Latest / The Karen Kenney Show / BUMPER RAILS

Transcript

BUMPER RAILS · The Karen Kenney Show

• 0:01
  Unknown: Hey you guys.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the Karen Kenney show. Oh, I'm feeling a little
• 0:10
  fresh. I'm feeling a little fresh and sprite. Just got out
• 0:12
  of the shower. You can see my hair is still a little wet. And
• 0:17
  today's episode kind of brings me back to my childhood a little
• 0:20
  bit as well. So we'll just kind of dive into how I landed upon
• 0:26
  this episode, and then we'll just get into the we'll get into
• 0:30
  the thick of it. So as you saw from the title this this sucker
• 0:35
  is called bumper rails. So when I was a kid, I was talk, first
• 0:40
  of all, I was talking with my nephew who I saw recently, and I
• 0:43
  was saying, Hey, we should all get together and do something
• 0:47
  fun. And, you know, they have kids, and some of my nephews
• 0:49
  have kids. And I was like, So what's an age appropriate thing?
• 0:52
  And we got to talking, and we started talking about bowling.
• 0:55
  Now, I come from like a bowling family. My mother bowled, my
• 1:00
  stepfather bowled. My aunts, like people bowled in my family,
• 1:03
  you know. And if you're from the West Coast, you're used to like
• 1:08
  big bowl, big ball bowling. But here on the East Coast, we do
• 1:14
  what's called candle pin bowling. So our pins are more
• 1:18
  like, almost like straight, not those curvy. I'm doing the thing
• 1:22
  with my hands. The shape of my hands. It's not like Baba Papa
• 1:26
  shapes. Remember the baba Papa cartoon? That's like West Coast
• 1:29
  bowling. East Coast bowling is more like straight up and down
• 1:33
  pins and small balls, right? So that's the kind of bowling that
• 1:38
  I grew up with. So we're like, oh, we should go bowling. And it
• 1:41
  got me to thinking about Sandy's bowling alley. Now Sandy's
• 1:45
  bowling alley, we was the place where we bowled as kids, and it
• 1:50
  was in Salem, although technically I think it was in
• 1:54
  Windham on route 28 but we all said it was in Salem for some
• 1:57
  reason,
• 1:59
  some of you, some of you, some of you East Coast kids, some of
• 2:02
  you locals, some of you local Massholes. You might remember
• 2:05
  Sandy's bowling, but my mother was in a league there. My
• 2:08
  stepfather was in a league there. We were, there. I spent
• 2:10
  so many hours of my childhood, and I remember all of a sudden,
• 2:15
  at one point, like we all learned to bowl just by throwing
• 2:19
  the damn ball. But at some point, all of a sudden, bumper
• 2:23
  rails came onto the scene, and bumper rails were designed for,
• 2:29
  I think, several different reasons. Number one, mostly to
• 2:31
  just keep kids from crying.
• 2:39
  Because little kids like, lose their shit when they can't
• 2:42
  successfully bowl. And a lot of kids like, let's just call what
• 2:45
  it is they don't have the coordination yet to know how to
• 2:49
  like, step, step, step, I'm swung back, throw the ball down,
• 2:53
  keep it on the lane, right. They would be would keep kids from
• 2:56
  getting like, non stop, gotta balls. And kids in gutta balls,
• 3:00
  they would cry because they couldn't do it right, and they
• 3:03
  couldn't do it well, and blah, blah, blah. So all of a sudden,
• 3:05
  some guy, some guy in Texas, I think, was the one who created
• 3:09
  bumper rails. So I think he originally started using, like,
• 3:13
  cod board tubes along the, you know, the go. So keep that, keep
• 3:18
  the balls out of the gut. Is for his own son or children. And
• 3:21
  then over time, they became these inflatable things. And now
• 3:25
  they're like these mechanical like boom, these bumper rails
• 3:28
  pop up. You can request them at the bump at the bowling alley.
• 3:31
  So
• 3:33
  they also, besides helping kids to not cry, to have more fun
• 3:37
  bowling, one of the other things that they did is because
• 3:41
  sometimes a kid like didn't know their own strength. They didn't
• 3:44
  have quite, like I said, the coordination, the movement down.
