662 - You are the conduit for miracles (w/ Gabby Bernstein)

Hello, and welcome to the New Mindset Who Does Podcast. My name is Casey Kenney at Case.Kenney.i. Instagram, and this is my weekly podcast where I create short, no BS episodes dedicated to helping you become the person you're meant to be. Leave your comfort zone and live a purposeful and fulfilling life. Let's go.

All right, welcome to episode 662. Hello, my friend. Welcome to a fresh new episode of New Mindset, who does as always. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting me in today, a very special episode. If you're listening to the podcast, you know, I don't do too many guests on the show. So when I do, you might realize that it's something really important to me.

and something that's near and dear to my heart. And that certainly is the case today. I am honored to be joined by the one and only Gabby Bernstein on the podcast. You probably know Gabby. She is a New York Times, number one New York Times bestselling author. She's a speaker. She's really a trailblazer in the world of spiritual growth and personal development.

And we're here today to talk about a couple things. One of those, including her 10th book, she's written 10 books. This one is called Self Help. She has nine other books you might be familiar with, including The Universe Has Your Back and also Happy Days. But regardless, Gabby has literally helped millions of people. And I don't say that with exaggeration. She has literally helped millions of people to unlock more aligned lives to overcome fear.

And I've been a big fan of Gabi for quite some time. She has this way of blending together wisdom, deep, spiritual wisdom, but with such practicality and relatability. It's something that I really look up to and I'm inspired by. And she touches on all kinds of topics that are kind of tough to define sometimes, like healing and manifestation and the idea of inner peace. So I'm honored to have her on the podcast today. And as you'll hear, we talked about a very powerful and specific topic.

We talked about you. We talked about me. We talked about self, the idea of self, the truth of who you are. And specifically, we talked about some really specific ways that introspection can help create hope in your life by way of getting to the core of self. We talked about the way that introspection can help you navigate your way out of survival mode.

Especially the survival mode from way back when you were younger and how like so many people, maybe you developed certain protection mechanisms to keep you safe. The things that you decided about yourself and your worth or other people when you were just trying to survive. We talked about how we can cut through these, find clarity and get back to who you really are, this idea of self. So join me for this conversation with the one and only Gabby Bernstein.

Let's start with this. Obviously, I want to talk about IFS. I want to talk about internal family systems. I think it's so great. I think it's such a poignant way to describe the different aspects of ourselves, which is such a great topic too, because it's weird how in life sometimes we've come to assume that we're just a person, we're a whole. We're just this one operating system. Obviously, that's not true. There's many sides to us.

You reference early in the book the question of when someone typically says, hey, tell me about yourself. Almost all of us revert to reflecting on some outer perception of ourself that we've built up what we do, our kids, what we stand for. Good stuff, of course, like a big purpose of life, but it's usually we always stray away from mentioning the inner stuff and we tend to save inner reflection for therapy or journaling or something like that.

And it seems to be that we really only know in full one aspect of ourselves, or at least we only think about one aspect of ourselves, the outer part, the perception of who we are. So of course, it begs the question about what about the inner self, what about the inner selves? And that's where internal family systems comes into play. And the goal of that, of course, is to help identify

and get to know these different parts of ourselves. So I'd love to, you know, hand you the floor just for a little bit and have you intro that topic because it is really the topic of your book, of course, but it goes so beyond that. And I'd love to just get in your words. What is, what is IFS and why is it so important to you?

Yeah, well, I wrote my 10th books, this is my 10th book, self-help. I'll share the book with you, here we go. My 10th book, self-help, is based on the principles of a therapy that changed my life. And that therapy is called Internal Family Systems Therapy.

otherwise known as IFS as you've referenced it. And I came to IFS almost a decade ago through my own therapy with my therapist at the time. But I didn't know what we were doing. She would do these practices with me that would connect to these parts of myself and

I didn't understand it, but it was working. About seven or eight years into this practice, I'm watching a YouTube video. I see this man, Dr. Richard Schwartz, sharing about this model that he invented called IFS, Internal Family Systems Therapy. He's talking about these different parts of ourselves and how we can connect to them and how we can help ourselves really heal almost like these little inner children inside of us.

