Hi. Welcome to the Conscious Connection podcast. I’m your host, Carol Hasbrouck.

On this show, we uncover ways to follow your inner guidance system so you can live your most authentic and fantastic life. Our mission is to help you learn how to differentiate between your ego thoughts and your true, authentic higher self, which can lead you to your life’s purpose. On new adventures, and even to new callings.

You can finally live the life you desire and the life you deserve. Today, I’m going to be speaking to you without a guest. So my higher power, my inner guidance system, is my guest today and we are going to have a conversation.

As I was driving over this morning, I listened to my latest guru teacher, Gabby Bernstein, and she has a wonderful podcast as well as an app program where you can draw a daily inspiration card, an affirmation card, and she was talking about affirmations. And I had a really rough morning. I’m just going to tell you, I had a tough morning to the point that I was in heavy sobbing tears this morning.

And I did that on purpose, which sounds really odd. But what I have learned to do is when I’m feeling any feeling, to feel it. I spent a lot of years, as most of us do, pushing my feelings down inside of me, thinking I was actually pushing them away.

And I wasn’t. I was simply storing them for later use. And they explode when I do that.

And they usually come out in angry words or just actions that I have to make amends for because I regret doing them or saying things. So I have learned that it’s important to feel my feelings. And this is right before Christmas and the New Year.

I have a birthday in two days and I’m alone. I don’t have a companion in my life. And I would really like to have someone special in my life that I can share my time with.

And this time of year always amplifies that for me. So if I get a little teary eyed, just bear with me. I think I’m talking about something that many people can relate to, especially during the holiday season.

And I’m not alone. I know I’m not alone. I have family, I have grandchildren, I have friends, I have business associates.

I have God. First of all, I have God in my life, and so I know that I’m not alone. However, I have defined being alone as not having a companion in my life.

And that definition is bringing me suffering and sorrow. And so part of my mourning had nothing to do with having a companion, but it did have to do. And I won’t go into the details.

But it had to do with not being acknowledged by someone that I felt should have acknowledged me. And there’s that should word I shouldn’t should on myself. And I wasn’t acknowledged by this person.

And so I felt isolated. I felt some form of rejection. Everything I felt I was the one giving meaning to.

It just wasn’t really what was happening. I’m sure no one around me thought, wow, she’s rejecting her, she’s abandoning her. I mean, it goes so deep.

And then I had a phone call right after that and that didn’t go so well. So I called to set a boundary for myself that I think it’s super important that we have boundaries in life. And it’s something that happened a few weeks ago.

And I have learned through a program that I’m part of that. It’s important for me to pause before I react, before I say anything. And let me tell you what, that was not my way of being before.

My way of being was if you said something that upset me or disturbed me in any way, or even if you annoyed me, I was probably going to let you know. And I have learned that it’s important that I pause, I pray and I process. And so I did that with this particular person and with this particular situation because it happened a few weeks ago and I didn’t say a word at the time.

I also knew that I needed to make a boundary. And I don’t know about. I’m not a real big people pleaser, but of course I’m just like everybody else, right? I want people to like me just like you do.

So anyway, after this event that I was already feeling sad about and making up these stories in my head about what it meant and it truly was. Brene Brown talks about the story I’m telling myself is. And that’s what I was doing.

So anyway, I decided after this event that that was a good time for me to make this phone call and set this boundary. And it wasn’t. But that’s okay.

That’s what happened. And I did. And the person I called put it back on me.

So they projected it, they turned it around and made it as though it was my fault. And I wasn’t even blaming anyone. Part of my processing is to get rid of the criticism and the blame.

That is my natural go to. I don’t like admitting that, but my natural go to if somebody does something I don’t like is to want to get back and blame them for it and criticize them. And so the time I took in the praying and the processing and the pausing.

I got to a place where I knew I could deliver my message with love, even though it was a boundary and I knew the person wasn’t going to receive it. Well, I did get to that place, however, because everybody has their own way of looking at the world. His response was to put it back on me that as though I was creating the problem.

