The Most UNDERRATED Healing Practice That Changes Everything

Do you beat yourself up for not healing fast enough?
Feel frustrated when you “know better” but still react the same way?
Struggle with guilt when you’re tired, overwhelmed, or not operating at your best?
Wonder why life feels harder the more you try to fix yourself?

Many of us were taught that personal growth comes from discipline, pressure, and pushing harder—but no one taught us about the quiet superpower of grace. Not the surface-level kind, but the kind that fundamentally changes how you relate to yourself during your healing journey. The kind that supports real self-healing, nervous system regulation, and sustainable self-growth especially while you’re unlearning old patterns, or navigating seasons of uncertainty.

In this talk, I explore the secret superpower of giving yourself grace, and why it may be the missing piece in your personal transformation. This isn’t about lowering standards or avoiding responsibility. It’s about staying connected to yourself when you make mistakes, emotions and/or patterns resurface, or life doesn’t go according to plan.

If you’re tired of turning every setback into self-criticism…
If you’re exhausted from feeling like you should be “further along by now”…
If you’re craving self-love that actually changes how you live, not just how you think…

This conversation will meet you exactly where you are.

For FREE Resources, 📖 Book Link, 📝 Quizzes, 👚 Self-Love Merch Shop, 🗣️ 1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

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Dearest Soul Sibling,

If you are enjoying this podcast, it would be super helpful if you left a 5 ⭐️ rating and review. This helps the powers-that-be in podcastland push this content before the eyes of more like-minded seekers like yourself.