• 3:47
  And a lot of times their balls would, like, bounce from one
• 3:50
  lane into somebody else's lane, and especially on League night,
• 3:54
  like, they never let the kids bowl near the league. They put
• 3:57
  the kids on the like, now they do like glow bowling and shit
• 4:00
  like that, like glow in the dark balls and all that fun stuff,
• 4:03
  and they just put them in a totally different section. But,
• 4:06
  yeah, you wanted to keep your stuff in your lane and not have
• 4:10
  it go bumping out. Okay, so why do I want to talk about this
• 4:14
  today? My speedy and I were having a conversation, and we
• 4:19
  were talking about somebody or a situation that we'd seen on TV
• 4:23
  or whatever it was and or online, and we were just saying
• 4:27
  like there were clearly no bumper rails in that situation,
• 4:31
  right? There were clearly no bumper rails to keep that shit
• 4:34
  from going wrong and bad and out of control. And I started to
• 4:39
  think about this as adults, we do in our own way, still have
• 4:46
  and need bumper rails. Now, when you were a little kid, the
• 4:51
  bumper rails of your life were really usually your parents.
• 4:56
  Your parents were the ones that kept you from running into the
• 4:59
  middle.
• 5:00
  Love the street of the road, from jumping off the building,
• 5:03
  from climbing the fence and do it like just doing shit that you
• 5:07
  shouldn't do stuff that was gonna get you hurt in trouble,
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  like arrested, maybe whatever, right. A lot of times your
• 5:16
  parents were your first defense against you paying the
• 5:20
  consequences of being yourself. Your parents were the safeguard.
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  They were the bumper rails between you and your own
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  sometimes stupidity, right? So now as adults, right? Our
• 5:34
  parents may not even be alive anymore. They may not be around
• 5:39
  anymore. So I started to think about this, and I started to
• 5:42
  think about my own life, because that's the easiest thing usually
• 5:45
  for me to talk about, right? Is obviously my own experience and
• 5:48
  how I apply these kind of universal themes, these
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  spiritual themes, in a more personal and like down to earth
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  way. So I kind of nailed it down to like four Ps, the four Ps of
• 6:03
  the bumper rails for us as adults, and why they come in
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  handy, because there are going to be times. This is why we kind
• 6:11
  of need bumper rails. There are going to be times when we kind
• 6:15
  of, I always say it's very helpful to just accept the fact
• 6:19
  that in some way we're all a little insane, right? To just
• 6:22
  accept the fact that we're all a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
• 6:26
  We're all a little crazy. Okay? The ego mind is not to be
• 6:31
  trusted. The ego mind is fickle as fuck. It is not to be
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  trusted, as we say in A Course in Miracles, the ego speaks
• 6:38
  first, and it speaks loudest, and I always add, and it's
• 6:41
  always wrong, right? The ego mind is all into you being
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  separate and special, and it will make you special through
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  arrogance, through superiority, or will make you special
• 6:52
  through, you know, awfulness and shittiness. And you don't know
• 6:56
  how bad I have it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So how
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  do we keep ourselves from going off the rails and doing things
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  that are not reflective of who we really are or who we really
• 7:08
  want to be in the world, right? The choices we make, how we're
• 7:12
  showing up, the relationships, how we spend our money, spend
• 7:15
  our time, who we spend time with, all these things, right?
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  So it's like, how do we keep ourselves from doing things that
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  are like illegal just not good choices, not healthy choices,
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  not hanging out with particular people who maybe are not going
• 7:31
  to be good for us, our well being, our mental health,
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  whatever. How do we keep ourselves from doing, I would
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  say, stupid stuff, illegal stuff, stuff that's going to get
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  you killed, hurt, put in jail or in a big pile of regret, shame
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  and guilt, and what are some of the things that we can put in
• 7:48
  place as adults, our own bumper rails. So where before, you
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  mostly had your parents as children, and maybe once in a
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  while, maybe once in a while, you had a sibling that looked
• 7:59
  out for you, but a lot of times they kind of wanted you to get
• 8:02
  into trouble. So not always super reliable. Sometimes you
• 8:07
  had your friends looking out for you, and in some cases, right,
• 8:10
  maybe you had a really good school teacher or a coach, or
• 8:13
  like a baseball coach, or somebody who kept an eye on you,
• 8:16
  right?
