kind of trying to pretend that I was okay because I couldn't be sitting at my desk having a panic attack. I mean, I could. I did not want to be that person. And so I was just in turmoil. And first of all, I want to say this was one of the most incredible human beings that I'd worked with because probably

about a week in, I realized I had to be honest and let him know that things were really challenging. Because I've always found that in the corporate world, I would rather be super real about my challenges and work through them and have vulnerability than pretend that everything was fine and then fuck up and then kind of be backtracking. So I just let him know that, you know, I was having some personal struggles and that I was uh a little worried about my ability to perform. And he was so kind. He just kept being supportive. I even remember there were meetings where I was in the meeting

with him and my anxiety was so bad that I was like tapping my foot a lot because it actually helps to release some anxiety when you move. And I knew that he could see it, and I knew that he had enough emotional intelligence and awareness to know what was happening. He never judged me. He just kept saying, You got this, your work is great. Keep doing it. So I did. But the moment that I want to share, and I haven't shared this publicly ever, was I was having such a hard time literally just sitting at my desk for uh any extended period of time, which by

the way, I always had an issue with that as someone who just needs to move more and has a lot of energy that I'd always take breaks when I was in the corporate world. I would get up every, I don't know, hour, walk around the block, have a coffee, whatever. But I needed to find some way to just calm myself because I couldn't keep medicating myself because when I took the medication, it would just make me feel so out of it that I couldn't even read the email I was writing, or definitely I couldn't get up in front of people and speak. So I was like,

what can I do to calm my anxiety without taking a ton of drugs during the day, which while they were prescribed to help me, I couldn't work on them. So at the time, the building, the office that Ripple was at was beautiful. Uh, there were a lot of really cool parts of it, you know, kind of the typical tech thing where there was a beautiful uh place to eat and a lot of really cool offices. But there was this one particular bathroom that uh they had that had a shower, which was really cool. And, you know, people could work out, come back, shower, go back to

work. And I found this bathroom, and there were a bunch of towels in the bathroom. And so what I would do is I would go in the bathroom and I would put a bunch of towels on the floor, and I would lay on the floor in a fetal position, just like shaking for like 10 minutes every maybe 90 minutes, every day. And then I would lay there in the fetal position, I would shake. Sometimes I'd cry, I'd breathe, I would try to calm myself, and then I'd go back, put on a smile, and sit at my desk. And honestly, when I say that right now, I'm

really emotional because it was so hard to do that, you know. I always talk about authenticity and how it's great to bring your full self to work, but it didn't feel appropriate for me to be sitting at my desk having a complete breakdown, especially I was a consultant, I was hired to produce, and I was so terrified that I couldn't produce anything of value, which was also interesting because no matter how fucked up I felt, and no matter how bad I thought my work was, I was still getting positive feedback, which also showed me that even while I was literally laying in a fetal position on

the ground of a bathroom many times a day, imagining that there was no way I could provide value, I was somehow still doing work that was good enough. It was good enough, wasn't great, wasn't my best. And I had to just accept that that was probably the hardest part. And I had to keep moving forward and I did. That was by far the hardest time of my life because in a lot of other times where I was really deeply struggling in a depression, I actually wasn't working. And as horrible as it was to, you know, be in bed for an entire day in a fetal position,

it was harder to have to get up, get dressed, put on makeup, which by the way was all very impossible feeling, and then go to an office and then not be able to write or speak. I lost like 90% of my ability to communicate. And that was my biggest skill. So that in itself was so heartbreaking and scary. I thought, am I ever going to be able to get those skills back? And by the way, yes, I did get them back and I got them back stronger because what did I find? In that losing my shit to the point where I'm literally shaking in a fetal

position on the bathroom floor. I discovered a sort of resilience and self-compassion that I never thought I had because I never needed to discover it before. I was literally holding myself like a baby saying, It's okay, you got this. Even if you're at 10%, maybe 10% is enough for now. Maybe 10% can get to 20 and 30 and 40. And it did. But I still have that vision of myself in the fetal position on the floor of that bathroom. And then getting up, getting out of that bathroom, walking through the halls, being polite to colleagues, working when I I mean it didn't feel possible, but it

was.