And I'm looking at the computer and I'm like, holy shit, that's the thing I've been doing for seven years in therapy. I didn't even know what it was and this is it. So it was almost like this crystallization of all the work I'd been doing. And really quickly, I invited Dick onto my podcast. This was in 2021, shared how much I love the work. And he said, I would love for you to get the training. And so I went on to become trained in internal family systems therapy.

Not with the intention of doing anyone on one work because that's not the nature of the work I do. I write books and I'm a motivational speaker, but to make it one to many and to democratize this life-changing therapy and to help bring that therapy out of the therapist's office and into everyday life because not everyone will have the privilege of being able to have an IFS therapist or maybe they won't have the resources or the time or the desire even. So I wanted to be able to take this tool

and make it a self-help practice. And so that's what I've done here with this book. And so to explain what IFS is, IFS is a non-pathologizing practice of therapy practice that is based on the premise that we have many different aspects, parts of who we are, and that these parts of us are often put into these roles of protection mechanism.

So if we think about the extreme aspects of ourselves, maybe someone might say, I'm really controlling, or I'm really a perfectionist, or I'm constantly judging others, or we have these different ways of defining who we are, the behaviors that we have.

Or for me, I'm 19 years sober now, but prior to my sobriety, I'm a cocaine addict, I'm a drug addict, I'm alcoholic. Just seeing these extreme patterns as who we are and what we do. But recognizing through IFS that these patterns and extreme behaviors are actually protection mechanisms. And they're called protector parts. And so who are these protector parts protecting?

They're protecting us from really young, impermissible, wounded child parts of ourselves. Experiences from our childhood that were too extreme for us to face into, that we ultimately found our way to these patterns and behaviors that became forms of protection to protect against the impermissible feelings from traumatized events in our childhood.

And those childhood moments where we had extreme experiences, big T or small T trauma, right? It could be something as big as in my experience, childhood sexual abuse, or it could be something like being bullied by your kid on the playground or being told you're stupid by a teacher, whatever the experience was, if you did not have a caregiver that could properly help you in that moment to process and move through it.

Then you were left in your own little child brain with no resources whatsoever. And you never wanted to feel that pain again. So you immediately turn to protection mechanisms. And these protection mechanisms became parts of who you are. And so these parts of you have been protecting you for a long, long, long time.

And the nature of self-help, my book, is to help you connect to the less extreme extreme parts, like not the addicts or the exiles, but to the day-to-day parts that are managing your life, right, to connect to the control freak or the judge or the person who's constantly avoiding or playing small, those aspects that really are running our lives day-to-day, and to help them connect

to our resourced self, which is the truth of who we are. And that's the good news here, case itself. And self is inside of all of us. We all have these parts, but we also have an adult resource, undamaged presence inside. And you might call that the God within you or the Spirit within you or your Buddha nature, but in IFS and for the sake of my book self help, it's called self.

And self is like an internal parent. If you have a spiritual practice, you might have thought of this as like an intuition or an inner guidance system. And in the book, I guide you to let these parts be seen by self and make that connection.

Well, it's such an aptly named book, of course. It's a little play on words there, considering the importance of the self and not just the category of self-help. But yeah, I'd love to dive into more about the self, but I love what you said there, just in general, giving us the overview of IFS and the way that it's a reframing and it's an empathetic appreciation for some of these ways that we're living and have learned to live in our life.

In a sense, it's learning to love all of those parts, even the parts that we can maybe put a finger on as being character flaws. Even in the book, you were sharing a story about how you were at an interview and someone asked, how are you so at peace with yourself? You said, I'm at peace with myself because I love every part of who I am.

Which, you know, it could take a long time to get to that place, of course. And, you know, you know, it's not as simple as just learning about the different aspects of yourself. But given kind of what you just said before we talk about the self, you know, how do we fall in love with some of those other aspects of ourselves, even the more the on the exile side or the side that we could pinpoint and say, like, that is a flaw or that is what's wrong with me or I'm getting in my own way. Like,

How can we learn to appreciate those parts alongside of the as advertised? This is a great thing about you part of yourself. How do we love all of those parts of who we are? So that's a slow journey of titrating slowly into connecting to these parts and then allowing self to be revealed to be there to support you to come back to a place where these parts of you can become less extreme.

