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How People-Pleasing affects Communication and Boundaries · Radiant Voices

• speaker-0: Anything that gets programmed into the brain can be unprogrammed from the brain. And that's literally what I do when I I sit there and we rewire their unconscious patterns that drain their energy, their confidence, their money, their relationships that they don't even notice. I call it power leaks. Like we come into this world as a whole being and then we get programmed with these invisible rules. And then these rules leak our power. Constantly through obedience, through fear, through scarcity, through control, and they just leak us. And then one day we wake up, we're like, we're not good enough. I feel insecure. And you live in this bubble of all your flaws and all your weaknesses or and and your insecurities versus in your power. speaker-1: Hello, everybody. I am really happy to be sitting today with Hibba Balfaki, who's an extraordinary entrepreneur and psychologist. She lives between Dubai and Miami, and she's known for many things. But amongst other things, she is the creator of the mind hacking process, which we're going to be discussing somewhat today, and also rage rooms in Dubai. And I'm super curious about that too. But she's also a somatic therapist and someone who thinks a lot about authenticity and realness and living a little bit more wildly. Hibba, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. speaker-0: Jeremy, thank you for having me. Super excited to have a chat with you today and get into all the nitty gritty things that we can talk about together. speaker-1: Awesomeness. So let's be real for a moment. You know, we're two people who are used to doing this wild and crazy thing of like switching on cameras and having to say a whole bunch of things. But as we start, like what's going on in your body? How are you feeling? What's going on in there in the fullness of you? I speaker-0: Very calm. I'm excited. So I do have a little bit of that like excitement in my body. So I feel the tingling sensation. But I'm pretty calm and regulated. I've had like a good morning where I've taken my shower. I've danced this morning. I took my doggy out for a walk. So I kind of did all my rituals that really ground me. And right now I'm like, come on, I'm like in like an action mode. Like, let's go. What about speaker-1: That's so Yeah, that's so perfect. I mean, I just want to s also say for the listeners, that would be a classic descrip description of a performance flow state. In other words, she's got that excitement, but she's done really regulating things. I love the dancing and I love walking with your dog, being outside, just kind of grounding and presencing yourself. There's no way just to be real that we don't have some tingles. I've also got some tingles. I also have a weird thing. I kind of call it pre-dromal. weirdness before I c I do a podcast or public speaking where I'm a little bit like something's coming up. I have to do something. And it's a little bit bigger than just being a normal human being. I used to get much more nervous, but now I have much the same as you that like I've got some tingles. I think I could probably be more grounded. So I'm l let's let's see what we can do with that. But also yeah, just really happy to be here. Feeling pretty playful, very human. And I also want to invite in my kind of like the this the softer, more vulnerable, real parts of myself too. Because while we have this performance thing going on, or this kind of I gotta deliver, there's a darn camera in my face, and I also really wanna just welcome in the parts that are like weird and wonky too. Over to you. Mm-hmm. speaker-0: Yeah, I feel like I like the word they keep using performance. I like to call it my alter ego. like I have an alter ego that switches on and like she's dangerous and fun. And then I have my other alter ego who's quiet and wise and reserved and and I'd like to bring them both in because they both have some wisdom to share. But I like to look at like I think we're super multifaceted people and we have multiple parts of our personalities. And sometimes, you know, we hone it onto one, but when we're able to bring all the different parts of us, like that's when the conversations are the most interesting. speaker-1: Yeah, I really I I think we're gonna spend some time in this podcast really talking about how to bring all of ourselves or as much as ourselves as we can into communication, into putting our voices into the world, into this moment rather than being a domesticated pleaser or a very afraid part or just pure performance without soul. Like how do we become as completely present and real Even under pressure. So I want to just lean into one of our mutual specialities and great loves, which is somatics. How do you see somatics? Like that's a word that many people who are watching this won't even necessarily know what it is. What are somatics to you? How do you experience them? speaker-0: I would say somatics are like what is going through my body that my mind wants to ignore. the mind likes to override and maybe sometimes create meaning to something that doesn't even exist. But if I kind of just silence the brain and the mind and just go and like explore what's going on in the body, whether it's a tingling sensation, whether it's a tightness in my chest, whether it's those butterflies, and just going. Okay, I recognize there's an action going on without trying to label it. I I like to refer to that as the somatics. I don't try to give it many meaning. I I just want to see what it is go in, like, look, there's butterflies. Fun. What are these? But curiosity. You know, what what are these butterflies? And then before the brain tries to give you an entre interpretation, there's usually that gut soften, soft voice that goes, Ooh, that's excitement. It's not loud. It's doesn't overexplain. It's just like, ooh, you're tired. You know, just simple as that. That for me is somatics. and I personally don't do a lot of like breath work or trying to release the emotion or trying to or work through it. I just acknowledge it, I hear it, and I sit with it. And I it just I I allow it to take as much space as it needs, as long as it needs. There's nothing to fix. It's just to sit, acknowledge, feel, and then it will transmute into whatever next emotion or feeling or whatever it wants to become. It will just happen. So that's that's the flow. speaker-1: Yeah, for me, somatics are the same, really. It's focusing on the felt sensations of the body. And we know that as civilized as a civilization, a sped-up modern civilization, we tend to be all up in our heads and hypervigilant and overthinking. And when I'm working with folk who are scared in meetings or presenting, they are they've got a body that is excited slash nervous. But they are already well in their heads inside a coping strategy, trying to overthink what do I need to say, trying to remember everything. And the brain is doing all the heavy lifting. And I have a process that I simply call the great pattern interrupt, which is we're going to move our focus and our awareness out of this coping mechanism, this kind of crazy sped up head, head based strategy into the body. It's the same thing that you're