And What Else?
Welcome to 'And What Else?', your source for thoughtful and meaningful conversations about personal and professional growth. Host Wendy O'Beirne is an internationally recognised coach and consultant with a passion for exploring the layers of topics surrounding self-development. Together, we'll dig beneath the surface of subjects, stories, and possible solutions to uncover new perspectives we may not have seen before. With curiosity and open minds, let's embark on an adventure of self-discovery and uncover the possibilities of 'and what else'. Stay Curious!
And What Else?
Where You Are Defensive, You are Rigid
This episode explores the deep connections between emotional agility, thoughts, beliefs, and personal value. Wendy highlights how being rigid about ANYTHING limits our growth, desires, and real connections.
• Importance of emotional agility
• Relationship between productivity and self-worth
• The impact of rigid beliefs on genuine connections
• Strategies to cultivate emotional flexibility
• Understanding the significance of internal dialogues
• The journey toward self-leadership and embracing change
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave a review or share it with someone who may benefit from listening.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and subscribe! And if you want to learn more from me, come and say hello on Instagram @thecompletioncoach or via email at wendy@thecompletioncoach.co.uk or find out more about working with me on my website, thecompletioncoach.co.uk.
Welcome to, and what Else, the podcast with me. Wendy O'Byrne, also known as the Completion Coach, and I debated, really debated, recording this one, because there's part of me that thinks do I go on about this stuff too many times? And then there's the other part of me that says hardly anybody hears the first time around. Hardly anybody hears, depending on what state they are in. Hardly anybody hears until they are ready to hear. And one thing I do know is that repetition is key to almost anything, and absolutely everybody that I work with has a problem with being in their body and they find it really easy to be in their mind, to be disconnected from their feelings and their body to such a degree that they can live in their heads, constantly scanning everything, constantly being hyper-aware, constantly looking to see what else they could and should be doing, constantly scanning for rules for good or bad, right or wrong, and constantly looking to see what they can achieve, what they can do better. And that drive to over-function, that drive to often work an awful lot, that drive to over function, that drive to often work an awful lot, that drive to push harder, can feel as if it gets criticized a lot. You know I I mentioned this a lot, but there's a quote that goes around the internet saying nobody gets to their deathbed. When can I wish I'd worked more? But actually nobody.
Speaker 1:Who is working from a wound of high achieving and constant productivity and pushing through and doing more isn't doing it on purpose. They're not doing it to be seen as the person that can do the most. They're not doing it because they don't want deeper connection in other parts of their lives. But they are doing it because there is a deep, deep part of them that completely runs their operating system that makes them believe that their greatest value in this world is what they can produce, do or be for other people, and so other people will have amazing faith in them. Other people will see them as the person to go to, the person to lean on, the person who can sort things out. Other people will see them as successful and got it easy and they don't have any problems. But other people won't know that you work so hard for them to never see that about you. You work so hard for other people to never see you as a burden, for other people to never see you as weak and for other people to stay at a relatively safe distance from you so that you don't feel overexposed and so that you don't feel like you're opening up to rely on somebody, because a big part of you fears, if you rely on somebody else, that you will get badly hurt.
Speaker 1:So what these people are really looking to explore when they come to work with me is not necessarily mindset. Their mind will change as a result of the work that we do. We will get them out of really rigid thinking. We will get them away from doing what they have always done. We will work with their neuroplasticity. We will be looking to create flexibility, because the person with the most flexibility will find it far easier to move through things than people who are super rigid.
Speaker 1:But we do not start there. We always start with the body. We always start with where and how they have emotional rigidity compared to emotional agility and where they get stuck within their nervous system, where the body throws them out, where they feel incapable and, ultimately, where the body is running the system, which is what we would then call the state, and we would look at what percentage of time they spend in each state and, from that state, how many decisions are made there. State how many decisions are made there. When we're then able to look at how we really change, where we operate from, when we're really observant and able to see quite clearly what our state is, when we are able to feel, acknowledge, process and move through things, then we have built agility. We're not stuck in the past, we're not projecting completely into the future. We're able to move between something that's been activated, something from the past, something in the present, and what we want to change in the. We're able to create more choice, more clarity and the thing that they have been attempting to do through rigidity, we create more self-control. What their rigidity has been doing has been trying to create control over externals and everybody else, and what we're looking to do is come into the self understanding, where the self feels controlled by emotions in the past, feels controlled by the perception of others, feels controlled of the masks that they feel that they should wear, should hide behind, should be using.
