Breathtaking Clarity With Linda Michie

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Thriving Adoptees podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Linda, Linda Michie. Looking forward to our conversation today Linda. Me too Simon. Yeah, so Linda and I caught up a month or so ago and since then she's become a doggy mum again to little Benny there at St Bernard.

[00:00:24] So we've been cooing over Benny but now it's time for business. So Linda, what does Thriving mean to you? So I have a neuropsychologist named Rick Hansen who I've been reading his works for many years.

[00:00:51] And he has a theory that human beings need three things. Safety, connectedness and productivity. And so his idea is that if you're feeling safe, you're feeling like I'm okay. You're feeling connected like you belong to people. And you're feeling productive. Efficacy, like I can do it.

[00:01:21] I have a job. I have a purpose here. Then you're, in essence you're thriving. You're doing well and you're okay. Yeah. The Supreme Court of Virginia who I rely on because they sponsor my parenting education license. has this idea that there are the three P's of parenting.

[00:01:47] Provide, protect and prepare. So the idea that if you provide for your children what they need. And you protect them from physical and emotional harm. And you prepare them for a life well lived.

[00:02:08] That then these human beings will feel safe, connected and productive and create that business of thriving. Yeah. Wow. I love the way you draw those strings together. I've been thinking about the safety thing actually, this weekend.

[00:02:35] Just being, I've been playing around with chat GPT. Have you heard of this thing? This AI? Yeah. Wow. So it's artificial intelligence app and you can ask your questions. And so I use it for kind of brainstorming.

[00:02:56] And one of the things I was thinking about was this felt sense of safety and how the newness, the newness, so that, that chance as I was transferred from my birth mother's arms, right? To my adoptive mum's arms.

[00:03:20] Then there is, there is, I mean, this was 58 years ago, right? And how, how can I, how can I remember? But I was thinking, it must've felt a little bit different. It must've felt a little bit different. And maybe that didn't feel safe, you know? And your cells remember that.

[00:03:45] You may not remember it in your, in your conscious mind, I think, but I think your cells have a memory and they, and they keep that, that feeling with you. Am I, am I okay? Am I, am I connected? Am I, am I, does this feel safe to me? Yeah.

[00:04:02] So I was thinking that in, with this idea of thriving, that it shouldn't be a cloudy idea for us. It should be, it should be something measurable. And so I was thinking, how do we, how would we measure whether we're thriving or not?

[00:04:25] We know if a baby has a documented case of failure to thrive when they go to the hospital, if they're not growing, if they're not eating, if they're not being nurtured. But how do, how do we measure whether we're thriving, whether adoptees or adoptive parents or not? And so I was thinking, well, we ask the doctor, how our, how our bodies are. We ask the school for grades, how we're, how we're learning. We ask our boss for a performance review.

[00:04:55] Are we, are we performing up to snuff at work? Our friends and family tell us if we're being kind or loving or generous, or if we have stable relationships, or if we have a spiritual connection to something meaningful to us. Are we sleeping, eating and, and resting and exercising? So I think we can almost measure how, how we're thriving.

[00:05:26] Yeah. You're, you're, if I remember rightly from looking at your website last time, you do some life coaching as well, right? I do. And I specialize in, in, in parenting, but I also do start all of my clients off with a chart. And, and I love this chart for visual people. The, on the left side of the chart, it says you are here.

[00:05:52] And on the right side of the chart, it lists the, your goals. And then there's a line from where you are to where you want to be. And all along those lines, you can document whether or not you're taking steps that, that will put you towards your goal. So, so you can look at it.

[00:06:13] And when you, if you're trying to lose weight and you pick up that cheeseburger and fries, you can say, is this on my path to, to where I want to go or not? So it makes, for my visual learners, it puts it right there in front of them that they can see that. Yeah. The reason I asked you about the coaching or why that popped into my head, Linda was because, you know, you're, you're looking at, you're talking about different, other people, right?

[00:06:42] Other people's views of, of, of how we were thriving in that measurements piece. And I thought, yes. And what, what about that internal, what about that internal perspective too? And, uh, I was thinking that a coach, I would guess, right? Um, I guess a coach would be looking at that, uh, internal perspective too, right? Very much.

[00:07:12] So what, what does it mean for you? What, if we look at, if we go kind of internal on, on, on Linda, what does, what does thriving mean for you? Oh, okay. Uh, so I think that, uh, it's been different over the years and right now I'm getting near retirement.

