Changing Outer Mayhem with Inner Mastery

It’s nuts out there. And when it’s calm and focused inside - it changes everything.

As a culture, we are

•  easily distracted 
•  obsessive over (fill in the blank) - politics, relationships, finances, etc.
•  experiencing one health, environmental, societal crisis after another 
•  swinging from wound up to completely disengaged 
•  feeling angry one minute to hopeless the next

So how do you stay sane? Focused? How do you even know what to focus on?

The internal impacts of what is going on in our outer world is staggering. There are so many things coming at us that our fight or flight response is being constantly triggered. 

That’s a recipe for, at best- burnout, at worst - disaster.

So how do we manage? What’s the answer?

This is something that Stephanie and Maren each have been studying for three decades. 

The answer is NOT one more thing to do in the outer world. It’s learning to master the internal, so that we can heal ourselves AND be the antidote for the craziness in the world around us. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and healing is possible.

Today’s podcast starts a several part series on Inner Mastery to address this very issue.

Tune in to find out what Inner Mastery is (insight and awareness on the ‘inner’ so we don't get suffocated and buried), why it matters (getting clarity through the constant noise so there is on-going flow and well-being), and how to get started (listening in for the next few weeks 🥰).

“The more inner mastery I have, the more flow and joy and ease I have in my life” ~ Maren

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:32 Inner Mastery, what is it, why it matters and why now
• 4:17 Getting off the first floor
• 7:38 Creating the future you want
• 9:53 Mastery in a world of information overload
• 12:41 What is important for ME?
• 17:17 Protection and being the antidote

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

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Transcript

Stephanie Allen: 0:04

In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?

Maren Oslac: 0:10

Deep Inside, you know there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.

Stephanie Allen: 0:19

That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac, and this is The Soulful Leader Podcast. Yay! Hi. Welcome to The Soulful Leader Podcast. I'm here with Maren, and we're gonna have a really interesting conversation today on a topic called inner mastery. And we want to look at what even does that mean? Inner mastery? It sounds like a great word, doesn't it, but what does inner mastery actually mean? And I'm relating it from a story of...there seems to be so much of a pull to our attention, our energy, our we're so easily distracted by what's going on in the outer world, whether it's in social media or whether it's in politics, whether it's in our relationships or finances. And when we're pulled into all these different directions, we can pull up a lot of stuff inside ourselves, a lot of narrative, a lot of dialog that isn't always so empowering, and it makes us hard to sleep at night. It keeps us up, it eats at us. And we might be even asking the question, I feel helpless and hopless. What is it mine to do? I don't know what mine is to do. Like, how can I make a difference, or can I even make a difference? And so the inner mastery is really looking at, how do we gain insight and awareness over what's going on inside of us, and have some space between it so that we don't get suffocated or buried by it? And you know, we want to look at some of the thoughts and the emotions and even our responses versus reactions, because, yeah, it's so easy, isn't it, to get completely spun off.

Maren Oslac: 2:13

So that's that is one of the things I'm seeing on the planet right now, and in the world, as we've mentioned, I'm in the US, and you're in Canada, and there's so much going on, and I see kind of two reactions is one of them is to get completely caught up in all of the stuff that's going on, and be angry and be resentful and be, you know, like to have strong opinions about it, for better, for worse, right? Like, just having a really strong reaction to it. The other one is to kind of bury our heads and be like, la, la. I can't hear you, right? I'm just gonna do what I do and like, not think about it as much as I can, even though eggs are like, 10 times their price, and milk is right? All the all the... there are so many ways that it's impacting us in our personal lives. And so is there something that's kind of not either of those things, like, what's the alternative to either being swept away by what's going on in the outer world or just completely ignoring what's going on in the outer world.