describing, this thing of moving into the depth of the Of the body. I like to focus, in particular when I'm working with nervous folk, on the felt sensations in the lower body, like the legs and thighs. They tend to be a little bit more neutral. We'll find anxiety more in the chest and solar plexus. I'm saying generally. And like you said, there's not processing it, doing anything about it, when you bring awareness in. You can find safety in the body. The body is a safer place than a scary problem-solving brain, and new miraculous things happen. And like you described, that wise voice, that kind of slowed-down voice of like, hey, it's okay. That's what happens. So for me, it's it's exactly the same thing, this this very deliberate movement into the body to find resource safety. And a different messaging, maybe. So what mechanisms, if I had to do that in the moment, and how would I do that? How would I move out of my head when I'm not even used to it? speaker-0: I'd say pause. Pause is such a quick, easy thing just to kind of like stop. we're constantly on the go, we're always doing, and we're human beings, not human doings. So sometimes if we just go back to like, let me just be, let me pause, let me take that three seconds to just go, okay. You know, and that pause by itself, it first hijacks the mind, so it disrupts the mind. So your mind that was chattered like, my god, what are we doing? We paused, okay, I gotta pause. So you really get in control of your mind, and then that allows you to s the space to investigate, like what's really going on now? Where like quick scan of the body. So pause, scan. What's going on? Where do I feel it? Giving words or just like speaking it out loud, go all. I feel anxious or I feel nervous or I have butterflies. That's usually a lot of the work, Jeremy. I feel like just by naming it, like pause, scan, name, like by naming it, we've done a lot of the work. We don't really necessarily have to do anything after that except sit with it. And it's giving ours ourselves the space to just have that moment with ourselves is such an intimate moment to be like, all right, I gotta pause, I'm gonna scan. And then I'm just gonna name it. It just takes thirty seconds, you know, it doesn't take anything more, and we're back to being regulated and and in in our body, in control of ourselves, in our in our presence, instead of just being like right over here in your mind, which we tend to love to live here. speaker-1: Yeah. And yet how painful is it living up there. So as you say that pause is so essential, the pause and I'm gonna say pause and drop awareness. I'd love to play play and do it play a little game right now, which is just to explore a technique that I love to share with folk and which is really a description or rather a practical way of doing this in the moment that I and and let's just see how we feel. So it's a little bit of a crazy one and we'll discuss how this technically from both of our perspectives. So if you could just take your hands like this, I'm gonna do it too, and cross them over each other. And we're gonna put the hands sort of flat facing the ground, like this. And then we're gonna put the hands down onto our legs and we're gonna start tapping or squeezing our legs left and right. So arms go down onto our legs. So take your hands down to your legs and put your hands on your legs. And everyone watching or listening, do this too. And I want you to also just release your shoulders a little bit so no one could tell you're doing this on a Zoom call. This is totally stealth mode. And now start squeezing your legs left and right. Try and avoid like too obvious a a sway because we want to make this total set stealth mode. And bring awareness down. So we're going to both bring awareness down. Let's take that pause, like you said. We're going to bring awareness down to the felt sensation of our lower body, like the feeling of the tapping on our legs, but the feeling all the way to our feet. And we're going to start slowing our breathing, so a longer exhale than the inhale. So we could for example count in four and then out six. Well, we're tapping and just bringing awareness down out of the body. So that there's almost no space to think because we've got so much focus on the lower body and we've just brought all the awareness down there onto the hips and legs and feet and so I'd love you just to share in real time what are you feeling and noticing as you bring awareness down into your body. speaker-0: Yeah, I I really feel like my nervous system kind of just relaxed and went into this like resting phase. Everything slowed down for me. touching my body felt intimate and felt safe. So very regulating. The tapping sensation as well added to that. And just becoming became more present, like slower, even like now how I'm talking is if we'd reversed about 30 seconds ago, I was more like excited and now I'm more like calm and regulated. speaker-1: thanks. Yeah. So that that's part of the the great pattern interrupt is this thing of just bringing awareness down. And as you say, there's a a kind of a slowing down. And we both know this from somatics of coming into the body. There is a slowing down. And what do you think? Like people might be like, but I don't want to be slowed down. Maybe I won't be able to think, or maybe I won't have any charisma. Like I'm still tapping as we speak right now. What do you think or what how do you feel about being in the body? Are you less charismatic in your body? speaker-0: Hmm, I would feel I feel like there's a time for everything, right? Most of the time we are outside our body. And it's kind of like what we're trained to be outside our body. But actually, if we look at like science, for example, when somebody talks slower, more people pay attention. So science actually follows the somatic way of doing things. So when you're in body, calmer, more regulated. you're more listened to, that's a sign of leadership. But I do understand that sometimes we're in environments where it's fast feed. Like for example, if you walk I have a lot of clients who work in the stock exchange. Can you imagine being in the stock exchange talking like this? You probably get fired. So it's about how do you stay, you know, regulated while you're in the chaos, which is an art by itself, right? Where inside you're like, but Outside, you're still at a faster pace. And and that's a lot harder. You know, me and you are both lucky that we're in a space where we can calm down and we can you know, slow lower our voice, be calmer, gentler. But sometimes life, you know, doesn't give us that that privilege. So it's about understanding how to stick your body, even when chaos is around you. And I think that's that's like the secret sauce. Like that's when you're like, Okay, I got my life together. speaker-1: Yeah, I really, really, really feel that too. And I think, you know, I think people often perceive that the goal is always calm, but real regulation and and a really strong nervous system can get super activated, can get a little super triggered in the moment, get a little bit angry, and we need activation. We need our anger, we need our excitement, we need our mobilizing energy. But when you twin it with some kind of a deeper Somatic anchor with some foundation of presence and