[00:07:40] So my life plan is right now about preparing for my retirement. So thriving for me in the next couple of years will look like what I've accomplished to set myself up for a successful retirement.

[00:08:00] Uh, will I get to, uh, have my giant garden and my time to relax and read and write that book on parenting that I've been planning for the past 10 years. And, uh, so, so my life plan is all about, um, being successful in what I've been trying to accomplish so that I can move into a world where I don't have to accomplish anything. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:29] But you have that purpose, you know, when we, you talked about safety, connectedness and, um, and, and productivity, you'll, you'll have that purpose in your, in your retirement. Um, but hopefully you'll be holding that goal a little bit more loosely. Will you, I guess, in terms of the book, it will, it will, it will find its space in your life view.

[00:08:52] It won't be as you'll, you'll have, you'll have time to, to mull that over rather than running at, at the speed that you do at the moment to serve your clients at the moment. Lots of times. So for the first year of retirement, I think it will be my, my main focus will be to get the book finished and out into the world in the best way that I can. Yeah.

[00:09:17] I want to take you back to that safety, that safety idea, because you, you talked to, we talked about this a couple of minutes ago. Um, I was thinking that perhaps I didn't feel safe in, in those, in that transition space, right. And that transition. And yet I was. Hmm. Right.

[00:09:47] I, I got lucky in terms of adoptive parents from when I had, when I, when I had nobody else's experience to measure against or to compare with. I didn't know how lucky or unlucky I had got.

[00:10:12] But since doing the podcast for the last four years, it's become clear to me that I'm at the luckier end of the spectrum. Mm-hmm. Right. Uh, and, and so, although I may have not felt safe in that, in that transition, the, the safety was there. Yeah.

[00:10:36] Although that I, although I didn't maybe appreciate it in that, didn't appreciate it in that moment. Yeah. But, but it's not there for everybody. Right. Oh, no. No. Everybody gets as, as, as lucky. Right. So part, part of what my firm offers is supervised visitation. I think we might've talked about this before.

[00:11:05] So I am on a daily basis dealing with children who are not safe and, uh, and need a professional there to make sure that they're safe. And, and, and so that's ever present in my mind that, that, um, that, that, that safety means everything to them because you can't go off and be creative or, or, or do the things you want to do with your life if you're not feeling safe. So that's the first thing.

[00:11:32] But I think that's why we talk about the feeling of safety versus the actualness of safety, because it's the feeling of safety that we need. And so many adopted children, uh, don't have that. They have so much loss and grief. Um, even if they're not consciously aware of it, that it, it can stick in there for a lifetime. Yeah.

[00:11:57] Cause what I was actually playing around with, with this chat GPT thing, uh, is the, the, the, the, the, the, the transition from not, not, not, from a birth mother to adoptive, um, adoptive mother, adoptive parents, but the transition of something that starts off as a feeling becomes a belief. Right.

[00:12:26] So this idea and, and, uh, chat GPT was giving me lots of different, lots of different things that could start off as a feeling. And then they end up in a belief.

[00:12:39] But the one that really rung true for me was this idea or that, the, the, the, the, a feeling of a lack of safety could become a belief that the world isn't a safe place.

[00:12:57] It was the key bit where, uh, like, uh, um, uh, a micro, uh, uh, uh, a moment of insecurity or of danger becomes then a bigger, like a macro thing. Absolutely. And so many people struggle with that.

[00:13:18] You know, they say believing your own thoughts is pretty dangerous, but, but once you do have that thought, if you decide you believe it, and then you make your decisions based on that, you could, you could get yourself into a bit of trouble.

[00:13:31] Yeah. Do we decide, do we decide to believe it? This, this is all seems very young and, uh, and a lack of conscious, a lack of conscious choice early on. It becomes, it, to me, it feels like that, uh, what do people call it? Is it confirmation bias? Mm. Confirmation bias.

[00:13:57] Yeah. So I think the neuroscience community would say we will, we will decide what we believe and we'll, we'll talk ourselves into what we want to go on in our, in our own heads. But, um, but, uh, it's a question I don't know if we can solve because then you could go into the idea of faith and is, is that, um, can you just believe in something?

[00:14:25] I can't believe in something I don't think it's true, so. Yeah. But I have talked myself into believing that I'm safe and that I belong and that I'm productive. Consciously. Yeah. I don't know. I think we might have slightly different, I think we might have slightly different take on it. Sure.

