The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Our minds create narratives—but lasting progress comes from direct experience, not imagined outcomes.

How often do we mistake the stories in our minds for reality? In this episode, I reflect on the difference between intellectualizing and living, using the early stages of launching her nonprofit, Healthcare Empowerment Initiative (HEI), as an example. I explore why growth requires direct experience, how our “internal weather” can distort our perceptions, and why meaningful progress comes from taking the next real step—not from believing the narratives our minds create.

Walk with me.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Good morning everybody. Welcome to Embodied Wisdom. Um, it's a drizzly morning today. A little humid. I haven't been out on a drizzly morning recently. I haven't done a walk in a drizzly morning. It's interesting. Perspective different. Amazing how different it feels on a sunny day, right, than a rainy day. It's interesting how the weather can affect us. So the weather comes in many forms, right? The weather affects outside of us, but we also have kind of internal weather, right? Um like waking up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak, you know. So sometimes what's going on with us internally, we're not we're not sure. Kind of like the weather, you know. We wake up in the morning, we look outside, that's the weather. I think sometimes uh there's all these things that affect the weather. I don't know really anything about the weather, but I know a lot about I think I know a lot about internal weather. So I've been reflecting a lot, a lot, a lot, on how little time we actually spend doing and experiencing and letting that decide uh what we want to do next, versus creating a functionality in our mind, creating a predictability in our mind, and um and then moving from that space. So then we think it's not going right. Something's not going right because of the the idea that we had about it. So we're not learning so much from direct experience. And I was just reading something about how smarter people, right, think. And I don't know if this is really, but I guess it depends on how you look at intelligence, but I think they're talking about just like being in your um actually just it's a certain like I I I would they're calling it intelligence, what I read because it's neuroscience, but everybody describes intelligence in different ways. So I think I'm talking more about intellectualization, um, so using your mind to think about what you're gonna do and plan it out or whatever. And it's basically like those people are less productive, like intelligent people could be less productive the way they're defining intelligence because they're using a part of this brain, they're analyzing, reanalyzing, thinking about it, wondering about it, and they're not doing it. They're thinking about it, they're wondering about it, they're reanalyzing it, they're planning it. It's it but it's not real, they're not doing it. I've talked about this in other contexts before, but I think the idea of like, are you gonna base your goals on the weather, you know, like how you feel that day, what you're thinking that day, kind of like the way you wake up in the morning, like that is that's silly, because then you're easily gonna get deterred because it's you know, just like people like, oh, I I walked four days in a row. I can't believe it, it's raining today. That's gonna interrupt my goals. That's gonna interrupt my process. I mean, really, like, you know, like we can't let our internal weather, which is like a thought that ran through your head, change the larger goal. But we do. We do because we're so busy in our heads planning everything. If you're interested in this podcast, I would say that you just live a lot in your mind. You know, you live a lot in your head. In the what-ifs, in the what could be, in the way that you woke up in the morning, the weather. And the weather's fickle, our minds are fickle. Our minds are fickle. So truly, and I mean by fickle, we can look at it like in astrology, the moon represents the mind. And every day, the moon, and it's a no that 28 to 30 day cycle, that's the month. And the moon moves in the sky every single day. You know, there's other planets, they they hang out longer in each sector of the sky, like, you know, each constellation. Because although it can seem abstract, the idea of astrology and astronomy and how planets move around, if