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The Anger Myth & Mind-Blowing Happiness: Trish Ahjel Roberts on Leading with Joy · All About The Joy

• 0:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Hi everyone, welcome to All About the Joy.
• 0:02
  Carmen Lezeth: This is the private lounge, and in the house we have just Cynthia.
• 0:05
  Carmen Lezeth: Cynthia, you took off your just Cynthia.
• 0:07
  Carmen Lezeth: I did, I did.
• 0:08
  Carmen Lezeth: And our guest, we are so grateful to have Trish Agel Roberts in the house.
• 0:14
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, you are the founder and CEO of Mind Blowing Happiness, and we're gonna get into why you called it that in a minute.
• 0:23
  Carmen Lezeth: But I also want to say you also you are also the author of three amazing books who are backed by, I mean, I can't believe how many I read all the comments.
• 0:31
  Carmen Lezeth: I was so 12 steps to mind blowing happiness, um, which was endorsed by Jack Canfield and Ianla van Sant, and I know her from the Oprah show.
• 0:42
  Carmen Lezeth: That's where I remember her from.
• 0:43
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm like, go ahead, girl.
• 0:44
  Carmen Lezeth: Uh thinking outside the Chrysalis, Chrysalis.
• 0:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Chrysalis, thank you.
• 0:51
  Carmen Lezeth: And your most recent book is The Anger Myth, which is critically acclaimed and was just released internationally in 2024.
• 0:59
  Carmen Lezeth: So um you spent 20 years in corporate America and then left.
• 1:06
  Carmen Lezeth: And I wanted to find out why and how you came, just get a little background on who you are before we pepper you with every other question.
• 1:14
  Carmen Lezeth: Welcome to the show.
• 1:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Thank you.
• 1:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, you know, I grew up, my my parents are from the Caribbean, and I grew up in Brooklyn.
• 1:23
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And uh I really grew up with this idea that you could kind of be like a doctor, a lawyer, or a business person.
• 1:28
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I didn't think that I had a whole lot of options when I went into corporate.
• 1:34
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And um, you know, I had some great experiences.
• 1:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I worked as an account executive, account manager for many years in telecom.
• 1:42
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I was a financial advisor for many years, but I always felt like I was only bringing a small portion of myself to the table, and I was only using a small portion of my talents and my capabilities.
• 1:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And, you know, if you have spiritual beliefs at all, you know that um sometimes spirit or God or whatever you call that will kind of guide you, sometimes in ways that you don't love.
• 2:06
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay.
• 2:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I was kind of ushered along a path where I was able to step away from corporate and start my own business.
• 2:17
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And it's been almost seven years now.
• 2:20
  Carmen Lezeth: So I've um yeah, can you um def well I read that it was trans transformational leadership?
• 2:30
  Carmen Lezeth: Can you explain a little bit of what that means for people like me who didn't really understand what that meant?
• 2:37
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, I kind of couched it under life coach, and I think that's not doing it a good service.
• 2:43
  Carmen Lezeth: So could you explain what it is that you actually do to our audience?
• 2:47
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, so I run a personal and professional development company, which is called Mind Blowing Happiness.
• 2:54
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I work with organizations and um also corporations as a speaker, bringing programs for their leadership, um, so that you can learn to lead authentically, learn, learn to lead with empathy, lead with joy.
• 3:11
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Most of our corporate models are based on a military model, which a lot of people don't realize.
• 3:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So yeah, so you show up in uniform, right?
• 3:19
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right, at least it's gonna go.
• 3:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Do we have our guns or something?
• 3:22
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I'm so good.
• 3:23
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You show up in a in a uniform, you know, the dark suit or conservative or whatever.
• 3:29
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And there is a model where you know the CEO tells everybody what to do through the ranks.
• 3:36
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And many times um you can't question authority, you're kind of a soldier, you're following directions, and it works until it doesn't work.
• 3:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, what we found is that many people are quiet quitting, you know, they're doing other things on the side, they're not really happy with the structure where, you know, you might be sitting in a meeting, somebody asks your opinion, but you know that they really don't want your opinion.
• 4:02
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You can't really speak up and say.
• 4:04
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So um transforming leadership has to do with being able to have authenticity as leaders.
• 4:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, it's not only for corporations or organizations.
• 4:17
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I think most of us are leaders, you know, whether we're leading in our families or we're leading in communities or we're entrepreneurs like me.
• 4:25
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Maybe we are leading in corporations as executives.
• 4:27
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Anytime we have somebody looking up to us, we're leaders, whether whether we want to be or not.
• 4:33
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So there's there's a lot of really good, empowering work that's there for the individual to come more into themselves and more into their own um authenticity and sovereignty, and then also to create space for the people who look up to us, whether they're at work or in our families, to come into themselves as well.
• 4:56
  Carmen Lezeth: Cynthia, do you want to jump in or go ahead?
• 4:59
  Cynthia: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:59
  Cynthia: Actually, um, so I was reading, you know, the website and everything, and it says that you also teach yoga.
• 5:05
  Cynthia: I do.
• 5:06
  Cynthia: Did you start with yoga?
• 5:09
  Cynthia: Like, did you how did that come about in the office?
• 5:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, if you went on my website, you probably saw a lot of things because I I actually do a lot of things.
• 5:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I I like to feel like it all comes under this umbrella of people becoming better and growing, you know.
• 5:25
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But yoga, the first time I took a yoga class, I was pregnant with my daughter in 2000.
• 5:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, and I remember at the time thinking, yeah, okay, yeah, this is whatever.
• 5:35
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I I just didn't think it was a big deal.
• 5:37
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, and then years later, I got into running.
• 5:41
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then I kind of circled back to my yoga because you know, running makes you tight, and they say, Oh, yoga will stretch you out.
• 5:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I was approaching it more from just the exercise standpoint.
• 5:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But what I realized when I started practicing yoga regularly is that when you change the position of your body, it changes your emotions.
• 6:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So if you've ever, yeah, so if you've ever seen um people prostrate, you know, we see this often in the um is in Islam in Muslim things.
• 6:10
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Oh, yeah.
