00:00
I think self-awareness is key to unlocking it all because everything else doesn’t matter unless you become aware and continue. And I think it is a lifelong process. There’s so many layers to awareness. ah The advice that I would give to everybody is to always seek the discomfort and not escape it.

00:24
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan, and today on the show I have Supriya. Supriya, how you doing today? Great, lovely to be here, Nick. I’m excited for you to be here. I always like to be able to shoot the breeze with the people that are on the show just a few minutes before we get started. And I was talking to you about your microphone and how you got your setup, but I know podcasting is new to you, but having these conversations, the little bit of conversation we’ve had so far,

00:53
I know communicating and talking about what your purpose is and what your work is isn’t new to you. So I’m excited that I’m one of the first ones to be able to actually interview you for this stuff. So, hey, why don’t you get us started? Tell us what you do for a living and what’s one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre? Sure. I’m a mindset business coach. I’m also an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur myself and an investor. So that’s what got me into this work.

01:17
um Something that’s unusual about me that most people don’t know is that I actually grew up in three cultures simultaneously as a child. And it’s termed actually TCK, which means third culture kid. And people who grew up that way have a very different way of looking at the world. So I was born in a village, a very tiny village in the Fiji Islands. And by village, I mean like we didn’t have running hot water. We have to like walk, you know, like very far away to an outhouse.

01:41
to take a dump, didn’t have any walls in our house, like just hanging up sheets, like really proper village. But simultaneously, my mother had left to come to Los Angeles. So I would come to LA and live in downtown LA and eat McDonald’s, know, happy meals and wear jeans and all these things that I couldn’t do in Fiji and then go back. And in Fiji, uh it’s the population is divided between East India, which is half the country and indigenous Fijian.

02:09
And in America, I lived in predominantly like uh communities of people of color. So I was speaking Spanish a lot. So there’s so much cultural stuff going on. And then my mother’s family had also converted to Christianity, but my father’s family in Fiji was Hindu. So I was raised with two different religious beliefs at the same time. So it was a lot of different things with language, culture, religion, just like really all of the things of life, uh clothing, food, like all of it, which is very different for me. So I switched countries every year for the first nine years of my life.

02:39
What a way to start this. There’s a lot to get into. But the first thing that came to my mind is I’ve been recently going through the Bhagavad Gita. Oh, yeah, it’s a beautiful book. Yeah, absolutely. But I got to it from Stephen Cope’s books about the difficult times or Dharma and difficult times and understanding what you’re here to do. I’ve been Christian for a solid portion of my life. I grew up Catholic and then, you know, went to

03:08
Christian church and all that. So it’s funny because now I kind of look at like there’s the Bible and there’s Bhagavad Gita and there are people that are like you should only read one if you’re this sort of religion or you should only read this and I don’t think of myself as religious. I think of myself as uh a soulful creature who has spirituality but there’s so much that’s in that and for you to be able to be brought up through that. What a cool situation. Most people have a hard time getting out of their own damn town. They just become townies.

03:38
you couldn’t even be a countries, I guess that maybe that doesn’t work. But uh tell us a little bit about that, like how that actually shaped who you are right now, growing up the way that you did and kind of going back from like a village with no walls to LA, playing in, I guess the dirty playpen of McDonald’s and eating cheeseburgers. Yeah, exactly. uh Shaped me a lot. You know, I didn’t recognize as a child only when I got older, I realized, you know, I have

04:06
I’m very curious person and I think that’s where it started. I was always like wondering why people are so different that I would meet because obviously my friends in LA were very different, like in school, were very different than the friends that I had in Fiji. My family’s values, because I, know, basically two different families going back and forth were different. I became extremely curious as to why people are the way they are. And that really led me to eventually study neuroscience and human psychology and like just all sociology, like all of those things of people’s makeup.

04:34
And also communication, I think was a big part of it. I was really in love with language. was a journalist for a long time and worked in marketing. I used to speak a lot of different languages. I don’t so much now, but just I really want it was fascinated by language and how language shapes how we think and how we sort of experience the world. Because like, for example, in Hindi, there’s five different ways to say the word love, but in English, only one way to say the word love. they all because they’re nuanced, they all mean different things.

