Podcast Transcript | Ep. 47

Integration & Happiness | Ep. 47

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Order Within Navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis, many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?

[00:00:24] How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism? These questions and many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek.

[00:00:43] Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward. Back with another episode of order within. Episode number 47. Today, we're going to be talking about. Integration. And happiness. And when, I mean integration, I mean, integrating the pain, the negativity, the darkness. All the things that so many of us work so hard to avoid.

[00:01:14] The secret to fulfillment and happiness is often found inside of the, that pain, that darkness. So integrating that darkness into our life become a part of who we are, allows us to become a whole. Because we are made up of positive and negative energies, light and dark. Good and bad.

[00:01:37] And integrating all that the wholeness allows us to experience the F the totality of our being. That means that the negative stuff as well we can't reach our potential. Without tapping in and integrating. Those hard emotions, those tough dark emotions inside of us to things that make us who we are.

[00:01:59] Because on earth suffering and struggle. As a part of the growth dynamic here.

[00:02:06] So we learn to integrate. These dark parts of ourselves, the shadow self, if you will, so that we can experience the fullness of our being and come into our complete expression of who we are. And the power that we hold. Comes from. Learning from those. Dark emotions. Those negative feelings that pain we experienced from within that psychological and emotional pain.

[00:02:33] Is there's often many things to teach us now. The upside of where we are in psychology and modern science is we're moving away from. Stirring around, backstories like therapy as an example. A lot of it used to be just rummaging through your past and exploring the things that happened.

[00:02:56] And you would really reminisce on a lot of those things, but the difference was is it was almost just rummaging up things without intention to understand it, to get to the root of that pain of that suffering and integrate it and incorporate it in the now, because our past is living within us.

[00:03:13] Now, the self is within us now. Our younger selves are within us now. Everything from our past is a part of the, now it's integrated into who we are, but when we're resisting these parts of ourselves, when we're fighting within ourselves, when we're avoiding. These feelings. These emotions. We're really suppressing and that creates the shadow self. And when we do this subconsciously, when we continue to press things down and ignore things or turn away from them or avoid them, they grow in stature.

[00:03:49] And problem. The challenge with that is if we don't face them, then it just continues to grow in the shadow. Self will eventually consume our lives. And that happens to so many of us because of our fears. And the desire to avoid hard things, hard emotions, tough, those painful experiences.

[00:04:08] And reflecting on those painful experiences can be hard, but it's getting to the root of where that pain is coming from and honoring ourselves at that point. It's not about blaming people. We can recognize who we are. And I think that's a huge thing is. This isn't about avoiding negativity. It's about.

[00:04:27] Embracing it. Leaning into it and living with courage and facing down things that we struggle with. That's how we become better versions of ourselves. That's how we overcome challenges. And that's how we learn and grow and expand. The skills and expression of who we are. In this world. This is something for me. It's very near and dear. The reason I launched my coaching practice. And is the desire to serve and to share with others, the things that I've learned, because I've struggled and suffered so much in my life internally, just emotionally. And I know how hard it is and I've been deriving too. Reach my potential, but it felt like for years,

[00:05:12] I was unable to do that because of all the baggage and all the pain and all the darkness that I was carrying. And a lot of that came from misunderstandings of my childhood. Misunderstandings of my parents. And not seeing that. Our parents are just like us. We're all trying to figure it out. So having them in our minds initially as children.

[00:05:35] Is, we don't realize that they're figuring it out too. So things that they did when we were young were often just them doing the best they could. It wasn't intended to be harmful. Or heard us or painful or any of those things, but sometimes that just happens. We just, we hurt one another because we live close to each other. It's just the nature of existence.

[00:05:57] We end up hurting the people that we're close to often unintended and so unintended hurt can become misunderstood stories. And if we don't explore them, our mind will seek to fill in the gaps. And often those gaps when done unconsciously are our beliefs or stories that no longer serve us. They may have served us at one point in our lives.

[00:06:21] But as adults, they no longer do. So unless we examine our mind, those beliefs, those feelings and the roots of them, and we go back to ourselves and. And care for ourselves as children emotionally within ourselves. This is what's crazy is you can. You can go back to that. Six year old, eight year old, four year old, whatever 12 year old.

[00:06:43] And. Engage with them and explore their feelings at that time. So we can better integrate and understand where that's coming from. And then as loving adults.