• 6:11
  Speaker 04: Yeah.
• 6:11
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Oh so that is also a yoga pose called child's pose.
• 6:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it just gives you an idea that that is a posture for surrender, for grounding, for prayer.
• 6:24
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, and they're just there are just so many poses where I would notice, ah, when I change the position of my body, I change my emotions.
• 6:34
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So that was kind of my my first aha with yoga.
• 6:38
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then I just started practicing more.
• 6:41
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, many people don't understand that there are what they call eight limbs to yoga, so it's the philosophy as well as the practice, and then meditation, and then breath work and concentration.
• 6:52
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So there's so many elements to it.
• 6:54
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's not a religion, but it is a beautiful uh way of becoming more embodied, you know, more understanding your own physical body as well as your spiritual self.
• 7:06
  Cynthia: So it's kind of funny because um, like during COVID, I work at the hospital.
• 7:10
  Cynthia: So during COVID, they had little um mini seminars like during lunchtime where you can do chair yoga for like 10 minutes.
• 7:18
  Cynthia: And a lot of it was breathing techniques, and it did help, you know, calm me down or just kind of be aware of my space and things like that.
• 7:26
  Cynthia: And when I was telling Carmen about it, she's like, I don't like yoga.
• 7:30
  Cynthia: I said, No, yoga can only be like 10 minutes if you want.
• 7:32
  Cynthia: She's like, Really?
• 7:33
  Cynthia: So I thought it was really cool that they actually incorporated that to kind of help the employees, too.
• 7:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, and I'm glad you said that too, because I've had so many people who are like, I don't like yoga, but you might have one experience with one type of yoga.
• 7:47
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So even the physical practice of yoga, there's all different types of physical practices.
• 7:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So there are things like chair yoga, there's of course power yoga, you could stand on your head.
• 7:59
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That's usually what scares people.
• 8:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But there but there's slower types of yoga.
• 8:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: What they call yin, where you hold postures for like three to five minutes.
• 8:10
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: There's restorative yoga, which is almost like lounging in your easy chair, but it really calms your nervous system.
• 8:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then there's what they call yoga nitra, which is like yogic sleep.
• 8:22
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's like a little bit of a meditation visualization type thing.
• 8:25
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So there's so many different kinds of ways to access that.
• 8:31
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, I'm still not a fan.
• 8:32
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah.
• 8:32
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, I think there's more to it than that.
• 8:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Like, I mean, you know, I grew up as a dancer and as a performer, and we did a lot of Pilates.
• 8:40
  Carmen Lezeth: And so I think there's also just kind of the contrast where it was just for exercise.
• 8:45
  Carmen Lezeth: I think my issue with yoga when I think about it exercise-wise, it's it doesn't work for me, right?
• 8:52
  Carmen Lezeth: But I do get the meditative part of it.
• 8:54
  Carmen Lezeth: I just don't do it in yoga.
• 8:57
  Carmen Lezeth: I I do it, I write in my journal every day, right?
• 9:00
  Carmen Lezeth: That becomes my meditative space.
• 9:03
  Carmen Lezeth: And so thank you for making me look bad to our guests, Cynthia.
• 9:06
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, but I've got I I've just never I've tried every single kind of yoga.
• 9:13
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, because I I really thought the hot yoga would be the thing that I would really get into.
• 9:17
  Carmen Lezeth: It just never worked for me.
• 9:19
  Carmen Lezeth: And I think that's okay too.
• 9:20
  Carmen Lezeth: I think everyone can have their own.
• 9:22
  Carmen Lezeth: And maybe one day you'll take a class with me.
• 9:24
  Carmen Lezeth: And then maybe I'll win.
• 9:29
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Cynthia gonna take it too now.
• 9:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yes, sure.
• 9:31
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I'm teaching in Costa Rica in January.
• 9:36
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Are you really?
• 9:37
  Speaker 04: Oh well.
• 9:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I think I think we have to make a trip, Carmen.
• 9:41
  Carmen Lezeth: All of a sudden, I'm like, it's all about, you know, I'm trying to be more like all into it.
• 9:46
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, let's talk about mind-blowing happiness.
• 9:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Where did that great name of your company come from?
• 9:56
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, how did this start?
• 9:58
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay, so I guess maybe around 2018, 2019, I had been studying uh Buddhist philosophy for years, and I had been studying yoga for years, and I had learned so much, you know, going through things I've been through in my life.
• 10:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I remember one night I got up, it was like three o'clock in the morning, and these 10 ideas came to me, and I had to write them down.
• 10:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I wrote them down, I went back to bed.
• 10:22
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The next day I looked at them, I added two more, and I said, Oh, I've got to teach this.
• 10:27
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I was writing um what I thought was gonna be like a little booklet for a retreat that I was putting together.
• 10:35
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I was really obsessed at the time with the idea of the butterfly because I was transitioning from like corporate life into like really feeling like I could be myself.
• 10:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I titled the book, Thinking Outside the Chrysalis.
• 10:49
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then I realized nobody knows what a chrysalis is.
• 10:52
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I don't know what a chrysalis is, so I didn't know how to say it.
• 10:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, nobody knows what it is, nobody can pronounce it.
• 10:57
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I feel better now.
• 11:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I feel better.
• 11:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So the feedback that I got was really great.
• 11:04
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, my readers were like, oh my gosh, these concepts are amazing.
• 11:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: We'd like something like another book that's more like a journaling book that we can work with.
• 11:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I thought, okay, great, but I got to do something about this chrysalis thing.
• 11:17
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I kept talking about self-actualization.
• 11:19
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay.
• 11:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I realized nobody knew what I was talking about with that either, Carmen.
• 11:23
  Carmen Lezeth: I do know that.
• 11:24
  Carmen Lezeth: That one I do know.
• 11:25
  Carmen Lezeth: That one I do know, right?
• 11:27
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But but the masses don't necessarily know what that means.
• 11:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I was thinking, okay, how can I describe the concept of self-actualization, which is basically, you know, reaching your fullest potential, right?
• 11:38
  Carmen Lezeth: Right.
• 11:38
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, how could I incorporate that into another word?
