[00:00:02] Speaker A: Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest telling you to move, to love, to speak, to try.
Day after day, you pretend you don't hear it calling, or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse, but it's there, ready for you, and it will wait for you as long as you need.
My name is Johnny G. And I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening as we dare to embrace our light. This is refractive.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Refractive. Today I have with me Alan Questel. He's known for his clarity, creativity, and down to earth style of teaching. He brings the depth of understanding, humor and gentle human perspective while creating lively conditions for learning. Alan has taught thousands of people in over 20 countries on five continents. He is the author of two books, Creating Creativity, Embodying the Creative Process, and of a more recent book, Practice Intentional Acts of kindness and like yourself more.
This new book takes readers through steps to broaden and sharpen their understanding of kindness. It shows ways to embrace this way of living in everyday life, and it provides the means to be kinder and generate more kindness towards not only yourself, but to others. Alan is constantly discovering how to be kinder to himself and to others. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here with you.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: When I was looking through some of your information and thinking about a topic for today, I really gravitated towards this idea of finding self esteem, building self esteem. And I know that this is something that's been an important part of your life and your work, and it's a major focus of how you live today. And so you just seem like the perfect guest to go there with.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: I'm ready for it.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Great. So I wonder, what has been your own journey with finding and building your self esteem to a healthy level? Because this is something that so many of us have struggled with over our lives.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, well, the first thing that comes to mind, because I had an idea that you might want to talk about self esteem, and I actually looked it up and I'm just going to say, it's okay if I read it. The short definition. So self esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves. It's based on our opinions and beliefs about ourselves, which can feel difficult to change. We might also think of this as self confidence.
Your self esteem can affect whether you like and value yourself as a person.
So I think of self esteem along the same lines as self image. And both of these are concepts, right? So the idea of a self image or self esteem is like, I can't hold my self esteem in my hands. I can't hold my self image. And so in that way, they're useful and important for us to consider, but they're also a little abstract. And what I like so much in this last part of the definition I read, which resonates with my book, it can affect whether you like and value yourself as a person. So I think the idea of liking ourselves and how we can come to like ourselves more speaks directly to the sense of self esteem. Except when I think of improving my self esteem, I can go to a lot of different places, but when I think of liking myself more, it just feels a little more personal to me and more concrete, maybe approachable in terms of the actions that I explore in the book and hopefully can guide people to liking themselves more, which definitely results in higher self esteem, for sure.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that angle on it.
In my journey, when I've kind of looked at the process of growing self esteem, I was told, if you want better self esteem, do esteemable acts. And this really, I feel, dovetails nicely with what you're saying about like yourself. Right. Because if I do things that I find esteemable, it is easier to just like myself more.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Right. And the thing that I think is so important, so essential that you said, is that it's self esteemable acts, that it's the actions of what we do that create self esteem. Liking ourselves more, a better self image. And I think too often, our idea of improving ourselves just floats around in our head of things where we'd like to have happen, of ways we'd like to be perceived, as opposed to what are the concrete things I can do to improve myself so that I grow in the directions that I want.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: I wonder, as you've done your work, where do you find people trip themselves up in improving their self esteem? What are the obstacles or barriers that we put before ourselves?
[00:05:46] Speaker B: I think the first place is that when we try to improve almost any aspect of ourself or look at the direction where we want to be, the place we trip ourselves up is we start looking at all the things that we don't like, all the places where I don't have self esteem, all the places where I wish I was something other than I was. And it's kind of attaching ourselves to the negative parts of ourselves that we're trying to move away from. And that's a natural phenomena. I think if I ask, whenever I teach, I ask a group of people. So part of my job is helping people like themselves more. And I ask the question, is there anyone here who doesn't want to like themselves more? And they all kind of sheepishly smile at it. And the thing is, the first thing that comes up when I explore that are all the things they don't like, we don't like about ourselves. That's the biggest trip up, and that's the place where we got to be really kind and gentle with ourselves. So, like, for example, in the book, many people think, oh, I'm going to start out with all the ways I'm not kind, and figure it out. No, I start out with, let's name all the places where you already are kind. Let's value the skills that we do have and to use that as a jumping board rather than trying to fix things or correct things all the time. So I think that probably that's the biggest thing, the biggest hurdle that people have to cross. And it's something that we cross many times. It's not like I can say, quite honestly, that the more that I've come to like myself more, the next level of liking myself more is almost always a bigger challenge.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: All right.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: That's really interesting. I feel like we should come back there. I feel like there's meat there.