You are appreciated,

KB 🦋

Transcript

Why self-grace is often overlooked

Kristen 0:00

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome to Empower Hour with Pabee. My name is Kristen Brown, and I am an energy intuitive coach, mentor, healer, and I help people to reclaim their personal power so that they can attract and create the life and relationships of their dreams. Because all change happens on our inner world first. And when we change our inner world, we change our life. And part of changing our inner world is really about learning to give ourselves grace. Learning to give ourselves grace is a massive part of our healing journey, of our growth, our expansion, of our evolution. And sometimes it can be overlooked. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it's strong enough or big enough or gnarly enough. And I say this repeatedly that many times we think that we have to be doing these just extraordinary leaps and bounds in our life in order to make a difference and to move the needle in our life. And it's really not true, you guys. I want to help break the narrative out there in the world that healing is hard because I hear it all the time. What I do know that there's a lot of emotions that can be mixed up with it. I know there's certain things that we need to face. I get it. I understand. But once you set course and you mix love, self-love into this equation, it becomes more soothing, more balmy, more easy. It is exciting. And it just feels so much better because a large part of what people might deem hard is the fear that they're still carrying. It's the self-judgments they're still carrying. It's potentially all the dense, dark feelings that they're still carrying. It's the harsh belief systems they're still carrying. And by giving ourselves a whole lot of grace, and I did write it like lotta, because I could have been uh grammatically correct and said lot of, but I really wanted to sound give yourself a whole lot of grace. Okay. This is part a huge part of the healing journey. This is a huge part of evolution. And when I started to apply this to myself, I couldn't believe how I felt. It was shocking because I'd never felt that way before. I'd always been highly judgmental about myself. I'd also absorbed the judgments of other people. So I was just a walking judgment machine. And when I started to give myself grace, there was something very balmy about it. And it's really hard to describe unless you're someone who has done it. And if you have, I would love to hear your definition of it and how it felt for you. So definitely come up on the stage and share that. But it's just a feeling of kind of neutrality. It's very nervous system calming, it's very understanding, and it makes you feel like life is doable. It makes you feel like, hey, you know what? You are okay. In this line of giving yourself grace, I wanted to talk about first what it is, what it feels like, and why it works. Because oftentimes when we understand the what, what it is, and the why, the how-to makes sense. When I wrote my book, The Recovering People Pleaser, chapter one and chapter two are the what and the why. What is people pleasing and why is it in place? And then the rest of the book is the how-to. It's the how to heal it. So we're going to start off with the what and the why, so that I give you hopefully, or I make a great argument, if you will, about why you could be giving yourself grace and what it's going to help you with. Because grace is not weakness. Some of the most helpful, balmy, energy-shifting, needle-moving moves that we can make are very passive. They're very gentle. So again, we think we have to go out there and muscle our way through our healing journey. What if you just give yourself grace? What if that's just one thing that you try? Like, you know what? I'm just going to start giving myself grace and see how I feel. And this isn't just about saying it, well, I'm giving myself grace. No, this is about embodying what it is. Grace is not weakness. Grace is actually self-respect in real time. It's self-love in real time. And it works because it creates an internal safety. And safety is what allows for real change to happen. When we are in fight-flight, when our nervous system is activated, it's very difficult to change because certain parts of the brain go offline, if you will, and we are more in the I have to survive mode rather than our thriving mode. Also, when we give ourselves grace, efforts become sustainable. We are more likely to keep working towards the thing when we are gentle with ourselves because it feels good. If we are judging ourselves, if we are mean to ourselves, if we are criticizing ourselves, that doesn't feel good. So we might just all of a sudden say, forget it, I give up, I'm not going to do this thing. And we may not even know why. It may not even be that it's very hard. It's just that we're just not quite getting there yet. We're just not quite there yet. Or there's still some things that we're working on to reach this particular place that we want to reach. So when you give yourself grace, your nervous system stands down. It starts to calm. And you move out of threat, you move out of shame, you move out of self-attack, and you move into regulation. And from that place, from that state, your brain then has access to clarity, to learning, and to choice. So when we're not giving ourselves, effort turns into pressure, it turns into judgment, it feels like failure. And that's why grace makes our efforts become more sustainable. And I've experienced this firsthand. I am still, you guys have heard most of you who've been here for a while, have heard about my post-menopause weight loss journey. And I've lost a good, you know, eight, 10 pounds. That last little bit kind of fluctuates a little bit. I lost another three, and then I gained that three back. Am I judging myself? Am I being harsh to myself? Nope. Give myself grace. And what I've discovered is how bad do I really want it? How bad do I really want this last five pounds? I must not want it very bad because I'm not doing the things that I know that I need to do for this last little bit because the other stuff has been sustainable. It stayed off. But you know what? I'm giving myself grace. I'm not going, you still haven't lost that last five pounds. You still have this, you know, trunk full of clothes or pants that don't fit you. No. I'm like, I'll get there. And I'm gentle with myself because I want this effort to be sustainable. I don't feel judgmental about me. I'm not yelling at myself. I'm not telling myself I'm terrible or I should have been here by now. Grace also helps because it keeps us connected with self. Because when we're harsh with ourselves, we don't become better. We don't become bigger. Efforts aren't sustainable. We actually become smaller, we become more restricted. And I don't mean like restricted with food we're eating, I mean restricted within ourselves. We can become quieter and we can become stuck. Harshness does not work for long-term goals. Grace keeps you in a close and connected relationship with yourself, even when you miss the mark. Even when you don't get you don't have the success in that moment. It's okay, it's okay. This is what I'm saying to myself. It's okay. You'll get there. Keep going. It also means that we can course correct without folding or collapsing or giving up. Because we are giving ourselves space. We're giving ourselves a playground. We're giving ourselves freedom to move through our life, responding to what's a priority right now, and allowing ourselves to have the priority change if that comes up. Grace also works because it separates identity from behavior. And this is huge. This is really big. Because oftentimes we want to see us as flawed. We have a character flaw, there's something wrong with us. And we make it our identity because we didn't quite reach that goal. When we can simply just say, that