05:04
So I don’t know, just the expression of language and the experience of it and how it shapes our experience is really fascinating to me. Let’s keep going with that a bit because it’s interesting when I think of the English language and how frustrating it must be for people to learn it. Like I’ve learned it since I was a little kid, but it’s hard for me to learn other languages. Like I failed Spanish in high school because I didn’t really give a shit and like I didn’t want to try. But now that I’ve gotten older, I’m like,

05:32
probably be easier to learn than trying to figure out English, like the word there. There’s there, there’s there, there’s there, and there’s there. And there are so many different versions of it, and they mean different things. So it’s interesting to think about that and how we all perceive it to be one certain way. But I think even if we go deeper than that, there are stories that are involved with the words that we tell not only ourselves, but we tell other people. What are your thoughts on

05:59
Yeah, so part of the work I do as a coach is really helping. I decode language patterns when people are speaking and seeing what is a mental representation of that in their mind. So it’s very interesting. There is a lot of science that shows our language actually correlates to neural pathways. So we all create these symbols in our mind. Language is symbolism, right? But each word and our relationship with that word will create a different symbol in our mind. And that symbol in our mind is actually made up of.

06:26
ah the belief that we have, the picture. So an example I’ll give, I don’t know if you’re familiar with like neuro-linguistic programming at all, but okay, you are awesome. I wasn’t sure. So with something called subodality. So for example, if you’re at a picture, a food that you hate right now in your mind and you would see what is the color of it? Where is it located in my mind? Like, is it bright? Is it not bright? Is it dark or is it light? What is the size of it? And then think of a picture in your mind of something you love to eat, maybe your favorite food.

06:54
and then ask the same questions, it would be a different picture. Which is so interesting. So like the symbolism of communication to me is interesting. Oh yeah. I want us to take a second to actually do that because let’s take a second and think about that. As you said it to me,

07:16
we should pause so the audience can just take a second. Think about the food that you don’t like and what it looks like. Then think about the food that you do like and what it looks like. We can redo it and I can do it slower. No, you’re totally good. if we, I think for most people it’ll come to them pretty quickly. Like even if you just let your gut kind of speak to you. Because as you said it to me, I just let my gut speak to me. And I was like, it’s something I wouldn’t like. I don’t know, dog food came up. And I was like, that’s gross. I would never eat dog food.

07:43
the dog food, like the alpo food that like is all wet and gross. When I saw that picture, I saw it as just wet and gross and almost dark. Then the food that I like would be cheese fries, mozzarella cheese fries. They were lit and bright and beautiful. I was like, wow, what silly things that if you really break it down to a macro level, but you wouldn’t really think about it. You’d be like, dog food, it’s gross, it’s dark. And I want to.

08:09
You’re like, cheese fries, great, beautiful, bright, like want them right now. Where is the salty goodness in my face right now? But taking that little bit to actually break that apart, walk us through what that looks like from the neuroscience perspective of it and why the brain does that. Yeah, so that’s actually like what I call the anatomy of thought. All thoughts can be broken down with this aspect of submodality that I mentioned, but it’s also somatic. So that’s the brain working.

08:35
but you are made up of both physiology and your mind. So on your body, that is also stored somewhere often. uh Depending on how strong your response is to that item, like the dog food, if you have a lot of disgust, then you might feel it viscerally somewhere in your body. And if you love something a lot, again, if it’s an extreme on that spectrum, you’ll feel it somewhere in your body, or you may not, or it may be a little bit more difficult to access.

09:00
But no matter what, it is stored in your body. So it’s both. It’s both the mind and the body as well, if that helps. Yeah. Let’s get into the somatics of it a bit. Sure. Because some people, totally understand somatics got it from my body. Other people were like, what did you say? What does that mean? How do I actually feel that? Because I do think a lot of people are too cerebral. Yes, 100%. Growing up, my dad would always tell me, think, think, think, think, think. Use your brain. Use your brain. Use your brain. But I’m an emotional person.

09:30
On the enneagram side, he’s an eight, I’m a four. Completely different. Then I feel all the things and I need to feel that before I can think that. Some people need to think and then feel and vice versa. But the somatics has to tie into it. And if we don’t really think or feel that, then we’re going to just jump right past it because your body will just be like, I don’t like it. And that’s end of it. So talk to us a little bit about the tie to it.