you just look at it at energy, you know, into the more mystical or the meaningful aspects of it, like you know, how you create meaning out of those energies, then that's what I'm sort of saying about the idea. You wake up, the moon's in this part of the sky, it the energy affects your body and your mind in this way, and so our minds are fickle. So to make decisions through our mind's eye, opposed to our direct experience on the ground, it doesn't make any sense. It really, really doesn't make a lot of sense. But that like kind of we're like nonsensical, so like that's okay, you know, that's okay. Because I was thinking about this because as I move forward with some of my projects, so that this week I had a meeting, is this as an example, with recently established a nonprofit agency. Uh, and its name is HEI or the Health Empowerment Initiative. And I I'm not exactly sure what it's gonna do yet, but basically I feel after here we go, years of direct observation, years and years and years, that having a space to objectively study had to best help clinicians and patients and the system itself, maybe survive itself to help people feel that they have, I'm going to say, a certain degree of personal agency and certainty around the decisions they're making in healthcare. And I don't care if that's a clinician, I don't care if if that's a um, if that's a patient, I don't care who you are, it's difficult. And I've heard this in my practice over and over again, stories like this, but I'm gonna allude to a story from podcasts that this woman that I sat with put me on to. She was listening to my ideas, so I went to her like as a potential funding source. Like she's gonna fund this. This thing I just started. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not I'm not sure what it is. I have ideas about directions to go in, but I know nothing of the nonprofit sector. I know not, and and so I'm compelled enough to create this because I've observed enough to know that I wanted to create an entity like this, like take it out of the one to one, one, one, one, one, you know, person and create a larger framework from that. So here's like a personal goal from my experience, my direct experience. But in my mind, I'm like, uh, I'm just gonna and lately I've been calling myself like the narrative peddler. I don't know, that's not really a sexy name. Peddling narratives. I don't know, it's like it's like making up stories. So I'm saying peddling narratives. It's like, I'm gonna go to this woman. I know her from the past, she's connected to my family, and she's just gonna be like, Brooke, this is a great idea. And I'm gonna have one meeting with this thing I established entity established, with having done no direct research, with having spoken to no one about this, just had in my head with myself, and I'm gonna predict how this is all gonna happen. I have no direct experience with it. So, anyway, so she puts me on, like, right, she's listening to me, and then she puts me on. So, this is how these things happen in real life. So she's listening to me, and she says, Oh, do you know of this podcast? It's Malcol Malcolm, you know, Malcolm Clow. I'm like, Oh, yes, yes, I know him. Um, and she's like, There's this podcast about this man, a friend of his, who is a crisis management guy. That's what he does for a living, and then he finds that he has this complicated prostate cancer situation. And he talks about his process. He interviewed 18 doctors, 18 doctors, before he could come to a conclusion, and they all said something different. A lot of them said different things, it was conflicting opinions, but the thing that it came back to for him, the thing it came back to for him in the end, oh it's getting drizzly. Oh, is it gonna be fun? We're gonna get rain done. This is so funny. It's like such a rebel. I'm out in the rain, no raincoat. Oh my god. Anyway, um, you should just take a walk in a rain with no raincoat every so often. It's a good pattern interrupt from, you know, I don't know, these things that are supposed to happen in your mind. Anyway, you know how how we're supposed to go out if it's raining. Um so hopefully it won't rain too hard though. Or maybe it'll just be a funny podcast. Anyway, so so um, so I'm realize, you know, so okay, so I'm listening to this. I listened to the podcast after she says this. She's exactly on to what it is that I'm trying to accomplish. I mean, she I'm obviously expressing it well enough that she has offered me this podcast