Heroes in Business - Andy Hahn, Fearless Living Healing Empowering Yourself

Episode Date: July 31, 2022

To live fearlessly, you have to learn to empower yourself. This takes healing trauma, having a willingness to say This is Who I Am. Find the inner knowing that aligns with Self and your passion in this episode of Guided Self Healing Fearless Living with Dr Andy Hahn.

Hi, this is Andy Hahn, and I want to welcome you to episode 56 of Guided Self-Healing, Fearless Living. And I want to talk today about the fearless living part of the title of this podcast. And it's come to be very important to me because about a month ago, a person I know asked me to write a testimonial endorsement for a book that she was writing on empowering yourself. The book hasn't come out yet, so I won't give you the title, but at some point when it does, I will tell you to read it because I have a lot of respect for this person. And I also had a chance to read the introduction, which I thought was extremely well written. And I think self-empowerment is a really important concept. And I really liked how she wrote the introduction, but I had to point something out to her, because she gave an example in her introduction that I want to use, because it touched something so much in me, so it was really my response to her introduction, is what I want to talk to you about,

because what she did was, she gave an example in there around self-empowerment and it was a very interesting example um this person i know is black and she was in a master's program um i will have to give some information about her but i think she'll be well well enough disguised until a book comes out when she talks about all this anyway. But that's for her to tell, you know, her story in that sense. But I want to tell you again what touched me, which is she gave an example of self-empowerment. And when I say she was Black, the reason that's important is she was in a program that was in a university in their master's of education program, and everybody else as far as I can tell in the program was mostly women and mostly upper middle class white women, and she was a Black woman from an

inner city and clearly much less educational resources and much less resources and much poorer. So she really was in a world that wasn't her world. And her dream was to get a doctorate in education, get an Ed.D. and she was in a, she was getting her master's in M.Ed. and she was applying a she was getting her master's in med and she was applying to the program and uh the semester before she was applying she went and took a doctoral level program uh with the person who heads the doctoral level program and uh she apparently was the best student in the program and a lot of the other students were having difficulty so she thought she was a shoo-in because the professor had said such wonderful things about her and so she applies to this doctoral program and she gets rejected

and she is stunned so she goes up to she being the person that she is and being quite assertive, went up to, or seemingly so, in many ways from the surface, she's very assertive. She went to this professor who was also the head of the program and said, you know, I would really like to know what's going on because I would like to improve my application for the future. And apparently the professor said, as she looked her up and down, people like you don't belong in this program. And this person I know said, you mean because I'm and she said yes and then it becomes very subtle and um basically what she said the woman who ran the program said you are wonderful at what you do which is applied work in this field and we who are researchers go into the field strictly to get information and then we come back and we write up our research whereas I see you as being a much more applied person. This woman, this Black woman, heard this and took it to mean that she was not intellectually capable of doing the program, which was devastating for her

because she had felt like she was in a world where she doubted her intellectual capacity. And she was really, we discovered, as we talked about a little bit, running it through a trauma of feeling a lack of belonging and how that lack of belonging affected her her capacity to really believe that she was intellectually capable even though on a rational level she not only was she capable but probably would be one of the best students in the program so the first thing obviously that keeps us from being able to empower ourselves is trauma but i said to her i said look

and and the reason she said it was empowering for her was she said it was devastating for four years until she started to regain her sense of intellectual capacity and said i'm not going to let this person define my intellectual capacity, at which point she went on and did what she wanted to do, because that was her dream, was to do research to be able to move the field along. But what I said to her was, you know, it's really interesting as you write this, there's nothing in there, this woman says about your intellectual capacity. In a funny way, she's doing something even more insidious, which is she's saying, even if you have the intellectual capacity, which I believe the

head of the program believed she did, nonetheless, she's saying, because you're Black, you're supposed to do applied community work and education, sort of like, you know, you're supposed to be like a Martin Luther King and leave the research to us. And I said, you know, this is even more insidious because she's saying, I know what life you're supposed to live and I'm going to make it so you don't really have a choice as much as I can do to, uh, to make what I think you ought to be doing happen. And that was somewhat of a revelation, I think, to the woman who was writing the book, because she had obviously not sort of read it that way. But I said, you know know it's really about empowering yourself here to say you don't get to define what you believe is my life purpose my destiny I'm the one who gets to define it not you and really at that point I think she could have said like