didn't work, instead of I'm the problem, I'm bad, there's something wrong with me, I'm flawed, I'm never gonna get any better. And when we replace those type of judgments with, hmm, well that didn't work, those four I still haven't lost a pound, hmm, what's going on here? We investigate a little bit, we look within, we ask ourselves questions, these type of things, that's where our growth is going to be accelerated. Because nothing is being hidden, nothing is being judged, nothing is being defended, and all of those things feel like literally throwing a wet, heavy wool blanket on our efforts. Tell me why anybody would want to continue to do the things that they're doing if they feel like that. We don't. Because the mind, the body is always looking to feel good, is to feel better. So if working towards a particular goal, we're not feeling we're feeling bad about it, it we we hate the way we feel during it, we're likely to drop it because the brain's gonna say, get away from that, get away from that. But when we give ourselves grace during this time, it's making us want to stay on track. And most importantly, grace works because it builds self-trust. And this is huge. Every time we meet ourselves with understanding, instead of punishment or judgment or criticism, we reinforce the message I will not abandon myself when things get hard. It builds self-trust. And that internal loyalty becomes the foundation for resilience, for empowered action, and for confidence. So although grace feels gentle and soft, it's actually a powerful action. Isn't that fascinating? It's a powerful action. It's how we stay open and honest and moving ourselves forward without breaking ourselves down in the process. Grace is about letting yourself be human. Grace is allowing it is openness, it is free of judgment, it's choosing compassion and understanding over criticism. It's allowing the process to take the time that it takes. It's meeting yourself where you are, not judging where you think you should be. Grace is stopping punishing ourselves for learning or practicing. So many times I see people they're trying to practice something, they're trying to learn something, and then I'm just imagining in my head right now someone on the piano and they're trying to get those notes and they're trying to get it, and then they can't do it, and they just like slam their hands on the piano. We have a choice in that moment. That's a judgment of self right there. Or somebody is up to bat in a baseball game and they strike out. They can walk away, throwing the bat, being mad, stomping off, head down. Or they can say, I did the best I could. I see what happened there. I psyched myself out before I came up to bat. Or in the case of the piano playing, maybe it was like, you know what? I ate a lot of salty food last night. My fingers don't work as well. I'm not as dex dexterous when my fingers are swollen. Not, I can't believe I shouldn't have eaten all that food last night that had salt in it. You're like Mexican food. Um, that's only coming to mind because we went to this restaurant last weekend, and oh my God, from the first bite, I was like, this is all salt. Jeez. You know, that happens sometimes. I know after I eat like that, I'm I'm not, I don't feel great at the gym. I don't know for some reason. It's like it's not super bad. It's like I don't have the energy. And when that happens, I don't attack myself. I don't get mad at myself. I don't say, oh my God, if you're not lifting as heavy as you did yesterday, you completely suck. I'm just like, well, lesson learned. I'm always adjusting my food, everyone. Same thing happens if I eat too much sugar the night before. I don't feel great at the gym the next day for some reason. So grace is also ending your understanding that healing isn't linear. Life isn't linear. It's up, it's down, it's sideways. We spiral up, we spiral down, we go to the left, we go to the right, we step forward, we step back, and then we advance. So understanding deeply that this is how it is to be human. This is what it means to be human. It means to be moving around. It's not a straight line. It never has been and it won't be. And if you look back on your life and you go, you know what, there was not a straight line to me making my business successful, or to raising great kids, or to losing that weight, or to making it on that team, or to getting that promotion, it was never a straight line, was it? There was all kinds of curves and U-turns and detours. And understanding that all the curves and U-turns and detours are actually part of our growing. This was a huge thing for me, and something I returned to a lot. I settle in it pretty good for a while, and then sometimes my head gets a hold of me, and then I have to return back to it. But that is that when things are taking too long, there's a reason. That means manifesting the ultimate goal, you know, the ultimate thing. There's a reason. There's a reason for me when that happens every time. And I can prove this to myself by going back and going, you know what? That didn't happen one minute before I was ready for it to happen. Because I needed that sidestep, that U-turn, that detour. I needed those because there was a lesson on that path. Do you know when Mel Robbins finally made it to Oprah? She finally got on the Oprah stage, you know, went and visited her at the Oprah ranch. And, you know, they meet on the, you know, outside and they walk inside and it's all this stuff. Do you know that Mel Robbins said this didn't happen one minute before it was supposed to? Mel freaking Robbins. She has a number three podcast in the world right now. And that's what wisdom is. Wisdom is knowing that I came here exactly when I was supposed to be here. Mel Robbins, think of its speaker, she's been out in the world. She gives live talk, she's everywhere, she's written a couple books, I think. You know, she got her Mel Robbins podcast, all this stuff, right? All of these things. And she said, I'm not here one minute before I was supposed to be. Because she knew whatever she needed to have in place to sit in front of Queen Oprah, you know, because it can be intimidating for a lot of people, is what I'm trying to say. Because she understands that idea that all of it's purposeful. So why would we be judging ourselves when we don't reach that goal quickly? Why would we be judging ourselves when there's a sidestep or a misstep? What if we just commit to and own and absorb the idea that all of it's purposeful? And understanding that all of it's purposeful, how can we judge ourselves on this? Is there really any judgment to be had? If the superpower of the universe is guiding us, infinite intelligence, unconditional love, and it moves us a little to the right or a little bit to the left, how can we judge that that we needed that experience to learn? But oh no, no, no, I should be more advanced than this, I should be further along than this, I should know better. No. When we know better, we do better. And we can't judge ourselves for knowing better when we don't. Period. There's nothing more about, there's nothing else to say about that. When we know better, we do better. And I believe that was a beautiful quote by Maya Angelou. This is about showing up for us every single step of the way. And here's the best part. A lot of these things that I practiced over time, I just kept practicing and practicing and practicing. Eventually they became who I am. Because my brain learned it and picked it up. One of them is self-forgiveness. I forgive myself very quickly. It's like almost, it's instantaneous. I call it quantum forgiveness. It's immediate. Because I understand I'm doing the best I can at any time. So I may I make a mistake and I'm like, oh yeah, okay, there's that. If I if it's just a personal mistake, that's one thing. But if it's a mistake that requires maybe apology or ownership or making amends to somebody else, I do that. And I move