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  But once we grow up, we now become responsible for our own
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  thoughts, words, actions and behaviors, our own choices, and
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  left to our own devices again, because the ego mind is a little
• 8:30
  insane, we won't always get it right. That's path of the
• 8:35
  course. But where can we like leading accidents are going to
• 8:41
  happen, right? We're clumsy. We're just just, just by the
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  fact that we are in these human bodies, having this experience
• 8:47
  here in the world, we're going to screw some things out. We're
• 8:50
  going to make mistakes, and thank God we have the means to
• 8:54
  forgive and to apologize, right? Make amends, because that's
• 8:58
  really important. But when we're really trying to get somewhere
• 9:02
  in life, when we're really trying to either transform
• 9:05
  something about ourselves, whether it's like letting go of
• 9:08
  an old habit or addiction or way of being or way of thinking or
• 9:12
  whatever, it's wicked helpful to have tools, what I would call
• 9:16
  like these tools, these 4p in place. So we're just going to
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  break them down, kind of like one by one, and these are the
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  things that I think about. So instead of like, keeping you
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  from going off the rails, right, kind of like in bowling, I'm
• 9:31
  kind of like, what are the things that we have in place, or
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  can have in place to keep us on the path, to keep us on the path
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  that we have set out for ourselves, and whether that is a
• 9:41
  path that is like there's a goal right that you're trying to
• 9:45
  reach, or whether there's some old story that you're trying to
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  let go of, maybe it's some sort of a healing, mental, physical,
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  emotional, spiritual, whatever it is, there's a path that we
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  find ourselves on. So what are these four things that.
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  The four Ps that keep us on the path. Number one is people
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  instead of your parents. Now, now maybe your parents are still
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  alive, and they do still influence you, right? I've known
• 10:09
  many, many adults who have said to me, Oh, my God, my father
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  would kill me if I did that. Oh, my mother would be so
• 10:14
  disappointed if I do this. Right? I think at some point, as
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  an adult, you have to start living for yourself. You have to
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  make choices that resonate for you, and you have to leave some
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  of the, you know, the origin family kind of
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  contracts that you kind of have to sign when you're a child.
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  Right in this house, we do this in our house. We don't talk
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  about that here. This is how it is. As long as you're under my
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  roof, this is how it's going to be, right? Well, once you're out
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  into the world and you're making your own choices, right, your
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  parents may not be as strong of an influence in your life if
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  they ever even were to begin with. A lot of times, sometimes,
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  right, a lot of times, sometimes parents are actually posted
• 10:59
  children for how we never want to do it, how we never want to
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  do it. I call that accidental teachers, right? They taught us
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  how we never, ever, ever, ever want to be in some ways. Okay,
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  not throwing out. You can't throw out. Look at I always say,
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  if we're going to blame, if you're going to blame your
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  caretakers, your earliest caretakers, your caregivers,
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  your parents, your people, right? Your guardians. For
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  everything that's gone wrong. A lot of times, the thing that
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  that went wrong also made us who we are. So we gotta give some
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  credit where it's due. That's, well, that's a whole of the
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  whole of the episode for another day. Okay? Number one people. So
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  who are the people that you're surrounding yourself with like
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  in the physical world, who are the people you spend the most
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  time with? Because these people are either going to help you get
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  where you want to go, or they're going to distract you. They're
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  going to detain you, they're going to screw things up for
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  you. They're not going to be setting good examples. They are
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  not going to have the discipline, maybe, for the goals
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  that you have and stuff like that, you know, and you've,
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  we've heard 1000 times that you add the sum of the five people
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  that you spend the most time with,
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  I don't know how much I believe like that in its entirety. I
