Heroes in Business - Andy Hahn, 20 Questions to Everything Makes Sense, Fearless Living

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

Dr Andy Hahn explores 20 Questions to Everything Makes Sense in this episode of Guided Self Healing Fearless Living. 

Everything makes sense. We just don't sometimes know the sense that it makes. If we think about any behavior, if we really look deeply into the motivation and where that person's attention went, we would find something about why they're doing something that might seem crazy to us. And it's the same thing with our own behavior. Sometimes we do things that seem crazy to us and we realize when we look most deeply into our motivation that it's all understandable even if very difficult. Healing is the movement from being unconsciously identified with an aspect of yourself that's traumatized to being with that aspect that's traumatized. It's the movement from being identified with something or someone

to being with them, holding them, and accepting them for all of who they are. Absolutes and relatives. There's a union between the absolute and the relative. Sometimes life calls for one, sometimes life calls for the other. But this brings us to a much bigger understanding that anything in the right context can be godly and anything in the wrong context could be what we might call demonic. So, for example, sometimes it's godly to speak up, and sometimes it's, so to speak, demonic. Sometimes it is godly to say nothing, and sometimes it's demonic.

It all depends on the context and where you are in the evolution of life. Building healthy communication. The very best things we can do for a healthy communication is to be able to step into the shoes of another and really try to understand and be empathic from the inside out. The next thing we need to do with communication is link action and understanding and empathy so that we can be fully in alignment. And then it's to speak from the open, vulnerable heart and the open mind with a true commitment to integrity and engaged action. Overcoming anxiety, depression, and trauma. Anxiety and depression, from my point of view, are the result of trauma. So trauma, simply again, is anything that can't be handled and integrated.

And when you can't handle and integrate something, you can't just say yes to whatever happens, including the changes that will happen if you don't get in the way. Anxiety and depression are symptoms of whatever the trauma is. So, for example, if you're anxious about speaking in front of crowds, perhaps you're in a story where at some point or other you were booed horrifically or, if you believe in other lifetimes killed when you were in front of a crowd and you couldn't handle it so the very thing that is your biggest problem

is in fact an invitation to remembering what couldn't be handled so you can heal and grow. What is depression and how can we heal it? Depression actually is not a feeling. It's a deadening of feeling. It's a non-feeling feeling. So when you're depressed, you actually don't feel, but then you feel terror about the non-feeling or despair about the non-feeling or whatever. So the feelings that accompany it are actually secondary to the depression itself. So we have an example of a young man who was depressed and he was depressed because something happened that was so hard for him to handle that he said to himself without being realizing it, he said, I don't care and I don't care. I won't let myself feel how painful this is, is a child's ultimate version of being depressed.

So anything that we won't let ourselves feel because it's too difficult leads to depression, or at least that's one way of understanding depression. The second way of understanding depression is that we are in a powerless situation and we can't handle the powerlessness. So part of us sort of dies inside. And of course that can happen, if you believe in other lifetimes, in horrific, horrific deaths where there's something that couldn't be handled and we die. So we manifest that dying process as a kind of depression.

So we manifest that dying process as a kind of depression. The best way to build confidence is to face the things that we're most afraid to face with, as my friend and colleague says, with courage and grace and a willingness to engage whatever it is that we're afraid of. Now sometimes the thing we're afraid of that would build confidence is actually taking an action. So perhaps, for example, the first time I want to ride a bike, all things being equal, I might be afraid of it. I might be scared because I've never done it before. And confidence basically says, feel the fear and do it anyway. But a second way to know confidence is to know what's true for you. So for example, if you're not ready to ride that bicycle and somebody is pushing you to do it,

and you say, when I really am true to myself, I'm not ready yet. Confidence is knowing your own truth and then saying, I'm going to speak it. I'm going to listen to my truth and speak it, even if it gives me some difficult consequences. And that really does build confidence if you can keep doing it. What's your love language? Well, there's a whole book about love languages, the five love languages, but I'd like to suggest a different kind of understanding of love languages. And I want to start with that there are three of them. The first love language has to do with preserving. The second love language has to do with connecting. And the third has to do with belonging.

So one way, if we are self-preserving, that we show love and we best receive love is if we do something for someone. I say I love you by making you a beautiful meal or creating a beautiful home or doing something for you. And that says I love you. That's one love language. A second love language is about connecting very deeply and erotically. So it says basically I'm gazing into your eyes and I want to know your soul from the inside out and I want you to know mine. Not from a place of craving but you could say from a place of longing and aspiration. Like it's the sense of like I want to know all of who you are and I want you to know who I am from a place of vulnerability with no attachment, no craving, no aversion, and being truly transparent and present. The third way is about belonging.