back. But meanwhile, I'm like, where's the money? Where's the money? You're offering me this podcast, but but meanwhile, in my experience of it, I'm having a great time. I'm listening to this podcast, I'm thinking this woman really gets me. She understands where I'm going. She's giving me these different resources, people to talk to, and she's like, I think you're at that stage. You know, you really need to go around and learn, which is the whole point of why I'm establishing this, is to learn how this organization, not me, can impact healthcare around people's decisions and how they're operating within the system and help them out. It's not meant to change the system, it's not meant to wish it was different, it's not meant to any other thing. This is what it is. She's like, so go be what it is. So, anyway, she sends a podcast. I'm listening to this. And one the most important thing the man says, as far as I'm concerned, is he felt in charge. He was in charge of his health care. He wasn't making up stories in his head if he's gonna live or die. He wasn't, he wasn't listening to the first doctor. But he didn't, he himself is a crisis manager person, so he can process this himself. But what about everybody else that gets this type of experience? Where do they process this? Where who can they trust? And this was about, you know, a trust. It was called the trust dilemma, the name of the podcast. And and so interesting, his process about how he trusted someone, what led him to trust somebody. And then one of the things that I said to her, she's like, well, why a nonprofit? I was like, because I wanted to make it trustworthy. And I'm like, oh, look at oh, wait, she's hearing exactly what I'm saying, and then she's putting me onto that reflects it back. I mean, it's like, wow, I have come far enough in this journey that I can express what this is. I created it from I can express it. Wow. Well, no, where's the money? I made that up. I made it up in my mind. This is how this works. I know nothing about it. So it's like the weather. It's like, oh, this morning I woke up and it's sunny out or it's raining. I'm making it up. It's like whatever weather came through. That's what I'm basing these decisions on. Not on direct experience. So, in other words, that felt great. And later that day it felt shitty. Why? Well, because I thought it was gonna go this other way. I mean, I thought it was just gonna be done. I wasn't gonna have to. So, in other words, I'm peddling narratives, I'm making up stories and them going around, and then they're upsetting me. So, this is what I mean about like the weather in our minds. It's like it's I don't even know what it's based in. Like nothing happened. Except I had an idea that I made up about how this was gonna go or the timing of it, which could create disappointment, except I am not disappointed. The other ideas she gave me so interesting. So interesting. I enjoyed every minute of the conversation. I thought, ooh, this is fun. But I'm like, where's the money? Like, I don't even know why I'm thinking like that. I don't. Now, I'm not saying the goal isn't to to fund this organization, of course it is. But I know nothing about funding an organization, I know nothing about what goes into it. I know that, and in that, I keep saying that, but I don't mean that as a negative, I mean it as a positive. How nice is it to go into something clean and clear, and then want to naturally let it evolve, like grassroots. So if you ask me at this point in my life, at this point of my career, if I could be brave enough to do something like this, if I thought about it, I would be so impressed with myself, if you ask my my past self, because I was so aggravated by having to do everything a certain way and everything the same way, and everything the way I was taught to do it, and that's in my career, in my family, it doesn't matter where. And now I have started something from scratch, and I'm not sure what it is. I mean, we're talking complete, I'm not gonna even say 180, 360 of how I've operated prior. It's like I broke out. Well, I'm going, but I didn't. I did, but I didn't. So I'm learning from my direct experience, but which one am I gonna choose? Because now I'm like, oh, I don't know. I don't know, like what if this is just like dead in the water? Like, what like wait, wait, this doesn't really have life unless I breathe it into it. And I'm thinking it's alive. It's alive, like, like, and it maybe it is. This is so pretty. Oh, rainy day pretty.

