Business Innovators Radio - Ali Davidson: How to Overcome the Legacy of Betrayal

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Ali Davidson is international best-selling author, transformational coach, international speaker, and dynamic presenter. She believes that our experiences, good or bad, are our opportunities to expand into our true nature. With her 25 years of skill, personal experience, work with clients, and intuitive wisdom Ali has developed a philosophy that inspires, motivates and heals the heart. Ali says, ‘life is hard, but living is easy’ and believes that her mission is to help people heal from betrayal, step into their greatness, harness their power, and find their purpose.Learn more at: alidavidsonlifeacademy.comRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/ali-davidson-how-to-overcome-the-legacy-of-betrayal

Your On the station of the planet Resistance is future The Revolution Has begun For listening to Revelepreneur Radio Helping you break the rules And build the business you need

For the life you want And now, broadcasting his pirate signal From somewhere beyond the status glow Here's your host Best Selling author, Marketing and Media Strategist Ralph Brogden Hello and welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want.

I'm Ralph Brogden. Lately, we've been talking a lot about passion and about love and how to transform your business with love. I really like the idea of passion. Why is it important? Because passion helps you to overcome the inevitable obstacles, the roadblocks, the challenges, the difficulties. of life. Life is hard enough. And then you're trying to build a business, preferably, the business that you need so that you can live the life that you want, but then you've got all those other roadblocks, obstacles. How you respond to life's challenges determines whether or not you're going

to succeed in your business, as well as whether or not you're going to succeed and be happy in life. So you cannot avoid difficulties, but How you respond to difficulties says a lot about you and a lot about the kind of business that you're going to bless the world with. Today's guest exemplifies this. She believes that our experiences, good or bad, are our opportunities to expand into our true nature. I'm speaking with Ali Davidson. She is an international bestselling author, a transformational coach, an international. speaker and a dynamic presenter. With her 25 years of skilled personal experience, work with clients

and intuitive wisdom, Ali has developed a philosophy that inspires, motivates, and heals the heart. Allie, welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. Thank you, Ralph. I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for taking the opportunity to spend some time with us. you say that life is hard, but living is easy. I love that. I'm not sure I can wrap my brain around it yet. Tell us what that means. Well, we all know, and as you said just a few minutes ago, that life can sometimes be very challenging. That we have a lot of hard things that we experience. And if we look at those as terrible things and we judge them as bad, then it's affects the way we move into our present and our future. Whereas if we can look at those things from a place of non-judgment and say instead, well, it's just part of living. Part of living

is having these experiences that are hard or tough or painful but allow us to reach deep inside of us to find our inner strength and from there create anything. Because if you can handle that, you can handle almost anything. Yeah, if you can handle some of those life difficulties, business difficulties kind of seem, sometimes they pale in comparison to those major life problems and challenges. This sounds like platitudes and theories until we begin to talk about your actual real life experiences you have had to overcome. You are a child of an alcoholic, a survivor of incest.

You have overcome betrayal. You have lost a company and filed bankruptcy and lost your home. What I love about, and you're telling me these things and sharing them, what I love about this is everyone else wants to focus on their successes. And give the impression that they've just been an overnight success and they're making a million dollars an hour. and they've never experienced any difficulty. What I love about you is you exemplify the principle I've learned that you take your mess and that becomes your message. That's exactly what you are doing.

But tell us a little bit about yourself how you got started and some of these challenges I've mentioned that you had to overcome to get to where you are now. Well, wow. And you've only got 20 minutes. Right. I know. I know. You know, well, it started in my childhood, of course, like most all trauma does. And mainly because you've got two adult people who are barely adults having children who haven't themselves worked through their child. That is absolutely correct. You were right. So it's a perpetual thing. And I'm hoping that in reaching, especially young people today, and I do see it, fortunately, that they do work through their stuff before they start having. having children because then they aren't passing those messages subliminally or

unconsciously to their kids. To answer your question, however, I have always, through my own experiences, found a way to use that as a teaching tool. And I think that is a big part of why I do what I do, because it never really felt like it was just happening to me. You always felt like, okay, I'm here and I'm having this experience. What is it? What's the reason for it?

What can I learn from it? What can I give from it? So that each one of these things just becomes something that happened to me that helped me to get to where I am. Even the incest, you know, even the incest, which I didn't actually remember all of it until way into my 30s. But once I worked through all that stuff, I realized, I would not be the person I am today had I not had these experiences.

