The Wellness Scoop - Gabby Bernstein on Self-Worth, Rock Bottom and Judgement

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Leading wellness speaker Gabby Bernstein talks about shifting the lens on the life we lead to create more ease, joy, calm and centring. From the importance of internalising our self-worth to why rock bottom can be a good thing, choosing to be open to new perspectives, stepping away from judgement, affirmations, self-sabotage, stress management and why doing the work to make the change isn’t always easy See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills. So one of the things that I like most about researching, recording and running the interviews that we do on our podcast is the range of guests that I get to speak to. I mean it is honestly such a huge privilege and an honor to get to talk to such experts and you know I used to be so terrified about approaching people for podcasts and everyone's been so kind and so generous with their time and slowly getting less nervous about it. But one of the things that I particularly enjoy is I feel like we get to speak to such a range of guests. And, you know, some guests that we've had this

season are Harvard professors and they've got a very scientific analytical approach and research and data kind of completely drives everything they do. And then on the other hand, you've got kind of more spiritual guests who take on a kind of almost softer approach to the wellness space, one that focuses more on personal experience, and it's almost more anecdotal in that sense, and really taps into the idea of people inspiring people and personal stories being obviously at the heart of that. And I have to say, I love both. And I get so much from both sides of the conversation and definitely feel my own personal development in both my physical and mental health has come from kind of marrying the two and learning from both sets of the kind

of spectrum. And I think knowing there's so much science behind wellness gives it such reason to believe and a reason to think about why you need to sleep and eat well and exercise and so on and so forth. But then at the same time, I think, you know, as we all know, making the changes can be really hard. And so knowing that other people have been able to make those changes themselves and that they've been able to do the work, you know, hearing from people who've hit rock bottom and changed their lives, you know, that's definitely what've hit rock bottom and changed their lives, you know, that's definitely what inspired me to make all the changes I did in my life back in 2012, when I hit my lowest point. And there was something in just knowing other people could do

it and had done it that inspired me to feel the same way. And actually, at that point, one of the very first authors that I came across in this space, who came at it from a more spiritual space was Gabby Bernstein. And I know she's someone that lots of our listeners and lots of our readers authors that I came across in this space, who came at it from a more spiritual space, was Gabby Bernstein. And I know she's someone that lots of our listeners and lots of our readers really resonate with as well. She is a New York Times number one bestselling author, so many times over and a complete veteran in this space. And I know, as I said, she's had a big influence on lots of you as well. And she's shed a lot of light and positivity and hope on the world and so today we're going to be chatting with Gabby which is really exciting and it's quite a nice broad conversation but generally looking about how we can shift the lens through which we look

at our lives to find more ease, joy, calm and centering from the importance of internalising our self-worth to why rock bottom can actually be a good thing, which is quite an interesting way of looking at it. Choosing to be open to new perspectives, stepping away from judgment, the use of affirmations, self-sabotage, stress management, and why doing the work to make the change we want in our lives isn't always easy, especially to begin with. And Gabby actually has a resolute faith in a higher power in the universe and the idea that the world is so much bigger than us as individuals, which I find really interesting. And Gabby actually has a resolute faith in a higher power in the universe and the idea that the world is so much bigger than us as individuals, which I find really interesting. And I hope you guys will as well. And I personally also really like her belief in finding inspiration and creativity and going a bit slower, which I think is something, especially in the kind of strangeness

of 2020 and COVID is maybe good inspiration as well. And she does have a phenomenal commitment to her own well-being and kind of a discipline in that which has changed her life. And I definitely take, again, a lot of inspiration from. So I'm hoping you'll really enjoy listening to her today. And a huge welcome to Gabby. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I have to tell you before we get started that I asked our readers yesterday for questions for you. So I've got some really nice questions, but more than anything, you just have so many fans. You've made such a difference to people's lives. And people just said, just let her know that she's amazing. Oh, I love her. She's a Zen goddess. She's incredible. I'm so excited. She's part of the podcast. What an amazing guest. I love Gabby. So I had to pass on all that love and welcome from everyone, not just for myself,