Stephanie Allen: 3:28

Yeah, and I look at that almost like a flat land road, so you think of like you're either left or right, or, you know, it's this or that sort of thing. And what if it was a triangle instead of a flat bottom of the triangle? What if there was another part where we met? Because sometimes we think about meeting in the middle, and when we meet in the middle, it dishonors, maybe ourselves or the other person, and it's compromising, and it's just still icky. I still don't like it. So how do we go to a whole new level of awareness and relationship that transcends where we both are? I guess like, even like, right now we're in two different countries, but where we meet is in our hearts. Where we meet is outside of time and space and location and time zones, even we meet at a different place with a common intention. And I think the question for me is that maybe I need to ask myself more, but also what I'm encouraging my clients more is like asking, what kind of world do you want to live in? What is your ideal?

Maren Oslac: 4:39

I love that.

Stephanie Allen: 4:40

Instead of fighting against something because it's there's always going to be something to fight against, always, there's always something that I always say, you know, peace is not the absence of war, healing is not the absence of disease. And that may sound totally radical for you, but it's like it's actually inside of us. Is inside, yeah, right?

Maren Oslac: 5:00

So if peace is not the the opposite of war, then what would you say is, like, what is your... you know, because like, you said that there's that radical, like, okay, so, but that's what we've been taught. So...

Stephanie Allen: 5:15

That's right.

Maren Oslac: 5:16

...not what we've been taught. Then what is it like? This is where our brain wants an answer to that right?

Stephanie Allen: 5:23

And this is where I would say the inner mastery comes from, is finding that internal war that I have inside myself, and really finding a harmonizing aspect of it, or a transcendence, meaning that they are all getting honored, but I come to a whole new level. There's that triangle again, I come to a whole new level that is above it but also includes it. So I'm not negating it, I'm not punishing it, I'm not rejecting it or ignoring it. I'm also not fighting it, but I'm actually lifting it up so that all parts are being met and listened and noticed.

Maren Oslac: 6:01

I do. You know, we've used this analogy in the past of you know, like, if you think about from a high rise, like, if you're standing in a high rise building and you're standing on the first floor, then all you can see is ground level. And then if you go to the 10th floor, you get, oh, a slightly different perspective. Wow. That tree looks really different from the top, rather than, right, you know, the ground level. And if you go... the hierarchy, you keep going up in the high rise, you have different perspectives. And I like that with, like, your triangle analogy, where, if we think of the ground floor, is that bottom layer of, okay, it's either this or that. Okay, now, let's go to the 10th floor and see if we can find the commonality, right? Common Ground there also, it's not again, it's not from that flat perspective. You're not on the first floor saying, you know, it's this or that. Okay, like you said, we'll, we'll, we'll mediate, and it'll be flat land mediation. You're actually coming from a higher perspective, and we'll just call it a different perspective, because it's not better or worse, it just is different. And now I have more insights. I have a better sense of, oh, that's why I couldn't see it, because to me, it looked this way, it looked this way, and now it looks totally different from a different perspective. You know? Yeah, right...

Stephanie Allen: 7:25

Yeah, like, sometimes we talk about the 360 degree view, but we tend to think about doing that 360 degree view on the bottom floor, instead of, like, a multi dimensional degree kind of look. So it's like, yes, what if we When we actually go to the future, we walked another, you know, in the other person's shoes, and see, saw from their eyes and felt from their experience. That's wonderful empathy. And then also, what happens if we actually go up to another, different floor to look at the look back and like crap, actually, we did need to look up whole thing from a from an observation of, like, okay... what am I seeing here, instead of, like judging it as right or wrong or good or bad, but what am I looking at here that may be helping and also what, what higher level am I going on to, or what different level upward am I going on that is actually... let me use it as another example. I remember years ago studying physical education at university. You know, there were certain things that you did and did not do that was right and wrong and good and bad. And one of the things, and I laugh at this, because this is back in the 80s, you never ever tilted your headback, you never looked up. You're supposed to keep everything you know, in a sagittal plane, everything like forward and down and side to side. You never did up and down. and down. And you know that saying is like, if you want to So what happened? Well, then all of a sudden, you know, in the live into something, start creating the future you want to live in. It's not about pushing away what you don't want. I 90s, in the early 2000s we started getting cell phones, we think that's a great indication of saying, hey, I don't want this, whatever this is, andto be able to flip it to say, well, started doing computers, and everybody's looking down, what do you want instead? Then, because that is part of your everybody's looking down. And then all of a sudden, people future that you can move towards, and then you don't give start looking up because something's going by, and the very thing that you hate or disregard or whatever. You don't they've, hurt their neck because we haven't used it. So my whole give that energy. You actually allow it to give you energy to move towards an ideal that you want to live into, and perspective is that what sometimes seems to be right or generally, if you share that ideal of where you want to live wrong or good or bad at one time in your life. into, other people will join you. You're not alone.