[00:06:54] Clear up misconceptions because the thing is when I did all this work, And it's never done. Like we're still doing it. I journal every day I meditate. Like we're. That's being a coach. Uh, an integration coach, a life coach transformation, coach, whatever, working on the inner worlds.

[00:07:12] I have stuff to always, it's never done. That's what I love about this profession is it. It forces me to be better. So we have to work at that. We have to integrate, we have to. We have to take the time to know who we are and we have to take the time to integrate these parts of ourselves.

[00:07:29] So that we can live in the moment now, because if we don't the past. Really destroys our moment. And that's what ends up happening is it so many of us are unhappy in the moment of now, because there are things from our past that have not been incorporated and integrated into our understanding of life today.

[00:07:48] And we're living out of misconceptions. So when we stepped back in as loving adults, even though we're learning to be loving adults, maybe we don't know how to be a loving adult. That's how I was initially. I didn't know how to love myself. I didn't know how to support myself. I didn't know how to care for myself. I didn't know how to nurture.

[00:08:07] My feelings and what I desired and who I was from within. It took me a long time to learn this stuff. And luckily I was able to leverage the brilliant minds of many people. Who have learned from these things and done things as well and created their own frameworks. And so that's what we talk about on this show.

[00:08:24] Is using these tools to integrate ourselves, but it's clearing up those misconceptions that we often have as children. With our loving adult from the now. And that's what we do. And so this is why it's so important. Is we're bridging the moment from the past into now and we're healing. This is how we heal ourselves because.

[00:08:43] That healing only comes from us. We are the source of our healing. And that source comes from us from our creator. The heavenly father and heavenly mother. Whatever resonates with you, but our creator, that's where that source comes from. We have been given this source of life. It's a seed as spark of existence within us. And we can use that spark of life that creation that spark of creation.

[00:09:06] To live, to heal and to create. So we're going to break down a few things in today's episode. I know that it was a little bit of a long-winded intro there. This is just a topic and very near and dear to my heart. And it's important for us to move forward as a species and in our own lives.

[00:09:24] This is how we find peace and fulfillment in the moment now. So we're going to talk about the problem with avoidance. We're going to look at the benefits of integration. We're gonna look at strategies for integration. We're going to look at the role of gratitude and integration. We're going to look at some prominent thinkers, and then we're going to wrap the episode.

[00:09:42] So the first section here is the problem with avoidance. And when we avoid or suppress our pain and darkness, it can lead to negative consequences such as anxiety, depression, addictions. And this is what happens when we avoid those things. When we suppress those feelings, when we run away from them.

[00:10:01] Is it starts to grow and what ends up happening is as we avoid that darkness, we start to experience more anxiety, depression, and addictions, or.

[00:10:12] Impulsive behavior. So addiction slash impulsive behavior. And these emotions build up over time. And they create more significant problems and they impact our mental health thing, pact our physical health. They impact our relationships, our work. Basically every area of life, because these things aren't living inside of us. And it's effectively, if you think about, if you cut your hand or your arm or something, what would happen if you never clean that wound?

[00:10:41] It would get gross infected. And potentially become life-threatening because if we don't care for our bodies, Uh, our wounds, both emotional and physical. They grow, they get infected. They expand. And they spread. So what happens if you don't heal an infection on your skin? It can turn into a larger infection.

[00:11:03] You can end up having to get your arm amputated can turn into a blood infection that can spread into your empire tire body. Get reached your brain. Like it could end up taking your life. When we don't do this basic care and that's the same thing that we're doing, and we don't care for our emotional selves.

[00:11:21] The inner worlds. It creates. This. It creates a tension. And when we're pushing away, all we're doing, it's like the average. I've said this example before, if you try and push a ball under water. Like a beach ball underwater. The further down you go. The more force it generates when you, when it pops back up, it's trying to make its way back up to the surface.

[00:11:45] That's the same thing when we avoid, it's only giving it more force. And coming back to us. Amplified. So we have to recognize that. Avoiding actually creates more challenges in our lives. It creates more of that anxiety, that depression, those addictions, that impulse. It builds up and it starts to feed those negative destructive habits.

[00:12:10] And this is how we overcome these things though, because we have to realize that. Pain and darkness. Our normal parts of the human experience. It's they're beautiful. They teach us things. They are indicators guides on our journey through earth, through life. So it's a wonderful thing. It's a blessing that we have the signals of pain and the emotions, the darkness that comes to us because they're teaching us where we're off course.