Speaker 1:Because we're not here to say that you're going to have a problem-free life. Do self-development, do spiritual development, do all of this growth work and you'll have no problems. That's not the promise, because life's always going to bring problems. There will be, at times, negativity, there will be doubt. We are not here to suggest that you can build unshakable confidence, Because we are shakable and we are meant to be. We are meant to be. We are not meant to live in a permanent state of any of our emotions, any of our thoughts, any of our beliefs.
Speaker 1:We're not permanent beings and a lot of our distress comes from our attachment to permanence. We want everything to be permanent and in the same breath we want it to change. You know, we want relationships to be permanent, we want people to never change, we want income to be permanent. You know, so often I hear people saying even like this is the house for life, the permanence of knowing that there is an agreement to something, the permanence of youth, and when that's changing and when we're changing, we can almost be constantly grieving the lack of permanence. But the one thing we're assured of is almost everything has to change. Within relationships. There are constant change Within our desires. There is change Within our outward appearance. There is constant change In our internal systems. There is constant change. Change is something that we're convinced we resist but we live in constantly.
Speaker 1:And if we are continuously in change but seeking permanence, we are constantly creating resistance and friction and what feels like force and actually this act of surrender that we talk about. The art of surrender, the lack of attachment, is simply our acceptance that nothing is permanent. Everything is always changing. So the art of surrender is that change is always evolving and we can move with it or we can work against it or we can work against it. And if we don't work on our emotional body, our ability to change, when people tell me that's just who they are, that's defense, because it's not who you are, it's your choices and it's your behaviors and it's the way that you are being. But it's absolutely not who you are, because who you are is forever changing. But it's absolutely not who you are, because who you are is forever changing. And if you are trying to convince yourself of anything being permanent whatsoever, then you are working against the greater force.
Speaker 1:Fluctuation is normal, be it in your weight, in your bank balance, in your feelings, in your relationships, in your opportunities, in your healing, in your creativity, in your sex drive, absolutely everything. There will be fluctuations. Fluctuations just means nothing is permanent. There is no permanence in your nervous system to stay in constant regulation. It will always fluctuate. Your job is to observe how much impact it's having and how much you can assist that fluctuation to create more agility through the states.
Speaker 1:The goal with agility is to move through all of your very human emotions, to have them all with building agility, knowing that none of them are permanent. None of them are permanent. They are things we can work through. There are things that we can move through and there are things that we can actually start to experience in a way that stop us circling through the same loops that create then mental loops that create these rigid behaviors, that stop us circling through the same loops that create then mental loops that create these rigid behaviors that get us repeating the same old emotional cycles because we keep going through in this rigid manner, clinging on to expectations that are this or that, clinging on to the idea that something is right or wrong, clinging on to rules that we are creating.
Speaker 1:Developing emotional agility means that you stop being at the mercy of your own defenses, and when you stop being at the mercy of your own defenses, you stop reacting, you stop making decisions based on the past and instead are making decisions right now to create the future that you want. And that's how you step into what's called self-leadership, because when we're emotionally rigid, you are being emotionally led. Your emotions are driving conversations, they're driving your beliefs, they're driving your behaviors, they're driving your spending habits, your work patterns, your relationship patterns. And the tricky part is most people think, if their emotions are leading them, that they are in touch with them. They think that they can trust the body's yes or no. And they can't at that point, because it is this old friction creating these internal responses that aren't their deepest body reactions, that the body kicking you out, saying I don't want you to come and look at this.
Speaker 1:So can we move past it? That's when we can get defensive without knowing completely why we feel attacked. It's where we're rejecting advice. We absolutely can't hear it. It's where we are getting stubborn because we refuse to look at different ways. That's been that good old, that good old phrase just how I am, just how I am. And it will show up in how you spend your money, how you pick your fights, where you overcommit, where you overwork, where you're self-sabotaging the thing that you really want, and where you are go, go, go, go, go, without pausing because you do not want to stop and even comprehend what it is you're avoiding within yourself. And so a really good way to see how emotionally agile you are is to see how defensive you are.