So I listened and I let him do that. And then I reconfirmed what it was I needed for him to do in the future, or actually for him not to do in the future. And he agreed to that.

And I simply said, I appreciate that. And then we hung up the phone. So I have learned that one of the things that I have to do when I have all of this going on in my head, which it’s going on in my head and of course affecting the rest of my body and my spiritual nature, my emotional nature, that one of the things I have to do is I have to talk with somebody safe about what just happened.

And it’s really important that I emphasize the somebody safe because I need to make sure that I have total confidence and trust in this person and that this conversation isn’t going to go beyond the two of us. So I have a good friend and I called her and interestingly enough, I of course have helped her in the past with situations just like this. And I called her and I told her what had happened and told her how my perception of how I delivered the message was.

And she said, well, you know, it sounds like you were triggered. It sounds like perhaps in the past you’ve had somebody turn things around on you. And indeed I have, as we all have.

And I said, but what else? Why do I feel so horrible about this? And she said, well, you’re in self. You’re in total self pity. Well, boy, I didn’t want to hear that.

And she went on to really regurgitate words I’ve used with her in the past because it’s always easier when we’re sitting on the outside talking with somebody about their situation. It’s easier for us to see the truth in it. And she was right.

I was in self pity. And it didn’t start this morning, by the way. It started a couple of months ago with another event that I never processed, I never shared with anyone.

Then the holidays came, then this event happened this morning, then I made a phone call. So I had pushed all of this down inside of me and for all I know it started 60 years ago when I was eight years old, you know, And I’m tired of not feeling my feelings. I’m tired of pushing things down because I know they create illnesses.

That’s what dis ease is all about. So I listened to her. She helped me realize that this is made up in my mind and very real at the same time, and that I have an opportunity to look deeper as to what is really going on.

And so I haven’t had a chance to do that yet because I had this commitment to come and do this podcast, which I had no idea what I was going to talk about. And now I can see this as very real and very authentic and important. So I sat in my living room with my journal and I started to write it out because writing helps me process.

And I just started crying because I decided to stop for a moment and feel what I was feeling, and it was overwhelming. And I just sobbed and I sobbed and I sobbed, and it lasted. It probably only lasted two or three minutes, but it was long enough for me to at least feel the feeling.

So I’ve shared it, which helped, and then I felt it, which helped. And I know I have more work to do on this entire process. And I know things to look for that I can dig deeper into.

And I just, like everybody, like, I don’t want to feel this way, but I can’t numb it out anymore. You know, I’ve done that too many years in my life, and I just can’t numb out over it. I can’t watch the tv, I can’t pick up a drink or a drug.

I can’t smoke a cigarette. I can’t gamble, have sex, go shopping, whatever it is that numbs it out. I can’t do that anymore.

It’s time for me to feel my feelings and get real with life. And so I had my cry. I finished my journaling and left the page open so that when I get back home, I can continue to look at what’s really going on here for me.

Because really what’s going on is I feel alone and isolated and not a part of. And that just isn’t so. I mean, I know it just isn’t so.

So anyway, I get to do that when I get home. And I’ll probably cry some more, and that’s okay. There’s nothing.

I had somebody tell me once that nothing grows without a little bit of water. And so my tears are that water that helps me grow. Oh, and my friend that I was talking to, she said, isn’t this great? You have another growth opportunity.

And I’m like, oh, shut up. But she’s right. I do have another growth opportunity.

And my Sister calls them FGOs, so you can imagine what the F stands for, for. And it’s true. And I do.

I have another growth opportunity. What I like about my life today is that I deal with these growth opportunities in a healthy fashion. So I don’t put something inside of me.

I don’t take from the outside to put it inside to think that’s going to fix it. I simply need to go inside and then pray and process. So my inner guidance system.