So from that place, when I'm in pain, I become very super diligent about what's going on inside of me. And I think that's the difference because a lot of people don't do that. We find ways to distract ourselves from our pain or to suppress our pain or to polish over it to make it something shiny, to look at what's positive. You know, we had this whole thing for quite a while about positivity. And it's like, well, yeah, of course, being positive is a better way to live your life. But not if you're suppressing the pain. Not if you're in denial of all the trauma from the past.

Yeah, right, right. And so educating myself has always been a very important part. So, you know, as you said, I've been coaching and counseling for 25 years. I've helped people through their businesses. I've helped people in relationship, save marriages. I have a few babies named after me and help people find their purpose and, you know, that type of thing. But it was in 2014 that I went through the biggest betrayal of my life. And all those other things were betrayals.

You know, I lost my business. I lost my home. These were all betrayals, but the biggest one and the most, the closest one to me was when I found out that my husband of 17 years and my best friend of 25 years were having an affair. And on that day, my world went dark. And so that's what catapulted me because I had to heal from this. I noticed how many women when this had happened to me came forward and said, oh, it happened to me too. And some of them were still talking about it 10 years later. Some of them were still angry, still bitter, still afraid to get into another relationship,

unwilling to love another person again, not trusting themselves. Those were all the impact and symptoms of the betrayal. And I didn't want that to happen to me, you know. So I really focused on what I needed to do. And honestly, during that three to four years, I pulled myself out of counseling even because I knew I couldn't bring myself forward into an objective place where I could help somebody if they were triggering me because I hadn't worked through my stuff. So that's what I did. And I wrote a book that actually starts at almost the beginning and walks through what happened and the developmental stages and the things that I let go of and the things that I explain. experience and the insights that it came through on the other side.

Very, very powerful. I'm happy to say, I'm here. Yeah, yeah. I love the life I have today. Yeah, just being here and still being at it and, you know, working with people. And you are a transformational life and career coach. So you're helping people to make those transitions. what was that like when you realized that you can that you're good at something, that you've

experienced something and now you find meaning and purpose by helping others who have been through a similar experience traumatic ordeal? What was that like for you if you could think back to when it dawned on you that I can help other people? Well, I had a really magical thing happened earlier. in the beginning of this experience for me. And that is how my book was born. And my book really was almost like a diary,

like here's what's happening, here's what I'm feeling. And at this moment, this is what I'm dealing with. And then after the chapter, there's insights that I put in later. And I found that every time I went to write, it could be weeks later, months later, I would literally go back to the beginning of the book

and read everything I'd already written, written, which was almost like self-counseling. So when I, I had no idea. I just knew I had to get this stuff out because a lot of the problems that people have when they've been betrayed is that it's such a devastating thing. I'd like to go into a little bit of that before I finish answering that question. It's okay with you? Yeah, absolutely.

Because people don't understand betrayal. When they think of betrayal, they're thinking of infidelity. but it's not just that. Betrayal is the breaking of a spoken or unspoken agreement, promise, or expectation. And although that sounds really simple, it is one of the most devastating things that could happen in your life because the people who have betrayed you or the situation that has betrayed you could have been avoided,

could have made different decisions. The symptoms of betrayal is exactly like PTSD. It is such a traumatic thing. It includes shock and loss and grief and a morbid preoccupation of trying to understand why and damaged self-esteem and self-doubt and anger. And studies show that 95% of the population will experience some form of betrayal at least once in their lifetime. And these can be between couples, siblings, parents' children. child, employer, employee, business partners, even between you and your body.

All of a sudden you're given this chronic disease, and that's not what you expected. You feel betrayed by your own body, right? And so the initial devastation is a loss of identity. You don't know who you are anymore. A loss of trust. Not only can't you trust the world or trust people, but you also can't trust yourself because you didn't see it coming. Right.

So it really is. I just can't impose upon people how devastating it is. And that in that shock, what most people need is to be heard. But the problem is every time you start talking about it, people start to get scared because what comes out first is anger. And so that anger is what people, people don't want to deal with because they're afraid you're going to get stuck there. So then their response to you is, oh, you need to get over this.

You need to forgive. You're going to be bitter. You're going to, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so what happens, right, move on, get over it, right? What happens is you suppress. So you suppress all that anger. And suppressed anger shows up as depression. Depression is not sadness.

depression is feeling nothing. So when you suppress any feeling, especially those negative ones, you also are suppressing your capacity for all the wonderful feelings. So instead, you're just apathetic. You're lost. You feel helpless, powerless.