• 11:43
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I didn't want to say happiness because happiness seems so fleeting.
• 11:47
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, it's like I have a nice cup of coffee, I'm happy.
• 11:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I take a walk in the park, I'm happy.
• 11:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I have a good day, I'm happy, you know.
• 11:57
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I wanted to find the word that would make that really ignite.
• 12:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I went from mind blowing.
• 12:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah.
• 12:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I love that.
• 12:06
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I like mind blowing, it's a little sexy.
• 12:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And who doesn't want their life to be a little sexy, right?
• 12:10
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: This is this ain't no regular happiness.
• 12:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, this is mind-blowing happiness.
• 12:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And that's where that's where that came from.
• 12:19
  Carmen Lezeth: I love that you just talked about happiness in the same way that I think about happiness.
• 12:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, right, Cynthia, you it's verbatim what I say about happiness and joy.
• 12:31
  Carmen Lezeth: And so for me, joy is innate.
• 12:33
  Carmen Lezeth: Joy is something we actually can control, um, and that we can learn to, anyways, not about me, but I'm just saying I love that's exactly I always say I eat a piece of chocolate cake, I'm happy.
• 12:44
  Carmen Lezeth: I get a bonus at work, I'm happy.
• 12:46
  Carmen Lezeth: You know, um, that's sustain it.
• 12:49
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um I'm sorry?
• 12:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, I said, but how do you sustain it, right?
• 12:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: How do you maintain that feeling?
• 12:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And that's what you do all day, right?
• 12:58
  Carmen Lezeth: Right.
• 12:58
  Carmen Lezeth: And that's what you do.
• 12:59
  Carmen Lezeth: You help people gain that ability to do that, right?
• 13:03
  Carmen Lezeth: Through all of the different um avenues that you work as.
• 13:07
  Carmen Lezeth: So you're a okay, you're a black woman, a Buddhist, a coach, a strategist.
• 13:13
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, how do those identities inform your work, right?
• 13:17
  Carmen Lezeth: How do you use all of those pieces to help, let's say, a group of a team of like five people in an office?
• 13:24
  Carmen Lezeth: Can you give us kind of a tangible thing that you would do with that group?
• 13:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, so when I work with organizations, typically we will create something that's designed to meet their needs.
• 13:37
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, I can say that my signature talk is Unlocking the Secrets to Mind-blowing happiness, which starts with the five kind of essential or foundational ingredients.
• 13:49
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's the first five steps in the book, right?
• 13:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The first one, you know, and a lot of times these things don't come into the office.
• 13:57
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like the first step is healing.
• 13:59
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: 70% of workers who are in corporate spaces have some trauma that is unhealed, right?
• 14:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So that's what the data is looking like.
• 14:09
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's not something that's someplace else, right?
• 14:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And those things show up.
• 14:14
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: They show up in the way that communication may take place at work, whether people are able to take critique or feedback, you know.
• 14:23
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, so it shows up in a lot of spaces, but the healing is the first one.
• 14:29
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And sometimes, you know, you're not gonna get healed at work just because I came up to talk to you for 45 minutes.
• 14:37
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But what happens is that the the awareness opens up.
• 14:43
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, you know, the realization that you're not alone.
• 14:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Everybody's had some form of trauma, whether it's you know, trauma with the big T or trauma with the little T.
• 14:52
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, but once you have that awareness, even for the organization, then it can be something that more attention can be given to, right?
• 15:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So um healing is first.
• 15:04
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The second one is spirituality, which is another thing that at work everybody um kind of pretends that we're these robots in business suits.
• 15:14
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right, you know, and then at the end of the day, you go home feeling really depleted because nobody is really seeing or connecting with you, maybe the way that you want to be connected with.
• 15:24
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, whatever your belief system is, we can look at data and understand that we have a physical body that we can see and touch, and we also have a non-physical body that now we can measure with equipment.
• 15:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, we can see not only heat, but also electromagnetic signals that come from our bodies.
• 15:44
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: We have a field, an aura, right, around us.
• 15:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So these things exist, they're not arguable.
• 15:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Well, you could argue, but you'd be wrong, right?
• 15:54
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right, you know.
• 15:56
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So the second step is understanding that there is a spiritual self.
• 16:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: People are walking around sad, lonely, bumping into things, angry, yelling at the people around them, in part because they don't understand that they have a spiritual self.
• 16:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: They may think that they are inherently bad or there's nothing inside them worth unearthing or acknowledging, right?
• 16:22
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So those are kind of the foundational.
• 16:25
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then the the next uh step goes into community.
• 16:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: We need community, we need to have a sense of community, whether it's the places that we work or communities that we build outside of our organization or team building, you know, that we may set up as leaders within an organization.
• 16:45
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, so those those are the first three.
• 16:49
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I could go on, but I don't want to.
• 16:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, I know.
• 16:52
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm I'm so sorry, I'm like fascinated, right?
• 16:54
  Carmen Lezeth: That's why I'm not saying a word.
• 16:55
  Speaker 04: I'm like, really, really?
• 16:57
  Carmen Lezeth: Because I'm thinking you could come to one of our clients' offices and have a conversation with some people.
• 17:02
  Carmen Lezeth: But you must you must work with people, and then it's a it's not a one-day event, it must be a long-term thing to get into all of that stuffage.
• 17:13
  Carmen Lezeth: So for respectfully, that's just my word.
• 17:18
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm sorry.
• 17:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, look, I told you, I love this stuff.
• 17:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I could be here all day, I could be here all day with the stuffage and all the things.
• 17:26
  Carmen Lezeth: So, but yeah, so if I do, if did I insult you, I didn't mean to be insulting.
• 17:30
  Carmen Lezeth: No, no, no, not at all.
• 17:32
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm I'm loving it.
• 17:33
  Carmen Lezeth: Oh, okay, but that's deep.
• 17:34
  Carmen Lezeth: Look at Synthia's like, you insulted her.
• 17:37
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, no, no.
• 17:39
  Carmen Lezeth: No, listen, I'm changing energy.
• 17:41
  Carmen Lezeth: I love made-up words.