[00:14:52] One of the things that's been going on for me when I've been looking at, at, at, at beliefs, uh, recently is that there's, there's two ways out of a belief. Either a new belief comes along that kind of blows the first one out of the water. Right. Right.

[00:15:11] So it's like a new belief happens or something else happens where the, the, the previous belief is, is shown to be not true and leaves like a, a vacuum that another belief may, may fill or may not.

[00:15:35] Um, and I, um, um, um, I guess I'm wondering how you see that from a life coach perspective. I think that it's human to look for support for your beliefs, like confirmation bias. I, you, you, you just mentioned it. I think it's very human for us to see what confirms we believe in. Oh, so there something, something has just happened. So there is a God people, people say this all the time, right?

[00:16:05] There's proof right there or, but you can't make yourself not believe in God if you do or vice versa. So yeah, I, this is over my pay grade, Simon. Yeah. Yeah. I, mine too. And, and that, but, but, but I think that there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a genius in it. There's a bit of fun around the exploration of the idea. Yeah.

[00:16:34] Like not having the answers in a world that's obsessed with having the answers. Yeah. Isn't it wonderful though, to be okay with not having the answer? Yeah. Yeah. That's a piece of thing for me. Yeah. So I want to, on this subject, I want to try something that I talk about quite a lot. And I'm sorry, listeners, if you think that this is a little bit odd or that you've heard me talk about it too many times.

[00:17:03] But I think Linda might give us a new take on this, right? Yeah. So about four or five months ago, I, I saw a great quote from Gabor Marte. Have you heard of this guy? Gabor, Gabor Marte. He's a, he's a, I think he was born in Romania or Hungary.

[00:17:30] He's a medical doctor and, but now spends a lot more time on, let's call it psychological stuff rather than general practice. As I understand. And he, he, he was speaking on an event called the wisdom of trauma, which I thought was an interesting idea. Right.

[00:17:56] Like the wisdom of trauma, you know, people don't, people, people don't usually put those two words together. Right. Wisdom and trauma. That's not how it's dominant. But he was speaking, and one of his quotes on this was that the feeling of not being enough is actually a belief that we're, we're not enough.

[00:18:25] A belief that we're not good enough. And this, this struck me power as a really powerful idea because there's a lot of adoptees and there's a lot of human beings out there as well. Right.

[00:18:43] That don't, don't, don't believe that they're enough, but we, we would, most people would talk about that as a feeling rather than a belief. And here, here's Gabor Marte, Gabor Marte basically calling it out and saying that this is a belief.

[00:19:06] Now, the reason that I thought it was a big deal, that it was a big deal for me is because in my opinion, it's, it's easier to bust a belief than it, than it is to heal trauma. Like if, if you just said, well, how are you going to heal trauma?

[00:19:35] How could you sum that up? Right. How could you sum that up? But I can, I can sum up how, how a belief gets busted. And I did a couple of minutes ago. Right. So in my opinion, like a belief gets busted when it gets replaced by something that we see is truer. Or it gets busted when we see it, it's not true. And then it leaves that, it leaves that vacuum.

[00:20:01] However, whenever I speak to anybody about this, that with this idea that it's easier to bust a belief than it is to heal trauma. Everybody, people don't get it. People, people aren't quite as enthusiastic as I am about this revelation. And I'm wondering what you, how you see that, Linda. And well, first off, is that, is that kind of clear? Am I, am I, am I making it clear?

[00:20:31] Am I overthinking? Am I, what? I think you're clear. I think that, I think to start it, we need to differentiate between the feeling and the belief. Because the feeling is not, I'm not enough. That, because that is, that is a thought. A feeling is, would be insecurity or shame.

[00:20:54] So if you're feeling insecurity or shame and you choose the idea that that means you're not enough, then that's sort of a choice because you could take those feelings and choose to believe something else about them. And I, and I only feel confident in saying this because I, I spent three years of my life studying neuroplasticity.

[00:21:22] And I know that what you put into your brain forms your brain. So if, so if you say over and over again, I'm not enough. If you think it, you, you will believe. But the opposite is also true, Sonia. You can, you can, you can practice, I am enough.

[00:21:46] And you can create neural pathways in your brain that tell you, you are enough. And then you can go and look for evidence that you're right. Or you can do the opposite and look for evidence that you're wrong. It'll be there. Either way, the evidence will be there. You'll find it. Just depends on what you're looking for. Yeah.