And at the same time, I remember when, a million years ago, back in the late 80s, when I was in elementary school, we would have typing class. Okay.
And I remember reading about this study that said that focusing on your strengths provides incredible opportunities for growth, whereas focusing on areas where you're innately weak provides only minimal opportunities for growth. And this study illustrated that people who were naturally a little bit more adept at typing once they went through lessons could reach speeds of 100 words a minute, whereas people who really struggled with typing and still went through the same lessons would never get above 40 or 50 words a minute. And so this was something that stuck with me. And I've tried to apply it in my career. I've tried to apply it in lots of different areas. But what I'm hearing from you is this idea of, let's focus. If we want to grow our self esteem, let's focus where we're already strong and leverage those strengths because we can take quantum leaps in this area, whereas if we're focusing only on what we lack, we maintain a smaller potential for growth in that area.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Two things come to mind when you described that study. One was another study that was done with teachers and schoolchildren, and the teacher was told that this group of students who you're going to teach, they're all a little behind and a little slow. And as a teacher taught this term for these students, they didn't develop very well. And then another teacher was given the same group of people and said, these are the smartest kids we have in the school. They excel, and now they all excel. So it was a question of how the teacher was approaching them that made a difference in their ability to succeed. So it's the same thing that you're talking about in terms of typing, but it makes me think of something else, which is a way that I have of growing this idea, and I talk about it in the book.
WHen I was 19 years old, I moved out of my parents house, and I decided or recognized at that point that I wasn't good at anything.
I was a complete failure at 19, which is silly, because at 19, how can you be a failure? You haven't done enough anything. Yeah, right, exactly. So I decided I was going to learn to do one thing well. And I don't know where I came up with this idea, but I was quite fortunate in what I picked. I decided that I was going to learn to brush my teeth well, okay, I was lazy about brushing my teeth. And I thought the good thing about this was if I didn't succeed at it, no one knew the dentist. They already knew, right? So I would practice. And here was something. I could practice two times a day for a few minutes and see how it would develop. And sure enough, over months, it wasn't like weeks or anything, I developed the ability, the skill to brush my teeth better.
But the interesting thing was what I started to encounter were all the ways that I sabotaged myself, all the sabotaging habits that I had that prevented me from being successful. And of course, if I'm not successful, I have low self esteem. But if we can start with something small like that, even typing is a little bit grand to learn how to do that. But if I can just pick up my clothes at the end of the evening, put them away, or do the dishes before I go to bed, or just something really small that I can practice, that there's no severe consequence if I don't do it well, right? And it's something that I can measure and develop and watch it over time until I can turn back one day and go, you know, I taught myself how to do this. It wasn't anyone else. So the typing is a great metaphor for that. And the approach, the attitude we have towards ourselves, for sure, is a big one.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Obviously not everyone grows up in a kind, loving, supportive household. But there's an awful lot of kids who do grow up in a household where the parent, or even just the parent, is focused on building the child's self esteem and equipping the child for life. And yet low self esteem is such a broad, it's almost endemic in its scale. So I wonder, why do you think it's such a widely experienced issue when so many parents go out of their way to especially equip their children to have a strong self esteem?
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Well, it's kind of like if I look at the question of self image, we can call it self esteem too. I can ask, when does it form? How does it form? Because a child has a self image at a very early age, right? And it can be both positive or negative, and it can be informed by the family around it or the teachers or the friends. But it's the friends that seem to tweak it in a negative way sometimes it's at a point in our age where we start comparing ourselves to others, either in terms of what they have or what they can do. And then there's the wish that I was like that. And so I'm less than another. So it's in this comparison that it really starts to shift at some point. And I think, you know what?