So you say, I love you, when you say I will take you into my clan, into my community, and say that you and I are associated and we are associated in the eyes of our community, and we belong together, and we participate together, and we do everything like that in a way that's together, but not clingingly together. So we can go in as two individuals, but we know that there's a we in the context of this community that everybody recognizes and those are the three real deepest love languages I would say. So preserving, connecting, belonging. So what's stopping you from doing what you want to do? I would say there are two things that stop people from doing what they want to do. The first is they don't know what they want to do and they try to figure it out and in my experience you can't figure out what you want to do because

your head doesn't have the answers. So if you really want to know what you want to do instead of looking up I would look down. I put one hand on my gut and just tune in and say what do I want to do and it's like asking a part of us that is beyond figuring it out but just knows and then once I know what I want to do once I know what's true for me I put one hand on the center of my chest and I say given what's true for me what do I really want to do with that and then you just follow your inner knowing what What's stopping you from doing what you want to do part two. So once you know what you want to do, what keeps us

from doing it? And I would say fundamentally there are three things that keep us from doing what we want to do. One is craving. So when we crave something it can stop us from doing what we want to do. If I'm addicted, I can't stop myself. I might say I want to do something, but I'm so wanting, I'm so craving something that I can't stop myself from doing it. So I have to work with what's underneath this craving. The second is a kind of aversion or an anxiety. So I want to do something but I have doubt and I have fear and the doubt and fear becomes so strong that I can't do what I know I want to do. And the third is overwhelm or forgetting. And sometimes you know

it's like I may know what I want to do but I'm so concerned that no one will want to go along with me. That it overwhelms my own desires and I just follow the lead of the others. So there are many things that can keep us from doing what we want to do. And if we know what we want to do, most of them are about trauma. But I've given you three of the key things you have to work with. Craving that keeps you from being able to say, I will do what I really long for. Fear and aversion, which says I'm too afraid to do it, whatever it is, because there's too much danger. or the sense of losing your identity if you did what you wanted to do and then saying I feel overwhelmed I can't do

that so I forget what's truly important to me and I just go along with everything else how do we discover and understand the truth behind what triggers us whenever we're triggered, which just means we're reactive, right? We're judgmental or we're comparative or we're needing to know something compulsively or we're anxious, so we're triggered by something. The way to find what's underneath it is to say that isn't about what's outside of me. It's about something inside of me that's being triggered. So the way to get to the truth behind that is when you're triggered, find what the

sensation is in your body and just choose to bring all your attention to it to such degree that it's like you're becoming it. Like an actor becomes a role, or a reader immerses themselves in a character in a book, and you become it so much, you focus on it, and you say, what if you come to share about whatever's triggering me? And then you actively get receptive and listen, and speak whatever comes to you, and you'll find the most surprising and amazing things. Understanding and acknowledging trauma. Well, what is trauma? Our definition of trauma simply is something that can't be handled. How do you master it? Well, that life is about mastering trauma. In a sense, you could say everything is about mastering what you can't handle.

that life is about mastering trauma. In a sense, you could say everything is about mastering what you can't handle. So how you master it is you choose to become the one who's traumatized while not identifying with it, knowing it's just something that's being experienced. It isn't who you are. And the second you do that, you stop being unconsciously identified with the one who's traumatized and you become consciously identified with the one who's choosing to be that one and then saying I'm here with you I accept you I'm holding you and I'm not you and that is the way out of hell into heaven so to speak learning to be yourself what does it mean to be yourself well it's a funny thing being yourself is in a funny way and not identifying with anything and if you cannot identify with anything you're never in harm's way you're never in harm's way. You're never in a place of anxiety or fear. So you would just say,

I'm going to discover what's true for me by tuning into my deepest intuitive knowing. And then I'm going to do what I truly want to do, taking everything into account. Because when you open to your deepest knowing, you don't only open to your egoic, selfish deepest knowing. You open to your deepest knowing about everything. And that truly is grace. And once you do that, you can say, who will I really be if I'm following life and I surrender to something larger than myself? And interestingly, in surrendering to something larger than yourself, you find yourself. And in finding yourself, you surrender to something larger than yourself. So you could say self and life are in an extraordinary union where each of them supports the evolution of the other.

New cycles of life. Life goes through cycles. There are a couple of ways to understand cycles. One is spirals, like a spiral staircase, and one is evolving infinity loops. So if you imagine this infinity loop that just keeps going higher and higher and smaller and smaller until it gets to a point. So let's look at both of them. The spiral says basically that you go from one point to another point up a staircase. And it's like you move from one side to the other side, just in an evolution, spiraling up. And of course, as with all cycles, you come back to the place for the first time. And most of those cycles really are about, if you think about it, it's about self and

other on some level. And we learn sometimes that life is about self and we have to be selfish and sometimes life is about other and we have to be otherish. And it's this movement from discovering the joys of knowing yourself and the joys of knowing the other and how they support each other that's truly a remarkable thing. The second way to understand spirals and new cycles is to understand what we call evolving infinity loops. And evolving infinity loops are like days and night. So if one side of the loop was night and the other side was day, well, you start any place and you move in a, you move like right up through the middle.