on. Because rolling around in the muck is what we've done for too long, you guys. It's kept us down, it's kept us small, it's kept us from not expanding, it's kept us in fear. Thank you, Peter. Peter said that actually sounds like a KB quote. Well, yeah, I adopted it too, I would say. It keeps us in fear, it keeps us not wanting to take risks. And I don't mean big, scary, crazy risks. That's not what I'm ever talking about. I'm talking about just the regular everyday risk that expansion in life requires. Risk is required, you guys. Even if it's a risk of your own embarrassment or your own cringe, like nobody else would see it. Like I'm gonna go and start doing yoga in my room by myself, in front of a mirror, and I'm gonna sit in front of myself and judge myself, right? You're taking that risk that you might judge yourself. You're taking that risk that you might be looking at yourself and telling you look ridiculous. If you're not willing to take that risk, that subconscious program is gonna be running the show and say, no, no, no, don't do that. You're gonna look like a fool. Even though nobody's watching. Like I always say, we want to pull everything up from the subconscious sub and unconscious up to the consciousness. We want to be aware so that we can work with what's going on. So what if we're like, you know, really interested in yoga, and then that voice comes up and says, don't even try, you're you're not flexible, you're gonna look like an idiot, whatever the voice says to you, and you say, you know what? I'm learning. I haven't stretched in a very long time. I'm recovering still from an injury, my balance isn't good. I'm gonna give myself grace for all of that. I'm gonna be so gentle with myself the same way that I would be with somebody that I love. Because that's my assumption that you are graceful and gentle with people that you love. And if you're someone that just heard that, you're like, oh God, I'm really not. That's a great place to start. Because when you understand what that feeling feels like inside of your body, it's very easy to apply it to yourself. It's very easy to apply grace to yourself once you start to practice. And you remind yourself. You remind yourself. Wouldn't it be great, Roman? I just spoke with Roman, a longtime friend of mine from the predecessor app, and he was talking about something else. But he said, wouldn't it be great if we had a bracelet? And anytime that we did extra not out of love that the bracelet would notify us or something like that. And I said, I'm thinking, wouldn't it be great if the second we needed to give ourselves grace, our bracelet just vibrated a little bit? Or did a little ring. Or our Apple watches, wouldn't that be great if they could monitor that? I'm joking, okay? I'm I'm I'm uh uh about all this technology, so just so you know, I'm really playing. But having that reminder for ourselves, like you are so in judgment right now, I can tell because this chemical changed in your body, and your heart rate did this, and your breathing did that, and you know, grace, grace, maybe, maybe we're we weren't allowed to do anything until we gave ourselves grace. I know it's kind of silly, but I love I love playing with that too. Grace. Gentle, gentle, gentle. So when is grace needed? Let's talk about that. Grace is needed when we're learning something new. Because learning requires trial. Error and repetition. And without grace, mistakes will turn into shame, embarrassment, cringe, whatever it might be, which is going to slow our growth. So let's say you start working out, you start therapy, or you start a new habit, and you're expecting quick results. And when the progress feels slow, you start to condemn and criticize yourself instead of recognizing that learning takes time. Grace sounds like I'm allowed to be a beginner. This is new to me. I will grow through practice, not through perfection. I will get there through practice, not through perfection. It's okay. You're doing the very best you can. Keep going. Grace is also needed when we are healing old patterns and traumas. By the way, you guys, grace is needed for everything, but I wanted to bring some real life examples. It's understanding, like I spoke about, that healing is not linear. And that sometimes old reactions are going to resurface. The old knee-jerk response, the trigger that leads to the big reaction or the big emotions or the attack, because often when we're triggered, that is a fear. We feel attacked, and so then we attend to attack back. We feel unsafe. Grace can, first of all, slow things down because it calms the nervous system, but it can also keep us on course, it can prevent us from relapsing into self-abandonment. A lot of times people will own, they'll take responsibility for the attack, let's say I'm sorry, I was triggered, this happened, this is what I was thinking, I don't mean to treat you like that, etc. etc. That's only part of it, guys. That's 50%. The other 50% is this reaction makes sense given my history. This reaction makes sense given what I've dealt with and where trauma has rooted in my body, but I can meet this with care instead of criticism. I can say, I see you, not too long ago, the abandonment of my former husband was triggered in me. I don't even know it was there because I don't have my childhood, I healed majority of things in my life. Okay, don't have triggers. It's very, very rare. And the abandonment wound was triggered in me. I felt that familiar panic. I felt all of these feelings I hadn't felt in a very, very long time. And I was like, whoa. I didn't first of all didn't even know that was still there. I thought that was gone. But it came up and it came big. And I was like, whoa. Did I judge it? Did I say you should not have this? There's something wrong with you. No, I was grateful. I welcomed that with open arms. Did I like the way it felt? No, that's not what I'm saying. But I was like, oh, I see you. Oh, okay. I didn't know you were there. This is still just another layer. This makes sense. It's exactly what I said to myself. This makes sense. Because this particular thing that's happening over here felt like that. It touched that in me. My brain goes, red alert, red alert, this looks similar, this looks similar, abandonment, abandonment, abandonment, abandonment. And so now I'm in a triggered state, and I had to recognize it. I was like, God, what am I feeling? It was 15 years ago. That abandonment. 15 years ago. And I said, I'm feeling, I'm feeling abandoned. I'm feeling, I'm fearing abandoned. That's what it was. And I met it. I said, it makes sense. I get it. Okay, now I can work with this. That was it. And then I had the tools and I applied the tools and I felt amazingly better. I didn't bring it on to anybody else. Nobody else heard about it, felt about it, nothing. It was all within. I met it with care instead of criticism. I didn't judge me because I understood. Even when we've done a lot of inner work, a lot of healing work, we may still be triggered. The beauty is they get smaller and more manageable the more healing work that we do, but doesn't mean that they stop happening altogether. They may not. It depends on your situation, how deep it was, who you're dealing with, all kinds of things. But if we judge ourselves for not being healed yet, or not being there yet, we're gonna hurt ourselves. We're gonna set ourselves back. The next time that grace is needed is if we're exhausted or overwhelmed. When we push through, when we're exhausted or overwhelmed, we are disconnecting ourselves from our body's wisdom. We are not honoring ourselves. Our body's trying to tell us something. I'll say this once, I'll say this a gazillion times until I die. This journey is about returning back to the self in all forms, mind, body, and spirit. And the mind, the body, and the spirit are all giving us messages at times. And when we push through, when we're exhausted or we're overwhelmed, we