for joining us today. Thank you. It's very nice to hear. Thank you. So you are actually one of the very, very first people that I actually ever saw really within this space. And you've been doing such amazing things for so long and you feel like such a kind of veteran of the the wellness space and and have achieved so so much but I was listening to an interview with you while I was researching this I feel like a stalker my guests basically before before I talked to them right and I was really interested to hear the way that you talked about the fact that although you'd had quite a spiritual sense in your upbringing and you'd learned to meditate and things as, you know, quite a young child with your mother, you'd felt in your twenties that your self-worth actually

really had to then come from something external and you were in quite a difficult place. So it hasn't always been a kind of easy spiritual path for you. No, not at all. And even as a spiritual teacher on the path, it hasn't always been easy either. I think actually sometimes when you make the commitment to be on a spiritual path, you're also making the commitment to the willingness to go to deeper places, which sometimes can be uncomfortable. I definitely experienced that at a young age, which is really what the catalyst was for my career to get sober. It was 15 years ago, I got clean and sober. I was 25 years old at the time. To exactly what you said, I was really living for the outside world. So my belief system that something outside of me was going to make me

feel safe and feel good about myself and feel worthy led to drug addiction, which also was the great catalyst for my own personal growth and spiritual development. That desire to get clean and sober was also a desire to live a spiritual life. And then I've been on this journey for 15 years as a sober woman and as a spiritual teacher. But like I said, there's this level of commitment you make when you sign up for this. And that commitment isn't always fun. Sometimes it's really uncomfortable. But I've definitely made a commitment to myself and to my readers that I'm going to show up in a way that is authentic and vulnerable and brave, very brave. I'm sure that identifying that moment was incredibly brave as well of saying,

you know, enough's enough. I need to look inside myself to find my own wellbeing, not try and find it in everyone else. I mean, that's a, it's a really big thing to acknowledge. How, how did you find that? I found those moments at different times in my life. And I think you can sometimes think of them as a bottom, but I truly prefer to see them as a breakthrough because those moments when we throw our hands in the air and say, that has to be better than this. That's a moment of prayer. That's a moment of asking for a miracle, ultimately.

So my hands in the air moments or, air moments or the moments when I hit my knees and prayed and said, I need something different have been the most difficult moments, but also the most transformational. So I think that's an important point to make right now for anyone that's feeling like they're hitting a bottom. It's a tough time that we're living in, but maybe there's a chance to see that obstacle as an opportunity and instead choose to see it as a breakthrough instead of a bottom. That has been my choice. Every single time I've hit a new bottom in my life, whether it be something going on in my personal life or something going on with my mental health or whatever it may have

been throughout my journey, I've been in the midst of the chaos, swimming and suffering, but at the same time knowing in my heart that it's in the pursuit of something great. That's a very different way to live. And I hope that people can even consider that in this moment right now. Yeah, and I think as you said, now more than ever,

it feels like such an important time to acknowledge that. And I completely agree, by the way, and that's absolutely been my experience. But I know when I hit my lowest point with my mental health, and when I decided to change my whole life around, those first few days are really hard, because you're trying to alter your whole mindset and start to look at the world in such a different way. And you know, in your heart that that's the right direction to go on, but obviously shifting a mindset is, is challenging. You know, it doesn't happen in a second. And do you have any tips or words of wisdom or things

that really supported you and helped you, especially as you started to alter the way that you were looking at the world? And as you said, looking kind of internally rather than externally, and maybe altering your definitions of success, of happiness, of what you wanted in your life? I believe that as I continued to grow and change over the years and continued to hit different bottoms that became breakthroughs, one of the driving forces for me has been the belief system that I have the capacity to choose the way I perceive my life, making that my devotional path of saying, I can choose how I perceive this now, even in the darkest moments, even in the midst of discomfort, I can choose to see