So one of the things that I found early on was when I wrote this book, I went through all these feelings and when I published it, and women were literally, I didn't have a lot of men, but mostly women were writing to me via Facebook saying, oh my God, this is exactly what I felt.

It's like you're saying my words. And I didn't realize the impact that would have. I mean, I did it for myself, right? And then I published it because somebody else said, this is really good. You should, this needs to get out there. But I really didn't expect that I would have people, you know, contacting me and saying, you know, what's next?

what do I do? And so, you know, the very first time, it was unexpected. It was people, I didn't know. I mean, I had a lot of people who knew me, some of which had suffered from betrayals for 10 years, 15 years. They had never worked through this stuff. But these people coming to me, my heart just exploded. I just felt like, wow, if I can help these people, it will change the world.

I mean, I take this to the next level, right? If 95% of us are having betrayal experiences and it is similar to post-traumatic stress disorder and it isn't healed, then we have a world full of angry, fearful, unhappy people. That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? And then we end up betraying other people as a way to kind of assuage for what was done to me. Now I end up doing that to someone else, either conscious. or subconsciously. Unconsciously.

Exactly. And what I found, which is probably the hardest thing for people to finally get to, and I'll give it to you now because they'll just be like, what? Is that the biggest betrayal is when we betray ourselves, when we abandon our own needs, when we sacrifice ourselves for other people, when we ignore our own wants and desires or squash them. is self-betrayal and it starts there. So if we are betraying ourselves, it is not surprising that other people and other things and situations will betray us also because it's our biggest thing we need to overcome. Wow, wow, powerful. So you definitely have your finger on the pulse of the problem.

You have diagnosed it, you speak to it, and that obviously resonates with a lot of people who can relate to that. Now the question is, okay, how do we deal with that? What is your, and you can't, you're not going to deal with it in three easy steps, but what can people begin to do or begin to think about or what are some baby steps they can take? If this resonates with them as they're listening to it, what are some actions they can take right now to move towards healing and towards getting this where they need to be? Right. Good question. Okay, so here's what I've found consistently, and that is that when people come to me, they are stuck in either one or both, blame or shame. So they're blaming another person, they're blaming a situation, or they're shaming themselves for not seeing it. And so that's where we start, is that we have to move them for,

blame and shame to a place of neutrality where they can actually start looking at what this experience was there to teach them and help them to know about themselves. My biggest thing in life is for people to know thyself, love thyself, and honor thyself, because I know that when we do that, we will also do it for others. So what I work with them first is getting them unstuck from this shame and blame, which, yes, it's not three easy steps. But the main thing that keeps them there is the lack of safety. So we can actually go to Maslow's hierarchy, chart of hierarchy. If we are in a place where we don't feel safe in the world, we can't do anything else. We are barely surviving. So our world is upside down. We don't trust anything.

We feel helpless, hopeless. We're paralyzed. We can't make decisions. It's a terrible place to be when we don't feel safe. And so that is the first thing that I work with people on is finding a way to be safe. And I have a whole, like, charts that I teach them. But the main thing about feeling safety is getting present. If you are living in the past or you are projecting out into the future, you are not safe. those are imaginations, even our past, over time becomes part of our imagination. No, no history is completely true because our perspectives change all the time. So, yeah, so we have to, we have to be

able to come to a place where we get present. And there's lots of tools for that. breathing is one. I like eating. Eating is a really good way to get present. Not a lot of food, but just, you know, like one jelly bean where you just let yourself taste it. You know?

Smell, taking a walk, moving your body, listening to music, dancing. These are all things like... The easiest thing is just sit in a chair and feel your body on the chair. That's now. From here, from dismay. place, then we can go into the three-step process, which is, first, you have to fail your feelings.

If you don't allow yourself to fail your feelings, you're going to be stuck forever. Second, the best way to, because you feel so terrible about yourself, and you've forgotten who you really are, you've forgotten what you're capable of, you make a list of all the good things that happened in your life, like everything, all the way back to the beginning, the things you could, like, I was really nice to, to the kid next door. because every little thing is just one more thing that you're remembering that was good. And I hate using the word good because, again, I don't like things being good or bad. But you're looking at things that you're proud of, that you feel pleasure,

that you looked at and felt peace and content in it. And then once you do that, and really it's all about writing your story out, I can't emphasize that enough because when you write, not on the Internet, You're not on a computer, but physically write the story. Yes. Even when you're feeling horrible, there's something that happens between, it's the neurological path, right, between your brain and your fingers as you're writing, that eventually the feeling as you're writing about it subsides,

and what you get to is reason and wisdom and insights that you wouldn't have gotten to. So it's a really wonderful way. And then you read that story out loud. And you read it as many times as you can because once you knew you start to find the gems. You start to realize, oh, well, that might not have happened if I had done this for myself first, you know, stuff like that. Or, you know, I looked at it and said, I thought I was happy, but I was lying to myself. I was never, not never, I hadn't been happy in that marriage for a really long time. But there were reasons that I stayed.

