Hi, everyone. This is Kristin Maxwell and you’re listening to Your SuperPowered Mind where we explore the process of transformation and give you tools and strategies you can use to transform your own life. Our subject today is particularly interesting; it’s “Using the Current Political Climate for Personal Growth and Development.”
And we have, not just one, but two guests. I could spend, really, probably the entire show telling you about their really amazing backgrounds but I’m going to give you some of the highlights.
Our first guest, Donna Lipman, is a master integrative coach with an extensive history with the Ford Institute. She was one of only two people from the Ford, other than Debbie Ford to lead The Shadow Process workshop. She has also worked with JFK University where she taught live training programs as a professor and she now works as a contractor for the University of Texas, teaching entrepreneurs presentation skills.
The other guest, Kathy Hertz, is also a lifestyle strategist and coach and a refugee activist with an extensive background in government, politics and activism. Kathy has received awards for her work, including the Point of Light Award from the George H. W. Bush Foundation. Both of them have co-authored an intriguingly titled book, Beyond Resistance: Coping with the Stress of the Trump Era, an essential guide. So Donna and Kathy, welcome to the show.
I am a shadow buster.
Thank you so much.
Good morning.
Good morning. I’m so excited. I love learning about you and your backgrounds, and also loving that you’ve taken on directly a subject that is really at the forefront of very, very many people’s brains, which is what the stress that’s happening right now in our climate. Before we start talking about the book and all of that, my first question is always, what superpower did you discover as a result of mastering your mind?
So I’ll start. This is Donna and my superpower is that I am a shadow buster. So, people might be wondering, “What the heck is a shadow buster?” The shadow being those parts of us that we hide, deny, and suppress. We don’t want people to know the parts of us that we think are bad or just not pretty. So we hide those parts of us from others and sometimes even from ourselves. And so what I am able to do is to help people, guide people to go inside and bring those shadows up so we can explore them a little bit, understand them, and choose differently in our lives.
That is an incredible skill. As I was telling you guys, briefly before we talked, this shadow work is really an amazing concept of really looking at and understanding those parts of yourselves that never really made sense and you were never totally comfortable with.
Our job is to help people bring that beach ball up gently and explore that.
Yeah. As you mentioned, the climate right now, in our country, is just ripe for understanding the shadow. I liken the shadow to a beach ball where we, as kids, went into the water, into the swimming pool and we had this nice big beach ball, and we’d jump on top of it, and we try and keep it under the water, but as soon as our attention is taken off of that beach ball, what happens to it? It pops up. And where does it usually hit us? Right in the face? Well, that’s kind of like the shadow.
So, at the moment, you don’t want that beach ball to pop up, here it comes, and it takes you by surprise and you’re wondering, “What the heck happened here?” And so our job, Kathy and I both are experts in this arena, is to help people bring that beach ball up gently and explore that. And so, in this political climate, we have so many opportunities to see those parts of ourselves that we do not like.
Yes. I am smiling. I cannot wait to go deeper into exploring how our feelings about the world now, what they tell us about ourselves and what’s going on inside of us. Quickly, let’s move over to Kathy. Actually, I didn’t mean Kathy, you speak quickly, but let’s move over to you and ask, what’s your superpower?
I would say that my superpower is self-confidence and self-trust because when you mention mastering your mind, I think of that as what we call in our book, the fatal four. It’s four things that happen, that kind of stop us dead in our tracks, usually, when we have an idea of what we want to do, or be, or accomplish.
Your self-trust really become powerful tools in creating what you want in your life.
Then what happens is that monkey chatter, which is number one, starts telling us in our mind, relating back to shadow, all the reasons why we can’t, or shouldn’t, or it won’t work, or we’re not good enough, all of these things that monkey just keeps going. Once you can identify it, you cannot allow it to sabotage you and so your self-confidence, your self-trust really become powerful tools in creating what you want in your life.
And just quickly, the other three that are part of the fatal four are comparison and judgment. Once you start comparing yourselves to others, it’s a losing game. Once you can stop that, you also increase your own ability to create what you want. The other is excuses, making excuses and being in self-righteousness.
So all of these things are what I consider to be the concept of mastering your mind and understanding them all, and getting a handle on those things has really allowed me to be a lot more self-confident, have more self-trust and therefore, create all the things that I desire in my life.
Yes, that’s beautiful. That is so much of what goes on, I think, in this transformation process for ourselves, is really learning what our mind is telling us and then, actually, learning that we have some power using discipline and getting more familiar with who we are and what’s behind the thoughts to actually stop being on this track of negative chatter that goes on the monkey mind.
So I can’t believe it because we, I can’t even ask you a question yet about the political climate, but we’re going to take a break and then we are really going to go deep into understanding how we can use the current political climate for our own personal growth and development. But before we go, can you tell the listeners where they can learn more about you or your book?
They can go online to our website at beyondresistancebook.com.
That’s great. Thank you. We will be back in just a moment to ask you some questions about what we can do to decrease our stress in today’s world.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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