• 17:45
  Carmen Lezeth: So just that's I that's one I have like seven of them.
• 17:48
  Carmen Lezeth: That's one of them stuffing.
• 17:49
  Carmen Lezeth: And it is deep.
• 17:50
  Carmen Lezeth: It is deep.
• 17:51
  Carmen Lezeth: It is deep stuff.
• 17:52
  Carmen Lezeth: And I I'm thinking about I am thinking about the offices I work for, and I'm like, wow, I don't do any of that.
• 17:58
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, I I I probably need it myself, you know what I mean, as you're speaking.
• 18:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So yeah, I mean, it's so needed.
• 18:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So many people are unhappy.
• 18:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: If you ask most people if they are happy, for the first thing they're gonna ask you is, well, what do you mean by that?
• 18:14
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: What does that mean?
• 18:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, and they might even be suspicious, like, what are you trying to do?
• 18:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: What are you trying to say to me?
• 18:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, so the the need is definitely there, but to your point, yes, it's I can go in and I can do a talk for 45 minutes and leave.
• 18:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And people might say, Oh, that was really interesting.
• 18:32
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Let me grab a copy of her book, or we'll leave behind a copy of the book.
• 18:36
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: This one um is a it's a journaling book, so it has 12 steps, five prompts per step.
• 18:43
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You could work through it all year.
• 18:45
  Carmen Lezeth: And this is the mind-blowing happiness book because we have the audio as well.
• 18:49
  Carmen Lezeth: So I want to make sure that people realize that you were holding up that book.
• 18:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Oh, yes, yes.
• 18:54
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That was 12 steps to mind blowing happiness that I that I was showing you.
• 18:57
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So for like a single talk, it could be something like that.
• 19:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But if I were going into an organization to do some work, typically it would be a workshop and then either some group coaching calls, you know, that would be on Zoom for maybe three months or some period of time that we agree on to give the opportunity for me to teach more and for people to get their questions answered, you know.
• 19:23
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, but yeah, it's it's um that's like my life's work right there.
• 19:28
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, I think that if each of us were even like 20% better, like if we just felt maybe 20% better about ourselves, so we could be maybe 20% more authentic and maybe show up with confidence, 20% more, you know.
• 19:44
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like we're not gonna be whole new brand people or brand new people, but if we could just get a little bit more, um my pet peeve is that we have a lot of um people who are emotionally not intelligent, without great intentions, who have large platforms and big voices, and even a lot of followers, right?
• 20:09
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So these malintentioned folks are making a lot of noise and doing a lot of things, and then we have very lovely, nice people who are at home gardening and they will not share their opinion or speak up, you know.
• 20:23
  Carmen Lezeth: So can you talk a little bit about what emotional intelligence is?
• 20:27
  Carmen Lezeth: Because I don't think I don't think a lot of people understand what emotional intelligence is.
• 20:31
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm so sorry.
• 20:33
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, no, no.
• 20:33
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So uh so emotional intelligence deals with things like self-awareness.
• 20:40
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, do you know how you feel?
• 20:43
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Do you have the words?
• 20:45
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like there is a chart, I can't think of the name of the chart, but there's a chart with all the words for all your feelings.
• 20:50
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, can you even verbalize your own emotions?
• 20:56
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Can you uh develop self-awareness so you're aware not only of how you feel, but how the way that you behave impacts other people?
• 21:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So developing some of that language and some of that self-awareness is really the root of what emotional intelligence is.
• 21:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right.
• 21:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I love it.
• 21:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Go ahead, Cynthia.
• 21:22
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm sorry.
• 21:23
  Cynthia: So I actually took your angry myth quiz online and it came out 50%.
• 21:31
  Cynthia: And I was like, um, okay, I'm 50-50.
• 21:36
  Carmen Lezeth: So can you explain what what that is?
• 21:38
  Carmen Lezeth: I know it's your third book and it's the book that's currently out.
• 21:41
  Carmen Lezeth: It came out in 2024 internationally, but can you explain first what the book is and then answer Cynthia's question?
• 21:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Again, audio.
• 21:48
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm always like I'm the producer over here.
• 21:50
  Carmen Lezeth: Yes, yes, yes.
• 21:51
  Carmen Lezeth: Go ahead, go ahead.
• 21:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I started off talking about the foundational concepts for um unlocking the secrets of my willing happiness, right?
• 22:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So we talked about um healing, we talked about spirituality, and then we talked about community.
• 22:06
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The fourth step is self-love and authenticity, and I touched on that a little bit.
• 22:11
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The fifth step is transforming anger.
• 22:15
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's really about peacefulness, learning to transform your anger into either calm, you feel fine, nothing's bothering you, or constructive action, not violence, right?
• 22:28
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: An action that is gonna be constructive.
• 22:31
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's the kind that we've thought through, right?
• 22:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right, right.
• 22:40
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So I used to do a lot of interviews on uh the book 12 steps of mind-blowing happiness, and people would say, Well, you know, we don't have time for 12 steps.
• 22:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's like what you were saying, Carmen.
• 22:52
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: This is a lot of work.
• 22:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: What is the one thing that I can do to be more joyful?
• 22:57
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And if I had to choose one, it is the anger, it's this idea around anger.
• 23:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So that's why the book that I wrote most recently is the anger myth.
• 23:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And the subtitle is understanding and overcoming the mental habits that steal your joy.
• 23:14
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It wasn't until I started studying Buddhism that I started to understand that anger is a mental habit.
• 23:22
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's a habit, you know.
• 23:25
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I didn't know that I didn't have to be angry when people did things that I did not like.
• 23:31
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, that was kind of like the only way that I knew to react to something was to be angry.
• 23:38
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But when you think about it, you know, if you've ever been around small children, like two-year-olds, you know, if you do something they don't like, maybe you take away their toy, you tell them no, whatever it is, they'll like let loose, you know, fall on the ground, scream, cry, whatever.
• 23:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: As we get older, well, we can't really get away with that, but we'll still do like the grown-up version of it.
• 24:04
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, I'm not speaking to you anymore, or maybe I'm screaming at you, but in some kind of way, acting out and never, you know, we don't really learn how to process it.