The most wonderful parents I know in how they raise their kids, their kids still encounter this because they're in a bigger world. They're in an environment of school and education that's telling them how to do something a certain way. But you know what? Even if the parents tell us that we're great and everything, sometimes we don't believe it. I was not a good student in school. I was until about second grade, and then I skipped fourth grade. So I was in the same class from third grade to the fifth grade with the same teacher. And honestly, she wasn't the kindest teacher. And my whole sense of myself became diminished. And then I got into the habit of doing less work and not liking school, but every time. And I was troubled. Too strong a word. I was a difficult child. So my parents had taken me to psychologists and psychiatrists and they did all these tests with me and everything. And every time I would screw up in school, my mother would pull out these letters. How smart I was, how good I was. That didn't help me. Someone telling me from the outside that I was something.
EitHer I didn't believe it or I thought they were lying, right? It was like it didn't help me. What was needed, what I didn't have then was someone to guide me through the process, like brushing my teeth. Well, right. That it needed to be something concrete where I could measure and feel a sense of accomplishment in myself.
And I think that's at the essence of any action that we want to improve on, whether it's being kinder to others or kinder to ourselves, or having higher self esteem or liking ourselves more, that if it's not internally generated, there's always a sense of mistrust.
It's like, honestly, I didn't feel intelligent until I was in my thirty s. And the way it happened was I was hanging out with two friends, both published authors, really smart guys, and we'd spend all night talking and stuff. And then I thought, these guys are really smart.
Could it be that I kind of was embarrassed? I'm not smart.
Unfortunately, my best friend just passed away. And he was a neuroscientist. He'd written 40 books and lectured at Cambridge. I mean, he was smart. MacArthur Awards, and we would talk all the time. And one day I said to him, you think I'm smart? He goes, Kusha, smart. But my internal image of myself was such that it was diminished for whatever reasons, whatever history I had. The most important thing, though, is we can move beyond it. We don't have to get stuck there.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: How do we move beyond it?
I know that you've looked at this in some depth, and I wonder what have been the tools and methods and systems that you find helpful in saying, okay, I'm coming to terms with the fact that I don't treat myself well. I don't look at myself through a very kind lens. I don't enjoy the impact of this way that I see myself.
I want to change this. How do I do that?
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Well, the first thing is I have to share with you that when I was writing the book, when I got to the part about being kinder to ourselves, I got blocked for about five years.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And I thought that I was pretty kind to myself. But as I really went deeper into it, I thought, I have this image of myself as being kind to myself. But when I reflected on the way I acted towards myself with myself, I wasn't that kind.
And I think the first thing that comes to mind when I think about entering into this journey, this voyage, is to give ourselves a reasonable amount of time so that sometimes I'm working with someone and I'm exploring a habit that they have, and I say, well, I'll say, how long do you think it'll take to change this habit. And sometimes they say three weeks, and I laugh. They go, okay, six weeks. And it's ridiculous. And I say a year and a half to two years, and they're like, what? That's crazy. And I go, well, think about it. If you say six months and in six months you're still doing the same behaviors, you're going to feel like a failure. But if you say a year and a half, and after six months, you evaluate it and go, I have another year to go. Okay, that gives me some time. It takes away the pressure of having to succeed in any immediate kind of way. So that's the first thing that comes to mind. The second thing, and this is true of anything, I think, is that we need to practice something.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:19:29] Speaker B: So, like, I was talking about brushing our teeth.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: This word of action that you referenced earlier, that's it.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Kindness. If you look up kindness in the dictionary, it tells you all the qualities, but it doesn't tell you how to do it.
That's really interesting to me. And most dictionary definitions are like that. If you look up the word to sit, it says to rest upon your buttocks or thighs. Well, it makes sense from the observer's point of view. But if you tell a child with cerebral palsy rest upon your buttocks and thighs, they can't sustain that.