embodiment, then you've got the power, you've got this foundation, but then you've got this mobilizing energy on top, and you could be extra, but you can be extra real at the same time. And you've essentially got the choice or the perspective or the space because you have this embodied wisdom kind of present with you. Does that resonate? speaker-0: Especially about anger. So one of my businesses is the Range Roof. So I love anger. I think anger is definitely something that we need to express. And when we don't express it, that's when this ease, disease, kind of shows up in your body. It's it's like we've labeled anger as bad, but just like happiness is an emotion, anger is an emotion as well. there's no good or bad when it comes to that. And Part of my journey is I did a lot of inner work and I still had so much anger. And then at one point in my life, my grandmother away, and she's the person who raised me, and I had so much tremendous love for her. And I like no amount of therapy helped me at that point, you know. And and I just had so much anger at the world, you know. I'm like, you threw away something from me. That's how I felt in that moment. And everyone's like, yeah, like talk to your therapist about it. I'm like, if I talk one more time about this, I just get more angry. And that's actually what happened. I took a whole bunch of my stuff and I went to the backyard and I like broke them and they smashed them and I released this anger that was stuck in my body, was in my shoulders, it was in my jaw, and I just like screamed and I let it out like so primal. And I was like, wow. I just feel so much better. I feel like this thing that was sitting on my chest for the last three months just kind of disappeared. And I just released it. And I was like, people need to do this. Like this has to be acceptable. Like we have to, you know, like let's let let me do this. And and I was literally on the floor when I looked at my best friend who was with me at that time and I was like, I'm gonna open this as a business. Like we have to do this. And she was like, You're crazy. Like That was just a thing you just did, like move on. I was like, No, you don't understand that feeling. And today, like the smash room's ten years old or nine years old, you know, say in Dubai. And we have these moments where people come and they have all this pent-up rage inside them and they release it and they come out and be like, I was not thinking that this was going to be therapeutic for me. Like I was just like, I'll I'll break stuff and I'll have fun. And it's like, but I also didn't know I had all these pent up emotions in me and that just letting it out was going to be a release. And I was like, yep, that's somatic work in a nutshell. speaker-1: I just love that. I I wish we had one of those near me. I th I think it's just an extraordinary venture. So what how does that work? Like someone books and then they come in and w is there a room for them? Padded cell? speaker-0: You get a you get to choose your music, like what kind of music you go by, you get it full geared up, you get a weapon of choice, like sledgehammer, a baseball bat, whatever it is, and then you get an item you'd like to smash. So printers, TVs, lots of stuff, like glass, and obviously everything's recycled, so we get them from the junkyards. We're not bringing brand new equipment. But you spend about 15 to 20 minutes in there and you just have the pr the place privately. Your body can't handle more than twenty minutes. I I had actually invited my my lawyer and his team to come to the smash room one time. And I have never seen a washing machine get destroyed. They flattened it. A whole washing machine became flat. And I have this video because I was sitting there going, I have never seen this kind of rage and and my lawyer's like, We're lawyers, we handle a lot of things and this was a great release for the team and all of them just was just were very positive at the end, like, my God, like I didn't this is the most common response. I didn't know I had so much pent up anger emotions within me, and I didn't know that I was going to release them like that. And I was like, Very common. speaker-1: That's so powerful. Yeah, you know, I i in my work I I work with a lot of freezers, people who who choke, freeze, dissociate, get stuck and shut down when they need to speak. And really frequently, one of the issues that's co-creating the freeze, obviously they have a childhood where they got it was dangerous for them to speak, but there is usually a case of suppressed anger. allied to that. In other words, an inability to have boundaries, to push through that freeze. What they really need is that mobilizing energy of their anger in order to break through the freeze, to bust through this freeze that that really got instilled in their in their nervous systems as children. And it was domesticated out of them. I have to be a good girl or a good boy. Now I know this is a subject that's really dear to your heart is this thing about this kind of domestication. I just I can see you smiling, just jump in. Tell me about tell me about that. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean a lot of my work has been with women. So I work premi pre predominantly with women. And a lot of the time when we're looking at their subconscious mind and the invisible rules that make them who they are, you know, and do what they do, I realize that a lot of it stemmed from obedience, being like, I have to be this good woman, I have to be a good daughter, I have to be a good mother, I have to be a good girl. And then the more I sat with them, I understood that this really comes from culture, patriarchy, all the rules that have been installed from the beginning of time and set as a standard of how we should operate. And as you know, and I know you're big in reprogramming as well, anything that gets programmed into the brain can be unprogrammed from the brain. And that's literally what I do when I I sit there and we rewire their unconscious patterns. That drain their energy, their confidence, their money, their relationships that they don't even notice. I call it power leaks. Like we come into this world as a whole being, and then we get programmed with these invisible rules. And then these rules leak our power constantly through obedience, through fear, through scarcity, through control. And they just leak us. And then one day we wake up, we're like, We're not good enough. I feel insecure. And you live in this bubble of all your flaws and all your weaknesses or your insecurities versus in your power. And when I just look at obedience itself, the trauma it causes women, it causes them autoimmune diseases. It causes them IBS. It causes them POCs, PCO. It causes them so many. Diseases because it comes from shutting yourself down, shutting who you are down. You're not allowed to be loud, you're not allowed to be extra, you're not allowed to be acting. Don't be too confident. Like there's a rule to everything, and you keep putting people in a box, at some point, the box will choke you. And then that that you you're choked, and this is where you're. your kind of work comes in, the dysregulated nervous system, the you're s you're in freeze mode, but women also fawn. There's a whole response where women sit there