• 24:14
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So the book teaches you how to process it, um, but it also brings attention to subtle versions of anger that we don't recognize as anger.
• 24:25
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, so in the book I call them anger seven cranky cousins, and they are um disappointment, annoyance, okay, frustration, jealousy, impatience, guilt, which is really self-directed, and then resentment, which is just you know, anger extended over a long period of time.
• 24:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because sometimes we get stuck in the disorder.
• 24:53
  Carmen Lezeth: Angry cousin, okay, cousins of anger.
• 24:56
  Carmen Lezeth: I just got it.
• 24:57
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm like, what?
• 25:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Just like cousin.
• 25:02
  Carmen Lezeth: What am I talking about?
• 25:03
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm so sorry.
• 25:05
  Carmen Lezeth: I hey, if I'm thinking that way, there might be other people who are losing.
• 25:09
  Carmen Lezeth: Oh, sure.
• 25:10
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like, why do cousins get involved with this?
• 25:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, no, I totally get it.
• 25:17
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So when I first started saying Buddhism, and they um, you know, shared kind of this philosophy around what anger is, and then I understood that there are subtle versions, you know, like we don't necessarily go from zero to a thousand.
• 25:34
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: We'll be on this low simmer.
• 25:36
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And you probably know people like this who are like just simmering, they're maybe complaining a lot, they're always just a little cranky, nothing really maybe makes them happy, you know.
• 25:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay.
• 25:51
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm just fixing my hair.
• 25:53
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm not pointing at you, Cynthia, at all.
• 25:56
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And it's like we think that, you know, like I'm driving someplace and I'm stuck in traffic, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm too good for this traffic.
• 26:06
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Don't they know that I'm coming through?
• 26:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know what I mean?
• 26:09
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's like and it but it seems normal to us, right?
• 26:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Until you realize how ridiculous you're being.
• 26:15
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But you have to pause and kind of think about it and work through it.
• 26:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like, well, you know, everybody else is in this traffic too.
• 26:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: They all have places to go too.
• 26:23
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I can't be the most important person on the road right now, right?
• 26:27
  Carmen Lezeth: So, um so are you saying anger?
• 26:30
  Carmen Lezeth: We shouldn't.
• 26:31
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, just to be clear, because I want to I haven't read the book yet.
• 26:34
  Carmen Lezeth: I did just order it.
• 26:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Did I just order it?
• 26:36
  Carmen Lezeth: I will be ordering the angry myth.
• 26:39
  Carmen Lezeth: Well, I don't want to.
• 26:40
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The anger myth.
• 26:41
  Carmen Lezeth: The anger myth.
• 26:42
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay.
• 26:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Are you saying that it's not okay to be angry?
• 26:46
  Carmen Lezeth: Or that you don't get angry at all?
• 26:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Or I'm just curious.
• 26:49
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I'm glad you asked this.
• 26:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, this is a perfect question.
• 26:52
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because it's not that it's not okay to be angry.
• 26:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Being angry, disappointed, frustrated, jealous, all those things are normal emotions, right?
• 27:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's fine to feel your emotions.
• 27:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And the the first step in the what I call the five-step tame and reframe approach to process your anger is to acknowledge it, right?
• 27:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So whatever you're feeling, you want to acknowledge it.
• 27:15
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The thing is, you don't want to live in it.
• 27:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Some people are living in it, they're living in the jealousy, they're living in the frustration, they're living in whatever variations of anger they're experiencing, and it's hurting them.
• 27:29
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like, look, I'm gonna pick on Cynthia.
• 27:34
  Carmen Lezeth: I think that would be helpful.
• 27:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Go right ahead.
• 27:37
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So if Cynthia is angry all day long, it doesn't affect me.
• 27:42
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's that you know, it's only affecting her, even if somebody did something terrible to her, like a deep, deep betrayal, right?
• 27:49
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And she's angry all year.
• 27:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Every day she wakes up angry over this betrayal.
• 27:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And listen, I've probably been there, so don't think you know, we've been through stuff.
• 27:59
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But say every day I wake up, I'm so angry over this betrayal.
• 28:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: After a while, the reality is the person who betrayed me is sleeping in their bed having a great time.
• 28:11
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, I'm the one who's dealing with this fire in my chest, in my belly that will literally, or I shouldn't say will, but can literally make you physically ill.
• 28:23
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:25
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Can give you um mental health issues as well, right?
• 28:29
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And it's not fun, you know, it's keeping you from having the relationships you want to have with other people, with yourself, you know, from doing things that you like to do, you know, just just from having a joyful life.
• 28:43
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's not that it's not okay to be angry and feel your emotions.
• 28:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's just as we we talk about things like self-awareness, you know, you want to say to yourself, well, how long do I want to be in this uh uh space that doesn't serve me, that doesn't benefit me.
• 29:01
  Carmen Lezeth: So when Cynthia took the quiz and she said it was 50%, what does that mean?
• 29:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That means that she's she's um I want to say she's healthy, but she has some work to do.
• 29:15
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It makes me think that the material is probably a little new for her, you know, which it is for most people, right?
• 29:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: This this idea that we have options, that we don't have to be angry.
• 29:26
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I know it was new for me, but I thought that like I told you, I thought that if somebody did something I didn't like, that that was what I should be feeling.
• 29:36
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I didn't realize that it hurt me.
• 29:39
  Cynthia: I mean honestly, I think sorry, um, I think if I would have taken this test maybe like five, six years ago, I probably would have been at like 75% because I did, you know, have anger issues and things like that that I have worked on.
• 29:54
  Cynthia: So now that it's at 50%, I feel a lot better about myself that it I'm working on myself and you know.
• 29:59
  Cynthia: It's it's getting there.
• 30:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yes, yes, yes.
• 30:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, fifty is not bad.
• 30:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, most people are not going to like score really well because for most folks it's a different way of understanding um what anger is and how it works.
• 30:17
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right.
• 30:17
  Carmen Lezeth: Like you can want people to be able to access uh the quiz so they could go visit your website at is it it's mindblowinghappiness.com.
• 30:27
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah.