Speaker 1:Just notice when you're going to shut something down, when you have been pricked, when something has been pricked in you. And you're going to shut something down when you have been pricked, when something has been pricked in you and you're just like, hmm, not going there Because what they will uncover, what this data, this information we get curious about uncovers, is where you're stuck. You will be stuck where you are the most defensive. You will be stuck where you are the most shut down. You will be stuck where you are the most shut down. You will be stuck where you are most emotionally activated, because whatever it is making you shut down, tense up, brace yourself, there is something underneath that. Your reactions are data, your emotions are data, your behavior, your patterns, your thoughts all of it's just information and the moment you can start observing it like that, rather than seeing it as a fixed truth about who you are, about what is possible, about what is not possible, about what you are determining the future to be. That's where everything starts to change. But there is a massive catch and that's reviewing that data without over attaching to it. Reviewing that data and not getting lost in it. Reviewing that data and sitting with some self-honesty is really hard and if it were easy, everybody would be doing it left, right and center.
Speaker 1:And you may think as most people do when they ask them for their values. You may think that one of your values is honesty. You may think you pride yourself on having integrity, and yet you will have all of these places internally where you bend the truth with yourself, where you downplay things to fit in, where you exaggerate things to be liked, where you over-promise because you need to feel valuable, where you hide how you feel because it's easier, where you joke at someone else's expense because it's safer than being vulnerable. And they might not seem like a big deal in the moment, but over time they're showing you where your emotional agility is lacking. Because that self-honesty isn't just about knowing your values. It's about seeing where your actions contradict them. It's about where they are important outwardly and externally but not so important internally. And look, this isn't about being your full. This isn't about being your full, true, authentic self with everybody at all times, because there are boundaries on that.
Speaker 1:There are situations where we need to be professional. There are situations where we may not know people very well. There are situations where it would just be unnecessary to bring everything to the party at all times. That's not you being dishonest. That's you using a social filter. That's you using a professional filter. That's you using your skill set to be agile. You can remain true to who you are and have a certain amount of filter in different situations.
Speaker 1:However, if you don't even know who you are, if you have no emotional agility, if you are defensive much of the time, living in your head, unable to connect to your body, rigid in your thinking, rigid in your behavior, rigid in the way that you do everything, taking on too much, overextending yourself, always being the person that can solve everybody else's problems, reading rooms constantly and never settling until everybody's settled, that is not emotional agility and it is not empathy. That is a way of you picking up on everybody's emotional shit and you're starting to mirror. You're starting to take things on. You're starting to take responsibility for things that are not your responsibility. It is your hyper vigilance, trying to take on micromanaging as much as you can to try to make things better for everybody, but not yourself.
Speaker 1:When you are able to see that your emotions are actually leading you and they are driving your behavior, your thoughts, your actions, your reactivity, your defensiveness. In the areas that you really want to make some changes. You really want to open up those parts of your life to something new. You want to detach from the rigid way of behaving. You are really ready to create change on purpose. You are moving with that flow of change. You are moving with the flow of life. You are moving through life without attaching such story and permanence to everything. That's where you can create agility, not just in your emotions, but in your beliefs, in your thoughts, in your words. Your thoughts in your words, in your behaviors and in the way that things move. Agility is you moving with life. Agility is you being flexible. Agility is your ability to really co-create what you want. And agility allows you to really expand into life.
Speaker 1:Because wherever we are fixed in permanence, wherever we are stuck in our heads, wherever we keep repeating cycles and frustrating the life out of ourselves, wherever we are deeply avoiding something that we know we know deep down we really want to do, we really want to do, but we're making ourselves so busy we've got no time for that then we're really just avoiding ourselves.
Speaker 1:We're avoiding that big part of passion in life that comes from what we deeply desire rather than creating in life for what will get approval, what is well respected, and actually your value in this world is not how much you can do.
Speaker 1:Your value in this world is not how much you can do for everybody else. Your value in this world really comes into so much more than just that, and so the more we can create agility in your life, the more we can really look at getting you to not just connect to yourself but to connect to other people differently, to move away from hyper independence and into interdependence. From hyper independence and into interdependence, into really seeing yourself as part of something, part of something that really matters, and it can make a huge impact on so much and it's really worth investigating. I'm going to leave that here for today, but thank you for listening. As always, you can dm me at the completionach on Instagram or drop me an email, wendy, at thecompletioncoachcouk. And, as always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please leave a review or pop it on to somebody you think may benefit from listening.