That when I find myself in a fetal position on the floor crying, which uh doesn't happen as often, but it still happens once in a while. First of all, I don't judge it. I see a human being, an empath, someone who cares and feels who's struggling. I hug myself, I tell myself that I'm here with myself, I don't abandon myself, and mostly I don't judge myself anymore. Because instead, what I see is a human being who's fucking authentic, who suffers, and who shares it too. Because I want you to know, if you're still listening, that your pain is so valid. My pain is valid, and it

sucks that we seem to learn these important lessons and get these amazing findings through such shitstorms, and yet that's kind of the way this matrix seems to be designed. So I'm not a fan of the creator sometimes. I think, why, why does it have to be so hard? And yet, let me tell you this. If I had known the journey that lied ahead 13 years ago, when I dreamed of running my own company and being a coach and a facilitator and living in Sausolito, I if I had seen what I would have to go through to be here in this moment, I would have said, fuck

no. But looking back, I would do it again. Because what I kept discovering when I lost my shit, man, I found parts of myself that I honor, that I appreciate. And also some parts I found that I do not love. Let me say it this way. I actually I love them, I don't like them, but they're real. And I think when we can embrace the fact that we lose our shit from time to time, I can't imagine finding anything more powerful than that. So whether you're on a high right now or whether you're in a fetal position in this moment or in five minutes or tomorrow,

remember that when you lose your shit, I think the universe does give you an opportunity to find something, but you have to remember that because what we seek is seeking us. So if you're looking for a lesson, if you're looking for the diamond in the shit, you're much more likely to find it than if you're looking for a bunch more shit. Because then you'll find that. Seriously. All right, there we go. That was that was actually hard to recall. I haven't been in that energy in a really long time. But I'm glad that I could feel that because it reminded me again of how powerful we

all are. I am no different than you. I don't even know who you are, but I think we're all so much stronger, so much more loving, so much more compassionate, so much more resilient, inspiring than we have been taught, than we believe. And if we're searching for our authentic truth and for an ability to love it all, know it all, and then act in ways that align with who we really aspire to be. Well, shit. That's pretty cool. So, how was that? What was it like? What did you feel when you heard the story? Did you get distracted? Were you really focused? As you go off

into your life after these probably about 30 minutes, I want you to notice a how often are you engaging in conversations that you don't really feel you're ready to be in? And can you ask someone to talk a little later? Can you design a conversation around your capacity and desire to listen? And can you truly listen masterfully? Listen to the words, listen to what's unsaid, listen to the feeling. You know, it's not always easy to do this. I think sometimes it's easier to just be distracted because we're just in a habit of that, but it's so much more meaningful. I can tell you that I would

rather not talk to anyone anymore than talk to people halfway, half-assing my listening, half-assing, or assuming they're half-assing theirs, right? So take that with you, I hope. Practice, practice, practice. And the more you realize you're fucking it up, because I've been realizing I'm not being a masterful listener sometimes. It's why I'm talking so much about it. I feel we all talk about the stuff we need to learn the most. And let's keep leaning in, let's keep finding ourselves, and let's let ourselves lose our shit from time to time because you might just find something pretty profound. In fact, after this or during this, go ahead and

add a comment, send me a question, write a review of this episode if it moved you in some way. I want us all to start admitting that we're losing our shit, we're finding some great things, and maybe if we keep sharing our findings with each other, we're gonna find even more epic stuff. You know what I mean? Uh also, please, if you haven't yet, subscribe, share. I love doing this. I love using my voice to talk about listening. It's much easier for me to talk than to listen. And whether you feel that or not, I'm so grateful you took the time to hear a very, very

vulnerable story, and I do hope it helps you in moments of a shitstorm, maybe in moments of a love loop, too. See ya next time,