Latest / The Uplifters / Rahti Gorfien is Helping us Overcome the 5 Emotions Blocking our Desires

Transcript

Rahti Gorfien is Helping us Overcome the 5 Emotions Blocking our Desires · The Uplifters

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: An uplifter is a compelling leader who tries to breathe life and hope into people around them.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Who listen and care and guide and help.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Whose way of being in the world inspires.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Who uplifts with humor and understanding.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who leads by example.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Don't judge vulnerable individuals.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Bold determination.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Who are here to create a better world.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Who can learn and teach.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Who encourages you.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Who shines their light to lead other people.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Who uses their best self in order to help others.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I found the life that I liked and I worked toward that.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: We are all uplifters.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Big love.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Kim Dakin.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I nominate Raji Gorfin of Creative Calling Coaching as the next uplifter.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: She is focused.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: She is funny, fun, knowledgeable, and she can rock your world.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Uplifters podcast.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Today, I am joined by Rachi Goffian, a career coach for creatives and adults with ADHD.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Rachi, thank you so much for joining me today.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: My pleasure.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that was perfect.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: That statement of what I do, career coach for creatives,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: And adults with ADHD.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: I love your name, Rati.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, thank you.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's really beautiful.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: What does it mean?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's a Sanskrit name.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: And Rati was the consort of Kama in the Mahabharata, which is...
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: Kama was the Indian version of Cupid, which made Rati the goddess of carnal love.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it also means springtime, desire, and intense attachment to the Lord.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I embrace all of it.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: I would say my favorite meaning of it is desire.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: especially with regard to being a coach, because it's all about desire.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't wait to hear more about what you mean by that.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Were you born into that name or was it given to you later?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: It was given to me when I like to say, hide me to a nunnery.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Jewish, so I couldn't join a nunnery, but I could move into an ashram.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: At a moment of great disillusionment as a young actress, I moved into this ashram in Pennsylvania.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: where there were many of us Hindus,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: as we liked to call ourselves,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: and I became initiated in this particular tradition.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: It was the early 80s, it was so long ago, I can't even remember the name of the tradition.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: Ah!
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: When I was initiated, the guru type person at the time gave me that name.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: And it landed in a way my other name never had.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: I even tried to go back to my other name for professional reasons because it seemed
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: to make sense,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: but couldn't.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: I had such cognitive dissonance with it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: I've just remained Rati.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Sort of like identities in general, isn't it?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: That some we are born with and we grow into them and others come to us in response.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: So tell me your story, Rachi.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm already so intrigued.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: My story.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: All righty then.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I was, as I mentioned, a theater artist for over 30 years.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: And at a certain point, I became very disillusioned with the business.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I was also getting myself into all kinds of mischief.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when we're young women, we don't always, I was enjoying my power.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: I could walk into any restaurant, any bar, look at a guy, go, I'm going to sleep with him.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: and do it.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Now there may be women who want to kill me because I said that and it's like obnoxious,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: but no,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: I really enjoyed it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: I was enjoying my power.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: It was also a distraction, a major distraction.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I was not always attracting the highest vibration of person.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: And at one point I had to even change the locks on my door,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: at which point it seemed I needed to dry out,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: so to speak.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it was also the AIDS epidemic, the beginning of.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was 1980, just beginning, right before.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I credit that bit of serendipity with saving my life quite literally.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: Moved into the ashram and lived there for about two and a half years.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: I thought I was a lifer.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: As it turned out, I wasn't.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: And as I like to say,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm one of the few people to have the distinction of having been kicked out of a cult.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: What an accomplishment.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I tell you, it took some doing.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: I had to actually punch a few people and empty a bucket of zucchini on someone's head.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that did it.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: That just about did it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Mischief.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, no sex, drugs, or rock and roll.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: What are you going to do?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's got to come out somehow.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: Got to come out.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I wasn't buying into the guru's vision.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're going to live in a community like that, you give up your individual dream.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's no room for it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: This particular organization has evolved since then beyond the whole guru-disciple paradigm.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: However,
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: back then,