unknown 15:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Rainy day pretty.

unknown 16:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Um interesting, rainy day pretty. I think I should start using that one. That's a good one. Like when people when I sell someone, they come in, they look pretty. They tell me they don't feel pretty, or they're like, or when I say, like, how what's going on with you? You're right. I'm like, why? Do I look bad? I'm like, well, yeah, like your forehead's all like crinkled up and stressed out. Um, so wait, did that mean I don't look good? No, that doesn't mean you don't look good. I'm just looking at the part of you that's stressed out, right? But again, I would call that rainy day pretty.

unknown 16:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Because if you're pretty, you're pretty every day. Uh it doesn't matter. So, and it's also about how you define pretty. So, anyway, we our minds are look are always looking for meaning. So, that's another important piece of this, right? So, if I don't give it meaning, like I don't go, no, this is the proper inform my mind that this is the proper stage that I am at. I am in the uh connection phase, I'm in the asking questions phase, I'm in the wondering phase, I'm in the and I said I don't want to have to shop around for a funder. This isn't, it's not shopping around, it's having conversations in a sector and learning and educating myself about the nature of how these things work, the partnerships, the collaborations, the nature of it all. And I have not at all lived in that world, and so I don't even know the nature of it.

unknown 17:46

Right?

SPEAKER_00 17:46

So that's the stage I'm at. It's not a failure because she wasn't like, oh yes, this is perfect for us. Instead, she was like, Seems like you have no experience here, and I'm like, oh, right, wait. So it's not, I don't know, when we have goals that we want to accomplish and we make them bigger, you know, and better than they are in our mind. I'm not taking away from that because I don't know, that's like a I don't know that that's motivating. I wouldn't say like me wanting to get this funded is motivating me to go talk to these people. So that's not the problem. The problem is that's real. The problem is is these stories that I'm making up, which is like deciding why one day is sunny and the other day is which there's stuff behind it, right? Like think the weather patterns, the name, there's stuff behind what our minds are producing. It's not that, there's plenty of influences. Like, let's not say how many influences there are in our minds that we don't even know about. You know, there's a and I might have mentioned this before, but there's this idea that 60% of what's running through our minds is connected to our ancestry. It's not even our thoughts. And so sometimes I'll hear someone say something. Oh, and now the sun's coming out. See, it's so fickle. Nice though. Nice. This reminds me of um, I don't know, you know, the summer, the summer reminds me of like summer camp rainy days. So there's something about it stays with you, lingers. Those type of memories in your body. Anyway, so um. So if we realize that, oh, like that would be like this, like, oh, the sun came out, right? Oh, yay, I feel better. Kind of like if someone was like, uh, oh, I know somebody who would be interested in that. And then my that, like, and then instead of being like, great, I'd love to have a conversation. I'm like, are they gonna give me money? Are they gonna be like it's like Brooke? No, no, maybe. So it's not that the motivation is wrong, it's the stories we make up about the motivation, and and then it'll be like, and then I'll even, oh, this is even a fun one. This is really fun one I picked up on it. Was like, oh, like I meant to speak to her, and then she's gonna give me the next thread, and this is all meant to be, and so I'm gonna follow that thread, and and maybe there's truth to that too. But you see what I'm doing here? It's all in my mind. I had the one meeting, I know she heard me. To me, that's a huge first step, but to my mind, or whoever is other influences, or the ancestors, or whatever is being in my mind, it's like, nope, nope, nothing happened. Or that's a failure, or how are you gonna keep this going now? Seriously, like what are you gonna do next? I mean, how long is this gonna take? Wow, this is a pretty big project. Uh yeah, it's a pretty big project. Well, I remember the beginning of my career, this this my current career. I talked to a lot of people. I don't know, I talked to a lot of people, and I learned. And I modified and I went forward, and I and my degree took, God help me, seven years. So that was all training for this. But meanwhile, I'm just gonna walk into this naked and be like, clothe me with no experience, and and I might have passion. She definitely picked up on my passion, and I did too, which was really nice to experience. So, in other words, I had fun, I got really good information. I then started following up on the information. And all of those things were like it was it was very, I don't know, I'm gonna say satisfying, enriching. Educational. It was nice to be in a new land. And she went on. She went on to give me information about, you know, the things I talked about. Because that part of what I was talking about was about, you know, a lot about personal agency, like the clinicians having personal agency. So I was talking about how, you know, if you're if you're a clinician in the system in a system and you want to help someone, but you but you don't have the power to. And the biggest one I see, especially in these larger systems, is time. And I also see that that there's a lot of referring out, right? That's why that's why I think the healthcare, so I don't know if this is true, is so clogged. Why you have to wait so long? It's because if you just go to the doctor about a basic stomachache, they won't like give you a medication before you confirm you have IBS with the GI. I mean, this is a this is what's happening, and it's difficult, it's difficult for