09:56
Yeah, I’ll definitely talk about that. But before I get into that, because you mentioned there’s basically these people who are visual and people who are like cerebrals with the word ease, but you describe visual and then feeling. But there’s a third category that’s important to know. Some people are just auditory, like sound is really important to them. So it’s neither. Some people can’t really see or feel, but they can hear really well. So it’s interesting. So everyone has a dominant way of interpreting information that comes in and then sort of organizing that information within their psyche.

10:24
So for the somatic piece of it, a really good example is Pavlov’s dogs. I don’t know if everyone here has heard of it, but I’ll just quickly sort of recap the story of Pavlov’s dog. So Pavlov was a scientist who was studying the stomach of dogs and digestive system um a very long time ago. And part of his, through his research, what he did was he would have to feed the dogs, interestingly, because you mentioned dog food, interestingly. ah Funny coincidence.

10:50
So anyway, before he fed the dogs, when he brought the food out, he would ring a little bell to let them know the food is here. So what the dogs would do when the food came out is their mouth would salivate because food that they love to eat and you know, your mouth starts to salivate. But over time, what would occur is when he rang the bell, that’s when it would salivate before they even saw the food or smell the food. So the anchor in their body had changed. the stimuli uh

11:14
change, but the response remains. So in our bodies is the same way we have responses to lots of stimuli in our environment, um as well as to thoughts that we may have. But the that anchoring between the stimulus and response can both be created, as well as collapsed within us, but we all have them. And then you can again, feel it in your body as well. But that’s how it happens at like wiring process. What a cool, cool situation we have with our bodies.

11:44
and that we don’t think about it too much. I think an easy way to be able to think, like, think about your breathing. Most people don’t. And just like with meditation, even at a basic level, just concentrate on the breath and just feel that, think about it, understand that that’s there. And most times we don’t, and we don’t break things down to that sort of level. ah I think for the most part, a lot of people, even if they don’t know the story of Pavlov’s dogs, they understand that there’s some trigger response or something.

12:13
But to think about how we do that to ourselves over the course of time years and years and years It makes me think of like traditions people are like all these are my traditions It’s like no really that’s family trauma that’s just been fucking passed down over and over and you’ve just said this is the pattern this is how we do it like the aunts and uncles yell at each other at Christmas time or whatever. It’s like that’s not tradition. You guys are just your trauma family. There’s something going on so

12:40
When you talk to your clients and you work with your clients on this to be able to be self-aware, to be able to understand that, what sort of process do you walk them through understanding if somebody knows that they need some help with this, but how can they do it on a daily basis? Yeah, so there’s a very specific techniques and process that I go through with my clients that would be just too much to, it would just take too long to explain it here. don’t give the secret to us. But it’s also like just time, you know, like this.

13:06
We usually spend like a couple hours talking about this one technique on both creating and collapsing the responses in our body. But I’d say the first thing that’s important is just to see what your triggers are. I think um the idea of being triggered has become very political recently in the last few years. But to me, it’s like if you’re triggered by something, there’s a response in your body.

13:27
Like that’s usually what it is. So if that’s happening, that means you need to deal with that and work with it at your own body level. Of course, we need to work with stuff that’s systematically out in the world and et cetera, but at same time recognize your own response and at some level take like accountability for your own response.

13:46
Accountability is a four-letter word to some people. Yeah. Especially in their own response. Yeah. I know it’s uh maybe controversial to say, but I think it’s important to just always have radical responsibility for all of your behaviors and responses at all times. I agree with that totally. And I say it sort of jokingly that it’s a four-letter word. I also understand that it can be that way because there’s deeper trauma and uh situations where we would be able to get through and work through that.

14:15
Have you ever had somebody that was like that? Like it was hard for them to be able to grasp it because of the traumas they’ve had? Yeah, so I’d say like trauma is also often in layers and I speak from personal experience. I went through a lot of trauma in my whole life. So you have to deal with it layer by layer. So usually when I work with clients, you know, it’s very goal focused because not therapy. So we’re trying to figure out like, what is your goal and what’s getting away? And usually the trauma does get in the way like some aspect.