peace instead. I can choose to be open to a miracle. I can choose to have a different perspective. That's not always available to us. And there's moments of that that come through, moments of that shift that come through. If you can just find that moment and then ride that moment, it can be a totally different way of perceiving your life. I also believe that when we're going through difficult times, what we need most is possibility. We need to really stay open and hopeful. It's when we lose hope that we succumb to the madness and the darkness and the discomfort. But when we stay committed to hope, that's when we continue to keep the door open to the possibilities of what can be. And you're a big believer in trusting the universe, am I right in saying, and trusting that there's a higher power and the world everything I teach is the belief system that we have a

presence beyond our physical sight that is supporting us. The ever-present energy of love that is within us and around us, it can show up in different forms to support us. When we attune our own energy with that loving energy, we start to feel a tremendous amount of guidance and synchronicity and support. We start to tune into intuitive ideas that we may not otherwise have been able to even consciously commit to. We start to notice that the things that we need begin to come to us naturally. It's the way of living with a spiritual sight rather than a fear-based sight.

When we begin to change the lens through which we live, that's when our life begins to change around us. For me, I have been in the devotion of that commitment so much that it has been my life's work. Without it, I wouldn't, I might not even be here, honestly. I don't know if I would have survived without that belief system. I've been through some tough stuff, right? As many of us listening have. We're all going through really tough stuff right now. For me, I've had to learn to rely on that strength of what I refer to as a higher power, the universe or God. And learning to rely on that strength is the greatest gift I've given myself because I stopped relying on my own strength and I started to allow myself to be

guided. I mean, I love it and it makes so much sense. And I wondered what you'd say to people who've maybe kind of newer to taking care of their kind of mental and spiritual wellbeing and their emotional wellbeing and who are thinking, oh, is this a bit too out there for me possibly as they start to come into this space? And how do you help reconcile that for people who perhaps haven't been used to this sort of way of thinking? Well, I would say to anyone that's listening right now that there's no accident that you're listening to this specific podcast. Not that they're listening to you, but that they're listening to this interview, right? Because you wouldn't be guided to this interview if there wasn't a part of you that was open and willing to see through

the lens of a spiritual connection. You just wouldn't be listening anymore. They would have stopped listening by now. So to trust that you were guided here, to trust that this conversation is in your earbuds right now to crack you open to the potential of a different way of perceiving the world. To really believe that. And trust me when I say that. So even if you're thinking, oh, this is too woo-woo, well, you're still actually listening, right?

So there's something within you that said, I'll listen to that one. And there's something within you that said, I'll keep listening. Trust that. Yeah, keep that open mind. And so I, as I said, I'm a fan. I love your work. And one of the books, I mean, you've written a lot of beautiful books, but one of the books that really spoke to me

and that I particularly enjoyed was The Judgment Detox. And I think it was just really interesting work. And I wondered if you could tell our listeners a little bit more about it and about how much, you know, we are so used to bringing so much judgment to ourselves and as a result to others in the world that we live in today. And I always feel like that creates such a negativity that does nothing for any of us, but yet feels so innate. And as a result, I feel like your work there feels so, so important, most particularly for women. And we do have a very female heavy audience here, and especially for younger women who perhaps are maybe struggling

a little bit with self-esteem and self-worth and there it feels particularly apt. Totally. So I wrote this book called Judgment Detox, which was my sixth book that I wrote that I think is probably one of the most important books I've ever written, but it's the one that people barely finish. So it's actually so cool that that's the one that you chose because that one that you chose, because that means that you've definitely made a commitment to your well-being. So I'm proud of you for saying that that was your book. It's easy when everyone's like, I want the universe to have my back, or I'm a super attractor, right? But to go through judgment detox, to make the commitment, to stick to it, is no small thing. It's no small thing. Judgment is a epidemic. It's the cause of

the world's problems, frankly. The separation, the way that we see ourselves as separate, the way that we see ourselves as better than or less than has created what we know now as systemic racism, that we know as war, that we can see. It's so heightened in my country in the most unbelievable ways in the United States right now, just witnessing the judgment that's caused just inhumane behavior. It's destroying us, frankly. It's really taking us down. And the only way that we can really become spiritual activists and create change in the world is to start by changing ourselves. So I believe that the six steps of the Judgment Detox are a really empowering path to go on

if you want to know that your energy is making a better impact on the world and you wake up to your capacity to be more compassionate, to be more opened in relationships, to be a better version of yourself. You release a lot of resistance and negativity and drama and trauma. It's the path that is really healing, but it's some work. It takes some work. And the first step is to witness your judgment without judgment, because I think very many people will start noticing all the ways they judge, and then they'll start judging themselves for it. So we have to witness our judgment without judgment. And the second step is to honor the wound, because behind every judgment is a wound. There is a belief system, a shadow side of ourselves that we just don't want to see.