So it's the actions that we have to take. And as I said, with brushing the teeth, it needs to be a regular action that's small, that there's no huge external success that it's based on. And most of the time, when we approach ourselves, we do it in too big a way. We try to do something that's too grand right from the begInning, instead of saying, let me start really slow, let me see, what Can I give myself? Well, I'm not talking about, I'm going to get a New car, Whether I have the money or not. That's what people do. They charge everything, and then they get these things, and it doesn't sustain itself because it's external. I would say one of the probably most significant ways that someone can grow themselves internally, that builds into a New Sense of Self Esteem, A New Self image, Is In how you move.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: What do you Mean by that? In how you move.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Well, if you think about it, I can ask a Question. So, one question I like to ask people is, when in your life are you given permission to have pleasure?
People Name a Number of things. Of course, they'll say taking walks Or Hiking, Doing Sports, Playing Music, Having Sex, Eating, sleeping, which I don't really count because you're not doing anything or sleep.
But if you look at all the Things that People value as a Place where they're Allowed, give Them permission culturally to Sense Pleasure, you'd be lucky if it added up to Three or 4 hours a day. What are you doing the Other 20, 21 hours?
You're going through your life. But now if you consider moving in a Way that you like the way it feels. And Again, I'm not talking about all the time. I'm talking about I'm at my computer doing something and I'm going to go get a Cup of tea or a cup of Coffee, that I'm going to move in a way that I like the way it feels. I'm not talking about like dancing my way to the kitchen or anything. I'm talking about how can I just Listen to the Quality of what I feel for a Short Period of time and maybe I do it on the way back? I can't do it all the time. And it leads to another Question, which is if I ask people, when do you decide to get Comfortable? I'll ask you, when do you decide to get Comfortable?
[00:22:35] Speaker A: When I'm uncomfortable, Right?
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And that's the basic answer. Now if you think about that, and that's a crazy criteria.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: That means I have to be uncomfortable before I get ComfortablE.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: How do we come to that?
If you look at a child drawing, a child is here and then they're there and they're here and they're there and they get up and they never get up. They never sit up and go, oh, Mommy, I have a stiff hip. Why? Because they're regulating themselves through their comfort continually.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Wow. Now, great point.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: You lose that by what? By wearing certain clothes. Don't mess up your hair, sit still in school, all these things which we need to be able to control and contain ourselves to a certain degree, but what it ends up in is we ignore ourselves.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Some people don't get comfortable until they're in pain, right. They're suffering. And so if we could practice getting comfortable, like if I ask myself, look, we could put a timer on my computer, on my phone, and just every hour it dings and I go, am I comfortable? No, that's better, right? Or ding, am I comfortable? Yeah. Could I be more comfortable? Yeah, I could. Right? So that we start using our sensory world as the doorway to appreciating ourselves, taking care of ourselves, to not going too long at something, or ignoring ourselves past the point where now I'm in trouble. And I have to see someone for help because of that. So I think that these are some of the things that we can do on an everyday way. Or I can give you another example, is most of us in a relationship, whether we're aware of it or not, we often have desires of what we wished or hoped the other person would do for us.
I wish my partner, I wish you wake up in the morning and make me a tea first.
And then if I don't say anything about it, I end up feeling resentful about something she doesn't even know that I'm upset about, which is what we all do. It's kind of waiting too long for something. But we can flip that and say, well, wait a minute, I want someone to make a cup of tea for me. What if I make a cup of tea for myself? What if I do for myself what I would hope others do for me? And maybe while I'm doing that, maybe I'll make them a cup of tea, surprise them, right? SO it's taking the responsibility for what we want to have happen in our lives and generate it ourselves as opposed to waiting for another. Now, it's also okay to say to the other, I would love if you did this for me. And if the other cares about me, they'd say, I would love to do that for you. And then it's a symbiotic relationship that feeds each other really well. But if the other person, just their nature, isn't to do something like that, then I need to learn to do it for myself. And that's taking care of myself. And it's not easy because many people I know who are really kind people are really good at being kind to others, but not to themselves. Like me getting blocked in my book.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Yes. I'm really touched by some of your examples you mentioned. Listen to how your body is feeling and move in a way that feels good.