So you're moving, if you're moving into daytime, you go up to daytime and at the top, it's like the sun is at its height and then it starts to wane and it becomes dusk. And then you hit the bottom of daylight and then you go up again through the middle until you become the deadest of night. And then you go back down the side until it's dawn and then you go back up through the middle again. And you could say that everything is like this to everything turn in its season right so you know sometimes it's the time to speak and it's there's a time to listen there's a time to lead and there's a time to follow there's

a time and like life has its own rhythms its own cycles about these things and our job is to be able to follow what life invites us into once we know what we're desiring and this is the way of course that you can what we call manage paradox because there is no truth about you should always speak or you should always listen it's that life invites you into something and then it runs out and then it's time to do the other thing and it runs out and can we follow the invitation of life itself. Then of course there are larger cycles and these cycles are like, you know, things that come over and over and over again. Like there are cycles of seven, right? You know, the octaves or the days of the week, or there's so many of sevens or threes.

And the key is that we go round in circles. And like, if we take a three, for example, we start off with symbiosis and then we move out of symbiosis and we assert something. And so there's a thesis and then we say that can't be all there is and we say wait a second yes that's true but what about this and there's an antithesis and then we go back and say how can we find something that is the union of the two which is the synthesis so that we can keep evolving to a new thesis from there and we keep evolving and evolving and

evolving in this triangle of life held in a circle. So and there's so many cycles. All of life you could say is a cycle beginning, middle, and to a beginning, middle, and over and over and over again in an evolutionary process. Someone asked me, what is obsessive-compulsive disorder really about? And if you think about it, it's really about security. Why would someone be obsessive-compulsive? There's a fear that if you do anything wrong, literally something awful will happen. The sky will fall, so to speak. And you'll find underneath all obsessive-compulsive disorder, in my experience, there's some kind of profound insecurity about what will happen with

life that really has to do with something dangerous. And it can be danger like germs, or it could be dangerous that if something's out of place, something horrific will happen, or it'll be danger that if you don't do everything perfectly, something horrific will happen. So what you need to know is it's always a protection to ensure that something even worse won't happen. But then of course, the protection becomes its own problem and it looks like the obsessive-compulsive disorder is the problem but it's usually a protection from a worse problem that has to do with something that is truly dangerous in the mind and the heart and the eyes of the person who has that disorder. How can we handle burnout? What a wonderful

question. People burn out because they don't have the right relationship between self and other. So why do most therapists burn out? It's because they take on the problems of others. Their boundaries are too permeable. But you can also burn out if your boundaries are too rigid. So the way not to burn out is to have permeable boundaries and to say, I choose what comes in and how much comes in, and I choose what goes out and how much goes out. And that can be about anything. And if I'm at choice about this, I will only take on what I choose to take on, but I will take on what I choose to take on. And I'll be able to both from a place of grace because I will be the master of my own ship and I'll be the one who's choosing what comes in and what goes out. And if you can truly do that, you don't burn out. But sometimes

you forget because of pressure and suddenly you take on too much because you're not paying enough attention and then it could just be that you go into an overwhelm and then you have to say, wait a second, look what I've done. I've taken on too much and I have to back off. Or I've taken on too little and I have to go forward. And the way to do that is to keep your pulse, your hand in the pulse, of your relationship with your external and internal life. Positive affirmations for mental health strength. I think the most powerful affirmation is an affirmation that affirms ourselves, by which I mean it's an affirmation of self-acceptance. So some people, you know, they want positive affirmations. They say, I'm going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise over and over and over again. And they focus on it,

they focus on it. But if you're not healthy, for example, then part of you believes you're lying to yourself, right? If you're not wealthy and you say, I am wealthy, part of you believes you're lying to yourself. So really what we want to do in our most powerful affirmations is deny not the truth, but to deny the judgmentalism. not the truth, but to deny the judgmentalism. So instead of if you feel like you're unworthy of love saying, I'm worthy of love, because you'll just say it's a lie, you could say to yourself, even though right now I believe or I feel I'm unworthy of love, I deeply and profoundly love, accept, and respect myself, including the part of me that feels or believes it's unworthy of love. So really, the most powerful affirmation for mental health is to be able to say yes and to be able to self-accept and ultimately to accept everything.