And the third step is to put love on the altar. And this is about prayer. And when we say a prayer, we allow our consciousness to receive inner guidance, intuitive guidance. And so that prayer can begin to open the door to freedom from judgment. And then the fourth step is to see for the first time, which is really about proactively seeing others in light, in love. And that allows the stream of well-being to flow through us so that we can start to have more compassion and connection. And then the fifth step is to meditate for oneness, which is all about really letting relationships be healed through your meditation pillow and releasing judgment through your meditation. And then the final step is forgiveness. And forgiveness is a constant releasing of resistance. It's a constant

releasing of judgment. And through forgiveness, we undo our judgmental thoughts. So that's just a sort of snapshot of what the six steps are, but it's a profound book. And I'm so glad that that's the one you chose because it really says a lot about you. You're very cool. I'll take it. But I just, I feel so much so that we all want to kind of create a positive relationship with the world around us, but it starts so much with our relationship with ourselves. And so many of us struggle with that. And I think the unbelievable judgment we bring on ourselves and the expectations that we hold for ourselves is so often such a big part of that and I think self-compassion is something that I feel so many of us struggle with in the world today and I know I love all the quotes and affirmations that you shared and there

was one the other day which was just say nice things to yourself you're the only one listening and I think it just couldn't be more true soby, one of the other things you talk about in relation to judgment, which I found very interesting because I'm fascinated by all the different ways that our mental health is impacted. And I guess, again, especially as women, and I think one of that is both judgment and lack of compassion for ourselves, but as a result then for others. And so much of that feels like gossip and that that's become such a humongous part of the world today, both between all of us, but also in terms of the media. And it feels like it creates

such negativity and comparison and just sucks a lot of joy out of life and makes finding that path of ease and happiness every day a little bit more challenging for people. And I was very interested in the way that you talked about gossip as a form of judgment, but also as an addictive pattern. And that isn't something I'd ever really considered before. And I wondered if you could talk to us a little bit more about that. Definitely. Gossip is a majorly, majorly addictive pattern. We gossip and judge and project onto others what we don't want to feel about ourselves. So the same way we would pick up a drink or overwork or have sex or eat over a feeling so that we don't have to feel the feeling, to avoid the feeling, the same goes for gossip.

So when we don't want to feel something uncomfortable, we'll talk about others, we'll project onto others, we'll shame and blame because it's too unbearable to face the impermissible feelings we have towards ourselves. So just like any addiction, it's another form of anesthetizing those deep-rooted, wounded feelings. That's why the second step in judgment detox is to honor the wounds because we can't release judgment without recognizing and reflecting on the wounds that put the judgment there in the first place. And what are the best ways to do that? Because I think you're so right, like the only way to move forward is to recognize what's holding us back. But that's, as you said at the beginning, it's really difficult work. And I wondered if there are any kind of tools or practices in particular that you use

for that. In judgment detox, actually, I use a practice called emotional freedom technique, which is otherwise known as tapping. EFT has a way of really reprogramming the brain and releasing the fight or flight response. And that fight or flight response is, it's an alarm system. It's a response to feeling attacked or judged or threatened. So even if we just feel not good enough for the moment, it can still set off the same alarm system in the amygdala that says, you got to fight, right? Fight back. You're being threatened. So when we're in that moment of feeling that kind of feeling, we want to judge to not feel it. But instead, if you practice something like emotional freedom

technique, which is in the book, there's this great relief that you can experience because what you do when you tap on different energy meridians while talking about the emotional disturbance, you actually can heal the energetic disturbance that lives beneath the pattern. And it's so fascinating what happens when we start to release the brain of the stories that we've held onto and the stories that have been hidden and the stories that we've dissociated from. So while we think we may not be reliving that experience, we're reliving it every freaking day because our experiences are constantly triggered. So through therapeutic techniques like emotional freedom technique or one that is absolutely fascinating and blowing my mind and I'm writing about it so much right now, it's a therapeutic practice called IFS therapy, which is known as internal family systems. And