14:40
of it. So we don’t may not resolve the entire trauma, but the piece of it that is affecting your way to goals. So an example might be maybe you procrastinate against a certain thing that you know is important in your business. And it is tied to something in the past, you just don’t see it. So it helps you figure out like, what is that connection and then break it. So that’s how trauma can come into play, for example. Another example, it’s kind of related trauma is I’d say like,

15:03
being gendered as a woman and someone of color, I’ve experienced myself, there’s a lot of ideas and beliefs that I’ve adopted growing up in my whole life and culturally being Indian as well. You know, for one example would be like, women just aren’t valued as much as men in my culture that I grew up in, which is the truth. I hate to say it, but it is the truth. And that isn’t something I really recognize until I started making progress on my own business journey. It’s like, oh, wait, these things are actually holding me back. And I’ve seen trauma in my family, like domestic violence, for example.

15:31
that is part of this, right? So I need to work with that in order for me to step into the woman that I am, the leader that I am. So that’s a personal example. That’s an important thing to bring up. Look, for those of you who’ve watched this show or have listened to this show, ah you may have heard me talk about how I have noticed and I’ve realized the privilege that I have had over the course of life. Even with the crazy stuff that has happened or the things that have happened, it’s not the same as somebody

16:01
like yourself, or somebody that came to this country or somebody of color or a woman. And it can be really difficult for some people to understand that I was having a conversation even earlier about the idea of land back. And the thought of that where there are lot of people that go, well, if we give land back, then they’re going to try to kill us and try to take away all of our things. It’s like, no, they’ll probably just fucking take care of the land. Like, they’re not going to come after you and

16:30
colonize you like you did them. uh But being able to understand from the other person’s perspective, from your perspective, what it looked like for you to grow through that, for you to go through that, live through it and understand. I’m sure you have clients that you can see from their side, ah what they’ve gone through, but you can see from a different angle, you know what I mean? Of like, this is what I can understand. ah talk to me a little bit about the traumas and the things that

17:00
you’ve experienced that have helped to shape you, but to also help you understand and see the systemic issues and the deeper problems. Oh man, so this is a really big question and there’s just so much to Well, we got another 30 minutes or so, have at it. Oh man, like my own personal life, I’ve had a lot of different kinds of trauma. I think that was one of your questions is like, what is a trauma that you’ve experienced? And part of it is like the identities that I am or have lived through. uh

17:30
So I had physical trauma. I was abused as a child by my parents, which sucks, but that was there. So there’s a lot of somatic stuff that I’ve had to deal with. A lot of physical pain in my body. That’s not specifically tied to identity, but it happens. um As far as, and I’ve had sexual trauma in my life as well. I don’t want to get into the details of it, but it has happened in my past. And again, as I mentioned, I witnessed domestic violence as well.

17:54
So those two things together is interesting because I joined the military. It was my first career in my early 20s. I joined the army when I was 19 and I served for six and a half years active duty. And the military and the army specifically that branch is predominantly male. It’s not as like Air Force, for example, has more women than men. And I was in the signal core, which is like 99 % male. So every unit I was in, I was usually the only female in my entire unit of like, know, 400 people, for example.

18:22
So I experienced a lot of objectification and I saw it consistently. I saw men objectify women, just in the way they just talked about women, like every single day, uh just the way they saw women, thought of women, experienced women. And I think that made me objectify myself as a result. And I think what also happened in my own case is that I was repeating my trauma, right? I sought to go in the military because I had already experienced some of that trauma myself.

18:51
So it wasn’t new, it was actually familiar. So I think people who have grown up with trauma or any identity try to recreate them from themselves because it’s in some way it’s safe psychologically. Yeah, you’re preaching to the choir with that one. Yeah, yeah. It’s again a hard truth. Like we do uh repeat our own patterns. They may not start with us, but then we continue to sort of propagate them. Yeah. It’s funny because I think an easy way for most people understand that

19:21
is that even if you don’t have children, to think about when people say, well, when I have kids, I’m not going to be like my parents. And then the people that have kids are like, damn, I did exactly what my dad did or exactly what my mom did or whatever. And sometimes it’s good things, you know, but oftentimes it’s just continuing the pattern of the trauma. Like you said, you were abused. I don’t know what the depths of that is. And you don’t have to give me gory details or

19:51
share anything like that. But I’m sure most people who were born in the 80s or 90s can say, yeah, every once in while I get smacked in the back of the head or I get something thrown at me or whatever. And then you take step further back, 50s, 60s, 70s, there were other things that happened. There was deeper abuse. And now I look at the people that are having kids, like I’m in my late 30s and I think of the kids from high school that have kids that are now in high school.