It just comes down to then being present, being intentional. And this is so key. This is so key. I love that you referenced. Watch a kid who's drawing and see how they're constantly gently moving their body this way and that. Because they're fully present. They're fully present. And I always look at puppies as role models for me because puppies, they are always present. They do what feels right in the moment and it's like, wow, could I just aim to be present a fraction of the time and see what a difference it would make?
It's beautiful, this idea of doing that. And it is, as you say it, it's like such a kindness to yourself to just say, how am I feeling right now?
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Right?
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Am I feeling love that. I love that. And even to go more literal in what you were saying when you said move in a way that feels good for me, for example, I'll go to dancing. Dancing is something that I have always wanted to enjoy, and I've always felt so limited by how much I'll allow myself to enjoy it for fear of being ridiculed or for looking foolish.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: And.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: I was at a bar event just earlier this week, and they were playing a bunch of very popular clips and music videos and things, and everyone around is singing.
They're just like lost in the joy of the moment singing.
And I was not. And someone says, wow, you don't really sing very much.
And I said, you know, you're right. And I'm thinking, why don't I sing? It would be so nice to sing with this group of 150 strangers who are lost in the joy of the moment, and I am not.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Do you know something?
That moment of I wish I could sing?
I think what we're looking for is a feeling that it's okay to sing.
And I think it's a bit of a mistake that we all make. I'm going to wait to feel a certain way before I sing, before I dance. The thing is, it's only through singing badly and dancing badly and people teasing me about it and me continuing to do it and making mistakes that I practice it enough that one day I go, I'm actually enjoying myself singing.
I had a training program in Colombia, and in Colombia, salsa is like the national sport, right? And I think it transcends football even. So, I took some lessons and I'm a pretty good dancer. And then I went to a salsa club thinking, I'll just watch people. I'm good at that, and imitate them. Well, everybody was doing something different. There's so many variations in salsa. Just in Colombia. Forget about Cuban salsa and other countries, too. And it was like, it took me years to learn how to do it, but I kept at it. I kept doing know, and I kept like that kid who's drawing, they're not afraid of making a mistake.
We're afraid of making mistakes. You know what I call this? The adult dilemma. The adult dilemma is that as adults, we think we should be good at something before we've ever done it. Yeah, we trap ourselves and just inhibit ourselves. Then instead of saying, what's the worst that's going to happen here, I'm going to go out there and try it. See? I'd like to hear you sing right now. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to. I don't want to.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Next up, folks, the standards.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: I love it.
As many people have. I had my own battles with low self esteem. And there was a point in my life, maybe back in 2016 or so, where when I would look at myself In a mirror, my inner monologue would be so aggressive and hateful towards myself. Like, the actual words that would come, it was like there was a person in my head speaking, saying, lower your eyes. Who do you think you are to look at? Drop your eyes.
That's what it would be like when I would look at myself in the eyes and I told someone who was a mentor of mine at the time what was happening, and the mentor said, what if you just didn't allow those thoughts to finish?
What would happen if you just cut that speech to yourself off? I'm just not going to do it. I'm just not going to go there. I'm not going to entertain it, right? And I was like, I'm not proactively thinking that it's just happening. And she said, we'll just try, right? Next time it starts, just nip it in the bud and saying, we're not going to say those things.
And I'm telling you, within, like, six months, it stopped.
It stopped. I no longer had to control it. Just by applying the intention of not speaking to myself that way, my psyche developed the ability to not speak to myself that way.
And that came to my mind as you were talking about just this idea of by feeling follows action, that by proactively addressing the cause of my negative feelings, I can cultivate positive feelings.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: That seems to be your lesson.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: I think that what you said, feelings follow action.