I could do an entire podcast interview just on that because I'm so fascinated by it. But that's really about working with the different parts of yourself. And so as you start to heal the parts of yourself that are the wounded parts through a therapy like IFS, you'll release your judgment because that judgment no longer is necessary if you don't have to protect those parts. That's a much bigger topic, but something that people can look into. But if you're ready to start now, Judgment Detox has all of the methods right there in the book. And how do kind of affirmations and daily intentions and all the quotes that you're sharing all the time, how do they play into it for you? How do you use those in the kind of

the most positive way to help reframe your thinking? Well, listen, I said that at the beginning of the interview, which is, in my own words, I said that our happiness is a choice that we make. Now, that is the truth, even when we're suffering from severe mental illness, because even the choice to get psychiatric support is a choice we make towards our happiness, right? So even when we don't know how to make the choice,

we can choose to get help. So affirming how we want to feel is the practice of living in affirmation. And in the daily commitment to affirming how you want to feel, you can begin to completely change the way you experience your life. Because every affirmation becomes a energetic shift within you. And an affirmation can make you feel different. And when you allow that feeling to change, that's when your life begins to change. And there's so many that you share that I love and I love looking at because it just kind of helps reframe your thinking for the day. And I wanted to ask if there were any favorites for you or things that you come back to time and time again, or are there ones that you just feel you kind of need on a

different day? I'll give you some affirmations I love. I always love to just find an affirmation that's relying on the universe. I surrender this to the universe. It's this or something better to really release something. I often really recognize that I can use prayer as an affirmation as well. So just affirming that I want to release and surrender something. So saying I surrender this to a higher power is an affirmation. I often will affirm that, like I said earlier, happiness is the choice I make. I speed up by slowing down is a big one that I love. I no longer choose to play small. Just even something as simple as I'm excited to move through this day with ease. I also do a practice that I have in Super Attractor,

which is a practice called the Daily Design Method. And in the Daily Design Method, you ask yourself three questions or four questions. And the daily design method, you ask yourself three questions in the first or four questions. And the first question is, who do I want to be today? So it could be, I want to be a good mother. I want to be a good podcaster. I want to be a friend. And then how do I want to feel today? And then what do I want to give today? And what do I want to receive today? And committing to those four questions can change the entire direction of your day. I love that. It's such a nice thing to do first thing in the morning instead of waking up and like checking Instagram or Twitter or something. I was listening to another interview with you with Arianna Huffington, and you said

that you and your husband then do a gratitude practice together as well, which I thought was so beautiful. Yeah. In the morning, we like to play the appreciation game, which is Abraham Hicks practice. And it's just going through a whole bunch of reasons why we appreciate one another. And when you do that, and you open the day with appreciation, oh my goodness, it's like we joke around. I'm like, I'll treat you like a king if you treat me like a queen. And it's fun. It's a fun way to start the day. And it's a beautiful practice to commit to and we do a nice job of it it's so nice it feels like such a if you start

your day like that then it's just going to kind of lead into the next thing into the next thing and the next thing and one question I had because it was definitely something I picked up on of people who are big fan of yours was that you do so much. I mean, you've written so many books, you've done incredible work, you've done so many speaking tours and undoubtedly have a phenomenal career. And I can only imagine how busy you have been, especially with so much travel and also becoming a mum to a young son. And I wondered how you kind of bring it into your work day and into your life as a mum as well to create that sense of balance? Because I think that's one of the things that so many people struggle with is they love the idea,

but then the reality is like, you know, first thing in the morning, the baby's awake really early and they're up and they didn't get time for the affirmations or the meditation. And how do you manage to fit it into your day? So I go to bed very early at night. I go to bed at 9 p.m. so that I can wake up before my son. So I wake up around six every day. And sometimes I'll do my meditation in my bed. And sometimes I'll get up and take a shower and practice myself, practice on my own. My son wakes up at 7.30 or he'll hang out in his bed until 7.30 for me to come get him. And what I love about that is that I sleep trained my son. So that was a total gift to him and to me.