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  definitely think the people we are surrounded by can be
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  influential, but I do think that sometimes we outgrow certain
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  behaviors of certain people, and we can still love them, but
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  maybe we just don't spend as much time with them. Maybe we
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  spend some time with them. So I think, you know, in this day and
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  age of the internet, it's really easy to try to do these quippy
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  little sayings, but there's so much nuance in human
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  relationships, right? So yeah, but we are influenced a lot,
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  certainly growing up, certainly growing up, because we are so
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  suggestible and highly hypnotizable and influence
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  influenceable, right? We are so easily imprinted upon to make an
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  oppression on us as little kids, especially between, you know,
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  literally the third trimester in the womb to about eight years
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  old. You know, all that stuff is kind of from our parents and our
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  environment and the experiences and the events and all that
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  stuff is getting imprinted on us. But So still, as adults, the
• 13:19
  people that you have in place around you, your sweetie, your
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  siblings, your family, your best friends, your coworkers,
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  whatever, these people, and I'm talking like maybe a handful of
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  people, are people who you really want to know. You really
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  want to know your goals. Really want to know what your dreams
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  are, the direction you're heading in, in the path that
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  you're on, because when you start to slip, when you start to
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  slip and get off the path, and whether this is a mentor,
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  whether this is a community of some sort, whether it's a coach
• 13:54
  or somebody that you're not paying, it could be, like I
• 13:56
  said, family or friends. You want somebody or or a group of
• 14:01
  somebody is to say, Hey, I noticed this. I'm not judging
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  you. I'm not judging you out of curiosity, though I'm curious,
• 14:07
  like, what's going on with this? Because it seems to me that you
• 14:10
  said you wanted to do X, Y and Z,
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  and yet you're making some choices that maybe aren't going
• 14:18
  to be in alignment with what you say. Like, I always say the
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  assignment is alignment, right? Some of these choices don't seem
• 14:24
  to be in alignment with what you told us you wanted to
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  accomplish. So having people there, not as gatekeepers, not
• 14:33
  as babysitters, not to, like, wag their finger in your face,
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  but as gentle reminders, like, Hey, you said this thing was
• 14:40
  important to you, and I'm just wondering, like, what's going on
• 14:44
  with you? Have you turned a corner? Have you decided to drop
• 14:47
  this goal? Are you no longer in pursuit of are you just gonna
• 14:51
  take a break? Like, what's shaken because the voice in our
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  head can be so loud and so critical and so dis.
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  Deceiving. So deceiving that ego mind, right? It is not our
• 15:05
  friend, and it can really get in the way, and it can take us out
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  at the knees, and it can sidetrack us. So number one,
• 15:12
  right? Your bumper Rails is adults. Number one is people.
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  Who do you have in place around you, to support you, to guide
• 15:19
  you, and mostly just to remind you of your own hearts, desires,
• 15:23
  dreams, wishes, plans, goals. Okay. Number two, having some
• 15:28
  practices in place. Now, people who come to work with me, we
• 15:33
  always talk about having a DSP, a daily spiritual practice.
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  Because one of the things that I know, and it says it in A Course
• 15:41
  in Miracles, and it is said in other ways and other traditions,
• 15:44
  is that, you know, an undisciplined mind can
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  accomplish nothing. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. One
• 15:52
  of the great things about having a daily spiritual practice,
• 15:55
  especially if it includes meditation, contemplation,
• 15:59
  prayer, these things that you do on a daily basis, meditation
• 16:03
  specifically, can really help, not only to quiet the mind,
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  right, but it doesn't always quiet the mind. Sometimes
• 16:09
  there's a lot of chatter, but sometimes you might, and
• 16:12
  sometimes you might need to bring your mind back to the
• 16:14
  present moment 1000 times, but that right there is the training
• 16:18
  of the mind to be able to place your mind where you want to
• 16:23
  place it when you want to place it there, so that you are not
• 16:27
  just being bullied by your own brain, by your own voice in your
• 16:31
  own head, that you have some authority, some agency, some
• 16:36
  authorship right, some autonomy away From the chatter of your
• 16:40
  mind and being able to have a daily DSP, to have a daily
• 16:45
  spiritual practice, right? And for some people, it's doing
• 16:48
  their rosary beads. For some people, it's doing like a mantra
• 16:52
  on a mala bead. For some people, it's passage meditation, right?