And so it was really getting honest with myself. about what those reasons were. And once I did, I was able to let go. Letting go is the first process of forgiveness. And that's a whole other piece that's really important. And what I found, and this is, you know, I kind of teach about forgiveness very differently than others because I don't believe you can just decide to forgive.

I think that's an act of denial, right? You're angry and you're hurt. You're not going to forgive the other person for what they did. you can't. It's just not possible as long as other things have not happened first. Forgiveness is actually an outcome of letting go, of accepting where you are, of being able to systematically and courageously look at what's next? What could you create for yourself that you couldn't have done before this betrayal occurred? What if you learned about yourself?

And so when all those things fall into place, all of a sudden, realize I'm not angry at that person anymore. When I think about that person or that situation, I don't have anxiety in my body anymore. I am at peace. And that is what forgiveness is. So, there you go. Wow. It's a lot.

I know. Yeah, I mean, there's so much value there and so much wisdom packed into those steps. The reason we seek therapy or coaching or counseling is because this is a process. Healing is a process and it is very difficult to heal yourself. Is it possible? Yes. But we're able to get a perspective outside of ourselves by working with other people who have a gift. you have, to be able to assist people, to help them, to counsel them, to direct them, to facilitate

the healing in a way that is going to be more efficacious. It's just going to work better. It's going to work faster. You're achieving the transformation instead of taking years, beating yourself up and going in circles between blame and shame, that you can have someone call you out on that and help you get out of that faster, sooner, rather than later. So tell us a little bit about how you help people, how you work with people when they recognize, hey, I've got this issue, and I need help. I can't fix this by myself. Well, because I'm a counselor first and a coach second, which there's just a slight difference between those two,

I do one on one work. I have tried to do what other people in this field have done, which is to do group work or to do a self-study program. But what I have found is that it's not effective. It feels good for the moment. I actually did one myself way back when at the beginning, which was a little, it felt good, but it didn't really help me heal. It gave me a lot of information, right?

And so that's always been, you know, I am trying to upscale, but it just isn't possible. And I use the metaphor of somebody getting in a car accident, right? Because I was in a recent car accident. And when it happens, it just comes out of nowhere, which is what betrayal does. It comes out of nowhere. And the first emotion, the first feelings that you have is essentially like an emergency room. You are bleeding. You are bleeding.

You need to go to the hospital and you need one-on-one with that doctor, those nurses to be fully attentive to you. That is why I created my retreat, which is two and a half days. And it's really for the person who's just found out who is completely devastated and whose friends and family are supporting them and loving them but don't want to keep seeing them in pain. And so, you know, you get left with, well, I've got to pretend I'm okay all the time. but I'm really not, or I have to really suppress it, and that's not healthy. So for these people, this is a one-on-one intensive where they come, and I really, we do self-care, we do a lot of deep dives.

It's very, very one-on-one for two and a half days. It's all about them. And I have found that that is the most effective to help people to get out of the emergency room and into what I think of as a longer one-on-one thing, which would be physical therapy, right? So now you stop bleeding, everything is working fine, you are going through the healing thing,

you've got all these tools, and then you get to a place where you're like, okay, I need physical therapy. I need to figure out how to work through this stuff on a grander level so that I can create the life I want. And that's my one-on-one. coaching. Wow, that is powerful. Let me just, let me just interject. I have not heard anyone else take that

approach in one-on-one. I've heard of group retreats and, you know, group coaching and so forth, but the idea, and it makes total sense what you're talking about when you're in a, when you have a, you're in a wreck, a life wreck, business wreck, whatever, you go to the emergency room. They stabilize you first, and you might spend half a day in the emergency, but they, they stabilize you, then they send you to intensive care or critical care, and they're still watching you very closely for a couple of days. Then they send you home with instructions, and now you've got to follow up with a therapist or a specialist for that long-term care. So I love that analogy and how you take people. That really sounds to me like it would be more successful

than just giving them a self-study course or, you know, trying to give them information. over the internet. Yeah, absolutely. And the reason that I do it this way is because I've tried the other ways. I did some groups and I was like, oh my gosh, because people come in from so many different places, right? You get some that are bleeding, some that are in intensive care, you have, some that need physical therapy.