And being in the stillness in the morning is like such a gift, such an amazing blessing. I also have a 12 p.m. practice of meditation. We started our interview at 12.40 Eastern today in the United States in New York. And I don't do anything until after 1240 because from 12 to 1240, I'm always doing my meditation practice. And that's non-negotiable for me. And then I also build in my exercise. And lately, I've been doing sauna therapy just to cleanse and clean my system. And so I have these non-negotiables throughout the day, and then I build my day around them. And then, of course, non-negotiable cooking dinner for my family and all this. It's a lot that I got to do. Thankfully, I have child care to support me in that. And not everybody has that kind of support with child care during the day. So was full-time mom, full-time boss, full-time business owner, full-time wife, full-time chef to my son and my husband. It was a lot of work. So I know what it

takes to do it all. But having the space and having the childcare has given me the chance to really get a lot done during the day and work within the parameters of my personal growth and my self-care practices. And how do you deal with kind of stress when it starts creeping in? Because I can only imagine juggling so many different things and with so many kind of big work commitments that sometimes things don't go to plan or are more complicated than they are expected to be. And you know, those moments where you're suddenly running late and this and that and the next thing, and it's easy to start going off that path of feeling calm and losing sight of how you saw the day going and instead becoming a bit of a kind of frantic ball of stress. And how do you come back? How do you recenter yourself

every time you sort of start to veer off? You know, I used to spend, I spent about 40 years or 39 years just going off the rails and then recentering myself. And I obviously became an expert at recentering myself and I've written nine books about the topic. But I'm now actually in a place where I don't have to just bring myself back to center. I'm really proud to say that I live in a pretty centered place most of the time. And I'm really, really proud to say that. That doesn't mean that things won't take me out, but not really anymore. And a lot of that is because of the devotional practice to my therapy. I've been in a practice called somatic experiencing, and I've practiced EMDR therapy, and I have two to three therapy

sessions a week, which have changed the way I respond to things, have totally changed my nervous system and my reactivity. Listen, I lived for years where I would micromanage people and drive people nuts and just constantly from trigger to trigger. But I had the privilege of hitting a bottom with my anxiety a year ago when I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety. And in that time, I had the privilege of having to really get strapped on my boots and get to work with my programming and unlearned behaviors that plagued me for years. And now I live in a very, very different way. And I think I've been in training for that forever. I'd always been sort of working towards

getting to this place. And then it really hit stride in the last year where I just feel very released and at ease. What an unbelievable thing to be able to say. And I think it's such testament to you and to your commitment. But the more and more be able to say. And I think it's such testament to you and to your commitment. But the more and more I talk to people and like yourself, who've spent so many years focused on this, the more I start to appreciate that kind of happiness and ease in our lives is such a work in progress. And it is something that is genuine work. You know, you've got to put in that time day in, day and it's just it's really inspiring to hear how much you then start to reap the rewards when you when you get to this point so many years in and to be able to say that you know you don't really go off center like that anymore is is

unbelievable and it's a real testament and um I had a couple of readers questions that I wanted to bring in and one of them actually was to stress interfere with the process, which I feel like you've just answered, but possibly for people who are kind of earlier on in the journey, is there any one thing you'd sort of say, you know, when that stress creeps in, like tell yourself this or anything like that? So listen, I lived in a really stressed out state because I'm a survivor of childhood drama. So when you've been traumatized as a child, what happens is that you live in a way where you're constantly in a state of hyperarousal, which is a stressed state. It's a stress response.