Maren Oslac: 9:53

And there are two things that as you're talking come up for me, one of them is from a higher perspective you can see things like what you were just talking about. If we were, had been able to look from a higher perspective and see a longer, kind of further out into the future, if you will. Because from a higher perspective, you see more of the past and more of the future, right? You get to see further out in what's going on. So you can see, like, oh, that's just a crash waiting to happen, versus being bright, like, when we're in it, we're so in it, we can't see that. And so having some tools, having some practices, so that we can get to that next place of, okay, how do I see further? How do I... how do we become more aware of the like, further out, so that I don't get caught in, oh, I hurt my neck because I looked up and I believed that old saying, right? Because that's, that's kind of where we are right now. Of, we're in this place of choice of where do we, and this takes me to the second piece, which you're just talking about, of when we're looking out of that upper floor window, we can be looking at the past. I don't want that, I don't want that. I don't want that. And what does that then look like? Because that's where we're going. I think we keep taking our past and putting it in front of us, right? It's sometimes we keep experiencing the same thing.

Stephanie Allen: 11:31

It's the same as driving a car looking in the rear view mirror like that's that's probably not very safe. You know, unless you're backing up, of course, you're going to look in the rear view mirror, but if you are moving forward in your life, it's really advantageous to look out the windshield. You don't want to be driving, hanging on to the window, hanging on to the steering wheel, looking at the rear view mirror, because you're going to miss what's coming towards you, right? And chances are you're going to crash, or you're going to hurt somebody, or hurt and hurt yourself. And I think that's why it's so important to look inside and to look at the very things that you are angry with or afraid of or feeling emotional about, because it does indicate there's a value there. There's something that, instead of trying to push it away or make it right or wrong or good or bad, to actually uncover maybe a deeper value that you want to live into. And that takes practice. It also takes it takes a community to kind of help each other see something differently, a new perspective, so that we can then cultivate that energy and move towards an ideal, rather than pushing away what we don't want.

Maren Oslac: 12:41

So I'm going to bring this back to the inner mastery and why it's important right now, and like, kind of what it is, and all the things that we've been talking about, like, getting to that higher perspective that comes from an inner place, not an outer place. So one of the things that's true is, right now, we have moved from the age of information. We've moved out of the age of information, and we can Yes. Like, like, how do I know in my heart, like, experience - we know that right like, so more information is not if I see the advertising that I'm completely bombarded with, what is needed right now. Like, we can ask chat GPT, we can ask any of the like, we have information coming about out our or all of the fake news or real news, I don't know. How do I ears, like, there's so much information, so it's, how do I know? And yes, you can do research, and that's important. know what's right for me in all of this information? How do I We've got plenty of information, and we can sort through it, and sometimes it's hard to tell. So how do we find that place in us? get signal instead of noise? How do I know what is signal for me? So that like, think of an old time radio where you'd had to tune the knob in order to get to the station, and you'd get static, and then there's, oh, that's clear, and then it'd be static again, and oh, that's clear. That's what's happening inside of us. There's so much static. So the inner mastery is about getting to that clarity for me, for me, and that's happening inside of me, not out there in the world, and then the mastery piece is okay. So how do I do that on a ongoing, regular basis, so that I get clearer and clearer and clearer signals. You