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  It is the repetition of a passage in your mind, or
• 17:00
  repetition of a mantra or whatever. But being able to have
• 17:04
  practices in place. For some people, it might be breathing
• 17:07
  practices, a yoga practice. It might be that you run or that
• 17:12
  you strength train, that's your practice. You go out into nature
• 17:16
  and you commune with nature. That could be your practice. For
• 17:19
  some people, I know some people who swim, and for them, swimming
• 17:23
  like gets them in the water, it puts them into this buoyant
• 17:26
  state, and then it's breathing and movement. It's meditation
• 17:30
  and motion, right? So having practices that keep you from
• 17:35
  going off the rails, that kind of keep you on this path, so
• 17:39
  that you are able to you
• 17:43
  know, put your mind where you want to put it, and to be
• 17:48
  guided, and to be able to slow down enough that you can hear
• 17:53
  the wisdom from your own internal teacher, your own
• 17:56
  internal voice, your own divine intelligence, whether you call
• 18:00
  that Spirit, Holy Spirit, intuition in a teacher, gut
• 18:04
  instinct, whatever it is that you have some practices in place
• 18:09
  that consistently put you in touch with yourself, with source
• 18:16
  and with spirit, I have found this to be highly not only
• 18:21
  invaluable, but incredibly practical. You know, people
• 18:25
  think of spirituality sometimes, or spiritual practices as being
• 18:29
  like, you know, like, oh, like, I don't want to say, woo, woo.
• 18:32
  That's more like the more esoteric, like the tarot cards
• 18:36
  and the,
• 18:38
  you know, divination tools and, you know, why can't I think of
• 18:43
  the word incense, and like all the enneagrams and the human
• 18:47
  design, like all those things, all those systems, right? And
• 18:50
  I'm not, there's nothing wrong with those. I'm just saying,
• 18:52
  right? I'm talking like things that you actually are using on a
• 18:57
  daily basis to remind you of who you truly are to remind you of
• 19:01
  the path that you are choosing to walk on, and to be able to,
• 19:06
  and I don't mean control your mind. It sounds so like it
• 19:09
  sounds so like rigid, but to be able to place your mind it will
• 19:13
  where you want to, so that you are not thrown about, like when
• 19:17
  the ego mind gets crazy. So just double A men hands, if you're a
• 19:21
  person who has anxiety, double A men hands, if you're a person
• 19:25
  who has some sort of depressive,
• 19:28
  depression, panic attacks when you feel like, what are they
• 19:34
  called, not ruminating thoughts, but like obsessive thoughts,
• 19:37
  when you can't stop thinking about something that is a mind
• 19:41
  that is now like is puppeteering you, and we want to be able to
• 19:47
  bring ourselves back to the present moment and to make
• 19:50
  conscious choices so we are not being Ping ponged around by the
• 19:56
  external world and by by chatter in our.
• 20:00
  That is not helpful. I mean, I can just keep talking about
• 20:02
  that, but let's stop there for number two. So we have people is
• 20:05
  the first P right? And practices things like, like, I said, daily
• 20:10
  spiritual practices of some kind. For some people, it's like
• 20:13
  writing and journaling. For some people, it's like making art.
• 20:16
  For some people, it's dance, like, whatever your I always
• 20:19
  say, like, it's not for me to tell you how you are supposed to
• 20:22
  commune with the divine, but I am always really interested in
• 20:25
  helping people creating personal practices that support them
• 20:30
  on their spiritual path. Okay, number 3p the number 3p is
• 20:36
  principles. So you can think of your principles as kind of like
• 20:41
  these core values, how you identify, like who you are. An
• 20:45
  example of that is you might have these things where you say,
• 20:50
  I'm the kind of person who, or I want to be the kind of person
• 20:55
  who, so that when your actions or your thoughts are starting to
• 21:00
  get a little wonky, a little wacky, a little like, out of
• 21:04
  alignment, when you're starting to maybe make some choices that
• 21:07
  are raising some eyebrows, or, like, getting some side eye,
• 21:10
  making little side eyes and waggling my eyebrows right when
• 21:13
  people like, what's up with that? Or you might even be
• 21:16
  feeling that, like, What the is wrong with me? Like, why am I
• 21:19
  doing that?