it's not for you to say I'm not capable to do what I want to do, or it's not even appropriate, was really what she was saying. I get to decide who I am and what's in alignment with my truth. And, you know, when I was telling her this, she said to me, and this is what really got me for reasons that I'll tell you in a second. She said, you know, I think I originally wrote it the way you're talking about, but I had, she had had some run-ins with her publisher and her editor had said, this is a much better way for it to read. And she said, you know, I hadn't even thought about it, but I just sort of said, if you think it reads better, fine, even though i hadn't even thought about it but i just sort of said if you think it reads better fine even though it wasn't her truth and i said you know

i said to this woman you know it's amazing you know how insidious this is because even your writing which was your writing and what was your truth, you know, you said, I'm just not going to fight one more fight. I'm just like, going to let this one go. And ironically, of course, it was so much about saying, I have the power to define what's true for me. And it's my book and it's my writing. And that also was somewhat of a revelation to see how automatically we give away our power and of course this was meaningful to me because as I looked back on my life which I do a lot of looking at my life and I've known about my not really being in my power

when I am and when I'm not and um clearly for me there is an area in my life where I have not felt this kind of self-empowerment where I've waited for others to empower me and reacted to them and that's around action it isn't around my mind because i've been willing to take on anybody mentally you know so i feel very empowered there which probably is you know a curse as well as a blessing but like you know if someone says something i'll say really i mean like you know you may know more about this than i do but it doesn't make sense to me so like maybe you can explain it to me or you know when i was a little kid you know this incident my mother reminded me of when i was like 11 years old and i heard these

adults in this uh you know small dinner party and I walked in because they were all laughing, and I was like, I found it. But, and they, I find out why they're laughing, which is, of course, I've told this story, you've heard it, but if you haven't, because one of the guests of honor at this dinner party was a talk show host, an overnight talk show host in Boston. And they were laughing because he had had somebody on, this was, you know, the late 60s, who believed in ESP. And they were all laughing about how silly that was. And I said to them, you know, well, if you could see and everybody else was blind, how would you prove to them that you could see? And no one said anything. So I, i they didn't know so i walked out of the room so you know in terms of

my thinking out of the box that's typically not where my problems have arisen which is why i can sort of like say i know what's true for me in terms of doing healing work and empowerment work and everything and uh you know don't have your mind be limited by anything but open to all possibilities but my world of possibilities was the world of mind and the heart not the world of the belly or action you know so i've wanted to understand the questions all the answers to the questions in the universe and i wanted to like do this because a i have a passion for understanding and b i have a passion for compassion and being able to understand people so that maybe i could be of some service in the world but around action forget it and so the most powerful moments in my life that have stood out to

me have not been about my intellectual standing up to people but when i really said i know this really what's true for me and i know what i really desire given that and i'm gonna go with that and i can count them on two hands at times i've done that um the most important being when I decided I want to buy a house and everyone told me how crazy that was for so many different reasons, all of which were rationally true. And I said, I know that what you're saying is true. And I may be happier if I got this, I had an opportunity to go into an amazing apartment situation, which is how I'd always lived my life. And I just said just said this really it's time for me to own my own house i don't even know why and i think it's like growing up or something

but the fact that that stands out for me so much is really telling because you know i look back at my life and i see how much i didn't really follow what was my truth. I mean, like, you know, from when I was, you know, eight, nine years old, I wrote this poem that really was very powerful and I loved playing music and, you know, but I love creating my own music. And so, but I didn't find somebody who would like support that so much

and I didn't have a teacher who did it and I just gave it up as opposed to saying I know what I need here I need someone who can meet me and then take me someplace you know in the world of aesthetics because I'm very much oriented towards the creation of beauty but you know that became you know my intellect because I wasn't willing to take action on that and um you know I knew that I was wrong in high school but uh I didn't have the courage to say you know what I'm going to go through something else because I got too afraid um so I didn't take an action even when I knew it was the right thing to do. And I see so many parts of my life where I've been afraid to make myself uncomfortable to really go for it. And, you know, that's when it's my choice. And I'm in something and I'm comfortable and I can accommodate it. I can say I can find something about the thing that I like,