[00:12:39] They're showing us the larger picture. And they're helping us to gain a deeper experience of life on earth.

[00:12:48] So when we accept and acknowledge them, we are embracing life. But when we try and suppress them or avoid them, we're turning away from life. So it's important to understand that these emotions and these feelings are not permanent either. They may feel that way right now, especially if it's consumed you.

[00:13:07] Or if it's ever present. There was when I was doing a lot of this work. There was a period of my life, where it was just an ever present, looming feeling of doom. Of isolation of pain. I was alone. Aye. And it's all I could experience, no matter what I was doing, the only way I could not feel it fully was to numb myself to their porn.

[00:13:30] Through sex. They're partying. It was to distract myself from what I was feeling, but whenever I was not distracting myself, it was ever present. And it kept growing until I acknowledged it. It just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And that's what happened. So we have to understand that these are natural. They're beautiful.

[00:13:50] And that by integrating them into our lives. We become more full versions of ourselves. We'd learn about the depth of who we are and we realize. What these emotions, this darkness has to teach us. There are lessons in all of this. And that's the beautiful part about it.

[00:14:08] And that's where acceptance comes into play because as we accept our pain and darkness, it gives us a greater sense of self-awareness. It gives us a greater sense of self compassion, like showing compassion for yourself, by recognizing and honoring that you're depressed or sad or angry or upset. Or lonely or isolated, acknowledging all those things is a great act of self-compassion. You're showing compassion to yourself by acknowledging it and seeing it and saying, you know what?

[00:14:36] Those feelings are valid, man. I'm sorry, you're feeling that way. You know what? I don't blame you. If I experienced some of that stuff growing up, or that's what I went through, like looking back and reflecting on our childhood, as a loving adult, we can look back to that John, and be like, you know what, man, it's valid that you feel that way and that's okay. It's okay for you to feel sad.

[00:14:56] It's okay for you to feel lonely and isolated. Because. That was your experience a lot as a child. It was very isolating and lonely. And so knowing that we honor that part of ourselves, we sh we are now being seen for the first time and awareness. Is our healing power and recognizing things and seeing things as they are enables us to heal and grow.

[00:15:22] And this develops. Inner strength. This is where our inner strength comes from is by doing this process. By going through this process repeatedly. Doing it day today. In the moments that we need it, we lean into those moments to where. We embrace ourselves, accept ourselves through love and compassion, and it helps us develop.

[00:15:45] A. A greater sense of resilience. A more positive and optimistic mind and empowering mindset. And it allows us to move forward and feel the love that we bring as a person. And that is to me. One of the most wonderful things about this whole process is just getting to experience yourself for the first time, feeling your own energy and experiencing how wonderful you are as a being, because we all have this glory within us.

[00:16:13] That's the power of acceptance. And so if you're struggling to do this on your own, this is where therapy and coaching can come into play. If you are wanting to navigate these dark emotions. Without being on your own and getting swallowed up by it. It's nice having a guide. I was kind of insane the way I approach this by doing it on my own.

[00:16:34] I don't really recommend it to anyone unless you're really feel compelled to do it. Or you're just simply struggling with anything like that. You just starting anywhere is a great place, but you can just accelerate this process with. A good therapist or a coach. Because basically when you go deep diving into yourself, they can be the anchor that you need. They can be your rope.

[00:16:56] Back up to the surface as you go cave spelunking, if you will self spelunking, the coach or therapist can be your guide. They can be that torch in the darkness and they can be their rope to remind you that you're not alone. You're not. Isolated. And then we're going to work through this stuff together. And because it's.

[00:17:14] It's hard when you start getting in there and exploring these emotions, they can be overwhelming. They can be intimidating. And so having support to go through these emotions can be very key and that can be done with family members and friends. If they're willing to be open and listening, now, you have to be careful there because.

[00:17:31] This work is intense and sometimes. People with their best intentions, just won't know how to handle the depth of the emotion that we're experiencing. That was something that I struggled with. I just came to realize that. Sharing with others wasn't necessarily the best way for me to heal because it just wasn't being recognized and honored. So at the end of the day, I came to find that I was the best person that could do that.

[00:17:52] Or a therapist or coach who is trained to do this work right there. They're trained to help you navigate these types of. Dark emotions and feelings.