So because they're coming in with all these different perspectives and at a different level of pain, it's really difficult as a coach who is in this group to, to, to, you know, give them all the right tools because they're drinking at different times, right? Everybody's believing in different places. They present with different injuries. You can't treat them all as if they all have the same concussion when this one over here has a broken leg. I mean, that makes total sense.

I really love that. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I also speak about this, and I call it the legacy of betrayal. And that is that betrayal's been around since the beginning of time. You know, since the beginning of recorded history, we have, especially women, you know, have been betrayed by the patriarchy. Now, when I say that, men kind of just like, oh, here she goes. No, I agree with you. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah. The patriarchy isn't men. The patriarchy is a system that wants to be. to control. And both men and women are affected by that. So our lack of

ability to self-care in a healthy way to recognize our own wants and desires which have been pounded out of us since the beginning of time, this feeling that we were always a little bit unsafe. That is what

allows betrayal to happen. So, right? So, yeah, anyway, I'm kind of going off in a little tangent here because that's my, you know, my bellywack, whatever you call it. But you can tell I'm really passionate about this. That's your thing. That's your passion, turning your mess into a message and a message of transformation and healing for people all over. What are you working on right now that's got you really excited that you'd like to share with her listeners? Well, it's this retreat idea.

I've been doing the one-on-ones, and again, that's great for those who are past the initial stuff and have gone through the grieving and the loss, but they're still left with this lack of ability to love and honor and trust themselves. So the one-on-one that is short, like a three-month program, that's done. That's easy. But then I realized, you know, there were people coming. in who were still at a place where they needed to tell their story and where they needed to really have a place to be heard and that didn't work in three months so that's why I created

the retreat that's powerful I haven't yeah you know I just um it's actually I'm surprised it took me this long honestly because because when I when everything first went out when it went like I call it, when it went dark in my world, there was a friend of mine who did these retreats, and they weren't about betrayal, but they were just these beautiful, like, self-care pampering retreats, and I did go to one, and it took me out of the pain for long enough that I could start to connect with myself and feel safe again,

and that was the main thing. And then from there, of course, I have a lot of tools in my tool, because I've been doing this for years and years and years. But that's the new one. That's the thing that I feel like, oh, God, if I could just, can't tell you how many times I thought that. I could just have them here with me. And we just really, really care for them, you know. That's what people need.

They need to be loved. They need to be cared for. Yeah. The website is Allie Davidson Life Academy.com. If you're listening and this resonates with you, if you want to find out more about Allie, she's got books, she's got programs. She's got the one-on-one coaching. And this retreat just sounds like, wow, for some people, not for everybody. Some people, you know, maybe they're content just to do something over the Internet.

But more and more, I think that personal touch and that one-on-one personal attention, especially in something like this, is so critical and very effective. It may be the only thing that works for a lot of people. So check that out if you want to learn more. Allie Davidson Life Academy.com and we'll have that link on the rebelpreneur website as well. Allie, everything you've said has been full of wisdom and experience, but I'm wondering if you have any final thoughts or words of wisdom that you'd like to leave us with as a final word. Well, there's four myths that I would love people to know.

And this is, one myth is that time heals all wounds. That's not true. We learn to cope with it over time. We distract ourselves. We deny ourselves. but the unhealed heart will eventually draw more pain. And so it's not time. It's learning to love and trust and forgive ourselves.

Some people say this event, don't let this event define you, but the truth of it is it does define you, and not because of your reaction or others, but because it's an opportunity for you to know who you are. And understanding why, oh, I can't tell you how many people are like, I want to know why, why did this happen? And you will never know the answer to that. It's not the right question. It's not about why.

It's more important to know how and what, and how did you ultimately betray yourself? And then finally, the one that I said earlier, which is forgiveness is a choice. It's not a choice. You can't force yourself to forgive. It will be an outcome of the other steps that you take. I love this quote from David Rico. He says, our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful. part of us.

And I believe that's true. Powerful words of wisdom there. Absolutely. Allie Davidson is an international best-selling author, a transformational coach, an international speaker, and a dynamic presenter who believes our experiences, good or bad are our opportunities to expand into our true nature. You can look her up and learn more at Alice. Alley Davidson Life Academy.com.

Allie, thank you so much for your time and for joining us together on Rebelpreneur Radio today. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Ralph. It would be an absolute pleasure, sorry. And I just love what you do. I love that you help people bring out their passion. That's wonderful. Thank you.

It's great. Thank you. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.