I wrote this whole thing about what I was going to talk about today, and I did all this research, and, man, I sounded brilliant. And my inner guidance system kept telling me, that’s not what you’re going to talk about tomorrow. I’m like, what do you mean? I’ve spent a lot of time on this, and you’ll have to bear with me because I do have these arguments with my inner guidance system on a regular basis, and it always wins.

And I said, but wait, all this time, I’ve spent all this research I’ve done, and the higher self, the inner guidance, the Holy spirit, whatever you want to call it, says, that’s not what you’re going to talk about tomorrow. So I threw my hands up in the air, and I’m like, well, what am I going to talk about tomorrow? And the answer was, you’ll see. You’ll find out.

And when you do, it’ll be the perfect subject for you to talk about. So that’s what I’m talking about. And I feel very raw.

I feel very vulnerable. But I also feel very safe saying this, because I know I’m not alone. Even though my fear of being alone is a huge fear for me, I know I’m not alone.

And so I got in the car to come over here to record this podcast, and I thought, all right, well, I’m going to listen to a podcast on my way to record the podcast, because I love podcasts. And I pulled up Eckhart Tolle. And I love Eckhart Tolle.

Do not get me wrong, I love Eckhart Tolle. I’ve read many of his books multiple times. I’ve done classes on his.

His teachings. In fact, he is the first person to. Well, probably not the first time I heard it, but he’s the first person to help me understand that I am not my thoughts.

Like I always thought I was my thoughts. Well, as. As deprecating as my thoughts can be, it’s a good thing I Am not my thoughts.

So I don’t know if you know anything about Eckhart Tolle’s story, but he was really on the verge of committing suicide and the thought came to him, I can’t stand myself anymore. And all of a sudden he thought, wait a minute, if I can’t stand myself, there must be two of me. It must be that I’m not these thoughts.

I am the awareness of these thoughts. I am behind these thoughts. And I’ve heard that many times, but I never got it before.

And so I am not my thoughts. And that’s really relieving to me to know that. So I get in the car, I put on Eckhart Tolle.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to Eckhart Tolle, but he sounds a little bit like this, only he talks even softer and kind of a whisper and it’s enough to drive me up a wall again. I love what he teaches, but his voice, for some reason, his voice and I do not get along. So I’m about two minutes into it and I’m like, oh, hell no, I am not listening to this because I’m already down, right? I’m already wallowing in this self pity and this aloneness and my.

I have a good friend who calls it my magnificent suffering. You know, I’m already really enmeshed in my magnificent suffering. So I can’t listen to Eckhart’s, Tolle’s tone of voice, his voice.

So I went to my new guru, Gabby Bernstein, and her podcast that was up. Her current podcast is on positive Affirmations. And I thought, oh, that is perfect.

That is exactly what I need to hear right now. And she teaches, first of all, she said, okay, so what is a positive affirmation? What is an affirmation? And an affirmation is a solution. It’s a knowing the truth, even beyond all appearances of what’s going on.

So let me give you an example. I’m a person that really learns from examples. So let’s say I have an illness and I am affirming that I am perfectly healthy and whole and complete and my body is completely healed.

Well, obviously that is not true in this moment, but it can be true. So I can think, I’m completely healed, perfect, whole and complete. Or I can think, oh, I am so sick and my body has this disease and I’m in pain and poor me, poor, poor me and get into that self pity and go spiraling down.

Or I can go to a positive affirmation, which one do you want to go to our natural inclination? Unfortunately, and I’m not sure why, but our natural inclination is to think the bad thoughts, the negative thoughts. And I have to literally force myself to say, wait, I want to live in the solution. I do not want to live in the problem anymore.

I have lived in the problem way too many hours of my life and I’m a pretty happy person. I’m a very optimistic person and have been happy and optimistic most of my life. And I have a dark side, just like we all do.

And I have a negativity about me just like we all do. So I had really gotten into that. Abraham Hicks talks about that you build up momentum the more you think about something and the more you think about it, it becomes a belief.