And it's a journey that I want the reader, your listener, to begin with a four-step process.

And that four-step process is the four-step check-in process, which is inside my book. And this is a process that allows you to start to connect inward and give some generous attention to these parts of yourself, these protection mechanisms and open up to some curiosity

and then open up to a little bit of compassionate connection to allow some spontaneous energy of self to come forward. And so the four steps are like this.

So let's say you might be, in my case, I'm aware I know that I have a part of me that's a, that's a controller. And then I've been working with this part of me for a long time. And I would maybe come up, let's say I just came off of a work call being really controlling and feeling a little bit shameful about that. And so instead of letting myself go into the shame and the blame, I choose to check in with the controller.

Okay? So I, that's step one, which is choose to check in. And it's the reason that I have that step that's so important to me is that choose, that choice is that parts are like, these protection mechanisms are like little children inside of us. And so if we try to just sort of like push them to do the work, they're going to be like, no, no way. I don't want to go there. It's very overwhelming. So it's making a conscious choice to turn inward and letting that part give you some buy-in like, okay, let's do it.

Okay, so that step one is just choose to turn your attention inward. Step two is to offer some curiosity inside. And so if I'm working with this controlling aspect of myself and I'm just checking in, I might say, well, what do I know about you? Or what do you want me to know, reveal any feelings or sensations or an age or an image?

Just opening up to curiosity, just letting that part of me show me what it wants me to know, checking in with the somatic experience. Where do I feel that in my body? And then the third step, once you have a little connection to that part of yourself, the third step is to ask that part of you, what do you need? And then the part will speak to you and say something like, I need to rest or I need to play or I need to speak up for myself or whatever it might be.

And then the fourth final step is just to check for these sea qualities of self. And so self is that presence of that internal parent and self has eight sea qualities, which are calm, courage, connection, curiosity, creativity, confidence.

There's one more and I'm always miss one. You're always, I'm always in a miss one or two clarity, clarity and commitment. And so as you have these, this opportunity after going through the first three steps, you would check and see, do I feel a little bit more calm? Do I have a little curiosity towards that part of me? And even if you notice the slightest bit of calmness or the slightest bit of courage, you know, you've done the self-help work.

Do you have any recommendations? That's amazing. I think a lot of us might find a check-in process like that new. There's a lot of noise and literal noise in our heads around how do we really highlight what we're saying to ourselves and what we hear back.

You talk in the book about journaling and your journal has offered you the freedom to let it out and say it out loud. I'm a big voracious fan of journaling. Do you have any practical recommendations for people to get into a habit like this that we're talking about a check-in process?

Yeah, definitely. So I love the let it out chapter, which is taking those same four steps, but journaling with them. So let's just say you don't even need to know what part it is. Well, let's just say the case that you, you know, had a had a encounter with a friend and it really, and you acted out really poorly and you left feeling really shitty. And so you're like, okay, let me check in with the part of me that feels really shitty right now. So you go to your journal and you choose to focus your attention inward.

And that's step one, choose to check in. Step two, you'd start journaling, asking the parts and questions. So where does this feeling live in my body? And does it have a shape or a color? Or does it have anything at once to reveal to many images or sensations or stories? I even ask how old that part of you is. How long has it been around? And then the book, there's plenty of prompted questions. And so you just start questioning in the journaling process.

And then the journaling can go on as long or as short as you want, but as soon as you feel you have a connection to the part, you feel like it's really let it out, let out what it needs to say and reveal. Then you'd ask that part through the journal with Compassionate Connection, which is the third step. What do you need? And let it answer, just let it rip, let it play.

And then you would check for sea qualities and you could write about it. Do I feel a little bit more calm? Do I feel more connected? Do I feel some courage and just check in, see what the shift is, witness the shift. And so imagine the next time you get super triggered by something that you went and did that. And then you slowly kind of came out of that after five or six minutes and you were just a little bit more relaxed.