are pushing away from, we're abandoning the body. We're saying these messages that you give me are not relevant and they're not a priority. But Grace says, I hear you, I feel you. And it's time to rest. And rest is not failure. It's actually a loving response to what I need right now. Whether it's physical overwhelm or mental overwhelm. Last night it was, you know, we ate dinner, we're watching a show, and we've been going to bed early, like around nine o'clock, because we were getting up earlier and going to the gym. I don't know what it is, you guys. It's the weirdest thing. I have always, always loathed getting up when it's dark outside. I hate it. Lately, I love it. I don't know what's happening. I'm like, I want to get up and watch the sun come up. Like, that's my favorite thing. Anyway, so we've been going to bed. Bedtime was about 10, 10:30. Maybe go up to bed at 10. By the time I fall asleep, it's 10:30. And we've been moving a little sooner. And I said to my husband, I'm like, you know, I really, I think I want to go to bed at nine. It's like, all right, let's try it. And he's on board with me. Last night, I was really tired, about actually about seven. Kind of my eyes kept closing on the couch. And around eight, I said, you know what? Or my husband goes, you know what? I really don't want to watch a movie. I really know what I want to do. And I said, I'm tired. I want to go to bed. He goes, all right. Went to bed, fell asleep fast. I slept nine hours. I don't even remember if I got up to go to the bathroom. Nine glorious hours. That's exactly what my body needed. And my daughter was downstairs with her boyfriend, and I said, Hey guys, we're going to bed. So we've been getting up early. I'm really tired. They're like, okay. I don't care. This family, we do not even question anybody's sleep. I have always, always stressed sleep, hydration, and healthy eating. Now they're all grown people, they do their thing, but you know, it's not surprising when I'm like going to bed. Okay. Now, like, why are you going to bed? It's eight o'clock. I mean, my daughter has said to me before it's like six, she goes, I'm going to bed, mom. Like for the night? She goes, I don't know, maybe. And she put herself to bed like six o'clock at night because she was tired from staying up late or doing whatever, you know, teenage years. Okay. Whatever you need. Whatever your body needs. Another way that we can give ourselves, or another area that we can give ourselves grace is when we're not showing up as our best self. Who feels that? There's just moments when we're impatient. There's moments when we could be emotionally reactive, or we're out of alignment, or we're snippy, or we're, you know, someone's having a party and they're so excited for this party and we show up and we're tired and we're just quiet in the corner. You know, all of these times we could be judging ourselves. You know? I try to meet it at the past. I try to call it out before someone else calls it out. And here's what's fascinating about that. When I call it out before somebody else does, it brings so much awareness to it, I stop doing it. Isn't that wild? Because if I'm just being impatient and snippy and snappy and I'm kind of ignoring it and I'm autopiloting my way through. But when I say, you know what, I'm kind of cranky today, or I'm tired, or I'm impatient, or I'm irritable, or I'm whatever I am. What I notice, I become so conscious of it that I stopped doing it. And I just got another DM and I forgot, I haven't been checking your guys' DMs. I'm so sorry. Sally said, I understand moving on in theory, but I really I relive mistakes over and over in my mind, replaying what I could have done differently. I really have a hard time with letting that go. Who can relate? Can anybody relate to that? The replaying of the mistakes in your mind. Yes. Okay. See, you're not alone, Sally. All right. And here's what I got for you. It's a habit. You're wired for that right now because you've been doing it for so long, it's now become a habit. So know that you can break that habit. Remember, the brain is a set of programs and conditioning. It's wired in certain ways. It's very similar to a computer, and it will keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. Until we go, yeah, I don't like that. I don't really like that. Dr. Joe Dispens's book, we break the habit of being ourselves, the old self, the self that is that we're not enjoying. So when it comes to replaying the mistakes over and over and over again, let me go back to what your message said so I don't mess this up. Oh, replaying what I could have done differently. Okay. So I think that's healthy to go back and say, oh yeah, that didn't quite work. What could I do differently next time? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Where it becomes a problem is, oh God, I should have done it differently. I wish I would have. That was terrible. I'm embarrassed. Ugh, that wasn't empowered, whatever it might be. That's where it's a problem. How about, well, flip. You know what? Instead of saying I could have done it differently, I've changed that narrative in my own mind to next time I'm going to do blank. And I let it be a learning experience and I shut the book and I move on. And that takes practice. It just takes practice because a lot of us will ruminate. I have a girlfriend who actually likes, she calls it stewing and she loves it. I just need to stew for a while. That's what she says to me. I'm like, who wants to stew? I don't like stewing, it feels gross. And if we're really in the market to raise our vibrational frequency and to heal ourselves, we have to understand what works for us and what doesn't. So I always say, even when it comes to pity parties, I'm all about a pity party, you guys, but not staying in it. Move the energy and move on. That's it. Complain, moan, do what you need to do, get it out and be done. And there's been times when I've been in that mode, and then all of a sudden I will say to somebody, okay, I'm done. I just needed to get that out because I don't want to stay in it. And they're like, oh, okay. Like, and they're kind of happy. You know? But yeah, just making the conscious choice. So going back to the thing, the mistake, or whatever you could have done differently. I get it. I so get it. Do a little uh debriefing with yourself. Go debrief it. Like, I know, you know, I could have done this differently. I'm next time, here's what I'm going to do. And that's one of the reframes I do with clients. When they say, I should have, I could have, I'm like, yeah, you could have, and you, you could have, but you didn't. So let's set you up for the next time because there is gonna be a next time. And let's get you really grounded in that. And also I love pre-paving. I've talked about this before, where prepaving is if I know that I'm gonna enter in an environment where a certain something might come up and my old knee-jerk response might be X, Y, Z, I pre-pave before. And I do two things. I do number one, I do what will I do when blank happens, and I root myself in that so that it's so conscious, it's the first thing I do. Okay, first thing. Second thing is I also imagine best case scenario. Walking in, and let's say, you know, I just can't come up with something on the fly, but let's say you're gonna go hang out with somebody, and this person is extremely negative and gnarly, and they they seem to attack you all the time, or this type of thing. And again, first case is I'm gonna pre-pave how I'm gonna handle this before I go in. I'm gonna set that up in advance. I'm gonna be really conscious in my mind. If person does this, here's my response. Whatever that might be. Healthy, loving way. Okay. The second thing I might do is I just imagine and envision everything going swimmingly well. They're not being drama, they're not being anything. It's just going really well. All right. Thank you for joining me, Amani.