everybody, right? So anyway, so I say that to her. She's like, oh, that's very interesting. And she's like, well, who would who do you want to talk to in the end about this? And I'm like, oh, well, I said, like, oh, well, I'm looking to maybe maybe the system would be interested because if we understand more about this, then we can affect clinician burnout. She's like, oh, well, that's interesting because think about how much money it is to up, you know, to get people going. And then she's talking about how in the nonprofit sector they can't get people to take jobs because um they're they don't pay enough. And she's like, well, that's interesting too. And I was like, yeah, that's all very and she's saying, and then she goes, I can see what you're doing here. I I can I get a better feel of it, but like what you wrote, it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't really say anything about why this organization is fundable, like what you actually plan to do. And I'm like, oh well, she goes, I'm understanding now more that you're talking about it, and I'm like thinking that whatever written materials I came up with doesn't reflect that. Well, that's really important. But when she heard me, she reflected back exactly what I wanted to do. And then of course I want to figure out like, how do I get from here to there to providing the service that allows for people to just come in, meanwhile, I'm saying I have no idea how to do this, and I want to study it first. I want to have the conversations, I want to study it, I want it to be organic, and then I want to create it, and then I want to put it out in the world. So I want to fund something that's not fundable yet and call it a failure because it's not, you know, it's like wow. And so, you know, this is when you could get that idea of the get rich quick scheme. Like, yeah, things might go viral, you know, something someone said, something, but also, but the things that really stick, like, I don't, and I won't even say this, I don't even know. Like, people work very hard to make things stick. People put a lot of work in, they take a lot of steps. When you look back at what they've done, you know, one of the best examples of this for me, my 80s baby, is 70s baby, but the 80s grew up in the 80s, is Rocky. Sylvester Stallone. You watch a documentary on him and you see what he put into those movies, and then you understand why you love them and they're iconic. Because things that are like done overnight that don't have that the nature of that level of that work put in, and this is what I mean, it's it's scary to take what's in your mind and put it and do it for people who intellectualize. And I think this is my message. Don't base the like base your expert the way you feel on your actual experiences. So if you wake up in the morning and the weather's bad, don't let the weather be what gauges your experience. Okay, don't let the weather be that. Let it let it be um something else. Right? Something real, something you experienced. So this is when that neuro the neuroscientist was talking about the difference between the people who do and the people who think about doing and over-analyze it and overanalyze it and overanalyze it. It's a different breed. It's like a different way people operate, and they're talking about that being intelligence, but I don't know, maybe maybe we have we have, you know, that I think we're in a world where we're starting to actually re think intelligence, and um that's important too, because we're sort of saying, oh, it's okay now to work. Hi, good morning. Work with um your hands, like you know, working with your hands is back, um, because we're now in a world where I think this is influenced by AI, you know, like we don't need people as much anymore to do thinking or to collect information. Let's say that. Not we need people to be thinking. I'm sorry, I don't mean that, but I mean that working with our hands now could is begin becoming again important or deemed as important career paths um over just merely intellectualized ones. So I say all of this because I'm sort of saying that intelligence comes in many forms, and thinking about things over and over and reanalyzing them in your mind and not doing them, right, is because the fear takes over, and if you're thinking about things over and over again, it's like you're basing your goals on the weather patterns, not on what you set out to do and your experience of it. So, what I a meeting that I could have can easily considered a failure because it didn't go the way I planned it, or the mission, it you know, it's like it's like this. I just got this thing in my mind, because I guess it's also based on whatever I'm watching or attending to. It's like you don't send the spaceship up, okay. How much work, how much work is it before you spent send the spaceship up? Right? It's a lot of work. So if I want to go from zero to sending the spaceship up in six months, uh, you know, it's not realistic. Now, maybe I have been building the plans for the spaceship for a lot of years, and that's been quiet. But the minute now it hit outside of me, now it hits that reality, right? So we could think about it, we can add us. I'm not saying it's it's not relevant or relative or important. I'm saying it's I'm saying it's just one leg of the journey, and then we have to execute. So it's not that that intellectualization is not an important part, but you cannot base your goals on it because it's too superfluous to do that, it's too dicey to do that. I'm seeing some very large crows here sending me a message. So if you have hopes and dreams that are yet to be fulfilled, have the courage to see them through in real life, to get them outside of you, to not keep thinking about them, to have direct experience, and then base the next step of whatever you're doing on that experience. Not on the weather, not on what your mind says, on what actually is happening. So, leave you with that. Thanks as always for joining me. Hope you enjoyed, and walk with me again soon. Next week will be our 4th of July edition. Let's see what comes up for that. Okay, take care.