How much time could you save yourself in bullshit, right? Like 48 hours of being mad and like three days of pissing off other people and maybe you would have ended a friendship. But instead you checked in with the part of you and you tended to that part of you as if it was a young little child inside and you were able to say, okay, let's get to work. Let's look at this.

Yeah, I love that. So powerful. I mean, I like the idea of just rip it. That's very kind of my style too, I think. And I like what you just described a lot, because I think a lot about the idea of mindfulness, which this falls under mindfulness. This is, you know, talking to yourself, listening in a state of non-judgment. And then moving forward, I think so often we think of mindfulness as

as from start to finish the process of sitting in how you feel and listening and acting and not judgment, which is fully part of it. Of course, that was the beginning part of what we just talked about. The next step, which I lean so toward is, okay, what is this part of me, this aspect of me want? What is it saying? What does it need? And using human language to describe that. So whenever I talk about mindfulness, I say mindfulness is listening to yourself and talking to yourself.

And that latter half being so important because if we only ruminate and ruminate and ruminate, we don't get to that step where we rip it, where we stand up and say, this is what I need, and then we can follow through with some actions and changes in our life. But I think what you just described

describes that in much better and study terms of allowing, letting it out and putting language behind it. Actually, that's a question for you as well. I think we live in such an interesting time that's amazing with social media and it's so easy to find.

people being helpful whether they're therapists or just normal humans sharing their story. I think sometimes though there's this gravitation toward labels and diagnosis terms of waiting in this and this and that which of course are very important. But sometimes I've just found that they get in the way of us truly connecting with ourselves because we put this label there as opposed to just letting ourselves come up with the words that make sense to us.

And that's why perhaps I'm such an advocate for journaling because we can find those words. So I'm curious for you, like, how do you recommend we like talk to ourselves and listen to ourselves and use words that we can relate to as opposed to kind of feeling the pressure of some of this therapy language perhaps, which is good. But maybe, you know, just leaning towards words that we can understand that have meaning. Yeah, I mean, I think that really the inner inquiry

can be much more simple than we make it. And so it's just noticing that I'm not feeling great right now. This isn't a good feeling. I'm having an undesirable experience right here right now and choosing to focus your attention inward rather than checking in rather than checking out.

Right. We'll check out by picking up a drink or we'll check out by binging in the refrigerator. We'll check out by watching Netflix or raging or whatever we do. But what I'm suggesting is you just check in and give yourself five minutes of checking in to see maybe that will adjust your energy and that then, you know, giving a little curiosity. We can all get curious. Like, how does it feel giving it some breath?

and asking, what do you need? I mean, these are simple terms that we, you know, it's interesting as I go on this journey of interviews for this book, people always open, people like yourself that are very interested in processes like this will go right to what is IFS. But I think almost in some ways, it's best for me to not even talk too much about IFS because the simplicity is what I'm here to give.

And my mission and my work is about democratizing this model or democratizing spiritual principles and whatever it might be that I am here to demystify. And so it's certain podcasts when you have the time, it's nice to be able to say, this is IFS, this is what it means, but really, just let's keep it simple. You have experiences inside that make you do extreme things and let's just check in with them instead of checking out

Yeah, well, you came to the right place because I always joke that I like to use like golden retriever level language when it comes to describing complex topics. So we get, we could bring it all the way down. And I appreciate that. Um, a lot of me, I think the idea of, you know, checking in, in addition to like my mindful practice and, you know, journaling and therapy and these things, it's,

So often, I think we see them as things that we do when we're hurt or healing or sad. And of course, that's an amazing time to do these things. But it's also a celebration. I think journaling and self-awareness and therapy type practices are a celebration of who we are. And we should not just reserve them for times when we're sad. They are a reinforcement of hope.