Imani 35:40

Ah, yeah, I think for all of us, it's easier for us to give grace to everyone else, but it's hard for us to extend grace to ourselves. Because we are our biggest critic just as much as we are our greatest cheerleader. And it depends on our environment and how we were raised and how we grew up. And sometimes we allow ourselves to stay in neutral in that positioning because, hey, that's all I've seen, that's all I've known, that's all I've witnessed. But when you say, hey, what if it's better? What if you're the person meant to change the narrative of how your life and how your family is supposed to operate? What if you're meant to be the guiding example? Maybe you're supposed to be the chainbreaker. And you can say, you know what? We're gonna do something differently about this. This this didn't work, it hasn't worked. But what if it's better? Let's try something new. And I like to say, let me fail forward, not backward. And when I say fail forward, I'm giving myself permission to discover what really works and what doesn't.

Kristen 36:50

Yeah.

Imani 36:52

When we don't give ourselves permission, we stay in neutral.

Kristen 36:55

And that's great. That's actually grace. Giving yourself permission to wave through it and discover what's working and what doesn't work.

Imani 37:04

Yeah, and it also helps us to learn have our boundaries been working? Do we need to adjust set boundaries? Do we need to create new ones? Because in life, the tests are always going to come back around. Why? It's like when, you know, for a doctor and a nurse, you know, they have to re-credential their, you know, license. They have to re-credential every so often, whether it's every year or every three years, why? To make sure they're still up on what they know. That's a great way to look at it. It's the same concept for us, is okay, did we learn the lesson from the last experience to now know what to do next time? Because the next time's coming. It might come a different way, a different shape, a different form. But did we learn the lesson from that experience to help us grow, to help us become the better individual? We were meant to be anyway. That's the biggest thing is giving ourselves that space and that grace to be ourselves and to process. I know for myself, I wasn't allowed to process growing up. You weren't allowed to have feelings, you were just to put up and shut up, you were to be seen, not heard. And this is the way it is until you pay some bills up in here. That's how it was. It's very de facto. Military family, de facto. This is the way it is. You don't like it too bad. Whereas now, once we become adults, we get to take some of that power back to be like, you know what, that didn't work for me as a child. What could be different to help me work through my things now as an adult? I don't have to go back to my prior conditioning. I can create a new habit, I can create a new tradition for myself to continue to grow and expand and be joyful and be hopeful. And when we give ourselves that permission, man, the people connected to us, we give them permission too because they're like, hey, wait a minute, you're doing that and you're joyful. You still have a smile on your face despite everything that's going on around you. Now I know it's not just me. I see what you're doing. How are you making it? And that opens the door for you to be like, you know what, this is what's worked for me. Maybe it'll work for you. Take a chance on yourself. It's about taking a chance on yourself because you are worth taking a chance on. You are worth finding out what works for you, not the general public, not the whole population, not social media. But hey, what works for me? And then be okay with it and not explain it. Just stay in your truth, resonate it, and continue to shine.