and fawn because they're that's their response. Men fight, women fawn, but they both also freeze. speaker-1: So I I as it happens, I'm actually w had my fight response completely domesticated and have had to l re bring it back to life. And I was also a pro fauner. I fawned for the A Team. so and I so so I'm maybe a little bit different to to the folk that you're used to. But let's just define fawning because folks might not know what that is. speaker-0: Fawning can look like people pleasing, can look like giving like in a threat situation instead of putting a boundary instead of but in instead of putting a boundary, placating the person or being extra friendly. but it's really becoming less of a threat so that the person does not attack you. So you diminish yourself and you play small and you maybe remove your boundaries. Maybe you agree to things that you don't necessarily want to agree to, just so that you don't potentially get hurt. speaker-1: Yeah, that's exactly the same. You know, I I I I one point with one of the ways I described it is my my boundaries were so appalling. They were literally like limp wet spaghetti hanging over my stomach. You could just kind of put your hands through my boundaries and this inability to be really clear, to even know what my limits and edges were, to be able to feel in the moment that something was okay or not okay, I would be so in the fawn mode. That I would essentially be doing whatever was required to placate and please in the situation that I couldn't feel or even know my own needs and then express them. And so it's a completely reflexive system in the sense that it's a reflex. It was just stuck inside me until I got in and had to do the work. So I had to learn to discover how to mobilize anger. It was just like, you know, where do I find that? All I can find is let me be a nice boy. speaker-0: So I also had a very traumatic childhood, but I was a fighter. I rebel, like a rebel as I like my response was fight. However, as I entered my healing journey, I started adapting to fawn responses and started to be like, so like overcorrecting, overcorrecting from fight and being like the bad girl to like, ooh, like Let me overextend myself. Let me say yes when I want to say no. Let me, you know, let me be more appropriate. So kind of like doing the fawn response, like overcorrecting from fight to fawn, but in a way that's like more appropriate, more acceptable. And it took me more of my inner work to realize, wow, I just went from one extreme to one extreme. Like let me over like let me correct that real quick and figure out like authentically who am I? Who do I want to be? forget who we're supposed to be. Who do you want to be? Like what makes my heart happy? Which persona makes my heart happy? And then I realized, no, every moment has a different persona. Sometimes I want to be loud and sometimes I want to be quiet. And and sometimes I want to be funny and sometimes I want to be serious. And sometimes I want to be a comedian. And sometimes I want to be a therapist. All of them are okay. We have to create a space for it all. But that's like The rebellion. That's the disobedience, right? It's like saying, I'm done with the world telling me exactly who I need to be. And I choose to be who I want to be. Whichever version of you you want to choose. That's your choice. And I think having that choice is like the the the rebellion against this this whole culture of invisible rules and obedience and Power and controlling. Since the minute we're born, we're being told exactly who you're being. You're told your name, your age, your your religion, your what you're gonna believe in, what you're gonna wear, like everything for the moment you're born. At some point, the journey is going back and reevaluating if that fits. And sometimes it fits, and sometimes it doesn't, you know. That's how I feel about it. Like you have to reevaluate it. speaker-1: So juicy. You know, like there's so many things that you said that I w I wanted to respond to in the moment. And of course, one of the bizarre things about a conversation like this that's being recorded in real time is this question of do I write down something that I want to follow up? Do I try and retain it in my brain while being present with you? My decision for myself is let it go in the moment and just trust that it'll come back if I need to. There was so many juicy moments in what you were sharing. I like I love this rebellion and I'm definitely if there's if there's a petition I can sign, I'm I'm joining your petition to join the rebellion. One thing I did want to mention, actually, just one place that I really, really resonated, and I just wanted to s to speak it out because I think it's kind of r important and subtle, is I got into a healing journey and that totally accelerated my nice guyism. I Where previously I might have been a little bit more of a toxic fighter, but also a fawn, I became I flipped over into I'm just now Mr. Peaceful. And of course I don't fight like the other people do, but and and I I overcorrected completely too. And recovering authenticity and realness involves reintegrating the parts of us that are kind of emotionally ugly, that are stuck. That feel awkward, that feel crappy or shitty or however they feel, like we all have them that are ragey or triggered or jealous, and like welcoming back all the stinky parts of ourselves and integrating them and letting them have a seat at the table. speaker-0: I'm on board with that a hundred percent. I think the love and light movement brings obedience. It's a just a type of obedience. Even if we were to talk about, for example, like what feminine energy looks like in the spiritual world and masculine energy, it's very patriotical, right? Like feminine and there it's always like feminine energy is soft and light. And I go from the school of I look at earth, I look at Mother Earth. Mother Earth is a thunderstorm as well as beautiful meadows of trees, right? So we are not one thing. So you cannot tell me that my healing journey looks like flowers and me becoming more agreeable. And that's when I've reached enlightenment, right? Because I see nature. I see the lioness. She will nurture her cubs, but she will be. The hell out of them, you know, and put them in shape, you know, and she will go out there and and destroy anybody that touches her cubs. And that's what I feel as a woman. That's what a woman is. She is soft and dangerous. She is, you know, loud and and and quiet. She is dark and light. And I think that's also male energy and and men as well. We are everything. And just pigeonholing us is marketing. It's the patriarchy. That's where we that's the obedience. Like we have to be one thing. We're not. And that's the beauty of life. speaker-1: It is the beauty of life. Yeah. So this thing about bringing all of ourselves and our I'm gonna say the power of our presence into communication, into moments like this. How do we drop the condition mask of this is my good girl, good boy, this is how I need to be, this is my the expectation of me professionally. How do we drop that in a useful way? Let's just say we were speaking up in meetings or appearing like this or doing a public speaking event. Are we supposed to be more kind of robotic and just, I must be professional? Or