[00:18:03] All right. So let's look at the benefits of integration now. And so I've talked a little bit about this, but a huge component is going to be. Uh, an increased sense of self-awareness.

[00:18:17] By integrating our pain. We become more aware of who we are. We become empathetic to who we are. We respect our experiences more. We begin to see fully who we are. We can also explore more of our values, the beliefs, the things that matter to us, our priorities. It gives us a sense of the way our mind works, the way we view the world, the things that are important to us and that.

[00:18:44] That emotion. Is enlightening when we sit with it. Because it's expanding parts of who we are. It's expanding our awareness to parts of who we are. And what's beautiful about this is that we will find parts of ourselves that we had no idea existed because a lot of times. The glory that we hold is wrapped up in all that pain. And until we start to explore that darkness and pain.

[00:19:08] We don't see the gifts that are inherent in there. And so as we move through, let me give you an example. So I, anger issues. I've talked a lot about that in my life. So I've had anger issues a lot in my life. And for the longest time that anger ruled me. It was the fire that I held inside me because I wasn't managing it.

[00:19:27] But as I began to manage my anger and explore my anger, I started to realize that the anger was valid and justified based on the things that I believed. And so as I started exploring these beliefs, And start exploring those feelings. I began to heal. I began to develop empathy for myself and understand that. Wow. Okay. This is valid.

[00:19:44] I, my anger is very valid. It's no wonder I'm angry. And what ended up happening though, is that same energy that was once anger became. Trans transformed into energy, positive energy force. I felt more forced to move forward in my life to create, to build so instead of anger, it was more now the creative outpouring type energy.

[00:20:08] This is what can happen when we do this work, when we expand our awareness and we acknowledge those difficult motions is there's gifts in there. There's power inside that pain. And when we open that pain up and we explore it and we empathize with it and we resonate with it. It integrates into who we are and expands our energy, our awareness and our potential. That's the beautiful thing about it.

[00:20:30] Is, it enables us to be more intentional about the energy that we're experiencing and feeling in our lives. And so self-awareness. And increasing our self-awareness by integrating our darkness. Our pain allows us to do this. Another bit is greater resilience. Integrating our pain and our darkness facing down our darkness.

[00:20:53] Is an incredibly courageous act. And it enables us to experience adversity, to handle adversity because that's adversity within ourselves. And so navigating that adversity personally, the emotional. The psychological adversity, the darkness, the depth.

[00:21:10] Is a crazy adventure. So the courage that you have to do that when you embark on this adventure does build greater resilience to not just handle stuff like this, but life in general, because once you start to realize that you can handle anything and when you can make it through. Your own darkness, you can get through your challenges. You can recover yourself. You can overcome that.

[00:21:31] That depression, that sadness, that loneliness, that imposter syndrome. You feel stronger, you feel more capable. It builds your confidence, your inner strength, and you have a confidence in your efficiency, your efficacy, your ability to do things because you realize, wow, I can do stuff I can heal. I can transform. I can build strength and inner strength and work through these difficult things.

[00:21:58] And I am capable. So it builds greater resilience and confidence by embracing these things. Another aspect is going to be improved relationships. The wonderful thing about working on ourselves is that by improving the relationship with ourselves we. Inherently improve the relationship with others. It deepens our empathy, our compassion for ourselves. And when we learn to be empathetic and compassionate with ourselves,

[00:22:24] Naturally, we have that same ability to apply to others. We can relate to the things that they're experiencing, the pains, the darkness, the inner world that they're going through because we've been there. We've done this. We do this work ourselves. So we can empathize with them. We can connect with them at a deeper level and we can empower them to heal. We can honor the healer within them.

[00:22:46] The power that they hold, as opposed to trying to be the savior, rescuing people, healing them and all that. We acknowledge the power that they hold, which enables them to grow and be incredible. Beings in and of themselves. And so when we do this, though, When we learn to communicate with ourselves.

[00:23:04] It allows us to be more self-aware and resilient in those relationships. And it also enables us to communicate effectively to set those healthy boundaries and connect more deeply with others because we can resonate with what they're going through because we've done it ourselves. It's incredible. The power that improving the relationship with ourself has on the relationship of others. Don't underestimate that.