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: it was the guru's way or the highway,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: and I didn't want it to cop out of my spiritual growth,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: which is the message we got if we left.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: And my energy didn't have anywhere to go, so I started acting out.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was a defining experience living at the ashram because I learned that company is stronger than will.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: I learned skills that I could not have cultivated on my own.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: I had the ability to actually earn a living because as an actor,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: you cannot put all the pressure on your career in most cases.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: I worked in the kitchen at the ashram.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: I was a macrobiotic cook.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I got referred and somehow tapped into this vein of gold,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: which consisted of jazz musicians in New York City.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I had a whole dossier of jazz musicians I was cooking for.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: I even remember at one point being backstage at The Late Show with David Letterman
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: and Paul Schaefer saying to me,
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: I really dug that purple thing you cooked when I went over to Will's place to eat.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I had no idea what he was talking about.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: An eggplant, I hope.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: It must have been something with red cabbage that bled, you know, the red cabbage weeds.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't realize it, but I was already a successful entrepreneur.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: Look at that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't realize it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: I was doing it to get by so I could have an acting career.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't love it at all.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: But I learned a lot of skills.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I also, as I said, company's stronger than will.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so if I was going to be an actor,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: I needed to surround myself with a team.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I started reading Barbara Sher's Wishcraft and Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: And with those books as structures,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: I created these groups around me and we pulled each other up,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: literally.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: We uplifted each other towards our goals.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: At this point, it was around 1989, I was married.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: I was a stand-up comic and I met my husband,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: at the improv in New York City.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: Now it's a pizza place, but they still have the brick wall and a plaque on it.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: It was the original improv.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: And he said to me, you know, you're good at this.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: You should start charging.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't know what this was.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm good at this.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: What am I doing?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: Turns out it's called coaching.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I found out that it was actually a profession.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I realized at a certain point that I wanted more training because I kept
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: hitting walls as a coach.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: So when I did finally get some training in creativity coaching and then a
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: certification in ADHD coaching,
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't want to be an ADHD coach.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't want to deal with that.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: Talk about herding cats.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: But as it turned out, it was where I was meant to be.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Concurrently, my son had just been diagnosed with ADHD.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I had my husband do an assessment with a physician,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: actually,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: also before I was certified,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: because he does things like leave the remote control in the freezer and,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: pots on burn.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: he's he doesn't know how to what I call complete the gesture,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: like when you open a jar and get the peanut butter,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: completing the gesture is when you put the lid back on the jar and then put it away.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it turns out he had ADHD.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: So that training saved my marriage.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my story.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you said early on that coaching is desire.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: What did you mean by that?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: Coaching's all about what you want.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: To me, it's what do you desire?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: What do you want?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's the most clarifying coaching question I believe there is and the most wide open.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: And if you know what you want, but you're not doing it, there's some exploration to be done.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: I would say one of the core issues my clients have when they come to coaching is
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: they cannot disentangle how they feel from what they want.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: You may want to do something, but what if you don't feel like it?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: And when you have a condition like ADHD, that kind of brain wiring, that can be really difficult.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, those of us who are not diagnosed with ADHD, we can do boring stuff.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: People with an ADHD diagnosis very often can't.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: They can't complete the form.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's just such a challenge of interest.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: Neurologically, it causes pain.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: I want to help people get what they want.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes that's the first goal, figuring what that is.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very much based in what their real values are.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: because so much of what they think they should want is coming from other sources
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: telling them this is what's wantable rather than what they really want.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's exactly right.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so a big part of the journey is figuring out where you end and somebody else begins.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: What is your voice?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's a big overlap between people with ADHD and over-parenting and people who
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: feel like they've had other people's perhaps parental desires layered on them as a
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: loving and protective measure.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it does create less space to sort of figure it out for yourself.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, my son won't have it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he won't have it.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I couldn't coach him.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he knows what I'm doing.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: As soon as I ask him a question, he's like, I don't want to be coached.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's payback because my mother was a psychotherapist and I used to say to her, don't analyze me.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Don't be a shrink to me.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so it's, what can I say?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's karma.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: It all comes around.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: It all comes around.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting to me that you really focus on this area of desire because that