And I think that's a good topic that I love to talk about as well. I think it's my mission in life through my writing and quotes and the podcast and everything I do to help people remember what hope looks like and optimism looks like. And that's a big theme of the book, right? Hope. You've got a quote in there that says, the existence of hope is enough to cut through the barrier of protection, which I really liked. And then you also talk about how just this whole concept that we're talking about

is really about recognizing pure intentions, like all parts of ourselves, even the ones that we've put that label on of being negative or problematic, they're there to be helpful in some way. There's good intentions behind them. I think, of course, it's a beautiful message. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the role that Hope as a theme plays in this, in your life. I'd love to hear that. Hope is the conduit for miracles.

When we have even the slightest bit of hope for a possibility to see something through the lens of love instead of that fear, then we open our heart to whatever it takes to get there. And that hope also opens up our conscious awareness to receive inner guidance and intuitive guidance. So leaning into hope

through a prayer, through even an affirmation or a message you share on your Instagram or listening to something like this, gives activation to that presence of hope inside. And it lets you reinforce the belief that it's possible to heal.

Yeah, the idea of possibility, it sounds like you agree, like that is hope. Like sometimes we think about hope, we think about optimism and we think, oh, that means it's positivity, right? Those are one in the same things. And so not always the case, right? We can think about hope as being the presence of possibility, the presence of change, the presence of evolution, the

You know, the presence of the better men, of course, but it's not always tied to just thinking to be hopeful. I have to close my eyes and just be delusionally positive about life. And I think sometimes that gets us stuck in a headspace of forcing things. So I think that is so true and so beautiful. And I think something that comes from this that you also talk about.

is forgiveness, specifically self forgiveness. And the idea of forgiveness also being a catalyst for miracles and life. And you talk about how we can't heal and we can't forgive things that we don't see, that we don't accept, that we aren't willing to embrace and look at.

I'm curious for people who have parts of themselves that they've perhaps buried in some way, either intentionally or just out of pure survival mode. How do we lean into ideas like hope and self forgiveness when perhaps we haven't done that step of saying this is the thing that I need to address? How do we put ourselves in that headspace where we're willing to do that and aware enough to do that?

I think that forgiveness isn't something that we're going to go out and get. It's not something that we have to do something to receive. It's something that is bestowed upon us. And we experience forgiveness as a result of making a commitment to our inner world.

And that forgiveness does begin with us on an individual level, right? So before we can forgive somebody, truly, we have to forgive ourselves. And so we have that experience very naturally and oftentimes spontaneously when we

have these experiences of inner reflection when we sit on a meditation pillow, when we do a four step check in process like self help is suggesting, when we even have a therapy session or yoga practice, the practices of reflecting allow forgiveness to be revealed. And it's not something you have to go out and look for. So I would really advise the listener to not try to forgive yourself.

but instead to turn inward and become curious. Yeah, I think that's a much more intuitive way to think about these topics that we think are like outcomes or nouns or things that we need to have. I'd love to on that note about turning inward and being curious as a catalyst for some of these things. I want to talk a little bit more about the self, right?

the self being the idea that this is the core of who a person is and it encapsulates a lot of those sees and curious and capable and compassionate and accessing this part of you. How do we best do that? I think so often in life, it's a difficult question, for instance, just to say like, who am I and what do I stand for? I'm 36 and I found myself in my 20s.

describing myself in ways that literally didn't describe who I was. It described either who I wanted to be or emulating other people or just a lot of copying and pasting. So how do we truly access this idea of the self and say, this is who this person is?

and being honest and real about it, especially just in a day and age where it's so easy to feel pressure to be a certain way or rush or expectations and all these things that might cloud our judgment. How do we truly get a handle on this idea of the self?

all of these patterns that you sort of just defined of like, you know, pretending to be something else or people, please, I'm not just using your words, just just giving ideas now, or, you know, forcing myself to be some way. Those are protectors that are like clouds in front of the sun. There's a beautiful quote, IFS practitioner as this quote, that, that self is the sun behind the clouds. And so we live in the clouds.

And we forget that self is there. And by undoing the behavioral patterns by checking in with them gently, we release the presence of self.