Jennifer 39:45

Love you.

You're going to figure this out

Guest Two: Peter

Kristen 39:46

Love you. Thanks, Amani. Nice landing there. You stuck the landing. Awesome. Right. You know, one of the things that I say to people, and I mean this, and it's it is dripping with grace. And that is when somebody messed up or didn't get the thing or is having the trouble in one particular area. I have said to them, and I say it wholeheartedly, 100%. I'll say, you know what? You're gonna figure this out. You're gonna figure this out. See how much grace is in that? What if you just said that to yourself? You're gonna figure this out. You're gonna figure this out. But you know, I say it in I. I'll figure this out. I'm gonna figure this out. I'll I'll figure this out. And I've heard myself say that to other people. So keep in mind, too, what you say to others, you will start saying to yourself. And what you say to yourself, you will start saying to others because it'll start to become normal. It'll start to become part of your language, it'll become part of your thinking. So this is why I was saying we can retrain ourselves to give ourselves grace. And it just takes one, the first step. It just takes consciousness, it just takes awareness, it just takes, you know what? I'm not gentle with myself, I'm not compassionate and understanding with myself, and I want to be. So I'm gonna dedicate myself to this and I'm gonna do whatever it takes because dog on it, Kristen made some powerful points today. Peter Carrington, what a beautiful picture.

Peter 41:14

Sis, what's happening? I have trouble with doing the stuff I know, knowing better, not doing it, and then saying, Oh, damn, I screwed up. I know better than this. And like giving myself grace for that is kind of a thing for me. So I've been kind of working on that. I'll give you an example from this morning. I had a coffee relapse this morning. Like I woke up, I wasn't in the greatest space, don't know why, but I'm like, I need to wake up. So I made a half a cup of coffee. I made coffee pretty strongly, and it showed in my blood pressure reading about an hour later. So there is a correlation there. I wasn't imagining it, but yeah, it's just it's a work in progress. But for me, when it comes to grace, it's the things that I know to do that I'm not doing or I fail to do, is when I really need to reset and give myself some grace and just keep keep it moving, man. Like that's my thing.

Kristen 42:02

And do you do that, Peter?

Peter 42:04

Yeah, I try to do that. I don't always do it, but I I I try I tried to do it. But I wasn't doing it so well today until your talk came on. Then I started to move a little differently, right? Yeah, no, I'm I'm just keeping it real. Like this was not a great morning, it wasn't a horrible morning, but I wasn't in great space because I wasn't happy with um with me drinking my coffee. I've been monitoring my blood pressure day and night, once in the morning, once in the evening, and my my readings have been good, but slight fluctuations, but pretty good. And then I went ahead and had that coffee this morning, along with stress. That's what kind of prompted the coffee, I think. So that was that that seeking behavior, you know, I'm in recovery, and that's still like a carved neuro uh pathway in my brain to seek something outside of myself to feel better. And this morning was coffee, right? But it's not great for my health, so I really have to uh stay focused. But the answer to that is uh I'm trying. I'm trying.

Kristen 43:00

You right, so you feel in some kind of a way, you reach for some coffee, your blood pressure went up, and then you're like, okay. And a choice, I our choice at that moment is to say to ourselves, all right, I really just can't drink coffee. All right, it's this is this caffeine's gonna go away, it's gonna, it's gonna metabolize, I'm fine. But I just I just learned something, that's all. Someone I know recently, I won't go into their medical history, but they ate something and when they or something was flaring up for them, and I said, What'd you eat? Oh, nor all the normal things. They said, Are you sure? And then they said, Well, I had a couple of bite of pot stickers at work, and I said, You know this and this and this with that. And they're like, Really? You think that would do it? I said, I promise you, give yourself 24 hours. 24 hours, boom. They they they were through they were through the thing, and they're like, Wow, just another this is what they said, wow, I really can't eat that, can I? Yeah, it's just another reminder. That's all, you know, we have to see that if this doesn't work for me.

Peter 43:56

Yeah, and that's the beauty of this app. That's the beauty of your talks like. We can relate to each other and and listen to people who are going through similar situations. And it just it just really lends to community and empathy and that equals self-compassion, self-forgiveness in my case, and grace. So hearing it from your mouth, like I'm feeling better already. Like literally energetically, I feel better already. Behind me, and uh the day is to be continued. Thanks for having me out.