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: is rule number one of being an actor is understanding what your character desires.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so in essence, you've devoted your entire professional life to understanding the desires of others.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: That is perfect.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: That perfect analogy makes me wonder, were you an actor at one point?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: was.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: Here we are.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: Some of us were, I guess, born to be actors.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Some of us were born to be actors so that we would evolve into coaches.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because I can tell you what I don't want to be is an actor anymore.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: For me, acting was just a way to spend time with words and humans.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And if I had known all the other options that existed in the world for humans and words,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: because that's all I've ever really loved.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: I might not have ever been an actor.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad I was because I learned a lot of really invaluable things.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: But it was for me just about the human mind.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: You're putting your finger on all the transferable skills that we have as theater artists.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: I was a playwright as well.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: And there's nothing like helping people shape their narrative, which is what we do as coaches.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: We have people live into the story that they want.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: And to identify the stories that they've been telling themselves.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: To identify that story and change the story.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: The old, tired stories that are just coming out there, controlling their identity.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: So what about you, Rachi?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: You're a grown woman with all of this lived history and experience.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, I imagine, I hope, you still want.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: So what do you desire these days?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be seen more widely.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: I still want that.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: I guess that's the through line from being an actor, wanting to be seen.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: However, what makes that a little more tenable is that I have a why now.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: There's a reason I want to be seen.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Which is good because otherwise it's sort of like the push-pull of, yeah, I want to be seen.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's some shame around wanting to be seen.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's desire with shame.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's desire with shame.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: However, there's no room for shame if you know why you want something.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And if you genuinely believe that why.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I recently published a book, The Five Emotions That Stopped Success.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: which has been the culmination of my life's work, I would say.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll give you the full title.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's published by Rutledge, which is an academic press.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: So they feel the need to put every possible keyword in the title.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: So the name of the book is actually The Five Emotions That Stop Success in Coaches,
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: Clients,
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: and Creatives Overcoming Personal Obstacles of the Mind.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: How long did it take you to memorize that script?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: It took me a minute.
• 14:49
  Yeah.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: It took me a minute to memorize it.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so the five emotions that I distilled are really categories of emotion,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: because as we know,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: there's so many colors in the past.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: There's so many emotions.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: But most emotions, if you drill down, there's a core emotion.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: And what I've identified those to be are shame, grandiosity, envy,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: boredom and fear so
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: If you know what's running you, you can separate rather than identify with those feelings.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: And you can't really act from your higher awareness and more developed brain if
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: you're being run by those feelings,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: which are really very primitive survival mechanisms,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: I would say.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me about each of these.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I understand shame, envy, boredom, and fear.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: What is grandiosity?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, shame is the big kahuna, I believe.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of like the DOS behind the computer.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the shame's at the core of most of these.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you could say all of them.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: Grandiosity is the flip side of shame.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: It is like this big, crystalline bubble, and as soon as the slightest aspersion is cast, it is popped.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: Ah.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the grandiose person goes into a shame spiral.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: Grandiosity, I think, is confused with ambition many times.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think the grandiose mind says nobody would ever understand my greatness.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody can ever understand me.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so I can try to put my work into the world and put it down,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: but there's no way I could do its brilliance justice in a way that other people