20:19
and like the things that they’re passing along to their kids and they’re trying to do different from their parents, but they’re not always. And they’re still perpetuating that because they haven’t actually healed that. The traumas yet. And I think for the most part, a lot of that comes down to that self-awareness of like, what is actually happening? What am I feeling? What’s going on? And it can be really difficult for people to not understand that if they can’t see it and they can’t get there. And self-awareness is a big thing that we talk about on this show.

20:48
And I always love to be able to hear from people of how they help people get to the point where they can see it, how they can put those self-awareness glasses on to be able to see it. Because if you don’t, and maybe you don’t agree with this, I’m assuming you kind of do, if you don’t see it, you can’t do a damn thing about it. 100%. Yeah. And if you can’t get to the point where you can’t see it, then you can never expect to change anything. So how do you help people get to the point where they can actually kind of flex that and grow that self-awareness muscle?

21:17
Yeah, that’s a great question. think self-awareness is key to unlocking it all because everything else doesn’t matter unless you become aware and continue. And I think it is a lifelong process. There’s so many layers to awareness. uh The advice that I would give to everybody is to always seek the discomfort and not escape it. I think we have so many coping mechanisms to just ignore the feelings that we are feeling, whether it’s a severe or subtle uh addiction like drinking alcohol or food.

21:47
It could work could be something like just watching TV. Like, I don’t want to deal with this. Whether I think a common thing people feel at the end of the day when they don’t work like, oh, I’m so tired. I just want to deal with when I watch TV. That’s actually a response. You’re not coping with the feeling in your body. Yeah, you might say it’s relaxing, but it’s not like there’s other ways to relax. You could go for a walk, right? There’s like healthy ways to move the emotions in your body. And then there’s just numbing it out. So I think not

22:12
like making a conscious choice and not numb, whatever it is that you’re feeling, even if you can identify it, even if it just like a feeling of blah and just sitting with it. Like just yesterday, I had something come up for me when I was feeling it. And that’s my response was like, Oh, I just want to go do something. I was like, Nope, I’m just going to sit with it. I made myself like lay in my bed and just feel like the deepest layers of that feeling for like two hours. Because like, and you get to like the deeper and deeper aspect, like, okay, now I see what the true cause of this is.

22:42
And now that I can see it and feel it better, now I can deal with it. What a weird thing for us as people that are like this to the people that aren’t like this, because we’re like, we’re just gonna fucking sit here. We’re gonna sit through it. And do nothing. drown myself in the deep end. My partner is great at that, where she will just sit in the deep end for what seems like too long sometimes. It’s like, it’s long enough to be able to do it, get it work through.

23:12
and make sure you’re actually good. And then there’s still stuff to go through. Yeah. And still stuff to work through. Like I think a lot of people are like, well, I just want it to be done right now. Give me a quick process or give me this or give me some pill to take or something. And I just want it to be done. It’s like, even when you go through and you process through something, you probably still need to process it another 80 times and like really work through it. And they’re like, I said, I’d give you one. I’m not going to give you 79 more.

23:40
or anything like that, but it can be really difficult for people to be able to do it. But don’t you find it funny or do you find it funny? I’m not trying to MLP you. Do you find it funny when you can sit there and you can feel yourself being like, no, just go do this other thing. This is more fun. You’re like, fuck off. I’m staying right here. I’m doing this thing right here. It’s hard. It’s hard work. It is hard, but it can be gratifying when you go through it. ah

24:08
talking about a situation that came up and I had, as we recorded this, we’re a couple days after Christmas, my grandmother died Christmas Eve and super close to her. I miss her. I love her all of that. And I was doing the dishes the other night and just letting it all go and just sitting there with it and just doing the dishes. And I remember thinking to myself, I should walk away and I should go do something like the pull to not be in that. I was like, nope.