what is it to bring more of ourselves, our authentic selves, out into the world? And what's the what's the upside? speaker-0: I would say being self-aware, like like we started off with this blanket statement of being self-aware. If I am aware of my behaviors and how I am showing up, I get to control me. I get to change it, adjust it, tweak it, you know, but I need to be self-aware. If I have no awareness, there is no action of change. So that would be like the cave started off. But to show during the mm, the best way I'd say it is like we're not one person or one attribute at every stage of our life. We change. And during the self-discovery era of anyone's life, I feel it's like shopping. You go on, you try something on, it fits, it feels comfortable. that sounds like a little bit like me. Doesn't feel comfortable, I take it off and I return it. I don't buy it. Right. Part of the self-discovery and finding out who you authentically are is to try different things to know if they fit you and if they are you or not. And then the ones that fit you will know because they will just feel like home. And when you have a lot of outfits that fit like home, it kind of makes that whole wheel of who you are. And you're like, okay. And then whichever one you wear that day, that's authentically you. Because they already feel like home. So that's where I would go with it because I don't feel like there's one correct answer of how it is. It's a self discovery. And then at one point you'll know something that is authentically you and you'll be like, All right, that's me. And then it doesn't become a thing where you have to change it. It just shows up because it's already within you. You've just reactivated it. speaker-1: Yeah, I love that. And I love that that that word home, the sense that we have a kind of a home base inside us. Often we are conditioned out of it. Maybe we started when we were very small, we were at home inside ourselves, and then we became more afraid and more conditioned. And yet then this journey, in fact, I think I can't remember the name of the the teacher who said we're all walking each other home. And I just love that. And So this notion of moving out of all kinds of clothes that don't fit us back home into really just being ourselves and the ease of allowing ourselves to be fully ourselves in the moment. I think one teacher that I I like also just described something that you were saying quite quite beautifully, and he just used the term knowing. In the moment to have a knowing sense that I am here and that I'm aware. I think you said self-awareness was the word that you used or the phrase you used. When we are hijacked and just inside our personality and our conditioning, there's no space. We're just inside our reactions, we're just reacting the way we do. There's very little space. When we bring back that sense of somatics, plus call it. Soul, presence, aliveness, awareness, knowing. I think you you said it really clearly. We have more choice. Suddenly we have there's just more us. So this moment might be un unfolding, but I've got wiggle room. Anything could happen. I'm no longer just in the tunnel of this is, you know, I'm in my conditioned self. Who knows what I might do in the next moment? But there'll be more wisdom, more presence. Go in. Yeah. I can see something bubbling. speaker-0: And a lot of yeah, a lot of my clients come to me like I don't know what I want. I don't know who I am. And I'm like, perfect. Write down where you feel envy or jealousy. Because I believe that those are the secret to what your inner being wants. You're only jealous because a part of you knows you can get that, you can achieve that. That's your purpose. That's that's your direction. Otherwise, I'm I'm not jealous of Michael Phelps. I hate the water, you know, right? Like I have no interest of swimming. Like I look at him swimming, I'm like, looks like hard work. Good, like great, Michael Phelps, right? You know, a tawny robbins, and there's a part of me that's like, I like I want that, right? Because that speaks to me. That's the direction I need to flow. So if we look at even if it's like I'm jealous that the neighbor has a loving relationship, that's my purpose. That's what what's the next thing that I want? Right. So write down. Like we are so ashamed of envy and jealousy, but it's a gift. It's your soul's gift to you. This is exactly what your soul desires. That's the maybe the next step in your life. So write them down like I'm jealous of her for this, I'm envy him for that, and just write that down. That's your roadmap. Follow that because that's your true desire. And once we we follow, we get on that path of following our spark. Doors open, more more things show up for us, and then we start feeling aligned. And when we feel more aligned, we become more ourselves. And it's just a journey. We're I'm not the same person I was eight years ago, and you're definitely not the same person you were eight years ago either, or five years ago, or three years ago. We're constantly evolving and changing and trying to be stuck in one persona or one person or one aspect of our life. It's n it. Hurts the journey. It hurts our soul. Our soul is so free and it wants to just be everything. And allow it. Allow it that space to just explore. And if we live life from a place of curiosity and just expansion and just going, okay, let me try one new thing. Like that thing that I'm always thinking about in the back of my head, like guitar lessons, and I just never do it. Let me just do one class. See if it fits, because I can try that class and go. Absolutely not, not for me, or my God, I've been waiting my whole life to play the guitar. But at least you remove it from your brain and from your mind, and that's constant remuneration of I should do that, I should do that. You try it one time, and it's over. Then you have a choice. Continue, release. And both are okay. Especially the release part. Changing your mind is absolutely okay. speaker-1: that's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, as you were describing much of that, I mean, it's you've been like this in many occasions throughout it. You were all lit up. And I just love it that the pilot light that you were describing was jealousy. You know, it's not like follow your bliss. It's like follow your ragey jealousy. And you know, you'll get onto a path because that's your lamplight. It's I want that. And Getting onto a path where you're lit up and excited and constantly challenged and evolving. I think it's just one of the biggest gifts we can possibly give ourselves. A lot of people that come to me and that work with me describe being jealous of their coworkers, the ones that present well. And I had never actually I've I've never said it the way you said it, this thing about, you know, jealousy is awesome. It tells you everything you need to know. So I'm absolutely storing that. And speaker-0: Love it. speaker-1: Yeah, just to really affirm this thing about about living radiant. You know, my my the process that I developed for working with voices is called the Radiant Voices process. And it really was the idea of radiance is really just this thing about being lit up, about being passionate, about following your heart, following your thing and standing up and being