Stephanie Allen: 14:39

What's true for you? know, anyone who's put time into any kind of anything to become masterful at it, you know that it's not a one and done. It's. Yeah, no, it's a constant looking inside and checking in, because it's like that same old saying of like, if you don't know what you stand for, you'll fall for anything. Meaning, if you don't know what you stand for, if you haven't looked inside and listened beyond the static to find your truth, your meaning, your values, your inner guidance, then you will be completely at the whim of everything outside of you. You will be over here and over there and up, up and down and sideways. You will literally waste so much time and energy, which also relates to money. It's currency. You know, your current is all over the place. There isn't a current. It's kind of like a flat, flat dead zone of water. And when we know when water is not flowing, it becomes actually toxic. And so this is really key, and the Chinese medicine would even tell you this too. When things aren't flowing for you, you end up living toxicity, and that toxicity will create dis-ease, maybe first mentally or emotionally, but then eventually physically in the way of illness. So it's, it's so important right now.

Maren Oslac: 16:09

It is so for, you know, I mean, like we're talking about a lot of, like, kind of big concepts, and the actual very tangible application of it in our lives. The simplest way I can put it is that the more inner mastery I have, the more flow and joy and ease I have in my life. And gosh, I know for myself that if I could see, you know, going to what you were saying about what's the ideal? What are you moving towards? That's my ideal. And it's not just for me. It's for the world, because what I want to walk in is a world where people feel they are in flow, where they're coming from a place of joy instead of anger, where there's ease instead of all the tension. I just watch people walk around, including myself and like, all the tension in that we hold in our necks and our shoulders and like, and then it progresses to literal disease.

Stephanie Allen: 17:17

Our nervous system is so hijacked. It's so hijacked, meaning we are in a constant sense, you know, sense of hyper vigilance, so we're in a fight or flight, or even freeze or even fawn. Everything is triggering us. Everything is is completely playing on our emotions, so much so that we don't even know anymore. We've shut down and we've abdicated meaning. We literally have given up our sense of who we are and why we're here. We've just said, why bother? And we give away our life force, our power and we're so needing like to be able to find a way to tap back into that. So when I look at the inner mastery, it actually gives us protection when you actually create a way to go inside and clear out and work with that mastery. Ongoingly, you become more and more protected so anyone out there that who's highly sensitive to what other people think of them, or being able to say no and not feel guilty, or any of those things, like, if you, if you truly care about the world and yourself, to be able to have some inner mastery is actually protecting you. So that you can rise above it. I call it rise above the ca-ca-pooponess... rise above it, so that you can also tap into that, that river that is flowing within you, but it's so important to keep you nourished and heal. You know, we talk about the absence of you know...healing is not the absence of disease meaning in the outer world. Healing is actually transcending within yourself and moving up to a whole new place. So there is peace, there is kindness, there is self love, there's so much more. And for those of you who are gonna say, well, yeah, I already love myself, I'm pretty good. That's great, because then this will even help even that much more. Because hurt people, hurt people, but healed people heal people and loving people love people.

Maren Oslac: 19:17

So it not only offers us protection, but then it allows us to become the antidote 100% that's just so cool. So we are so... this subject matter is so important that we are going to, the next few podcasts we're going to go into five aspects of what it means to work with inner mastery. And we're going to bring up, you know, like things like emotional regulation and clarity and purpose. We're going to talk about freedom from external validation. Oh, wouldn't that be nice, right, resilience without being rigid and also integrating of our shadow pieces. So we're going to take each of these and talk a little bit about why now, and what that means for us, and give you a few tools. So we'd love for you guys to follow follow along for the next few podcasts. We'll be sending them out. If you're on our email list, you'll get our indications or our notifications that the next podcast has dropped. Or you can subscribe on Apple podcasts, or, you know, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us, and you'll find out when our next podcast have dropped. You can also join us on our Facebook group, in our Facebook group, or in our LinkedIn group. Both those are at Soulful Leaders, and remember that we're also on YouTube. So if you'd like to see our little talking heads while we're talking about all of these things, feel free to join us on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining us today, and we'll look forward to going deeper into this inner mastery, what it means and how you can start on that journey or continue on it for yourself. Thanks so much.

Stephanie Allen: 21:11

And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen and

Maren Oslac: 21:17

Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website, at TheSoulfulLeader Podcast.com

Stephanie Allen: 21:28

Until next time...