The trick in that is it may not be immediate, like you talked about six months, but feelings will follow the action. We have to get used to it, right? How many people start a new job and feel like a charlatan until they've done it? Like you graduate school, right? Whatever you've studied. Like, I studied acting. I was an actor. But did I feel like an actor? No. I had to act quite a bit. I had to do the action of acting before I felt, oh, I'm starting to be able to do this. I think I can do something like this. You know where the place you never want to be is? In the coffee break room of new doctors, because they're like, oh, my God, I thought the guy was going to die right in front of me. Right.
Because they haven't learned to do it, practice it enough to feel confident in what they're doing. But there's two things that come to mind me when you say this. One is, and this I don't have an answer for yet. We have to be able to catch ourselves doing this negative thing, because what happens is the negative thing just takes over and just keeps wearing us down. And we don't even know that we're doing that to ourselves. So I can tell you a story. So I was coming back from a trip from Europe, and I'd been working there for about a month, and I was pretty tired.
And I'm on the plane, and in a week and a half, I had to go somewhere else. And I started thinking about all the things that I had to do, all the preparation, and I started to get completely overwhelmed. And I caught it. That was the magic moment. I caught it. And in the moment, I asked myself this question, is this a good time to be thinking about this? And the answer was no. It's a terrible time. You're tired. You have no materials. You're on a plane. You can't do anything about it. Let it go. And I kind of like, oh, I felt so relieved for about an hour. And then the noise in my head started gearing up again, and I caught it again. Is this a good time to be thinking about this? No. And what I've discovered since then is every time I ask that question, is this a good time to be thinking about this? The answer is always no.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Always.
And I have other mantras that I talk about in the book, too. Like, if I'm ruminating about something and just looping and looping and looping where I'm not tired or on a plane or anything like that, if I catch it, I can go, oh, I'm driving around in a bad neighborhood. I need to get out of here. So it's just like your idea of cutting your thought and saying, I'm not going to listen to this voice. Right? Takes practice. And it doesn't mean that we don't regress and fall into it again.
But maybe when we fall back into it, we don't linger there as long we can move out of it more. Because most of these internal conversations, whether it's in front of a mirror or looking down or anything like this, they're not action oriented. They're conversationally oriented in a negative way. And it's like, how do we move out of that?
That's the work on ourselves, really, to grow ourselves is to be able to go, oh, I'm doing that again. I don't need to do that.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So I want to recap some of the main things we talked about today as we kind of get to the final part of our podcast. You talked early on in the episode about.
You talked about the importance of leaning into your positive qualities rather than focusing or dwelling on your negative qualities. And this was not, correct me if I'm wrong, in a sense of denying our weaknesses or things like that, but it was really just meant on saying, I want to pour strength into my strengths right now. Did I catch that correctly?
[00:37:11] Speaker B: You did. But I know when I talk about this kind of thing with lots of people, they feel like, well, this positive perspective is just too hard to maintain.
Right. It's like, yeah, I know I'm good at this, but there's always that. But in there. And that's where we need to return to something that's actionable on a regular basis, that's small, that I can practice, get better, and do something. Yeah. So I agree with you 100%.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Good. Okay. All right. And then one of the other points that we talked about was that we talked about the idea of feelings following action. And so that if I want to see this result of growing a positive self esteem, it requires me to move proactively in that way.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. That. It's an action. I talk about kindness as an action, not as a quality, something that we do practice in a certain way. And I want to be clear, too, that the idea of acting in a different way in the beginning may be quite uncomfortable.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: Feels awkward. Yeah.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Feels awkward. It's not me. I don't know myself this way. So we have to keep not to ignore those feelings, but to be differentiated from them. To say, I feel insecure. I feel like a charlatan. I feel not positive, But I'm going to do it anyway.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Like you said, until the feeling does follow the action, at some point, it.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Makes me think of people who've, like, let's say, lost their arms or lost use of their arms, and they learn to write or paint with their feet. Imagine the awkwardness of that for how many months before it.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Years.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Actual years. Right. Before you can actually count on that as a capacity. Yeah.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: All you need is a paper cut to realize you can't put your hand in your pocket.