• 30:27
  Carmen Lezeth: And they can find the quiz there um as well as so much more information.
• 30:33
  Carmen Lezeth: You also have a podcast as well.
• 30:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, do you do that podcast just monthly, though?
• 30:38
  Carmen Lezeth: We're on a little hiatus for the podcast right now, but when I do it, I do it monthly.
• 30:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Still, I listened to two of them.
• 30:45
  Carmen Lezeth: It was such it was you have some guests on there, and it's just a wealth of information.
• 30:50
  Carmen Lezeth: So it's mindblowinghappiness.com.
• 30:53
  Carmen Lezeth: Uh please go visit the website and get the quiz if you'd like to score better than Cynthia.
• 31:02
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Don't pick on Cynthia.
• 31:04
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I love that you went on the quiz.
• 31:06
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I will say as well, that is self-awareness, right?
• 31:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That is the willingness to do a self-assessment, to look at yourself, to learn, because most people won't do that.
• 31:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I like you, Cynthia.
• 31:24
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Don't worry.
• 31:26
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay, well, it was nice having you on the show.
• 31:28
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, I think one of the things I I'm not most proud of, but I think I deal with anger pretty quickly.
• 31:39
  Carmen Lezeth: And Cynthia, you could you could say I don't or whatever, but I get angry, I get mad, I tell people, and then I'm done.
• 31:45
  Carmen Lezeth: And and I move through it.
• 31:47
  Carmen Lezeth: And I think it's I have issues too, and I'm gonna take the quiz and see where I score.
• 31:52
  Carmen Lezeth: But I think one of the things that I have always found interesting about being angry is that people really hold it in.
• 31:59
  Carmen Lezeth: Like they don't want to admit that they're angry.
• 32:01
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm so glad you said that.
• 32:04
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, I'm glad you said that.
• 32:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because that's because you know, I think that with my work, people do get confused and they think that it's about repressing, so that you're like, well, somebody does something ridiculous, and you're like, oh, that didn't bother me at all.
• 32:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I'm just fine.
• 32:22
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I'm just fine.
• 32:24
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And that's why you're biting your tongue.
• 32:28
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That's not what it is, you know.
• 32:31
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, or they may feel like they can't defend themselves, like if somebody is verbally attacking you, I can verbally attack you and keep my nervous system calm because I'm pretty good at this, you know what I'm saying?
• 32:44
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But yeah, so don't but but that takes practice, right?
• 32:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, but yes, it doesn't mean that I only speak flowery words all the time, or that you can come and say whatever you want to me, or that I don't have boundaries, or that I won't even physically defend myself if I need to.
• 33:02
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So you can do all the things that you need to do.
• 33:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It has more to do with um what's going on internally.
• 33:09
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And actually, I can take you guys through the five steps so you understand.
• 33:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, that'd be great.
• 33:15
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay.
• 33:17
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, and I love this because it um I use the acronym anger, so it'll actually spell anger to kind of help us remember a little bit.
• 33:26
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So the five steps, right?
• 33:27
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So if somebody, I don't know, cuts you off in traffic, flips you the finger.
• 33:31
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So what you don't do is speed up and bump into the back of their car.
• 33:36
  Carmen Lezeth: That would be violence.
• 33:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So we don't go for violence.
• 33:41
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So the first thing, you acknowledge your anger, like I was saying before.
• 33:45
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So you're like, okay, I'm pissed.
• 33:47
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I see you.
• 33:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay.
• 33:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, second step is notice your breath.
• 33:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So this is a big one.
• 33:52
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Cynthia, you were talking about that when you did the yoga segment.
• 33:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, you could just take, you know, three long breaths.
• 33:58
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Inhale to the count of three, exhale to the count of three.
• 34:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: When I when I get intense, like I may not be breathing at all.
• 34:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's like so remember to breathe.
• 34:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The G is to gear up your imagination.
• 34:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And for many of us, we had imaginations when we were kids, and then somebody told us, stop daydreaming, get your act together, and we just don't really use our imagination anymore.
• 34:28
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So you want to kind of open up your imagination.
• 34:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay, this person cut me off, you know, gave me the finger.
• 34:34
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Maybe they're running from the cops, right?
• 34:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Maybe their mother just died.
• 34:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Um just come up with a story that you don't know.
• 34:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Maybe they're having a heart attack, right?
• 34:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, or they have some disease that makes them flip their finger.
• 34:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like, I don't know, you know, I don't know what's going on.
• 34:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That is a great imagination right there.
• 34:58
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, or my my favorite is maybe they just had a very poor upbringing, you know, they were raised by wolves, and thank god I'm not them.
• 35:09
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right.
• 35:09
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, whatever that thought process is, it takes you away from following something that you don't need to get involved with, right?
• 35:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right, and then the next step is um, oh I'm like, wait, but what are we supposed to say?
• 35:26
  Carmen Lezeth: It's the being angry, that's why.
• 35:29
  Carmen Lezeth: It's so sorry.
• 35:32
  Carmen Lezeth: This is good, this is good, okay.
• 35:34
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's anger, yeah, it's anger.
• 35:35
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's the E.
• 35:37
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So the E is okay, well, what are we gonna do now?
• 35:40
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, in this scenario, when you're driving, you can just entertain yourself.
• 35:44
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You don't have to do anything.
• 35:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You can call a friend, you could turn up your um radio or podcast, whatever you're listening to, put on an audio book, you could start singing, whatever.
• 35:55
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Just do something to entertain yourself, and you know, you can do it.
• 35:58
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, freedom or entertain yourself.
• 36:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It depends.
• 36:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, this is where it gets a little something.
• 36:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, for small things, you entertain yourself.
• 36:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You can't always entertain yourself.
• 36:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Sometimes somebody might be in your face, or it might be something that requires more, it could be a work issue, whatever.
• 36:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's either entertain yourself, educate yourself.
• 36:15
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Sometimes you need to do some work and learn some stuff.
• 36:19
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That's good, and and then sometimes, like when you have issues that are like social justice or war or you know, all the isms and all those things, education may not be enough.
• 36:30
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: This is when I say enlighten yourself, it kind of circles back to that.