24:38
My hands are soapy, I still have a bunch of dishes to do and I’m just gonna sit here and I found myself like kinda laughing to myself. I don’t know if my partner caught me but I was just sitting there laughing and crying and like, working through it. But you have to be able to work through that and sit there and sit in it. Is there any sort of advice you give to somebody that oftentimes will feel themselves be drawn into something that is harmful for them and they’re like, you know, I…

25:06
I tell myself I’m going to do the work and then next thing you know I find myself on the back porch with a beer in my hand or playing a video game or something like that. Is there some sort of advice you have for that? don’t do it. just takes courage. Straight up. mean it just takes courage and courage is not an easy thing but maybe do it like a little bit at a time if you can’t fully do it like my example of two hours. Just do it for five minutes. Start small right? You don’t have to jump to the extreme right away.

25:33
but just sit with it for a little bit if you can, or maybe talk to a friend, right? If you can’t do it alone, if that’s helpful, or journal, just some capacity to get it out. uh Also physical, like physical movement is very powerful. As we talked about earlier, there’s cerebral and there’s somatic. So if you don’t want to think or feel your way out of it, do some movement, because that also moves the emotion, moves the energy, and changes your brainwave patterns as well, which will help you get to that uh place of release and also insight.

26:03
It’s a very good point. And I think something for us to talk about there too is to not let yourself get into a spot where you’re like, well, when I get really upset, I go to the gym. Do you work through it? Or do you just use that as a thing that is kind of the bandage or just to be able to get away from it? I know that I’ve done that. I was thinking recently about my meditation. I’ve stepped up the amount of time that I’m meditating and there are times where my eyes will open, I’ll be looking around, I’m looking at things, I’ll grab my phone and I’m like, fucking stuff.

26:33
just concentrate on your breathing and get back to the thing, but being able to figure out like your mind and your body, you’re gonna try to figure out the easier way to go about it. And I love when I ask you the question, you’re like, just do it. Just straight up, just do it. Okay, cool. But what are some of the steps that people can take that can help them to be able to do that? Is it putting themselves into a spot where maybe they don’t have their phone near them or maybe they don’t have this or that? Like what are some of the things

27:02
And I’m sure everybody’s got clients that they’re like, I’m trying to help you and you need to help yourself. But here are some of the barriers you can set up. What are some of those barriers? Yeah, I think what you said about like you said, changing environment is also important. But I think I was trying to allude to is just do something different than what you maybe you’re used to. So if you’re not maybe a physical person who was like going to the gym all the time to do something physical, if you’re not maybe a contemplative person, then do the journaling or meditation.

27:29
or talk to somebody if that’s maybe not what you’d always do, like just always talk it out and have verbal diarrhea for lack of a better word, or change your environment. Like you’re saying, leave the room you’re in or the physical place, like the building you’re in, like your home or whatever. So just changing the opposite to whatever is your natural tendency. I think that breaks the pattern and it breaks your way of dealing with it. So just by breaking the pattern, you’ll have access to more

27:59
wisdom within yourself if that makes sense. yeah, absolutely. And you bring up a good point of being able to have that kind of verbal diarrhea. It’s similar to like what you’re saying sitting in it for the two hours. If you were there for 15 minutes, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten to that next level that you got to at 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour and 15 minutes and being able to walk through those steps.

28:26
just like as you would in a subconscious process to be able to walk down the steps into your subconscious to be able to actually get to the root of the things. It can take a little while to be able to do that. But then also having the people like yourself or myself that are coaches that can help people through that. It’s funny, I joke with my coach, I’ll get onto a call. Like I had a session, I don’t know, week and a half ago before Christmas or whatever. And like 15, 20 minutes in, I was just, ah.

28:53
I was like, Look, man, I’m sorry, I’m just dumping all over you right now. And he was like, That’s why you pay me. Touche. All right. And having those people that can actually help with that is probably different. Like that coach isn’t my best friend. It’s not the person that I went to high school with that I’ve known for years and years. And it’s not my romantic partner. It’s not an employee or anything like that. So having that right avenue to be able to do that. And I think some people

29:22
are hesitant to hire a coach because one, it’s fucking real at that point and they have to do the work. But two, there’s that uncertainty of is it actually going to help me? So what advice would you give to somebody that’s trying to figure that out and like, what’s the first step they can take? Or the first, you know, little baby steps. For the coaching specifically? Just being able to have that conversation and do something a little different, but getting some of that stuff that’s out of them, because you and I both know that

29:51
The more that you work through that, the more that you actually process through it, the better off you’re going to be. You can do a lot on your own, but you can’t always do all of it on your own. And having somebody else that you work through, I know there are people that listen to the show that are like, hey, I want to hire a coach, but I don’t know who’s the right one to hire or what to go after, who to even talk to. But they shouldn’t also talk to their super negative uncle.

30:16
I agree you shouldn’t talk to someone who’s already in your life because first of all, they’re not going to be objective in their perception of you. And that is really important right away. And secondly, they’re probably not trained in anything specifically. They don’t have a skill set. Coaching is a skill set, just like any other profession out there. Having said that, there are different levels of skill, just again, like any other profession. So I think it’s really important to look at somebody’s credentials and capacity.

30:42
I think in the recent years, a lot of people say they’re coached and they have zero training in coaching specifically. I was like, yeah, I’m sure they can, they’ll be great person to talk to, but can actually help you in a, in a specific way with processes and modalities. So look for that. think that’s important. And then the other thing is look for, I think alignment’s really important, both from a level of what is it you need. Like I specifically work with entrepreneurs who are focused on high performance and business growth.

31:11
I wouldn’t work with somebody who’s not that, right? Like that’s a match. So finding somebody, like if you’re struggling with things specifically in your marriage, for example, I’m not the person for you, but there’s a lot of people out there that can help you or like your health, right? If you’re trying to achieve something in your, like I don’t work with, you know, chronic pain or weight loss or, any of those things, but there, again, there are people. So aligning like your goals of what you want with coaches who work on that specifically, but also values. think values match is really, really important.

31:39
because I have personally, like I’m always getting coached myself. Like you said, you have a coach, I’m working with two coaches myself. I’m always on this like self growth journey never stops. But in the past, I think I had made the mistake when I’ve hired a coach, it didn’t have the same values. And there was definitely like, I felt they were trying to like mold me in a certain direction that just wasn’t aligned with my own values. So think that’s really important. So when you’re first, know, meeting with a potential coach, like really ask about those questions and try to see who that person is and if it is a match for you from that level as well.

32:09
That’s a great, great point right there. Because I think that’s one of those uh kind of unconscious fears that people have. Like what if they try to mold me into something? Right. If I don’t want to be that, can you help me evolve instead of helping me change everything? And especially if people have never had a coach before, they don’t know what that that’s like. uh Sometimes you also need to go through bad coaches, you got to spend money and go fuck that was awful. I’ve learned not to hire that type of person or whatever. uh

32:38
But having the right ones on board can absolutely help and can change the game for you. And along that line, what’s that one piece of advice you give to somebody that’s on their path towards self-mastery? I think always be curious and follow the discomfort. Because I feel like that discomfort we talked about quite a bit, but it is important. And also, uh part of that is not to use your

32:58
whatever your escape tool is as a addiction to. I lived in a spiritual community when I came back from Iraq for two years, kind like an ashram situation where everybody meditates and does yoga and healthy living, all this stuff. But what I saw there is that whenever something went wrong, like in their life or in relationships with other people, because a very small community, oh, we’re just going to meditate on it. It’s like, okay, well, now this is turning into a crutch too. So just having that self-awareness of like everything can actually…

33:26
become a negative thing for you. So having that self-awareness and escaping the discomfort and being curious, but not creating a new addiction in the process. And you got to be self-aware to understand that. Yeah. It doesn’t matter if it’s meditating or praying about it or anything like that. If you just use it as a crutch, you’re not going to be able to get anywhere or you’ll wobble your lung, you know, along the way with it because it’s a crutch at that point. Be willing to burn it down. Yeah. Whatever it is. As you should and sit in it.

33:55
Wow, this has been great stuff. Bre, I really appreciate you being on the show today. Before I let you go, where can people find you and where can they connect with you? Yeah, so I’m on all the social media platforms. So follow me at samskara.co or along on my website if you’re interested in checking it out. The name is the same, samskara.co. Again, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.