So most people who live with chronic stress likely have unresolved wounds or attachment breach or behavioral patterns from their childhood experience that have caused them to be in a state of fight or flight. And we can get stuck there. And that's called living in a place of hypervigilance, which is a really scary place to live. And I lived there, like I said, for 39 years. It's really, really scary. And you can do all the meditation in the world, but you'll constantly feel like a yo-yo going back and forth and back and forth. So there are many tools you can use to self-regulate. But I think that to really undo the habit of stress, sometimes it requires even more therapeutic support. So I'll give both sides. But one side is having a meditation practice or a prayer practice or breath practice. I've written so many books about this. And then there's also

the practices of having a therapy practice where you can really get to heal the wounds that have caused the stressors and start to unpack the reasons why the stress has been running the show. And some of those techniques, again, are IFS therapy or EMDR therapy or even emotional freedom technique, like I mentioned, or somatic experiencing. There's so many great therapies to help with that. And one of the other questions, which I guess is quite similar, is people who feel like they struggle with self-sabotaging and any kind of words of wisdom there? Well, self-sabotage, again, is based on a root cause belief system from childhood. And so when we have a childhood belief of being unworthy, then that will be

repurposed and replayed in our life in many different ways. And so, so much of our healing is an undoing, an undoing of the fear-based ego belief systems that were placed upon us as children. In a spiritual practice, a lot of the undoing happens through self-forgiveness and forgiveness of our past. In therapeutic practices, it often is a real radical shift in our perception of who we are. And so feelings of unworthiness can really run the show. Our first step is to just witness those feelings and see how they're creating the experiences that you don't want to have. And then the second step is to become willing to see them differently. And that's a really powerful place to start. That's a powerful

place to start. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other questions that came up a couple of times, which I thought was a really nice one actually, is like, how do you lift yourself up when you're starting to feel uninspired? I'm the wrong person to ask because I'm so inspired by things. I live in this place of inspiration and I can do things really fast. So I always say that we can speed up by slowing down. So if I'm feeling like, oh, I'm not really in the mood to write today or whatever, then I'll slow down actually. And so I'll go and I'll do a 40 minute meditation and that will re-energize me. And then I'll sit down to write or I'll sit down to record an audio or I'll do something creative. So when we feel

uninspired or disconnected, it's about reconnecting. And then when we realign through a meditative practice, which I would highly recommend, some kind of meditation practice, then that inspiration can start to flow through us again. And my final question from our readers is, if you just had one tip of something that you would start right now, today? What is it? Where to begin? Connecting to your breath. Your breath is the greatest resource you have. So just even breathing in for five strokes and holding your breath for five seconds and releasing it for five seconds and holding it out for five seconds.

That simple breath pattern is transformational because it will reorganize your nervous system and put you into a relaxation response, which can then give you oxygen to the brain and oxygen to the parts of your body that might be in pain and start to restore you because your body wants to naturally restore itself and your mind does too you have to just breathe your way into it amazing yeah we did such a great episode must have been a couple of months ago about breath and it's it's unbelievable how powerful it is and such a simple tool at the same time but Gabby I have to say Gabby has been the most amazing support because we have had some serious technical issues in this episode and she has been such a good guest

and so brilliantly grateful. And the ultimate example of the fact that she doesn't get rattled by things, I can definitely testify to that. So Gabby, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Your publicist actually at Hay House sent me some of your new affirmation cards this week

and I have been loving them. I'm just kind of preparing for birth and a new little one at the moment. And they've just been such a lovely addition to our life at home at the moment and just absolutely love your work. So thank you so much for taking the time to share it with us today.

Oh, and I have to give you my birthing affirmations. Is that what you've got or are they? Oh no, I would love those ones. Oh, I'm ones get those two too amazing yeah definitely need some of that brilliant well guys thank you so much for listening I hope you all have a lovely week and take a lot from all of Gary's amazing work her books are absolutely beautiful and massively recommend them if anyone's feeling a little bit stuck and needing a bit of inspiration have a lovely Tuesday everyone thank you so much for

listening bye stuck and needing a bit of inspiration. Have a lovely Tuesday, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Bye. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com.