Which an acceptance here doesn't mean passivity. It's a very active process. Acceptance is a very active process. Because it just says, just because I accept something doesn't say anything about my actions. It just says that I accept myself. And if I can accept myself, then I can act in a way that is truly in alignment with my deepest yearnings, my deepest longings, my deepest knowings. Positive affirmations for mental health too. Sometimes, however, nothing is in the way of our affirming something. And that's called the law of attraction in the way that people usually understand it. So let's suppose nothing is in the way. You can still have your preferences. And if you want to affirm something about your mental health, whatever it is, what I would say is,

let yourself experience it like it's happening right now. So it's not just you're imagining it. It's like you're imagining it. You're feeling it. You're sensing it. It's like, what would happen if you were living that way right now? And you feel it in the body. And if nothing's blocking you,

you'll be able to have a good sensation. And you bring all your attention to that good sensation, and you say, what's it like being this being that I am right now? And you start living it in every context imaginable. And that is the way to affirm yourself. Why do we procrastinate and how do we overcome it? Well, why we procrastinate is idiosyncratic.

Everybody may have a different reason. The Enneagram, of course, would suggest that there are nine reasons why we might procrastinate if we think about it because it says there are nine personality types, right? There are nine motivations for potential procrastination. So if I'm a perfectionist, the reason I might procrastinate is that I'm afraid I'm going to make a mistake and I have an ethic about making no mistakes. So if there's something that I, even if I'm responsible, that I'm really scared to address, I might have a hard time doing it because I might do something wrong. If I'm a giver, why would I procrastinate?

Because I might have to do something about acknowledging my own needs. And that might be very difficult for me because my role in life, my sense of worthiness is to take care of the needs of others. So I might procrastinate a lot about something that I'd be doing for myself. If I'm a performer, I might procrastinate if I think there is something that I would do where I would end up doing badly and the world would know about it. So I would want to avoid it because then I would be shown for being a failure or someone who can do nothing.

So those are three reasons. And if we went around the Enneagram, we would find all of the reasons one might procrastinate, and each of them is different. And of course, the only way you would know is you would say, what am I most afraid of when I open to the possibility of doing whatever it is that I'm doing. And then you'll find your reasons if you're really honest.

And what will happen is, find the sensation that's associated with your fear and bring all your attention to it and say, what are you most afraid of about doing this thing? So you're putting it off. And speak out loud, like letting it use your voice, and worlds will open to you. And the amazing thing is, the second you do that, you no longer unconsciously identify with the fear because you've, in a sense, been with the one who's afraid, but you know it isn't you because you've chosen to be with them

and you hold them with grace and acceptance. Anxiety disorders, the impact and treatment. Anxiety disorders basically just says that something, when I start to do it, you know, my heart races or, you know, it's like I have my, I start to get sweaty. And it's like, I say, why am I doing that? And of course, we'll say the same thing we always say, which is when you feel anxious, find the part of you that feels anxious. How do you do that? Just scan your body and say, what's happening in the body when I feel

anxious? So let's say your heart's pounding fast or you're getting overheated. Bring all your attention to heart pounding fast and overheated and say, heart pounding fast and overheated. And say, heart pounding fast and overheated, whoever you are. What have you come to share about anxiety? And then, of course, you're no longer unconsciously identified with them. But you're holding them. And they'll tell you what they're most anxious about.

And you can say, I'm here with you. I can be with you. And then suddenly, you're in a whole different relationship with your anxiety. Types of people in the world. There are three types of people in the world. Each of them has three variations. So there are heart people, there are head people, and there are belly people. And essentially, heart people say, what do I need to do to be accepted by you? So of course I will create some kind of image and I will put that image out into the world and if you accept it I'll have a warm feeling in my heart and I won't feel the despair of saying that if you really know who I am you would never love me. You'd never accept

me. That's hard people. Then we go across a great divide to head people and they say the exact opposite thing. They say, the world is a dangerous place. What can I do to stay secure in the face of something that could hurt me, right? And so what I have to do is I have to find a way to have, you know, the courage and the faith to face my own fear that the world is a dangerous place, that something can hurt me. And that's my work in life. You know, that something will demand too much or will literally hurt me or will try to trap me or whatever it is so we stay with that and if we can do that then we're in a whole different relationship with our doubt and our fear and there are belly people right and if heart people say I feel therefore I am and head people say I think therefore I am. Belly people say I respond. I do.

I sense and undo and therefore I am. So I'm responsible therefore I am. I'm someone who can respond right and so a responsible person says I get my identity by responding to something outside of me. I can create something perfect. I can create harmony. I can create, you know, a world that's a truly, a world that's protected once I know what I'm responding to. So the work then of course is to say, if I weren't responding to something,

if I really weren't doing that, could I deal with the despair that comes up when I don't know who I am? Three kinds of people. Thanks very much.