[00:22:17] And so much of society is, is, is looking for the negative. So, so much, so much of our media is training us to look for the negative, right? Well, plus we're born with a negativity bias. Negativity sticks to us better. It's just a fact. And then of course, these are dark times in the media with our government. We won't, we won't go there, but there's a lot of negativity out there. If that's what you're looking for.

[00:22:45] But, but again, your choice, you can, you can start with the news every morning and see what Donald Trump's doing today. Or you can take a walk in the woods. And here, the flowers are blooming everywhere. There's new buds on all the trees and, and, and you can put a whole lot of beautiful stuff in your head instead. Yeah.

[00:23:12] I'm going to, I like the way that you, that you, I love the way that you answer that question, actually. Where you, where you went to something around, you, you went to something that is far more feeling, feel, it feels like a feeling.

[00:23:35] If you say shame, if you nail it as shame, shame and insecurity and unsafe and not enough. That's far more visceral than a belief that we're not, not enough. I think maybe I need to, I just saw the, the title.

[00:24:03] I just saw the quote from Gabo Marte, right? And I didn't dive into his context. So I need to dive into his context. And one of the reasons that it struck me, I think is because I'm not particularly a Gabo Marte fan.

[00:24:24] I, I, I find his, I find his focus very, very negative. And almost as if there's a lot of people out there like this that won't give you the positive until you pay them. Oh, that's how I feel.

[00:24:49] That's how I feel about, um, there is, well, what they will, they will give you trauma education, which will take a little bit of sting out of the trauma. It will do a little bit for normalizing it, but they won't actually give you the healing education until you, you, until you, until you pay.

[00:25:16] And, uh, there's another guy that does this, this Bruce, Bruce Perry. I bought the book that he did with Oprah, which is basically a case for trauma. And I listened to it for like eight, 10 hours. Cause this guy is held up to be a genius, this Bruce Perry guy.

[00:25:36] And he, he, he just said, well, it's, it's trauma, trauma, trauma, but there is this thing, um, neuroplasticity. And, and, and that means that we're kind of, we're, we're okay. There is some hope. But it, it, to me, it read like a book that was to argue the case for the, for, for the trauma, maybe to take a little bit of sting out of the trauma, but it wasn't about healing.

[00:26:02] And if I was going to write a book for eight or that, that was eight or 11 hours long, I would be wanting something. I would be putting, to put some healing stuff in it. But I was, yeah. What do you think about the idea of mindfulness, um, in dealing with trauma?

[00:26:21] Because, and I'll, I'm asking because Rick Hansen, the, the, um, the neuroscientist would say that if you, at any given moment, most of the time in the present moment, we're mostly okay. Okay.

[00:26:39] So if, if trauma is refelt by remembering, um, the things that have happened to us, then what would happen in our brains if we focused more on the fact that right now we're probably mostly okay. We're, we're warm enough. We're fed enough. We're, we're loved enough right now.

[00:27:08] Do you, do you, um, just subscribe to a mindfulness, um, way of thinking about trauma or feelings of not belonging or not being good at all? Not, not so much. Okay. Um, I, I, I think you're spot on.

[00:27:35] I, I, I think, I think you, I think you're spot on. I think you're spot on. Um, that, that, that, that we are okay. That we are okay in, in, in the moment. Do, do I stop and ask myself, am I okay? As a way to get out of stuff? No, I, I'm, I don't.

[00:28:00] Um, I think my approach is more about being, it, it, it, it, it, it's about being less bothered. I think I'm, I am less bothered than I used to be. Mm-hmm. In, in, in the moment.

[00:28:27] So, I don't try and fight, I don't try and fight my feelings as I used to do. Mm-hmm. I don't try and bust my beliefs as I used to do. I'm less bothered about what I think and, and how I feel than, than who I am.

[00:28:49] Um, I don't, I don't find, well, yeah, I think I, I threw the, the towel in on the fight against feelings. So, I wonder then if we're, if we're traumatized, we have trauma in our past and we lost our memory, would we cease to be traumatized?

[00:29:18] Yeah, well, um, I've heard this, I, I, I, I've heard, I don't know who said this. He said we need a, it was a, a guy talking about needing a, a forgettery, right? Need, we, we've got a memory, so why don't we have a, a forgettery? I like it. Yeah.