So I got to get my wallet.
Yes, it's true. We find out that. So then it becomes a question of adaptability. How adaptable are we? How do we figure things out?
One thing I wanted to mention, which is this idea of liking ourselves more, which came to me many years ago around a workshop I was developing on self image. And I thought, our self image is a reflection of how much we like ourselves. We don't like ourselves. And I followed that into the idea of, this is what I help people do, like themselves more. And one of the key ways, as I described earlier, is by moving in a way that you like the way it feels. It's something that's actionable like that. And I always thought, well, this is an intrapersonal process, one within myself. How do I extend it into the world?
And it kind of happened by accident, where I did some kind act towards someone, and immediately I felt better. I liked myself more.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: And I thought, that's the loop that we need to the connection we need to have, and it's not to. I'm going to do a lot of kind act, so I like myself more. It's more like when I do something kind, I feel better about myself. My self esteem changes when I do something like that. And so this is something that they feed each other. If I like myself more, I can act more kindly towards others. If I'm more kind towards others, I feel better towards myself as well.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: You need patience to grow it over time, because you know what? I'm not at the place where I'm done. I'm still learning to like myself. I'm still learning to be kinder. And as I mentioned in the beginning, the next level of challenge, to be kinder, to like myself more, is always a bigger step.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
I think the last topic that I wanted to recap was this idea of get present. Right.
Pay attention to what's happening, to what's going on. And that it's through this presence that you can unlock the power of choice in the moment of what's right to do what feels healthy to do. And did I get that right?
[00:41:39] Speaker B: I think so. But then it begs the next question, which is, how do I get present?
[00:41:46] Speaker A: I have another episode on that.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Okay, we can talk about that, because in my earlier book on creativity, I talk about presence. And one of the ways that I would see someone like an actor or dancer, being present is when they're more comfortable with themselves in front of others.
It's a sensory state, this idea of comfort that the idea of being more present. And that's the amazing thing about moving in a way that I like the way it feels, is that it's immediate and it's concrete. I can feel when it's not working and I can go, it's not working. I have to change something. What do I need to do? Because if I leave it to my thoughts and feelings, that can take a long time. That can take quite a while.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Leveraging your body as a tool in that.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: So, Alan, so obviously, if your message is resonating with listeners, they can access the book and learn a lot more of information. And so the book is practice intentional acts of kindness and like yourself more. What are some other ways that listeners might be able to engage with you if they like what you offer and want to take it to the next level?
[00:43:03] Speaker B: Right. Well, I have a website for the book. It's called Practicingkindness.com. And the sample worksheets there and information about the book. And the book is available as a paperback.
I don't like to call it a Kindle. I like to call it a Kindle.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: A Kindle, yes.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: Very on brand for you and also as an audiobook. And I think there's a lot of information there. And then I'm on the web a lot. So if you just Google my name, you'll find my other websites and things like that. And if you ever do find, like, some of my websites, my email or something, if you email me and you don't hear back from me, like in three days, I didn't get it. So I answer all my own emails and I'm fast with it, too. Okay. And I love to have connection with people and have questions that they have or experiences that they have and things like that.
I'm easily found, I think. Good.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: All right. And so it's Alan with one, Lalan and Questel. Q-U-E-S-T-E-L. That's right. All right, perfect. Alan, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Very warm conversation.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: I really enjoyed talking with you a lot. Thanks a lot.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: Same here. I appreciate it, everyone. As always, I have so much gratitude for you tuning in, listening to another episode of Refractive. And as you go out into the world, remember to aim your light. Take care.
You've been listening to refractive podcast, and this is Johnny G. If you found today's content uplifting, if you think it might make somebody's day better, give it a share on social media, click like, subscribe. All those things help to expand this podcast availability to new audiences. I'm a speaker, a coach, and a facilitator based out of Washington, D. C. But I travel a lot. If you think I can be of service to you or to your organization, help people get unstuck or move into their authentic power. Shoot me an email. My email address is
[email protected]. Take care. Thanks for listening and aim your light.