And self is an essence, self is an experience, self is a feeling, self is an energy, self is something that I can speak to with authority because I live it. And I in self all the time know, but I know how to get back to self, because I know how to undo the beliefs and I can befriend the parts of myself that are the clouds in front of the sun. And so I think that,

Look, you know, I'm a decade older than you. Well, nine years older and nine years older. And I can say to you what my 36 year old cell, my 36 year old parts were actually experiencing extreme protectors at that time. When I was 36, I remembered trauma from my childhood. I remembered it in a dream.

and that memory revealed to me such clarity of why I had been running for so long, why I had been a cocaine addict, why I was a workaholic, why I was running, running, running, running, running. And that revelation was such a huge experience because it put me on a journey of

really getting closer to those parts of myself that were so extreme and letting my parts recognize that there was healing possibilities inside. And now nine years later, I'm sitting with you and I am happier than I have ever been. I feel a sense of genuine safety and confidence and courage. I love every part of who I am.

I am proud every day of how I show up. And even when I fuck up, I turn back in and I show up better. And it's all a result of being in a devotional practice to the inner work case. And if there's any advice I could give my, my new friend here is just make, put all your energy into the inner work and everything else will completely shine. Everything else will fall into place.

Yeah, well, that's beautiful and we're grateful for you to be able to sit down and share all this and have your life, of course, be a testament to it. The concept of, and we don't have to go into all the detail because I want people to read the book and go through it at their own pace, which I think is important.

the concept of exiles being one of the parts. I think this is an aspect of ourselves that we reserve a lot of the time for therapy, which is amazing, right? The parts of us that are holding

You know that that trauma potentially or some intense vulnerability and you know shame guilt grief like these intense heavy emotions, but I think we'd agree that you know exiles as part of ourselves it plays a very important role in our lives.

I love just to talk a little bit about this side of ourselves, especially because I feel like a lot of people are going through different healing journeys, which is a word that we throw around a lot. But I think if we were to tie a line here between topics, healing and exiles would probably be connected. Can you talk a little bit about this part of ourselves in particular, the exiles?

The exiles are addressed in the book, and I also make a really loud call out that that is the parts that I would advise people connect to in therapeutic settings. Because the exiles are, for me, my exile was a little girl who was abused as a child, and that was such an extreme experience case that I had a protector that dissociated from that experience.

I literally forgot. I didn't remember. I put it away. My brain shut it out only to remember it at 36 years old. So these exiles are so oftentimes so extreme that we will do anything to shut them down.

And so my advice would not be to go straight into the little child part of you or go do some ceremony with your dramatized child. No, do not fucking do that, right? Like go slow, titrate slowly. That's why I love this book for people because it's about just start working a little bit with these managing parts, the protectors. And as you start to recognize these protectors and start to get a little bit more connected to them,

Then you can maybe say, you know what, I think I'm ready to go do that deeper therapy. Or you know what, I'm going to go work with that life coach. I'm going to go do that deeper trauma work with someone who is absolutely qualified to do the trauma work because you do not want to find your way doing trauma work with someone. I wrote another book called Happy Days, which is the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace.

And I would love to advise that to people who might be facing into trauma also because that gives a really beautiful guideline of all the different trauma therapies, IFS being one of them and the modalities for healing. Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate that answer a lot. I mean, I think, I think there's a, there's a time and place and it's so interesting. And I, I celebrate it. I love social media. I love how we've rallied around introspection and self-awareness and different mindful habits. Yeah. I think there's a lot of pressure on people to, to, to heal themselves. And I think that's, that's great. And it's something we need to do. But to your point, I mean, I think it's,

It's something that we need to do the right way and it's not something we can force. It's something that perhaps we need to be more delicate and intentional about. Something that comes up when I talk to people that read or listen to my podcast is we talk about specific feelings or we talk about specific aspects of ourselves or ways to check in. We talk about letting it out and letting it rip, which I think is great.

What advice do you have for people who maybe feel overwhelmed by many different emotions at once? I think it's easy if you could say, okay, this is the emotion. Now let's go through it. Let's talk about this one emotion. But if only life was that easy for most people to say, okay, this is exactly how I feel when the reality of most people is I feel this and that makes me feel that. And then I spiral to this and it becomes this cascading effect.