[00:29:39] And I think I'm less scared by my thoughts and feelings than I used to be. And I think I gave up fighting them. So, one of my coaches over the years, we would, we started, I haven't spoken to her for a while.

[00:30:05] We, we used to start a conversation and she would say, how have you been? And I, and I'd say up and down and she'd say, me too, welcome to the human race. So, it, it was about grace. It, it, it was, it was about grace for our thoughts and feelings rather than trying to change our thoughts and feelings. Mm-hmm. Um, because I've, I've done a lot of worrying about worrying.

[00:30:36] I've done a lot of worrying about worrying. Yeah. I'm less, I'm less bothered. Something's actually popping into my head about, um, a training that I went to. Maybe five years ago, just before COVID. Five, maybe five and a half years ago, just before COVID.

[00:31:02] And people, there was, yeah, training is a week, like a weekend, a weekend webinar. And it, it was a lot of small business owners, entrepreneurs, and a lot of mindset-y type, type stuff. And there's maybe 120 of us in a room, something like that. And they, somebody, somebody asked a question from the, from the stage.

[00:31:29] You know, one of the speakers asked a question about thoughts. Um, and, and, and specifically changing thoughts. And they asked a question like, you know, um, the question was, who, who, yeah, who wants to change their thoughts? Something like that.

[00:31:59] So, like, who, who wants to change their thoughts? And everybody put their hand up. And then it's, right. And who doesn't? And I put my hand up. I put, I put my hand up. I don't want to change my, change my thoughts. And I, and then I looked around. I, uh, and this, um, I felt, I felt myself go red. Right. I felt, uh, when, you know, like I'm standing out here. Right.

[00:32:27] I felt really different in that moment. I felt, uh, I heard something this morning on the podcast. Uh, I felt like I was being kicked out of the tribe. Oh, that's the worst. That's the worst thing there is. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is life or death stuff, you know, uh, for our ancestors. Um, and, and this guy who, who was trying to sell, uh, like a mindset ninja training course

[00:32:56] from, from the, from the stage basically was doing that. Right. He looked at me like I was absolutely nuts that I didn't want to change my thoughts. I've just found it. I found it impossible. I don't think I can, I don't, I don't think anybody can change their beliefs. I think beliefs change for them. Yeah.

[00:33:26] Like we, we, a new truth, a truth, a newer truth becomes true or an old belief becomes seen as false. I can't, I can't look in the mirror. I'm like those affirmations people, right. Into that sort of stuff. Right. That just does not work for me. Right. You know, I'm going to change this belief.

[00:33:49] No, that, that I've, I've tried a lot of that stuff and it doesn't work for me. I've had a lot of coaching. Mm-hmm. And so as part of, as part of that coaching, I've seen some of this stuff. Yeah.

[00:34:16] But I do, I, I, I really remember that moment about, I mentioned worrying about worrying. I, when a coach guy pointed that out to me, says he seemed to be doing a lot of worrying about worrying, Simon. Mm-hmm. And I just thought, wouldn't that be easier if I had more grace for worrying?

[00:34:58] How do you see the relative strengths, weaknesses or differences in, between coaching and, and, and, and therapy? Oh. Um, hmm. So I'm not a huge fan of talk therapy, so I'll put that right out there.

[00:35:23] Uh, I think it, if you look at the data, it's sort of, um, 50-50. It might, it might help. It might not, but we don't know what the outcome would be if we didn't have it. Um, I think in talk therapy that people very often, um,

[00:35:47] reiterate their, um, the, the negativity that they're experiencing, which brings it back to mind, which strengthens the neural pathways of that negativity. Um, and so I, I think if, if that's how you use therapy, that it could actually be worse

[00:36:09] for you than not, uh, with coaching, we're entirely focused on now and, and how we get to where we want to go. So this, it, it, it, they're almost opposites in, in that we're, we're focused on the positive we want in our life rather than the negative we have in our life. And how to get there.

[00:36:35] When, when we make plans about how to get there, we're engaging our prefrontal cortex. We're, we're, we're engaging our thinking and planning minds, which is where we want to be. We're not in our reptilian brains of, of fear.

[00:36:55] And, um, and so, and so it's almost an opposite, um, way to approach, um, difficulties or, um, strengths. Yeah. Now, another thing that therapy can be used for is, is, is validating is, is just pure validation. And that is a wonderful thing.