[00:23:27] And then finally it's your personal growth and development you don't want to integrate, as I was mentioning earlier, when we integrate these painful experiences, this darkness in it. It encourages to grow. It expands our sense of self. It expands our capabilities, our potential. When we develop our greater emotional intelligence, empathy and compassion.

[00:23:49] It helps us to become more effective leaders and partners and community members, and just better at everything we do it, it makes work easier. It makes our family life better. It's going to improve the quality of life all around, and it enables us to grow and continue to grow throughout life. So it's a habit. It's a skill that we can develop that can be applied to all areas of our life.

[00:24:13] And learning to integrate the dark and negative pieces of things because it's crucial to life.

[00:24:18] Honestly, one of the. Learning about my own darkness and exploring the darkness within me has made me a more empathetic and compassionate person to relate to others, to connect with others, because I know. What we all carry inside of us and how hard it can be. So it really does bring us back to others. Our darkness teaches us so much. My darkness has taught me so much.

[00:24:43] Not knowing I wouldn't change anything now, knowing all that I know, because I know that it's made me who I am and it's given me perspective on life. And so when we can incorporate and embrace. The challenges, the darkness, it just really has the power to change our entire lives.

[00:25:01] All right. So let's look at. Some strategies for integration. Now I've talked a little bit about therapy and coaching already, so there's getting a good therapist or a good coach can be an incredible way to integrate this pain and darkness that can help us explore those root causes of our pain and develop coping strategies.

[00:25:20] And provide support through the work and the difficult emotions. They can also provide exercises. And. In pivots mental pivots that we can use reframes on how we adjust and challenge those ideas. Because a lot of times what we find is that things that we're believing now are not true anymore. And so therapy and coaching can help us reframe those current negative beliefs to reframe them into more aligned, truthful, positive beliefs that are a reflection of reality today. Not how things were when we were kids.

[00:25:55] Or at earlier points in our lives. Journaling is another journaling has changed my life. It was, I've filled up notebooks upon notebooks and it's just a powerful way to explore pain. Sometimes just letting everything out, pour out of you onto the paper or on your computer, whatever it is, just letting all those thoughts, that emotions to anger, all that stuff flow out.

[00:26:16] It's so cathartic. And then when you look at what comes out of you and you're like, wow, that's. There's a lot of crazy feeling and thoughts in there. Like I said, I've had some dark emotions, anger murder, rage feelings come out during my journaling sessions and. The experience is always incredibly enlightening and light full it. It's cathartic it.

[00:26:42] Releases. Heaviness. So journaling is an incredible tool to explore those negative thoughts and feelings. And grain and gain a greater insight into our emotions and identify those patterns or triggers that may be upsetting us or contributing to that pain. So when we can start digging in there through journaling and allows us to clarify our thoughts.

[00:27:03] And explore our inner world in a safe way. What I always love about journaling and still love it is it's. It's the one place that you can go and it's just your free space. You can just let it all out, whatever it is, just let it all out because it's meant to be private to you. And that's the power that journaling holds is it's your private sacred space that reflects the inner world.

[00:27:25] That you're sharing on paper or digitally.

[00:27:29] Another strategy. For integration is creative expression. So art or music. Uh, painting, writing, creative, writing, dancing, whatever yoga, it's, the creative expression, whatever that means to you, whether it's art or movement or thought. Creative expression can allow us to explore those dark emotions through a creative meeting.

[00:27:52] Yeah, so it's music or art. We may paint something out or we may write a creative story. We may make a piece of music. We may write lyrics. We may write some poetry to express those feelings, and then we can review them. And look at them. And explore the meaning of them because this stuff flows through us. We can then explore what it means to us, the stories that it means to us and the value that it has to us. So leveraging your creative expression.

[00:28:20] Exploring. The variety of creative methods that we can to work through this darkness is a great way to go about it as well. And then the last one is just mindfulness and meditation. I'm a huge fan of this. It can help us cultivate a greater sense of awareness and self-compassion. Just by being mindful, we can learn to observe our thoughts and emotions without judgment, and ultimately develop a greater sense of resilience.

[00:28:46] And the face of difficult emotion. So mindfulness being present. Allows us to just, uh, just breathe, allow things to just come to us. And allow our mind to expand what we're experiencing and be open to possibilities. Meditation and mindfulness is an incredible way to experience ourselves meditation.