Do you have any advice for people who maybe just feel overwhelmed by so many emotions that can't put their finger on it? I would say bring it to the somatic experience. So just notice instead of the emotion, just the physical sensation. So in the moment, if you're feeling like, I have all these kinds of emotions that are overwhelming me and I want to try this check in thing, just check in with the feeling, right? So if you're feeling like your jaw is tight, check in with your jaw, or if you're feeling like you can't breathe, check in with your breath.

And by focusing on the somatic experience that all the emotions can sort of be revealed and more answers and the parts of you can be revealed. So go to the body.

Yeah, you talk about mind body in the book as well, so I think that's great. Moving a little bit away from the book, I love talking to folks like yourself and practitioners of this work that could be rather heavy at times, it could be serious. I'm curious just for you, just in your work and where you are in life and it's a random question, but what gives you hope? What makes you excited for people? I love the part we're talking about hope

And, you know, believing that aspects of ourselves and those aspects of other people are all about good intention. What gives you hope about humanity? I think there's so much negativity around people and politics and this and that. But like, what gives you hope right now through maybe perhaps through this lens? Like what gives you hope?

Well, my own lived experience of the miracle of this type of work are really 20 years of spiritual development and commitment to my inner world. Living the miracle gives me hope because if I can do it, then anyone can.

I just have this strong sense of possibility for all people. Because not because it's something I read about, it's something I've lived. And in having lived the journey of extreme fear and impermissible experiences to come to safety, having lived that gives me hope that other people can do it too. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool that works right about how your own lived

experience could then transcend, transcend to other people and help reinforce it and give hope and, you know, that belief in positive intention. Maybe I'll just close with one other question here. That's related, of course, but, you know, I think about the way that we get in our own way, some of the ways that we self sabotage the way that we allow emotions to

cloud our judgment or get in the way of hope. And I think a lot of the times it comes from taking things personally in life that perhaps we couldn't, namely shouldn't, namely things that people say to us or do to us that we interpret as a slight or being hateful towards us or whatever it is. Like what we take things so personally. And one of the things that I take away from the book and a lot of your work is

not doing that and doing that through the check-in process and understanding that in the same way we're examining these aspects of ourselves that are serving a role, it's the same to be true of other people. Do you have any thoughts on that of how to not take things personally in life as a way to give yourself hope, as a way to perhaps reinforce self-forgiveness and forgiveness of other people?

Well, I think that anytime that we're taking something personally, we want to often blame or shame others, right? Because we want to feel what's happening on the inside or blame or shame ourselves. And so we will do something to avoid having to feel that feeling.

And that's where I think that I'll sound like a broken record, but I would say check in with the part, right? Check in with the part of you that feels like you've been taken advantage of or that you've been shamed or you've been blamed or the part that feels like the victim because the pathway to releasing that feeling is by befriending it and connecting to it and getting to know it. And so I don't think that the answers are sort of like, that's why the subtitle of this book is, this is your chance to change your life.

Because there's one force, it's four steps. It's the one method throughout the entire book. Master it and send me a DM and I'll congratulate you. Send me a DM when you feel like a new person.

Well, awesome. Well, thank you for that. And I hope people do pick up the book. It's out now, so I encourage everyone to pick it up. Anything you'd like to close with, promote the book, anything else you've got working on. Thank you for coming on the show, by the way. It's great to hear it from your mouth after having read and celebrated your work for so long. So thank you for coming on. But anything you'd like to add?

Yeah, I mean, it's just wonderful to be with you. And I hope that people just just experience this book and you can, you can go get it on Amazon. You can go to deergabby.com slash self-help and just find your way to it. There's resources on that page, deergabby.com slash self-help. And I just, I just, I'm thrilled to be able to put a book out with the title self-help because it, it weeds out the, the unwilling, right?

Yeah. If you're willing, you're going to buy it. If you're willing, you're going to do it. Well, thank you. And it's an easy read to as much as it might be a new way of thinking for some people. You've written it in such a simple way, which I appreciate as a simple guy. So thank you for that. Everyone pick it up. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you.