• 21:21
  If we can have some principles in place that say, like, this is
• 21:26
  a line that I never cross, this is not something I would do. I'm
• 21:29
  not going to steal from I'm making these up, right? I would
• 21:32
  never steal. I'm not somebody who's going to
• 21:36
  lie on behalf of whatever. I'm going to do my best to always
• 21:40
  tell the truth. I'm not going to like cheat on a test. Blah,
• 21:45
  blah, blah, blah, blah. We get some principles in place when we
• 21:49
  get a little tempted, because you will be tempted by this
• 21:53
  world to abandon your values, to abandon your morals and your
• 21:58
  ethics. I mean, hey, take a look around at the world right now,
• 22:01
  there's a lot of moral bending. There's a lot of bullshit that's
• 22:05
  happening out there under the guise of, like, quote, unquote,
• 22:10
  religious beat what? Don't get me started, and we're back.
• 22:14
  Don't get me started. But we want to have some personal
• 22:17
  principles in place so that when we find ourselves starting to go
• 22:21
  a little bit out of the lane, a little bit off the rails, we can
• 22:25
  look back on that and say, That's right, this is important
• 22:28
  to me. I have a code remind Note to self. I gotta do that episode
• 22:32
  about codes, right? You gotta have a code and your principles,
• 22:36
  self principleing, because there won't always be your people
• 22:41
  around there are going to be moments when you feel tempted.
• 22:44
  Let me give an example. I remember speaking to a friend
• 22:48
  one time, and I would love to hear from people about this, but
• 22:51
  I remember speaking to him, speaking to a male, an old male
• 22:54
  friend of mine, one time, and he is convinced. He is convinced
• 23:01
  that all men will cheat on their partners, male or female.
• 23:07
  Given if you were to say to a man, right, you will not get
• 23:14
  caught, like if you could somehow give them a guarantee,
• 23:18
  right? In this magical, in this magical like
• 23:22
  story that he is telling me this. Imagine a world where you
• 23:26
  can cheat on your partner and never get caught. He said to me,
• 23:29
  every single man would do it. And I looked him in the face and
• 23:33
  I said, I don't believe that.
• 23:35
  I don't think they would.
• 23:38
  I said, I think there's a lot of men out there that have certain
• 23:40
  principles that they would never do, that they wouldn't do that
• 23:43
  to their wives. They wouldn't do that to their family. I'm not in
• 23:45
  PS. I'm not judging anybody if you have or haven't or whatever.
• 23:49
  I'm just saying I don't buy into this whole all men think with
• 23:53
  their dicks, and all men can't, like help themselves. I know
• 23:56
  some highly principled people, and I said to him, I don't think
• 24:00
  that's true. And he just laughed and shook his head, like poor
• 24:03
  me, like poor me, because I'm such a sucker that I believed in
• 24:06
  the goodness of people, right? The goodness of some men
• 24:09
  somewhere. Oh, my God. But you know, maybe I am a sucker, but I
• 24:14
  do choose to believe that there are still some really principled
• 24:16
  people out there, right? So having principles
• 24:22
  keep us on track right, keep us on that path. And then here's
• 24:26
  this protocols in place for when maybe you slip, for when maybe
• 24:32
  you lose your way. You slip off the path, you lose track, you
• 24:36
  get diverted in the woods, and you take a path less traveled,
• 24:40
  right, or maybe a path you shouldn't be on, right, and all
• 24:43
  of a sudden you're like, Oh, shit. We got to have some
• 24:45
  protocols in place. It's like, okay, I left the path. Now?
• 24:50
  What? Now? What do I do? And it doesn't help us to just kind of
• 24:54
  stay in the shitty diaper, in the victim loop, feeling sorry.
• 24:57
  It's like, no, if there's somebody to make amends to.