So I can either think negative thoughts that can become a belief or I can think positive thoughts that become a belief. A major point we continually emphasize at Naiman Creative is that we build legacy work websites. This means that we create websites that last long term and scale infinitely as your business grows, are dynamic, effective marketing tools, assist in business operations, document the history of your company, and are valuable assets to a business.

So is your business looking to build a legacy? Contact us today@infonaymancreative.com or visit our website at naamancreative.com to get started. So Gabby’s talking about positive affirmations. Of course, the New Year’s coming up and she sets her audience up and she has a huge audience.

She’s been doing this for 18 years and she’s really wonderful. If you haven’t heard her, go to the podcast and just type in Gabby, Dear Gabby, which I think is a great name and, and check her out. So she’s talking about the benefits of positive affirmations.

Well, that is exactly what I needed to hear because I have been practicing positive affirmations for decades. But in my wallowing in my self pity, in my negative, my deprecating voice inside my, what do they call it? The inner critic inside, I forgot about positive affirmations. And so one of the things I have also learned from my most awesome spiritual teacher, Dr. Durrell R. Pulley, who by the way has a program every day at 6:30am on Facebook and YouTube called the Daily Download.

And you don’t have to listen to it at 6.30am you can listen to it anytime. And it’s Dr. Dural Arpuli with the Daily Download.

So he’s been my spiritual teacher for about eight years now and he taught me a spiritual practice that I have not been doing. So no wonder I’m wallowing in self pity. And I just started doing them again.

In fact, I haven’t even done the whole bit of it. Anyway, it’s called Scripture denial and affirmation. So we’re Christians and so we believe that scripture is the truth.

And I have to tell you, I have my journal here. I’ve been journaling again because Dr. Pulley recommended I start doing that for about four days. And I wrote down all of my fears because fear, I can basically take every single negative emotion I have and look at it and go, okay, what am I afraid of? What am I afraid of? Obviously I’m afraid of something or I wouldn’t be feeling like this.

And so here’s On December 15, I started. What am I afraid of? Number one, that people won’t like me. Number two, that I am arrogant.

Number three, that I’ll get it wrong. Four, that I’ll be alone the rest of my life. Five, that my beauty is fading.

Now these are honest. I mean, I can’t believe I’m sharing this with an audience I don’t even know, but I am. Number six, that I’ll say the wrong thing.

Seven, that I’ll never be held again. Eight, that I’ll fail at speaking. Nine, that I won’t have friends, someone to hang out with.

10, that I won’t understand and become one with God again. Because I believe. I believe that I started out as a spiritual being, one with my creator.

And through the fall or whatever you want to call it, we decided we were separate. And I’m afraid I’m not going to get back to that again. And that creates my suffering, that creates my misery.

So I’m on number four. So I took each fear that I have and they’re probably pretty common fears, right? I mean, if you took a group of a hundred people, I would say that, you know, maybe close to half of them would have one or more of these fears. And so I took each fear that I have and then I googled that fear.

So the first one I googled was what does the Bible say about what people, Whether people like me or not? Well, all kinds of things came up. And the Bible generally advises against fearing what people think, encouraging us to trust in God instead. So the better question for me is what does God think of me? Because you’ve heard the saying, what other people think of me is none of my business.

That’s the truth. But we live in a society, especially with social media and just everything. We live in a society where we really care, or I really care about what other people think of me.

Well, the Bible tells me, fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you.

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand, signifying that our true security comes from God, not from human approval. And then, of course, there’s the. The proverb that most everybody knows, and it’s trust in God from the bottom of your heart.

Don’t try to figure everything out on your own. So that was my first one. I won’t go into every single fear that I had.

I just know that if I can find a scripture which is the truth, it tells me that my fear is not true. By the way, fear is another acronym for fear is false evidence Appearing real. If fears were true, everyone would have the same fears.

So I am not afraid of spiders. I am not afraid of snakes. I’m a little bit afraid of alligators.