• 36:34
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: The spirituality, finding something that will make those types of things make some sort of sense for you.
• 36:45
  Cynthia: So that's the action.
• 36:46
  Cynthia: Do we also use EA for edit?
• 36:49
  Cynthia: Like maybe edit the way you would change things.
• 36:54
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I mean, if you like edit, I'm I'll go for that.
• 37:04
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm gonna have to put this co-author on my next book.
• 37:11
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But I like that symptom, if that makes you remember something for you, then go for it.
• 37:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because that the E is the action.
• 37:19
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Like, what is the action that you're gonna take?
• 37:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Are you gonna entertain yourself?
• 37:22
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Are you going to make a note that you need to learn something later or address something in that way?
• 37:29
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Or are you gonna have to go straight to spirit?
• 37:31
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because sometimes you gotta go to spirit, you know?
• 37:35
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, entertain.
• 37:36
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, what were the three E's?
• 37:38
  Carmen Lezeth: Because there was three.
• 37:39
  Carmen Lezeth: Entertain, I guess.
• 37:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Um educate, enlighten, or enlighten.
• 37:47
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah.
• 37:47
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then R.
• 37:49
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then the last one is R.
• 37:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So once you've done whatever your process is, right?
• 37:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You acknowledge your anger, you took a breath.
• 37:56
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, you use your imagination to think about, you know, generate some compassion, some empathy for whatever someone else might be going through.
• 38:03
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You figure out how you're gonna take your action, whether you just entertain yourself and move on.
• 38:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then once you do that, it sounds like a lot, but this can all be split seconds once you practice it.
• 38:12
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So once you're done, you just like recognize your success.
• 38:15
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah.
• 38:16
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, I didn't get into a car accident, I didn't ruin my own mood for the next 30 minutes or for the rest of the day, right?
• 38:24
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, I de-escalated, maybe something that could have escalated, whatever it was.
• 38:29
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You want to recognize your success and be like, hey, like how you were saying, Cynthia, like I'm not, you know, I may not be perfect, but I'm not where I was five years ago.
• 38:37
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right?
• 38:38
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Or even yesterday.
• 38:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So recognizing your success is actually really important because when we try to change our habits, and remember I was saying it's a mental habit, we need to have something that is like a reward, you know.
• 38:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So if we are trying to start a new habit where we run every morning, you know, you might want to have a nice little cup of coffee when you're done or something, so that you have something to look forward to as your reward.
• 39:05
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So you want to recognize your success.
• 39:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And it could be as simple as a smile, you know.
• 39:11
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm laughing because I'm sorry, you said running and then coffee as your reward.
• 39:15
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm like, girl.
• 39:16
  Speaker 04: She's like, I have coffee.
• 39:19
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: What did she say?
• 39:20
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Do you want cake again?
• 39:22
  Speaker 04: It'll be chocolate cake.
• 39:23
  Speaker 04: Chocolate cake.
• 39:28
  Carmen Lezeth: I'm like, that's that's not really good reward.
• 39:30
  Carmen Lezeth: That must be like a Buddha thing.
• 39:32
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: No, I'm just gonna reward me.
• 39:36
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But I will I will also say this, right?
• 39:38
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Your reward could just be talking nicely to yourself.
• 39:41
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, for sure.
• 39:42
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Which a lot of people don't do.
• 39:44
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yes, most people, the voice in it, you know, because I work with individuals, I also work with organizations, but I do a lot of work with individuals.
• 39:50
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And one of the things that comes up a lot is this voice in our head that's like always yelling at us, we're not good enough, we didn't do it fast enough.
• 39:58
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: What were you thinking?
• 40:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, so sometimes just that pause to be like, look at you go, you did the thing, or however you talk to yourself.
• 40:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: That's how I talk to myself.
• 40:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You know, just having that is huge.
• 40:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And then over time, you know, people ask me a lot about how do you build confidence?
• 40:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Over time, becoming the person that you want to be builds your confidence.
• 40:26
  Carmen Lezeth: I think it's hard for me, like especially when I'm thinking about how I deal with my anger, and I it's the been the way I've always done it.
• 40:35
  Carmen Lezeth: I have no rhyme or reason, and I'm not saying I can't improve on it, but what ends up happening is people are and get upset with you, or you're too blunt, or you're too mean, or you're too, you know, like people do all that stuff.
• 40:46
  Carmen Lezeth: And then so that's a whole other thing I work on, which is like not, it's not that I don't care what other people think, because I think that's a facade that nobody cares.
• 40:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, I don't care what anybody thinks.
• 40:56
  Carmen Lezeth: The minute you say that, you've just acknowledged that you care that other people think.
• 41:00
  Carmen Lezeth: But I feel bad because sometimes when I'm angry, I let people know right away, and then people are then upset because I said it too hard or too mean or I'm too blunt.
• 41:10
  Carmen Lezeth: And how do you how would you answer something like that?
• 41:14
  Carmen Lezeth: How would you deal with the backlash of being a backlash of being your authentic self and doing your best to deal with anger in a better way?
• 41:24
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, so I think that you can be authentic without being um mean, bitchy.
• 41:33
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I was gonna say abusive.
• 41:35
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And I was like, I don't want to offend the house.
• 41:38
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: You can say it.
• 41:39
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Okay, I'll I I'll open the door.
• 41:41
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Go ahead.
• 41:42
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah, so I think well, yeah, so I think that you can be authentic without being yeah, mean or or abusive, right?
• 41:52
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And you can, I'm telling you, those five steps work so well, they almost sound too easy sometimes.
• 41:59
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: People like ah, now if you have um some like a clinical anger management problem, right?
• 42:06
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because some people from childhood traumas may have um the the way that your brain gets rewired in a certain way, and I'm not a clinician, so I can't go too deep into that.
• 42:17
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But if it's not um something that's completely out of your control, and you can pause long enough for that breath before you pop off, right?
• 42:28
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because I used to, you know, I used to just go straight to whatever came out my mouth at a certain time as well.
• 42:34
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But if you can pause before you do that, and then use your imagination, right?