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: would get.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm better off not doing it at all.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's a lot of all or nothing.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's a victim mindset.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's a victim mindset.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: Grandiosity is a victim mindset.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well put.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great insight.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: I keep thinking as you're saying these two that they're Shakespearean.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: They're tragic emotions too.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: So now Envy.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Envy I love.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: Envy is, I personally believe that I have identified two forms of envy.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's the garden variety envy, where you feel like somebody's living your life.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: How dare you?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's this other envy I call eroticized envy.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I came up with this term because eroticism is about connection.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of shadow artists engage in eroticized envy.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: They may represent other artists or they may marry people.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: And they don't realize their own creativity.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's more of a vicarious thing going on.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: Got it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think it can also be a form of escape.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: If you've ever gotten obsessed with someone, whether they're famous, whether you know them or not.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: And you find yourself Googling them, basically cyber-stalking them, thinking about them all the time.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's eroticized envy.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: yeah,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: to me,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: what's going on is you recognize something that is perhaps latent in yourself that
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: you don't know how to access.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: But this other person has.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: There's been so much conversation around women not feeling enough or feeling a
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: sense of inferiority when stepping into new roles.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Fraud factor.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is that fraud factor?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Is that an example of the eroticized envy?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's fear.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Fear of being misjudged or judged or shamed.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: So the eroticized envy is less about I'm not enough than it is about others are more.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: They have what I want, so I think I'll hang around.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: I will get myself connected to them.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: As you said, living vicariously.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think it can be sycophantic, eroticized envy.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it can lead to grandiosity in the other person, perhaps.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, in the other person, for sure.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: Or they may already be there.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is getting messy.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it is.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, it's messy.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, life's messy.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: The one that I found kind of most exciting to be included in your list is boredom.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's the most insidious, the most pernicious of all of them, and especially in my niche of ADHD.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: My thinking about boredom is that it is a loss of a sense of meaning.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: When something becomes uninteresting, it doesn't mean anything anymore.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: And if it's your own work and you get into the weeds with it,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: there's that epiphanic moment when you conceive of something as an artist and you
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: start the work and it's exciting.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: You know, or maybe it's the vomit draft of a novel, or at least the first few chapters.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think of the wonderful movie, Nyad.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's where,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: you're going to swim across the Atlantic,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: and all of a sudden you're in the middle of the Atlantic.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: Instead of exhaustion, what you have is boredom because you're hitting all of the obstacles.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: You're in the middle of your imperfection.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: You're in the middle of making a mess.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very easy at that point to lose that original impulse of why making this matters.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so in a lot of the work I do, I really encourage people to view completion as success.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: Just finish it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: Finish it.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: Don't give in to the delusion of boredom.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: This does matter.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, because it's often just fear.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it can be a subset of fear.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: In the book,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: there's a whole chart of mask emotions,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: how something can present itself as boredom,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: but underneath it's actually grandiosity a few degrees over,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: you know?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, boredom, you've got to keep it.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: Or it's avoidance of another emotion.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I guess you could say that.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's protective.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: If shame is the root of all of these, is fear the flower of all of these?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: No, fear is just a survival mechanism, I think.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: There are certain things it's good to be afraid of.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: You should be afraid to cross the street with your eyes closed.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Then there are things that you're afraid of
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: because you don't want to be pilloried.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think it's surprising that,
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: yeah,
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: there are people who I've heard are more afraid of public speaking than death,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: than dying.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: It took me 15 years of psychoanalysis to work through my shame enough to have a life.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: The story of being kicked out of an ashram.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: That could be a story that comes with shame,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: but it sounds as though you have worked through that journey to appreciate it and
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: see it as a point of pride to understand lovingly what your younger self was trying
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: to accomplish in that time,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: what she needed.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: and that her reactions were simply an expression of her needs.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: And now to use that understanding of yourself and pour it into others to help them understand themselves.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: So that's why I want to be seen.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: I want other people to understand these five emotions and not be run by them.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: I want people to have agency over their lives by being able to separate
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: from their negative thoughts and emotions.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: When I was in psychoanalysis, at a certain point, I had a dream.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: And the dream was I was up in the mezzanine of a big Broadway theater,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: all that red velvet velour,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: and that big crystal chandelier,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: and the chandelier goes up.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: And all of a sudden,
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: I was watching myself on the stage experiencing something from my past that was