[00:29:10] Is the ultimate drinking up of your own being. And so when you sit with yourself and you're exploring those dark emotions, allowing them to take you where you are where you're going. And being present in that process is incredibly powerful. These things are simple, not easy necessarily, but they're very powerful and they're readily available to us right now, which is amazing.

[00:29:33] And so self care says. It's really what I teach is self care and the tools that we have to care for ourselves. Self care and self compassion are critical aspects to this, so when we're looking at practicing self care, we want to make sure that we're getting enough sleep. We're eating. Okay.

[00:29:51] That's something I've got to do better. My wife and I are working at getting better at meal prepping and planning to eat whole foods. We're engaging in regular exercise or journaling. We're doing the things that feel good to us. It's nurturing to us. So identifying those things that are nurturing and nourishing to us and to our being are crucial on this journey too, because this work is hard. So allowing ourselves to develop self care practices and engaging in them on a regular basis can support us in this journey of healing and re.

[00:30:23] Recharging and recouping and restoring who we are from within, because there is a lot of restorative work that has to happen. When we do this work.

[00:30:33] One final note there, in terms of self care, we have to do our best to, to instead of judging or criticizing those feelings or emotions that we. And lean in with compassion and care gentleness softness. It doesn't matter what comes up. The goal is to embrace it as it is, and to honor it, whatever it may be, because it has something to teach us instead of judging and criticizing. That's often what we do. We berate ourselves over these negative emotions.

[00:31:00] And we suppress them down because they're taught to us as if they're bad. But they're really teaching us something. And so we have to embrace them and try and be mindful of the desire or need to be judgmental or critical. Of the feelings that we're experiencing. So be mindful of that as well in this process.

[00:31:20] All right. So the role of gratitude. And gratitude is a powerful tool for in integrating our pain and darkness. By focusing on what we are grateful for. We can shift our attention away from our pain and towards the positive aspects of our lives. This can help us develop that resilience and emotional balance. So being grateful for the things that are good in our life, it could be the smallest things. The fact that we're alive.

[00:31:46] The fact that we. Have access to clean water and air. We can really. Be as simple with this as we can, but practicing gratitude for the ability to even explore these things. Is an incredible thing that we have. And so it's important to cultivate gratitude and understanding how it can help us in this process, because we have to actively seek out those things in our life on a daily basis, while we're doing this to balance that out, we don't want to get just.

[00:32:18] Suffocated by our darkness. So we have to balance this out by, by cultivating gratitude in our life and being intentional about calling out the things we are grateful for. And that means when we're going through our journaling process or we're doing our daily check-ins or whatever it may be. That we're listing out those things that we are grateful for, that we are.

[00:32:38] Happy about that we feel good about because it just reflecting on them can remind us not all as hell in our life right now. And that there is a lot of great things. So gratitude. As a powerful way to balance that. And it's also a way to integrate our pain and reframe it by showing gratitude. So it's by reframing those difficult experiences in a more positive light. So as an example, like the anger that I shared earlier, that was a terrible Uh, dealing with the anger was hard. But what happened as I explored it and integrated it. It became more positive force in my life. It became a forward moving energy. That was very powerful. So when we show gratitude and we work to be grateful for these painful experiences, this is what's crazy. You like when we find the things that we can be grateful for in painful experiences.

[00:33:31] We basically remove the ability to be taken out by negative experiences in life. That's what's crazy because we lean into all of it. We don't run away from it. We lean into all of it. Therefore everything in life becomes something we can learn from and be grateful for. And that's, what's incredibly powerful.

[00:33:50] And then. Even applying that gratitude to relationships with others, it's just a huge piece here. So whatever it is that you may be grateful for in your life. Be intentional about those things. Find those things, write them out, remind yourself of them, especially as you're exploring. The darkness in your world because it's a lot of work. It can be very difficult. So don't, it's easy to get caught up in the negativity, balance that out by being grateful and listing out those things that you're gratitude grateful for in your life, whatever they may be.

[00:34:23] The simplest things are completely solid.

[00:34:27] All right. Let's look at some prominent thinkers.

[00:34:31] Relative to this. So Carl Young is he's really in so many ways the huge. Tip of the spear for integrating the shadow self. And the darker aspects of our personality. I've talked about him before. He's a prominent, psychological figure. And modern psychology he's influenced many modern thinkers. So Carl Young is really the kind of the godfather of the shadow self.