I am not afraid of sharks. But I’ll bet you the people listening to this, a lot of them are afraid of snakes and spiders and sharks. I am not afraid of them.

So if I’m not afraid of them and you are, is the fear of that real? Well, it seems real for you, for sure, but it’s not. It’s something you’ve decided and the meaning you’ve given it in your mind. So if I can identify my fears, if I can write them down, and you could go to a Buddhist text and ask the same question, you could go to a Muslim text, a Muslim text, you could go to a Jewish text, any of the great masters, you could go to Sanskrit, you could go to yoga and ask these same exact fears that
you have.

And there would be a solution in there, an answer as to why that fear just isn’t real. And that gives me comfort to know that I have a belief that it’s important that people like me. That’s my belief.

It’s important that you like me. Well, it’s not true. It’s just not true.

And so I find the scripture, and then the denial is, it doesn’t matter what other people think of me. And then the affirmation is, God loves me just the way I am, and that’s enough. So I put them on an index card and I read them in the morning.

I read them at night before I go to bed. I can read them throughout the day if I’m having a rough day and I’m practicing my scripture denial and affirmation. And when I do that I tend to not go into self pity.

I tend to not have events where I feel the need to sit down and cry. There is nothing wrong with crying and I’m so glad I can still cry. This is a little side note, but when I was growing up, my, my dad died when I was 12 years old of brain cancer.

And of course that affected my mother greatly. They had been married 25 years and then she remarried five years later and that husband died of brain cancer. So you can only imagine the sorrow that my mom had.

And my mom never cried again in her life because she was so afraid if she started crying she’d never be able to stop. So I make myself cry sometimes. I mean, I just sit down until I cry because that ate her up and she died of a broken heart.

She died of a heart attack. And I know that because the doctor said, you know, now my mom smoked, so obviously that had something to do with it. But the doctor said, you know, there was really no reason for her to have, have a heart attack.

Her heart looks pretty good and I can tell you that she died of a heart attack because she kept all of her emotions inside of her. She never cried again. So I got off track.

That’s okay. It was important to say. So I write my fears down, I look at each fear.

I don’t try to rush anything either. By the way, I wrote down 10 fears. So what’s today? The, the 19th? So 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

So five days ago I started this process and I’m only on fear number four because the first day I wrote them down. And I know that I’m healing, I know that I’m taking the time I need to take for self care. You know the saying when you’re in the airplane and the oxygen mask falls down, right? Like I gotta put that on myself first because I can’t help the people around me if I don’t.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a plane when the oxygen mask falls. It’s scary. I have one time, my little tiny, she was very small in stature, grandmother and I, who, my grandmother was completely deaf.

She could not hear a thing. So we’re flying, I’m flying her back to Arizona. I was probably about 20 years old.

And she can’t hear on the speaker that the pilot is saying, you know, strap yourselves in, we’re having some. I don’t, and I don’t even remember the emergency, some kind of an emergency. And sure enough, the oxygen masks come out of you.

You heard the Instructions. All this time she got on a plane, you really never expected it to happen. Well, my poor grandmother, she had no idea what was going on around her.

So at first I started to put her mask on her. And then I remembered, because I had heard it so many times, put the mask on yourself before you help someone else. And I did.

I put my mask on and then I put it on my grandmother. And so it turns out we didn’t need to have them on, which is a good thing. But we didn’t know that at the time.

But I learned that lesson, like, immediately. I wanted to help her. And it’s like, no, Carol, it’s important that you stop and take care of yourself first.

And that’s not selfish. That is not being selfish if you stop and take care of yourself first. Because frankly, the only thing I can give away to other people is what I have developed inside of myself, is how I’ve taken care of myself.

What I have inside of myself is all I have to give. So the practice, the spiritual practices that I have now gotten back to in the morning, I am getting up 30 minutes earlier because I wasn’t having the time to do what I used to do. And I wasn’t feeling great because I wasn’t doing my spiritual practices.