Kristen 44:22

Love you, brother. Thanks for coming. And I love that picture. It looks like a professional photo. Like you and Jet went to JCPenney's and posed. It's it's really great. I love that. And I love that blue shirt. That's amazing. Oh my goodness, you guys. I love you. I feel like crying. You guys are the best. I know I'm. Oh, your daughter is a photographer. It does. It looks like a professional photo. Okay. Let me see. We got a couple other messages here. Sally said she doesn't like waking when it's dark. I don't have a set alarm. I generally wake naturally when the sun is just starting to come up. I love that. I can now verbalize that I'm hangry. That's great. And Sally said, I will avoid situations that may experience embarrassment. I don't know why that particular feeling is so extremely uncomfortable to me, more so than any other. I'm aware of it, but still bound by it. I'm trying to work through it. Lots of judgment and shaming in my childhood, which I still carry with me. I can push through and do things that scare me. I'm wondering if the fear will ever leave me. Yes. It absolutely will, Sally. 1000%. You have it nailed, by the way. That again, brain programming. You have anything you do, you were attacked, you were shamed, you were criticized. So your brain goes, oop, I do something new. This is what happens. All right. It's like Pavlov's dog. You ring the bell and the dogs salivate because they knew they were going to be fed. It's the same thing. So breaking it down to that and just knowing that that embarrassment is just a feeling. That's all it is. It's just an emotion based on fear. So I'm I am fearing that blank is going to happen when I do this thing over here. And just understanding first and foremost, that's all it is. And then looking around, like let's say I'm just going to use this example. Someone wants to go to a yoga class and they're scared, they're embarrassed that people are going to look. Go just walk up and look in the window that yoga class a couple times. Anybody looking at each other? Anybody judging anybody? And then you can start to retrain yourself for a new truth. And I've had to do this. I've had to do this with so many things in my life. Where I had to retrain myself for a new truth and say, this is what's real. This, these people, this situation, this circumstance, this whatever it might be, is my past. It's my past in the present. And I'm not going to allow my past to be in the present. Those people that did that to me are not here right now in this particular situation. And even if they were, I know that they're wounded. They were just spewing out what was coming from their insides. Okay. They were just giving me glimpses into themselves. That's really what that was. I know that's hard. I'm not minimizing this, by the way, you guys. You guys know that based on my 900 talks here. Not minimizing this. But I want to give some like real life examples of how to move through this. And that's really retraining ourselves, retraining ourselves. And when you do start to give yourself grace, because what you weren't given, my beloved sister, is grace. You had no one saying to you, it's okay, babe, you're going to get it next time. Or it's okay, this, or yeah, I know we all make mistakes sometimes. Or it's all right, you got to see this time. You know, that was hot, that was physics. That's hard. You didn't have anybody filling in that grace gap for you. So your body literally doesn't know what that looks like right now. Think about that. It wasn't there. It doesn't, it's gonna be brand new. Brand new. You're you're gonna have an you're forming a new identity, is what you're doing. An identity of I give myself grace and it's okay. And I don't know what this feels like yet because I'm not used to it, but I will be. Remember, I can't express to you guys how horrible I was to myself internally for for decades until I wasn't. And now it's just grace, grace, grace, grace, and it's it's now natural because it's become part of my programming. So also knowing that the more you practice it, the better you're gonna get with it. And it's not that you're getting better, it just becomes natural. It's kind of like your knee-jerk response is gentle. It just becomes that way. So, Sally, you keep going, sister. Your awareness is absolutely stellar. You're right on point. I can tell you have done a lot of intraflection, a lot of um introspection, a lot of self-reflection, and a lot of healing work. So you can't get to these deep awarenesses without that. So freaking kudos to you, sister. Give yourself a big high five and a pat on the back. It sounds like you might have had a rough one, a rough go of it growing up. And like Imani was talking about, you're you're breaking the pathology. You're cracking the system. You there's a fork in the road on your family pathology, and where everybody's going right, you're going left. You're like, I'm not doing that anymore. I'm super proud of you. So thank you for that. I hope that answers your question, at least gives you a little, a little insight. All right, you guys, I think that's it for today. I'm so grateful for Amani and Peter for coming up and also for Sally's back channeling DMs. Excellent job, everybody. Like I said, I always want to cry. I my heart is so open on here, and you guys completely rock. And I am eternally grateful. We're eternally grateful for you. And yeah, Sally, I had a feeling, girl. She just said very in all caps, rough childhood, and I've done a ton in all caps of work. More to do though, thank you. Yes, heart, yes. Well, it's showing, okay? It's showing. We are we're continuing works in progress, but wow, I'm impressed by you. Good job. High five. I'm gonna hit the phone. That's me high fiving you. Excellent job, excellent job. Thanks for listening, everybody. So much love to each and every one of you. Hope you're having a really great holiday season, and I look forward to talk with you again tomorrow. Much love, everybody.