counted and being seen in the world. I wanna ask you a question. Do you mind if I do? speaker-0: Go ahead. speaker-1: Okay. So amongst other things, you developed a process, the mind hacking process. Now, I understand as far as I as far as I've read, this is a deconditioning process. We're both we've said it earlier, we both love deconditioning, but let can we just step five steps back to tell people or describe what that is and then how your process works? I'd love to I'd love to know too. speaker-0: I'm a like science, and I'm a big believer that our subconscious runs everything. Like if I want to change anything in my life, I'm gonna first address it in my subconscious mind. Because we have these invisible rules that are dictating everything that we do, which for me then creates something. It creates something called a power leak, which means I am leaking my power. and it's costing me my money, my love life, my freedom, my dreams. So if I ever have a problem, I try to trace it back to the this power leak and the invisible rules that are running in our subconscious mind. I've identified that really there's four main power leaks that most of us leak from. Obedience is one of them, fear is another one, scarcity, and control. We're either trying to we're trying to control everything. If I'm trying to control everything, I know. That there's something in my money, my love life, my freedom, my dreams that is leaking at the moment. Because I'm trying to control everything. If it's scarcity, feeling that there's not enough, I if I'm withholding, whether I'm holding information, whether I'm holding money, whatever it is, that's a leak in my power. And in order for me to get to the goal I want to get to in life, I need to resolve these leaks. I need to fix the leak that's leaking in my house. You know, so that my house can function. I am the house. So I just could tell you I'm gonna go little bit back on this, and this was was created out of selfishness. I went through a horrible time in my life in 2015. I lost my father, I lost all my life savings, and I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And I was in the top of my life at that point and everything happened in three months and I became functionally depressed. From the outside it looked like I was super successful. I was still working, still achieving, but internally I was in a super, super, super dark place. And being a psychologist, I knew what I needed to do. You know, I needed to do the inner work. But in that point of my life, the Western healing methods were the talk therapy, they were not Creating the change that I was hoping to see. So I kind of took a break from my life and I went to the East and I started learning Eastern philosophies and healing and really looking into energy and understanding what's going on. And I went on this side quest, you know, like let me discover. And I was like, okay, I really think if I just brought a little bit of the West. The neurosciences and the trauma and this mild mildfulness, somatic work, and I kind of married them together. And I can't there's something there. And I really did it out of selfishness for myself. I was like, I'm gonna figure this out for myself. During a couple of weeks later, I started to feel the change. I'm now no longer showing up pretending I'm somebody else. The changes are natural. They're already in my body. I'm this new person. And that's why I started going, my God, this is I'm mind hacking myself. There's something over here where we're like there's a ha I hacked it and I don't know what I just did. And I literally sat down and I was like, Okay, there's step to this. So I let me see if I can redo this on other people. And I started just bringing my friends, you know, friends and families, they're they're your first victims. So I bring it in and I'm like, tell me your problem. And they would tell me, and I'm like, let me go into your subconscious mind and see if we can resolve this through energy and through neuroscience. And it worked. And at one point, once I started receiving the feedback, like, you're onto something, I shifted. I was anxious. And right before the presentation, I was no longer anxious. What is this magic? And I was like, boom. Let me start to create a methodology and actually look into this a little bit deeper. So bringing it back. So this was a selfish side quest. That started in the betterment of myself because I was going through something. And then when I sat down and started looking at the methodology, I was like, all right, it's very simple. These are leaks. We need to close the leaks. How are we going to close the leaks? That's the question everyone's going to ask. So, one is identify the root cause of your trauma. Like, where specifically did this come from? If I believe something, where did I learn this from? We don't grow up going money grows like money's the root of all evil. Let's take that as a simple belief structure. You're saying this day in and day out. Where did you decide that that was an ultimate truth? Where did this come from? And you'll be like, like I heard my parents saying it. Yeah, well, good, because now that you know that you've heard your parents saying it, that's not your belief. That's not something you would like to keep on because I'd like to put believe that money is beautiful and a great energy, not the root of all evil. Right? So the first step is really understanding where our where our beliefs come from. And when you're able to go like that's not mine, you're able to detach from it and change it. It's as simple as that. Now that I know that this is not mine, I get the choice To flip this around and choose a more empowering belief for me to believe in. Right? And you're like, okay, so now I get so the new choice is the new programming or the new code. The how is we know from science that if we put our brain in an alpha bit alpha brainwave, we can create change or an alpha theta brainwave. What is an alpha theta brainwave? Very simple. We just did it in the beginning of our session when you asked me to touch. by my a tap on my thighs, we just lowered into our body. And from there, our brain opens up its susceptibility to change. So now if we just go, okay, I'm going to delete the belief that money grows, doesn't grow on trees, and replace it with money does grow on trees and money's available for me anywhere and anyhow in that brainwave. Change happens automatically. We don't actually have to do too much. And I would love to go in schools and teach them this because I'm like, if I just know that as a child, what I believe I can change, life is endless. You know, there's a lot of talk about manifestation and visualizing, and I'm like, great, you cannot manifest your way from. Beliefs programmed into your subconscious mind. Otherwise, everybody would have had the jet right now, because in the million dollars. The reason you don't have it is as much as you've manifested it, is because there are leaks that have come in in your subconscious mind that you haven't changed yet. Go address the leaks. Your life will you will then be able to manifest whatever you want. But you need to address the root cause. That's as simple as I I would I can try to explain it because the steps are there are steps, but it is like it's work. It's inner