[00:34:57] So his work relative to that has done a great job in terms of increasing our awareness and personal growth abilities. Bernay brown is another person who's written extensively on vulnerability and the role that it plays. And being in building meaningful relationships and. Experiencing greater levels of joy.

[00:35:20] Full authenticity. And she's really open about the way that she approaches things. She's all about authenticity and being vulnerable and being raw and real and truthful. Like her, one of her things is like it's, cursing and praying. Like she doesn't see that those things are mutually exclusive. It's okay to be rough around the edges.

[00:35:42] And so I love that because I resonate with that. I'm not a squeaky clean person. I'm. Um, edgy. I cuss. Um, fiery. That's who I am. It's what makes me who I am. And so when we embrace our authenticity, all the edges, all the grit. It allows us to be the fullest version of ourselves and experience joy at greater levels. Bernay is all about that.

[00:36:06] Pema Chodron is she's written extensively on the importance of embracing difficult emotions as a part of the human experience and using mindfulness and self-compassion to work through these emotions. She blends a bit of Buddhism in Western world in her philosophy. She's been doing this for a very long time. So it's cool. Seeing someone again, balancing that Eastern Western philosophy.

[00:36:29] And really leaning into the importance of embracing the difficult emotions, because from her perspective, it's just reality. It's a part of reality. And so accepting reality allows us to be happier, more grounded in truth. And then the last person here is Tara Brack. BRAC has written extensively on the importance of radical self-acceptance and using meditation and mindfulness to cultivate greater self-awareness and inner peace.

[00:36:56] She has a PhD in clinical psychology, but she also blends Western psychology with Eastern meditation. So it's the reversal of Pima. If you will. I was more Buddhist with integrating some Western philosophy. Whereas. Tara is. Full PhD, clinical psychology in the Western world blending Eastern meditation. So there's the reason I share prominent thinkers. Isn't because you need to like all these people, but it's the idea is to give you little nuggets or clues of people that might resonate with you and their different perspectives on how to.

[00:37:32] Attack things like this. So each of these thinkers that I listed have their own approach to navigating the shadow, self, the darkness, the pain, and how to integrate it in our lives. So I'm hoping that. It can help you explore your own journey. Of healing and self-mastery.

[00:37:49] All right. Y'all that's the last bit I've got for the show here. As you can see the way we learn to embrace our negativity, those dark emotions, and in lean into them. And embrace them with compassion. And sensitivity and care. It enables us to become the full version of ourselves and enables us to become the best version of ourselves. And it allows us to take all that pain.

[00:38:16] That negativity. That disruption in our being the, because in a lot of ways it's us moving in different directions, right? It's discord in our life, the depression, the sadness, the isolation, this is all discord and moving away from what we want to be, what we desire to be in the world. And when we integrate that, when we start to align all those things, we become operational at a higher level. We start functioning at a higher level. The energy starts flowing freely now for us through us, because. We're not broken. We're not.

[00:38:49] Disrupted and being pulled in various directions. We're now organized and collected and operating out of one. Flowing channel of life and energy. And so when we lean into those negative feelings that darkness. It enables us to activate our powers. And become the fullest version of ourselves and ultimately experience happiness and fulfillment in the moment because we've now taken all that pain. Understood. It, showed compassion for it and integrated into who we are. And it still lives with us today.

[00:39:22] That's the thing. We carry it forward with us. We transform it. And that's the work of transformation it's integrating that darkness, that pain. Those negative emotions and bringing it into who we are to express ourselves fully. That's the power of transformation. So I hope you enjoy today's episode.

[00:39:43] I've got a lot of things going on. It's so much fun doing what I'm doing and I'm excited to continue to expand my coaching practice. Um, Working on my personal power program. I've still, I've got the six week personal power program. If you're interested in working with me, one-on-one. Please feel free to reach out. You can get me on Twitter.

[00:40:01] At Brandon Lee ward, you can get me on LinkedIn. I'm on there as well. I've also got my website. If you wanna hit me up on that@brandonleeward.com. DNS are open y'all. So I got a lot of content out there for you to listen and leverage. I've got the podcast and then I've got my coaching services. So if you're interested in working together, just let me know, feel free to reach out.

[00:40:21] But otherwise, I hope you guys are rocking it. I hope you're feeling good. I hope you're exploring navigating. And mastering your self. It's the, I think the greatest adventure that we can partake on, on planet earth. So with that being said y'all until next time.

[00:40:38] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.