So now I get up 30 minutes earlier and I have my coffee and I read my books. I have about three daily books that I read. And then I help Dr. Pulley on the daily download from 6:30 to 7.

And what I’ve been doing is I’ve been jumping into work right after that, hopping on the computer, doing that kind of thing. Well, now I don’t. I stop and I do short meditations and then I journal and I get my feelings out and I ask questions of my inner guidance system.

I ask questions of God. What do I need to know? And the answers come because I can tell the difference between my ego voice and God’s voice. Because my ego voice is never concerned with anyone else.

It’s only concerned with me. My God voice is concerned with the big picture. So I ask God what it is I need to know today.

What is your will for me today? And I start journaling and I journal. And then I go for a walk or I do some yoga or I do some exercises. And then I can start.

And my scriptures and denials and affirmations, and then I can start my rest of my day. And when I do that, there’s an amazing grounding to myself. There’s an amazing centering, a balance.

Like I still have to deal with life just like we all do. But I’m more capable. It’s easier for me to not react.

It’s easier for me to. To take it in and to know, okay, this is either something I need to process and then deal with later, or it’s something I can just journal about and get out. I can pray about and get out.

But if I skip my spiritual practices, my day doesn’t go so well. So I’m committing, and not just for the new Year. For me, what happened was I felt really off.

I just couldn’t put my finger on it. And Fortunately, I have Dr. Pulley as not only my spiritual leader, but also my therapist. And I called him and I said, what’s going.

I can’t figure out why I’m not capable of having a good day. And he helped me realize that I wasn’t doing what I needed to do to take care of me first before I went out and took care of everyone else. So I do.

I’m in a program where I take care. Not don’t take care. That’s not.

I help a lot of people, and I do it lovingly and eagerly. But if I’m not helping me first, it drains me. It just wears me down.

And then I’m no good to anybody. So I’m so grateful, so very grateful for the years that I’ve lived. I’m getting ready to have a birthday in two days.

I’m going to be 69 years old. And let me tell you, that’s old, and it’s okay. You know, I used to think old wasn’t okay.

And I don’t mean I’m old as in I’m going to die tomorrow old. But I’ve been around a while, and I have less in front of me than I have behind me, and that’s okay, too. But what I know for sure is I want to make the most of what I have ahead of me.

I want to be the best version of myself that I can be without the pressure of being that perfect. Like, I’m not. I’m no longer interested in being perfect at all.

I know in spirit, I’m already perfect. I’m perfect, whole and complete. In spirit, as a human, I got a ways to go.

The beautiful thing now is I can identify. I can be aware, and I can identify what the. What the lesson is.

It might take me a little bit, but I can identify the lesson. And then I can get to work on. On solving the problem or learning the lesson so that I don’t have to repeat it.

I just don’t want to keep going to Sunday, to Saturday school, to summer school, you know, I don’t want to repeat the class again. I want to get the lesson so I can move on to a new lesson. Because I used to think, okay, I’m going to get to a certain age, and then everything’s going to be okay.

And guess what? It’s not. And it is so. I mean, I live in a world where it’s and both, so it’s not okay.

And it is okay. It’s not an either or for me anymore. And I’m not.

I often wonder if when I die and go wherever it is, I’m going to. Am I going to have more lessons there or am I at least going to be able to take a little rest? And, you know, the mystery of life is I don’t get to know that right now. And I’m okay with not knowing that right now.

What I do know is that I’m gifted another day above ground. I’m gifted another day to enjoy this beautiful world and earth that we have. And all I can do is the best I can do.

And I pray for you that you remember to put your oxygen mask on first. Do your spiritual practices, do what you need to do to take care of you, so that when you have a rough time, which you will, that you’re equipped to take care of yourself so that you can enter back into the world of helping others. Because there’s nothing better than to help others.

Thank you for listening to me today. I feel amazingly better than I did when I walked into this room. And I, frankly, was very scared to even share all of this.

And I’m so grateful that I had the courage to do it. Sam.