but it's really not aligning with who I say, this is who I am and this is what I want. And even if it's scary to take an action-oriented leap, I have to do it as opposed to a mental or a heart leap. And that's gotten me into a lot of trouble and even you know when i've known something and i mean the classic example i'm thinking of right now is my mother used to give put coffee in my milk i did not like coffee but she kept saying to me you know i'd say i don't like it and she kept saying but you have to learn how to drink a warm drink when you're an

adult so you should learn to like it um so at least she was responding to me but she kept saying but you have to learn how to drink a warm drink when you're an adult so you should learn to like it um so at least she was responding to me but she was saying you know i'm gonna put the coffee until i'm sure you're a temper tantrum at some point she stopped but i'll tell you i never wanted to try coffee again after that until like you know i was in my 27 was the next time i tried coffee and i found out I really kind of liked it but by then I was like saying I don't want to drink coffee so much but it was like stunning because I had been a rebel my whole life you know rebel without a cause so to speak because I could say well you can't force something on me even if you're powerful but I won't do I won't take an action anymore. I'll just take a non-action. And so what I want to say to us here is I think fearless living and to become whole

means to be guided by a larger sense of self, an inner master who is the visceral knower. You just know something is true for yourself and given what you know is true what then do you really desire to do in the world when you line up with what you know is true and i'm still working on this one let me tell you um because you know at the end of the day my personality still wants to be special in other people's eyes and gain acceptance for my quote-unquote authentic self and my who i am and my identity which i have to find but it's you know is it the real identity of like saying i'm going to sit with every

difficult thing about myself and then say i'm going to act from that place no matter what the consequences are going to be as long as i'm not being, you know, someone who's intentionally being hurt by it. Because of course, when you act on what you want, there are a lot of people who can get upset. So fearless living takes two aspects. two aspects. The first is when you feel anxiety, you have to find out. And sometimes you don't even know. It's just like you go around being a zombie, at which point it's kind of hard to say, can I step back enough to just say I'm going on automatic here? Because if you realize you're going on automatic, that's a trauma structure too. It's like, I don't do this. So you might feel a numbing. But if you could sit with the numbing and say, I'm here with you, numbing, you might find out what's underneath me.

I don't care what you might feel, a lot of pain and outrage and fear and despair and goodness knows what else. And if you could really be with it, you could say, oh, I'm here with you. I bear witness to the sensation that is the numbing and what's the pain underneath i'll be here with you you know so that's the first aspect and then there's the second aspect which of course is about the personality which is you want to take care of all that stuff at the end of the day in my enneagram world i am a what's called a sexual romantic, which means that, you know, I so want to be authentically special, which is not being authentic at all. It's being like an idealization of authenticity. So can I be of all of whom? And if I know it's true for me, and can I not be so

concerned about connection and acceptance that I'm denying myself and of course that's been a lifelong struggle you know it's like climbing as my wonderful co-writer says you know it's like climbing a mountain you never know where the top is and you keep going up and it gets harder and harder because you still don't know where the summit is and you've been going for so long and as you're tired and it's harder to breathe because there's no oxygen and like it's getting more vertical and you still have to keep going and saying can i really not get caught up in you know the compulsion to be special the compulsion to be accepted the compulsion to connect

the compulsion to even have any identity whatsoever, so that I can live in alignment with my true inner master, my true self, that knows what's true for me, not what the truth is, but what's true for me and says I can live it. So this is my aspiration and one, you know, and two things have to happen for that aspiration to come true. I have to be able to say yes to anything that comes my way, because otherwise I'll get stuck. And once I can say yes to everything, which is the universal, I think, the reason for living is to be able to say, I can take anything that comes my way. I don't have to like it, but at least I don't have to get reactive

and judgmental or profoundly anxious. Then can I have whatever it takes, the heart and engagement in life to say, I'm going to find out what my particular role is here and I'm going to go for it. And I'm not going to let anything stop me. Most especially, of course, myself. So, my dear friends, thank you so much for listening to this podcast.

And until we meet again, you can always reach me at Life-Centered Therapy, which is our website. And you can find everything about the work we do, both in terms of healing trauma and in terms of manifesting what you truly desire which is our work and understanding ourselves so we can do it and if you want to reach out to me you can always email me at a h-a-h-n a-i at life centered some people forget the e-d at the end centered therapy.com and i will so look forward to hearing from you and i will respond so thank you and until i see you again goodbye