• 25:00
  To own your shit. Own up to it. I slipped, I screwed up, I made
• 25:05
  a mistake. I did X, Y and Z. I lost my way. I forgot. I forgot
• 25:10
  to check in with my people. I let my practices slide. I
• 25:14
  haven't been doing my DSP lately, right? I didn't check in
• 25:17
  with my principals because I didn't want to think about them,
• 25:20
  because I just wanted to do the thing that I wanted to do, even
• 25:23
  though I knew it wouldn't end Well, right? When that kind of
• 25:27
  stuff goes down, we want to have some protocols in place. Step
• 25:31
  one, this is what I'm going to do. Step two, then I need to
• 25:35
  make amends. Step three, and sometimes who you need to
• 25:37
  apologize to is yourself, because you might not always be
• 25:41
  hurting another person, but sometimes the things that you
• 25:43
  choose to do, you only end up hurting yourself because you
• 25:47
  lose self respect, you lose your self integrity, right? And then
• 25:52
  you start to get yourself into shame and blame and guilt and
• 25:56
  all these regrets and things that are not very helpful. So
• 26:01
  having protocols in place of this is how I get myself back on
• 26:06
  track, you know, in an AA and in different things, that's why
• 26:09
  they give like chips, right? They give those chips, like your
• 26:12
  24 hour chip, and then you get like your day chip, and we and
• 26:15
  it goes on, right, your month and your years and whatever.
• 26:18
  Because when you slip, one of the things, one of the
• 26:20
  protocols, is now you start all over again, you go back, and you
• 26:23
  start and you get your next chip, right? You get a 24 hour
• 26:26
  chip, right? So there's things in place that help you to stay
• 26:31
  on the path. And here's the thing, if you slip on the path,
• 26:36
  it is not going to feel good when those bumper rails are not
• 26:40
  in place, and we go outside, when we go rolling into somebody
• 26:44
  else's lane, or we are in the gutter, in the gutter, in the
• 26:47
  gutter, making choices that keep us in the gutter. It is not
• 26:51
  going to feel good. It is not going to feel good even Gandhi.
• 26:55
  Even Gandhi talked about this, Mahatma Gandhi, and I love this.
• 26:58
  It's called the path. I call this the path, right? And this
• 27:01
  is what, this is what Mahatma Gandhi said. He says, I know the
• 27:05
  path. It is straight and narrow. It is like the edge of a sword.
• 27:12
  I rejoice to walk on it. I weep when I slip
• 27:19
  God's word. Is
• 27:21
  he who strives, never perishes.
• 27:26
  I have implicit faith in that promise, though, therefore from
• 27:33
  my weakness, I fail 1000 times I shall not lose faith.
• 27:43
  I shall not lose faith, because here's the thing you guys, you
• 27:47
  slip off the path right. You get yourself back up. You get back
• 27:51
  to the business of love. You get back to the business of being
• 27:55
  right a person of their word, of like relearning to trust
• 27:59
  yourself again. Keep your word to yourself. Keep your word to
• 28:02
  other people, etc, right? He who strives never perishes. So we
• 28:07
  don't just throw our hands up and say, I blew it. Too bad. No,
• 28:11
  you go back to those P's. You go back to your people. Maybe you
• 28:14
  get a sponsor. You go back to your people. Maybe you join a
• 28:18
  group like the nest, right? My group, mentoring program, right?
• 28:22
  A spiritual community like you find, like I said, in the nest,
• 28:26
  right? If you want to join or check it out, just go to
• 28:30
  excuse me. Karen kenney.com/nest,
• 28:33
  N, E, S T, maybe you go back to your yoga studio or your church
• 28:37
  group or your whatever it is. You get in touch with your
• 28:40
  family, or an old mentor, or you hire a coach, or you hire a
• 28:44
  spiritual mentor, like I work with people, etc, etc, right?
• 28:48
  You get back to your people,
• 28:51
  you get back to your practices. Because one of the things that I
• 28:55
  find, especially with clients and people in the nest and
• 28:58
  people I've worked with over the years, almost always when
• 29:02
  somebody says to me, I've been having a hard time lately, I
• 29:06
  will say to them, how's your DSP going? And they'll inevitably
• 29:10
  say to me, I haven't really been doing it lately,
• 29:15
  and it's like Exactly, exactly. And so the practice is the DSP
• 29:21
  keeps us locked in, keeps us on track. Okay? And then you have
• 29:25
  those principles, who you are, what you stand on, what's your
• 29:28
  code, what you really believe. Those principles will keep you
• 29:31
  from making suspicious decision, right? Choices where it's like,
• 29:36
  Mmm, that sounds a little too good be true. That sounds a
• 29:39
  little crooked, that sounds a little off, right? Do your
• 29:42
  homework. Make sure right. Check in with your principals. Am I
• 29:45
  the kind of person who would do this, buy this, say this, you
• 29:49
  know, all that stuff. Support this,
• 29:53
  vote this way, whatever, and then have those protocols in
• 29:56
  place, because it is inevitable, man, that we are going to slip.