• 42:42
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Because, you know, I almost named that book um Anger Lies.
• 42:47
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And my my literary agent was like, What are you talking about?
• 42:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It goes back to the whole sort of Trish with what are you talking about, Trish?
• 42:54
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: But the thing is, anger gives us false information.
• 43:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So in that moment when you're angry, you really cannot make a good decision until you calm yourself down.
• 43:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, you know, you may be talking to someone that you love and say the meanest thing to them to hurt them, just in that moment, you know, you forget that you even like them in that moment.
• 43:18
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It's like in that moment, they could be the one person you hate the most, you know.
• 43:23
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah.
• 43:24
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So allowing yourself to pause, just finding a little bit of space, and then the breath is not only a pause, you are literally bringing oxygen to your brain where you're gonna need it, you know, and then tapping into that empathy because you figure, okay, somebody did something really stupid that that pissed you off, right?
• 43:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: What were they thinking?
• 43:48
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Was was their goal to make you angry?
• 43:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Did they misspeak?
• 43:53
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Did they, you know, like only from that place can you figure out, okay, like how many how many um disconnections take place from miscommunication?
• 44:06
  Carmen Lezeth: Right.
• 44:07
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right.
• 44:07
  Carmen Lezeth: That's fair.
• 44:08
  Carmen Lezeth: That's fair.
• 44:10
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Yeah.
• 44:10
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So um I'm gonna go down.
• 44:13
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Go to go to small heart.
• 44:18
  Carmen Lezeth: No, no, I know, right?
• 44:18
  Carmen Lezeth: I don't know how this alliance between you and Cynthia came, but I'm kind of over it.
• 44:22
  Carmen Lezeth: I feel like, you know, when it comes to anger issues for myself, I I feel very confident in how I deal with it, but it's always difficult to watch how people react to because I um I do not practice everything you just said.
• 44:41
  Carmen Lezeth: It's a learning for me, what you just said, and I am grateful to kind of learn that stuff.
• 44:46
  Carmen Lezeth: But like I do things a little bit different.
• 44:47
  Carmen Lezeth: Like, so if somebody's mad at me on the road or cuts me off and I get upset or whatever, I will then wave at like I've trained myself to be like, it's okay, you know, and it usually throws people off, you know, like and so that's a there are some things that I'm doing that I've incorporated because I don't like being angry, I don't like feeling mad.
• 45:09
  Carmen Lezeth: And I think because as a kid, I remember feeling mad and alone all the time, right?
• 45:15
  Carmen Lezeth: So you talked about trauma, whatever.
• 45:17
  Carmen Lezeth: And so, like, I do other things, but I love what you're teaching and what you just shared because um I feel like I just learned some other skills that I've never even thought about um that I think might help me in my process.
• 45:30
  Carmen Lezeth: So thank you so much.
• 45:32
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, Cynthia, do you have any?
• 45:34
  Carmen Lezeth: I was gonna say last words as if like anything else before we wrap up.
• 45:40
  Carmen Lezeth: No, no.
• 45:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Yeah, this has been so enlightening.
• 45:44
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, so thank you for being here.
• 45:47
  Carmen Lezeth: I want to mention again, it's mindblowinghappiness.com.
• 45:51
  Carmen Lezeth: The book is the anger myth.
• 45:54
  Carmen Lezeth: Did not listen to me from earlier.
• 45:56
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, please go check out the website.
• 45:59
  Carmen Lezeth: Please purchase the book.
• 46:00
  Carmen Lezeth: Is there anything else you want to add?
• 46:03
  Carmen Lezeth: I mean, maybe I'll ask you one last question before we finish.
• 46:06
  Carmen Lezeth: If someone is listening and feeling stuck, where would you tell them to start besides going to your website and getting your book?
• 46:13
  Carmen Lezeth: What would you say they should start at?
• 46:16
  Carmen Lezeth: Maybe taking the quiz or if they're feeling stuck.
• 46:21
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, well, there's a there are quite a few opportunities to engage with me.
• 46:26
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, recently I put something, I created something called a small step one-on-one laser session.
• 46:35
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Uh-huh.
• 46:35
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So it's you can get on a call with me for 30 minutes on Zoom and you know, tell me what you're working on, and I can make recommendations for you.
• 46:43
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: It came up because I do a lot of one-on-one coaching.
• 46:46
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: I coach for businesses, I coach for speakers, I coach authors.
• 46:51
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um, and I've been doing this for a long time now.
• 46:54
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: And sometimes people, they're not really ready, they don't even know maybe what a life coach type relationship looks like.
• 47:00
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Right.
• 47:01
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: They might just have questions, like what you were saying, like, where do I start?
• 47:04
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: So, yeah, so I have a 30-minute session.
• 47:06
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: If somebody wanted to book me that way, they can do that.
• 47:08
  Trish Ahjel Roberts: Um and they can find that on your website as well.
• 47:12
  Carmen Lezeth: Okay.
• 47:12
  Carmen Lezeth: Well, thank you so much for being here.
• 47:16
  Carmen Lezeth: It's been such a pleasure.
• 47:17
  Carmen Lezeth: And again, um, we'd love to have you back if in the future you would like to come back and hang out with us, and maybe we'll invite Rick, our other person briefly.
• 47:28
  Carmen Lezeth: Um, but thank you so much.
• 47:30
  Carmen Lezeth: And everyone, remember at the end of the day, it is all about the joy.
• 47:34
  Carmen Lezeth: And I hope you got that from this wonderful, wonderful interview today.
• 47:38
  Carmen Lezeth: Thank you.
• 47:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I've learned so much.
• 47:39
  Carmen Lezeth: I love when that happens.
• 47:41
  Carmen Lezeth: Thank you, everyone.
• 47:42
  Carmen Lezeth: Bye.
• 47:42
  Carmen Lezeth: Thank you.
• 47:43
  Carmen Lezeth: Bye bye.
• 47:46
  Carmen Lezeth: Thanks for stopping by, all about the joy.
• 47:49
  Carmen Lezeth: Be better and stay beautiful, folks.
• 47:51
  Carmen Lezeth: Have a sweet day.