work. It's not easy. I I it's not like, yeah, you know, I'm a I'm gonna do that. It's consistency, is waking up every day and going, All right, I'm gonna choose to do inner work. I think the first year of doing my process, I would mind hack every day. Every day. I would wake up and be like, all right, this is a belief. I would change the belief. Why? Because I came to the understanding that there's about 300 million beliefs running in our subconscious mind. Some of them are good, not all of them are bad. But some of them are really disempowering. And really figuring out what was disempowering me needed a lot of self-reflection. Needed me to look at myself, look at my shadows, look at my toxic traits, and be like, ooh. Let me let me write this down and figure out why I do it, how I do it, and from where that I learn it so that I can unlearn it. And if you come from a traumatic childhood, you pick up a lot of unconscious toxic traits that you don't even know that you have. And that ability to sit with yourself with your ugliness is 90% of the work because you're just like, yeah, I accept. I can accept that I'm a liar, a cheater, I like all this stuff. You're like, no way, I'm not that. You just have to accept that you've learned them somehow, you know, and there's a part of you. Like, did you tell your friend her outfit looks good when it didn't? You lying. You're a liar. Like just accept it. Like shift that shadow, right? Like, I'm not talking defrauding the government lying, but that little behavior there is a lie. And just being able to say, Yes, I'm a liar, that is the first step in being able to look at your shadows and reprogramming it because it's freeing. But it takes a lot of courage and a lot of hard work. speaker-1: Well, thank you. That's such a a beautiful description and I love the sound of your process. It sounds deeply liberating. Yeah, I think, you know, we both come from a an experience that it's possible, first of all, one basic is that it's possible to change. And many people carry a belief system as, you stay like this for life. You just are who you are. That's my personality. no, that's my conditioning. And conditioning, programming can change. And so, yeah, I also de work with deconditioning as well in my particular speciality. And I I I agree with you this thing about kids should be taught at school how to work with their conditioning and programming, work with their anxiety and fear. And yeah, maths is great, and science is great, and history is great. They're all great. But like the basic life skills of getting unstuck and replacing deeply suboptimal. And self-limiting beliefs with new chosen belief systems, like I can, I can do it, I'm worthy, it's safe for me to be seen and heard. I I deserve success or I choose success for myself rather than you know, money doesn't grow on trees or whatever other programming we've got. And so, yeah, there's this buying in. I suppose the first step is this buying into yes, I can change and I want to change. And like you said. A really real perspective that it actually requires work. It requires a commitment. reprogramming yourself after a lifetime of being the same set of wiring, just imagine a computer or or a nervous system wiring. We're gonna rewire. We both know it requires work. It requires showing up, it requires consistency and and a desire and a willingness to change. But of course, if you were to Without yeah, yeah, if you were just to what what are to describe the benefits? Like w what are the benefits of doing all this work of deconditioning and reprogramming yourself? Is it real? Can you can you can your world become better? And how? speaker-0: Loving yourself. I think the connection, the self-connection and the ability to love yourself with all your flaws and and having so much grace towards yourself, this unconditional love that you seek from others that you grow and cultivate within, I think that's the most rewarding thing that healing or reprogramming does for you. It's it's an obsession with becoming the full version of you. I'm not gonna say better version of you. I wanna say the full version of you. And that I don't know how to explain it, but it's this deep love, deep love for yourself where where you feel super connected to who you are, that nothing in the world can move you or sway you from that deep knowing that you are loved. by you for you. We seek that love externally all the time, but this work brings you back to knowing that it is you, you know. I I like to tell my clients, you are her. You don't need nobody to tell you anything. You are already her. And I'm not here to tell you that you're amazing. You need to tell yourself that you are amazing. and that's the work. You stop seeking the external validation, you stop it seeking the external approval, and for people to make you feel whole incomplete, and you become super connected, super whole with yourself that the storms don't matter. They don't you're just like a tree. You're there, you're rooted. Your roots are so strong to the ground and and the wind, you know, that's just you know. makeup for your hair on on vogue. Like that's that's what the wind is. You know, like you're like, yep, I can handle that. Like I got me. That's it. That's the feeling I would say it's nothing more than true unconditional love for yourself. speaker-1: I love that. You know, you used the word home earlier, and I think it is exactly like you describe. It's this thing initially we're kind of scanning the world to try and work out how to be and looking at other people to reflect back at us whether we're okay. And even with somatics, we're coming back into here. But also then this deconditioning process where we're looking for external validation when we do this process of starting to replace these. weird belief systems and notions about who we are that we're kind of put into us. We're like moving those out and then choosing how we see ourselves in our world, then it's an inside out job rather than an outside coming at us. And we sit deep I like to call it call it we sit low slung. We're kind of in ourselves, like, I'm kind of heavy. I'm sitting here and I'm less interested in what other people have to say about me. I'm much more interested. My first port of call is how do I feel? It used to be, how does everybody else feel about me? Because then then that'll tell me how I should know how I should feel about myself. And it's this sitting in ourselves and a kind of an inner kindness, both for s it starts with ourselves and then a kindness that then emanates out to other people because we've sat with our own stuff and we've seen how messy we are. And when we see how messy we are, we have to extend an olive branch for everybody else's mess too, because we're all in a bit of a hot mess on this on this wild planet of ours. But it's this coming home to ourselves, sitting here inside ourselves, and then interacting with the world from this deep-seated, hey, I'm here, let's talk. speaker-0: It makes us more human. The healing journey makes us human and more connected to each other. And you see what was what's going on with this crazy word right now. We're so disconnected. And instead of just connecting to others, first we need to connect to ourselves because then connection to other becomes so much easier. But