• 30:00
  We are going to make mistakes. And I'm not saying slipping,
• 30:03
  like with sobriety, but just we're clumsy. We're going to say
• 30:06
  a thing, do a thing, and then afterwards go. I should have
• 30:09
  thought about that longer. I should have been a little more
• 30:11
  patient. I maybe shouldn't have, like, said yes, like, whatever
• 30:14
  it is, and it's just the nature of being human. And this is why
• 30:18
  forgiveness is such a powerful practice, and having grace and
• 30:21
  mercy and compassion for ourselves and others when we do
• 30:25
  slip up. So this is the question I want to leave you with. What
• 30:30
  do you have in place currently to keep you on the path?
• 30:37
  Just pause. Take a big breath in,
• 30:42
  exhale it out twice as long.
• 30:47
  And think on this, what are the people you have in place? What
• 30:50
  are the practices, the principles and the protocols?
• 30:54
  What do you have in place to keep you on your path?
• 30:59
  And if there's some place where there's some gaps or some holes,
• 31:02
  and you want to work on that stuff. You know where to find
• 31:04
  me, right? Just go to Karen kenney.com
• 31:08
  but it's important that you take time, I think, to answer this,
• 31:11
  because it's so easy to go on autopilot with your life, to
• 31:15
  just go through the motions, to just get through the day, to
• 31:17
  just survive the day. And we stop living intentionally. We
• 31:21
  stop living with intention and attention, and we kind of just
• 31:24
  start to become little robots going through the motions,
• 31:27
  right? And I get it. I get it. Being alive on this planet,
• 31:32
  being human is wicked hard man. It's wicked hard. It's
• 31:36
  especially hard right now. I mean, it has been hard when I
• 31:40
  look back. I mean, I haven't been alive through all of the
• 31:43
  awful things that have happened in this country and in this
• 31:46
  world, but when I look back and I think, like, you know, we
• 31:50
  often say there's that phrase, right? We need love now more
• 31:53
  than ever. I'm like, I don't know. I can think back to like,
• 31:56
  1940s when we really needed love in the 50s and the 60s, when we
• 32:00
  were I just think we need love all the time in the most
• 32:04
  capacity possible, and maybe the world would look a little
• 32:07
  different. And that's what I think about these four Ps,
• 32:10
  right? The people, the practices, the principles and
• 32:12
  the protocols, these are ways of loving. These are ways of loving
• 32:16
  ourselves and keeping us, keeping us on the path of love.
• 32:22
  So I
• 32:25
  think that's what I got. I'll probably think of something in
• 32:28
  20 minutes, and wish I had said it. But for now, that's what
• 32:31
  I've got. I hope it's helpful in some way and beneficial. And if
• 32:35
  you feel like it has been for you, maybe it will be for
• 32:37
  somebody else that you love. So share it. Spread the link. I
• 32:40
  don't know, tell somebody about it. I always, I always
• 32:44
  appreciate it when people let me know and reach out and say, Oh,
• 32:48
  I sent this to my cousin, or I sent this to my auntie, or I
• 32:51
  sent this to my friend. So just thank you, and thank you to
• 32:54
  everybody who is a loyal listener. New listeners.
• 32:57
  Welcome. I'm so happy to have you here. As I always say, you
• 33:01
  can find all things on Karen kenney.com if you want to get
• 33:04
  this podcast directly into your email inbox every Thursday
• 33:08
  morning, bright and early, just go to Karen kenney.com/sign
• 33:12
  up. It's wicked easy, and that's it. Okay, wherever you go, you
• 33:18
  guys, may you leave the animals the people, the planet, the
• 33:23
  environment and yourself better than how you first found it.
• 33:27
  Wherever you go, may you and your energy and your presence
• 33:32
  and your love and your bumper rails
• 33:36
  be a blessing. Bye, you.