[00:37:22] If you're going to a therapist and they're saying like your experience, I have grace with that, lean into it, love it. It's, it's, it's you, right? That's, that's good. But if many, I think many people go to therapy to complain over and over again about their problems without a whole lot of resolve. And I don't think that's good for us. Yeah. It's constant, um, theme that keeps on coming back up, up and up and again on, on the podcast

[00:37:51] is that talk therapy doesn't work for pre-verbal trauma. And yet a lot of talk therapists have maybe because they have the best intentions in mind have taken money off people who haven't realized that. Well, so, I mean, I think validation is like self-esteem.

[00:38:17] A lot of parents believe that if they share their good esteem with their children, that their children will have good self-esteem. That's not how it works though, because your esteem of me is, is lovely. It's nice. I like it. Right. Feels good. But my self-esteem that has to come from me acknowledging that I'm worthy, that I did a good job, that I can do it.

[00:38:46] So I always teach my parents instead of saying, I think you did a good job, them instead saying to their children, how do you think you did? And let the child come to the realization that they think they did great because that's the self-esteem builder.

[00:39:05] So the validation that esteem you get from a therapist saying that, you know, they understand you, that they're there with you. That's great. It's nice. It feels good. But the validation that you're there with you is more important for our well-being, I think. Yeah. Isn't validation a double-edged sword?

[00:39:34] Say more. Well, on one hand, it makes us feel good. On the other hand, it can keep us stuck. Okay. Meaning that if someone else's opinion of you could send you to a place where you're trying to get more of that by pleasing that person? Not quite.

[00:40:05] You know, a coach will, as I understand it, and as I've experienced it, a coach will come from a place of empathy and rapport and will be trying to ask some questions that draw

[00:40:30] out, that help a client maybe bust some beliefs. So, Simon, when I'm providing parenting coaching to, and even in general life coaching, because sometimes folks need to get a hold of their personal stuff before they can dive into their

[00:41:00] parenting skills. I'm much, much more focused on developing the skills that we need to move forward. I'm a huge fan of you are here, wherever that is. Now let's move forward. Do you look at those self-limiting beliefs as part of that, as part of that skills development?

[00:41:30] I wouldn't spend an awful lot of time on it. I would be much more focused on making a plan, a good, healthy plan to move towards the things that you want in your life is going to provide that strength in moving forward. Okay. Okay.

[00:42:00] So, what I meant about the validation thing was, I saw this in a group, an adoptee group last week. So, somebody came into the group and said, I'm new to the group. I'm struggling. What's helped? What's helped you? What's helped you? And underneath there were a whole load of answers.

[00:42:29] And I think one said, it went basically, and it was more than just one word, right? A couple of sentences, right? It would say, therapy or EMDR or somatic experiencing or nothing or therapy or nothing. Right?

[00:42:57] So, if you go into a space and you say, what's helped? And imagine that everybody said nothing. You would be in, you would be, you would be not coming out of there with a spring in your step. Right?

[00:43:23] And even if you see like a two thirds to one third breakdown, then you're kind of like, somebody saying nothing, well, nothing can help. Nothing can help. It's just like, it's not going to, it's not going to empower us. And if we go in there saying, I'm struggling with this, and everybody else comes in and says, joins us in the hole and says, yes, I struggle with it as well.

[00:43:53] Right. Then we are what we would say in England, snookered. But isn't that when you have to challenge the belief and say, if it's not the case that nothing will work because you haven't tried everything yet. And so let's find that thing that we haven't tried yet. And try.

[00:44:21] And have those folks tried making a plan to thrive? Do they have a plan to thrive? Because if they have a plan to thrive and some clear cut steps about what to do about it, then they're in a positive spiral. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

[00:44:45] I once heard a coach, an adoptee coach, talking about this stuff and saying that that person felt that clients should have a coach and a therapist at the same time. And I just thought that's going to be a little bit confusing, surely. It is going in two different directions.

[00:45:08] But I think if you can get the validation that you're craving and find a way to make a plan to move forward and do well, you can work that combination out. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think gets in our ways on executing plans? I think being human gets in our way.

[00:45:37] Being human is the big problem. Okay. We'll just take that out of the equation, right? Yeah. Because we do have all these feelings that we want to act on. Maybe that's not the best for us. You know, I think if you were a religious person, you would say the seven deadly sins are what gets in our way. That greed and lust and laziness.