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: very traumatic.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: I told my analyst this dream and he got very excited.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: He says, that's it.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: What's it?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: You're the woman in the mezzanine.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I had to reclaim.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: Who I was.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: I am the woman in the mezzanine.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: We're all the person in the mezzanine.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so that became a recurring motif in the book.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: as a way to come into yourself and separate from negative thoughts and emotions and
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: stories that you feel have defined you so that you can move past them and move
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: towards what you desire,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: what you want.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: And put yourself back on the stage.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: Put yourself back on that stage.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Full circle.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's why I'm really wanting to speak as much as I can.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because, yeah, I want to get back on that stage.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: Especially now that I have something to say.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you are clothed in yourself.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: And not just a costume that's been placed onto you.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I love that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: I love doing a character, creating a character.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: I loved it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the things that undermined me as an actor,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: though,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: was I always sensed that I needed to have a purpose.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I wasn't clear what the purpose of being an actor was.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: I just knew I was driven to do it.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: If you're not really grounded in your why, that's what makes it unsustainable, I think.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: For some of us, be the confusion of a want with a need.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be famous.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: I want to be recognized and loved.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: How do you guide people to begin to understand and acknowledge the emotions that
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: might be getting in their way?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it starts with the pause.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: As a coach, you've heard this.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: You ask somebody a question.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: What do you want?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: The first answer is very often, I don't know.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very important to keep your mouth shut.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: at that point as a coach.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: Because in that pause,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: the person is grappling with desires and feelings and thoughts they haven't allowed
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: themselves to engage with before.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: So really, it's in the quiet spaces.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to be able to contemplate, you have to be able to do nothing.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: You have to be able to waste time.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: and moodle about and just sit.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it's what happens between the thoughts and the doing.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's where the realizations happen.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where you get in touch with your real feelings.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's beautiful.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: For some people, that's terrifying.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Last question.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: You've been taking care of other people for a really, really long time.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: How do you take care of you and sustain your good work in the world, Raji?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, thank you.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I take care of me with a phrase, leaving myself alone comes to mind.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: I don't beat myself up anymore for how I feel or what I think.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: I let myself sleep late.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because I do better if I do that and I wake up.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: I don't see clients before 11 a.m.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: I don't tolerate being treated badly.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: I do little delightful things.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's a store around the corner called Leroy's Place.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: Little plug for Leroy's Place.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's an artist collective and all of the artists are monster artists.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: They create monsters out of different fabrics and medium.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: I just go in there for the dopamine hits.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I wander around.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe once in a while, I'll buy a little creature or something.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's what it's about.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a big one for taking care of myself.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I am so glad to have met you, Rachi, and so grateful for this time together.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: I gotcha.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uplifters,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: let's all give ourselves some permission and love so that we can keep doing our
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: good work in the world.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to the Uplifters podcast.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you're getting a boost from these episodes,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: please share them with the Uplifters in your life and then join us in conversation
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: over at theuplifterspodcast.com.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Head over to Spotify,
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Apple Podcast,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: or wherever you get your podcast and like,
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: follow,
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: and rate our show.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: It'll really help us connect with more uplifters and it'll ensure you never miss
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: one of these beautiful stories.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Big love.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: Painted water sunshine with rosemary and thyme.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Dwell in the perplexing though you find it vexing.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: Toss a star and hover.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: Be your own best lover.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Relish in a new prime.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Plant a tree in springtime.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Dance with idle hindsight.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Bring the sun to twilight.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: Lift you up.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Whoa!
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Lift you up Lift you up Lift you up Lift you up
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Lift you up.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: I cried.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's that little thing you did with your voice.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right, in the pre-chorus, right?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was like... Mommy, stop crying.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're disturbing the peace.