it's really starts with connecting here with us within ourselves. Then the rest the rest happens because you're vibrating in that. Correct vibration at that point. You know, you're you're there and you're your glass is full. And when your glass is full, you can connect to other people and be part of this world even better because you can create some change. We can't from an empty glass help anyone. And the only way for our glass to be full is for us to connect with ourselves. Feed this soul, feed it. speaker-1: Yeah, I love that. And I I think the power is, is that when people regulate their nervous systems, they learn to sit in their bodies, they work through their pleaser patterns and release some of that stuff so that they sit more deeply in themselves the way we're describing, their nervous system is then the most regulated in the room, the in the meeting that they're in. And their nervous system starts becoming a resource for all the people around them. And they are kind of magnetic. They d Are radiant because they are regulated. We know from our mirror neurons that we're all reading each other all the time. So when that person does that journey of learning to be at home inside themselves, be real, be authentic, be warm-hearted, they affect the rooms that they're that they that they enter and communicate in. And it's just a much more satisfying version of interacting with the world. It becomes Kind of mysterious and playful. We never quite know what's gonna happen. Like in this exact moment. We've we've been we've been following these threads, this whole discussion. I've barely looked at my notes. I had some notes, but we just been we've just been making stuff up. So it goes. Yeah. That's the word flow, right? So deep in flow. Hebba, I think we we you know we said we were gonna do an hour. It's we're almost there. I I I do want to then ask you just one last thing, which is around soul and presence. What are those to you and and how do we access them? Are they just there? speaker-0: I think once you're connected to yourself, you start to access your soul. the way I look at it is our soul is like an ocean and our body is just a bottle of water in the ocean. So our our soul is everywhere, it's expansive. And presence means really filling up that jar in the water. So that body, this this soul that's living in in this body. it's interesting because people ask me how do I describe myself, and I always say I'm just a soul having a human experience. that's one of my favorite ways of like introducing myself because I feel I can't really tell you everything of who I am. Like it's so vast, but as a soul, I'm just having all these human experiences and it's a whole lot of fun, you know. so presence for me is really living this life fully. It's ups and downs. We're not just talking about the positive, really the down and the up, feeling that whole experience and being present in it versus always trying to skip it or, you know, avoid it. Whether, you know, we we try to avoid the bad days, but they're part of the human soul experience. We need them as much as we need the good days because how would we appreciate the good without knowing what bad is? You know, how would you know what up is if you've never felt down? How do you know what light is if you've never been in the dark? It's all a cohesive experience that we have to go through and appreciate and be present in it without trying to skip it. That's presence for me. speaker-1: Yeah, I love that. You know, a lot of what we've been talking about has been a call beyond emotional and spiritual bypassing. In other words, to be present with tough stuff, to be present with joy. And and I think one of the things that people are really underestimate is let's just say this is your anxiety, your public speaking anxiety or social anxiety, or any kind of anxiety. And it's it's a hard thing to have this coming up and arising in your body. But usually what we'll tend to throw on top of it. Instead of feeling it is, no, this shouldn't be happening. Why am I like this? And we we have a deep rejection and avoidance of feeling the actual pattern. It is impossible to release the pattern while we're still rejecting the fact that it's happening and trying to avoid it. And you described it much earlier when we were talking about somatics, where you said, When it's there, just sit with it. Let just Be with it, feel it, scan it, notice it, maybe name it without analyzing it, and then gradually this thing can begin to unfold. speaker-0: More thing to that, which is something I've been doing for years, and I call it my little power move. And I actually have a journal that I carry with me everywhere, and I have and I write down the power in the thing that is not going well for me. So whatever it is, whatever it is, like today somebody filed a court case, for example, right? I'd be like, okay, like that's amazing. So what is the power in it for me? All right, how can I turn this into a power move for myself? And I was like, okay, I can advocate for myself. Here's an opportunity for me to advocate for myself. And if we start trying to look and finding the power, we stop being victims of what's going on in our life. And we take the learning and the opportunity to step into something we've potentially never stepped into. So advocating for myself is not maybe a skill set that I have, but now I have the privilege of advocating for myself and learning this new skill versus sitting like, poor me, there's a court case. You know, like that's an example, right? And if we can look at everything that goes into our life and find the power move in it, we stop leaking our energy and we step into our whole potential as a soul and as a human being. So Yeah, maybe that's something people would like to use. And I literally walk around with this journal every day. I've done it for years. And I literally all right. And then I like to stack them up. Like, my God, today I'm like superwoman. Like, look at all these things, all these power, you know, like these power moves that I'm accumulating throughout the day. Like, whoo, you know, they should put me on some video game because I'm just winning. speaker-1: Boss level. I love that so much. I really, really love that so much. And it's this this framing and this willingness to look at the obstacle, to face the obstacle, to walk towards it. I I'm gonna bring us to a a a close with huge gratitude with a with a a phrase, a saying that I really love that I think resonates with what you're saying. And it's a call to action too. Please look at HIBA's work. You'll see her links in the show notes. She's show notes, she's doing incredible work. And the thing that the thing that I want to finish us on is this saying: what appears to be in the way is the way. Like HIBA's power moves is when we have these obstacles. You can try walk around the obstacle, but the power move is through the obstacle. What appears to be in the way is the way. If we want to thrive, We have to move through that anxiety. We've got to move through that depression, through that block, we got to do the work. Yeah? speaker-0: I hundred percent agree. Mm. Clapping. speaker-1: But thank you so much for such a magnificent session. It's been such a joy talking. speaker-0: Thank you, Jeremy. It's been awesome.