[00:46:03] And that's what gets in our way because we give in to our worst nature. And so I think that to thrive, we do have to change that. We have to turn that around.

[00:46:28] This is why we don't let three-year-olds run the world because they haven't quite thought it through all the way yet. Okay. They will move towards what feels right, right? Chocolate, you know, whatever it is. Not what's best for us. So we have to use our brains and make our plans.

[00:46:57] And so the opposite of what gets in the way is those urges or those wants or needs is to educate ourselves and to make a plan, develop the skills that we need to thrive. And yes, engage an expert if you get stuck.

[00:47:22] Someone who is going to be an expert about your unstuckness. And that might be a different sort of person for everyone. It could be a clergy for someone or it could be a friend for someone else or a therapist or a coach or a medical doctor. Whoever is going to help you move out of that and into closer to the space where you want to be.

[00:47:53] Yeah. What about this notion that we get in our own way? Do you subscribe to that? Absolutely. We're our own worst enemy. Until we train ourselves not to be. But that's really hard work, Simon. That's really hard work.

[00:48:15] And if you don't know what's out there for you, if you don't do the work, then it could seem too huge a task. Isn't it beliefs that we can't do stuff that gets in our way? Rather than ourselves. Beliefs that can change. When you go looking for the evidence for new beliefs.

[00:48:47] Yeah. We can agree to disagree on them. Yeah. We can. I was born into a life of I'm not good enough. And I changed that. When I was young and growing up, I thought I was in the wrong planet. I just thought I didn't belong here.

[00:49:14] And there was evidence everywhere that I wasn't right for this world. Until I went looking to challenge that and found out I am perfectly suited to this world. I just have to be in a different place. The woods instead of the news. For my example.

[00:49:34] I need to be sailing instead of arguing with someone who is determined to make me feel bad. Those choices. And eventually I came to the new belief that I'm planning good enough. Yeah. Do you remember that moment? I don't. I think it was a process.

[00:50:04] Series of moments. Series of little moments rather than one big kind of epiphany thing. Is that kind of what you get in that? Yeah. I will tell you a short story about something that really worked for me. Because I was, I used to be a world class ruminator. I would get so stuck on what was wrong that I could spin for hours. But one day, and I'll sadly admit that I was probably 40.

[00:50:34] Before I got to this point in my life. I wrote down my life story. All my complaints and all the horrible things that had happened to me. And all of my trauma and all my bad feelings about it. I wrote it on a series of legal pads. And I put them in a suitcase. It's kind of an expensive learning lesson for me. And I drove them to a dumpster.

[00:51:05] And threw them away. And decided that at that moment, I was going to stop calling myself a foster child. I was 40 years old. I wasn't a foster child anymore. So I think stuff like that. Things you decide to do to put you in a different space in the world is, that can be powerful stuff.

[00:51:31] I didn't know that you were a foster child. I was. And so I was one of the kids that didn't get adopted. And so I, and I think that is part of why I do what I do today.

[00:51:55] Um, but, um, it was, it was, it was purpose. It was a purposeful journey for me to, to, um, live a life where I, um, am safe. And I belong and I'm productive. Yeah.

[00:52:21] Part of me is kicking myself for not asking, for not knowing that. But then the other part of me saying, how would I have known that? Right. No, I, I, I don't, um, I guess I just told a whole bunch of people, but I don't usually, I don't usually talk about it very much. Yeah. It is ancient history now. It is. Well, it's not, listeners, you know, she's still spring chicken. I'm still what?

[00:52:50] Spring chicken. Ah, yeah. No. No. But I'm definitely not a foster child anymore. And that was what was funny about it. It, or helped me realize that I was still calling myself a foster child at 40 years old. Amazing, Linda.

[00:53:19] An amazing experience this life. Yeah. Definitely learned to lean into it. And feel really good about helping, um, other people lean into it. Is there anything that you'd like to share that I've not asked you about?

[00:53:49] Um, you know, I could talk to you all day long, but. Yeah. Did you have a, did you have a new, did a new identity come in to, to fill the, fill the vacuum? Yeah. Um, I think so.

[00:54:18] I think that, um, instead of my identity being a traumatized person, I think over the years, my identity has, has become more that, um, I have the ability to help traumatize people. And that's something to feel really good about.

[00:54:53] Thank you, listeners. Thank you, Linda. Thank you. We'll speak to you again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye.