17 – From Molehill to Mountain: Taming Exaggerations of Your Brain

0:03Shailia StevensHello and welcome back to a new episode of Time for You, where we nurture presence and love and well-being, and where you can kick back and just relax with your earbuds in, your cushy socks on, and just take some time for yourself. I'm Shaleia Stevens. Today I am broadcasting live from downtown Frankfurt in a hotel room. Those of you watching on the YouTube channel can see in the background. I, I did make the bed, but it's not visible. Lea is coming to us from Zurich in Switzerland. Good morning, Lea.

0:40Lea WernliGood morning.

0:42Shailia StevensGood morning. We have the, uh, the Easter weekend and, um, it's just one day after Good Friday. I don't know, does Saturday have an actual title or name or does it just get left out?

0:55Lea WernliI don't, I don't know. It's probably Cozy Saturday. No, Chill Saturday.

1:01Shailia StevensNo, Nothing.

1:02Lea WernliIn Switzerland, we don't have a name.

1:04Shailia StevensSo Good Friday, Chill Saturday, Easter Sunday.

1:07Lea WernliYeah, that, that would work.

1:09Shailia StevensWe just call it that. It's this week, the only time we could find time to do some episodes. I had to move it once, Leah. You were so patient. It was like moving all the times. So today I thought about what we could talk about, Leah. And you know how we love those like teachable moments when we're in our own life and our brain just gallops off in some direction. And, um, so I wanted to talk about what happens when our brain makes a mountain out of a molehill.

1:40Lea WernliAnd what, what does molehill mean? A little hill?

1:45Shailia StevensOr yeah, so a Maulwurf. Oh, it makes those little hills in the yard.

1:51Lea WernliYes.

1:51Shailia StevensSo it makes a mountain out of a Maulwurfhügel.

1:54Lea WernliFor the German-speaking crowd. I didn't know that word.

2:01Shailia StevensA Malwarefugue. Yeah. So I was, you know, Leah, the last couple of weeks I've been kind of working quite diligently and intensely on getting our My Secret Life interview series put together for a new audience. So I became a founding member on this like cool project called The Collective, and they're creating a sort of new marketplace for digital products that is similar to Etsy, where small business owners can like feature the cool expertise that they have.

2:42So they have everything on there from gardening to how to cook Turkish to parenting and life development, spirituality. So, and I was really following the guidelines. So they have like specific rules because the marketplace, they want to position it in a certain way. So the price point of the products is between $1 and $100. That's a rule. So you can't, you know, present anything to the marketplace that's any more expensive than that. And they want it to be something that's kind of quick to consume.

3:21So within a day or a week. So it can't be like a ton of content, like all everything you ever knew in a digital product. So There were just some stipulations, and we had this sort of catalog, and these are the, the ways that you need to set up your product so that will be accepted. And Leah knows I've been super excited about it because, like, I like to geek out on those, like, digital products and on the funnel, and, like, I like the idea of reaching a new audience.

3:53And so I was really excited about it, and I turned in my, my different deliverables on the dates where they said it was due. So we had a deadline for our profile. We had a deadline for our product and stuff. And I was really proud of myself because, Leah, you know, we have a lot going on in our lives. And then doing like a separate project on the side suddenly just can get a lot. So I was really convinced that I'm not going to be in the group of people who get like revisions.

4:26So I heard them in the Facebook group talking about— so we're going to be going through all the products, and some of you will be getting an email saying that you need revisions to be made. And I was like, oh, those poor people that have to make revisions. Not me. I followed the catalog. So I get this email the other day, and it says, you need to make revisions on your product. And I think I got the email in the middle of the night, like, you know, right before you go to sleep.

5:02you just check your email a last time. And it was so funny what happened, Leah. Like, I thought, huh, that's odd. And I just kind of fell asleep. And then the next morning, my brain made a mountain out of a molehill. So let me tell you what it started to do. It was like—

5:24Lea WernliTell me.

5:24Shailia StevensYeah, I'm gonna tell you. It was saying, like, I woke up in the morning, my first thought, you know, that first waking thought was, They've swindled me.

5:34Lea WernliYeah.

5:40Shailia StevensLike, they set up these guidelines and I met every single one of them, and now they're saying my product isn't like ready for the marketplace. They're not going to let me go out with the first batch of, um, the first launch where all the media gets put onto the, the products. That was a thought I had. I thought they're definitely going to reject the product entirely, and I'm going to have to create something new because I turned in an interview series and that wasn't one of the categories.

6:14I had all these thoughts in my head, like the way I've worded the landing page is too psychological or too deep, and it doesn't fit to their positioning as having like the shortcut, like being grounded in a week. My brain started to just blow up the whole situation. And then I'm starting to dread because I'm like, now I have to go in there and I'm gonna have to change all these things. And then I saw myself in my mind's eye having like these diplomatic conversations with the owners of the collective and having to convince them that they accept my product because like this is Except, and so on and so forth.

7:00And it was funny because, you know, in the moment I could get some distance to that, that, that thinking. And from that little bit of distance, and I was like, Shaya, come on, this is ridiculous. You know, like, you're making a huge thing. You don't even know what you've not met in terms of the guidelines. And even so, so what if the product doesn't get accepted? So what if you have to make a new product and So what if you need to make revisions?

7:31You know? So I was like a little step back and thinking, all right, my brain's making a mountain out of a molehill. And I let it sit for like a day because I was busy and I didn't have time for it. And the next day I opened up the email and it turns out, do you want to know what I did wrong?

7:49Lea WernliYes.

7:52Shailia StevensI just forgot to put the full pricing on the product. So I had the symbol of a US dollar, but I didn't write USD, right? Because, you know, there are Australian dollars or Canadian dollars, US dollars. Like, they want you to put the symbol, the dollar, the price, and also the what kind of dollars it is, which makes sense, right? I had overlooked that in the catalog. So the change was literally like 2 minutes. And I, I did it. I went to the forum, I wrote them back that I had done it, and it was done.

8:28Lea WernliNo.

8:30Shailia StevensYeah, so it was no big deal. But the reason that I wanted to talk about this today, and so like, let's take it up like to the meta level. It's like, actually, I experienced all the feelings of being rejected, of being swindled, The dread of having to rework something, the pressure of having to get it done before the— like, I went through an entire experience in my feeling body, or whatever, in my mental space, of a whole story that didn't even happen or exist.

9:09Right? And I thought that'd be really cool to kick us off today as like— Really, it's true. You know, we're only ever living in the experience of the thinking that we're having, that we're putting our attention on or taking seriously. And even if we have some distance from it and know in the back of our inner self that that's not really the truth, we can still have this whole experience that is in that moment our reality, but it has nothing to do with reality, right? With the real reality of life. And isn't that interesting? And how often we do that in, in life.

9:57Lea WernliTotally. We are really funny creatures, aren't we?

10:11Shailia StevensYeah.

10:11Lea WernliAnd it's always, it's always the same. I mean, we only ever feel thinking coming through. Even when a situation is probably You know what I mean?

10:36Shailia StevensI do.

10:37Lea WernliIt's, we feel it when we make it up. And that's all we could feel if it would be really true. Both. That's the worst that could happen.

10:57Shailia StevensYeah.

10:58Lea WernliAnd maybe it's a very, very, very kind way of the brain to rehearse.

11:12Shailia StevensSomehow. Yeah.

11:13Lea WernliBut we don't need to because we're made for that. Yeah. But in real life. Yeah.

11:23Shailia StevensYeah, totally. And I felt, I felt so grateful to know what we know. And this is, guys, whoever's listening, this is the reason we're doing the podcast at all. Like, we really want you to know. is like you can win some distance to that. And when— now that we're talking about it, I remember years ago when I was working in advertising agencies. And I would wake up in the morning, and I would rehearse the day that was coming fictitiously in my mind.

11:56Lea WernliMm-hmm.

11:57Shailia StevensAnd I would see all the difficulties coming my way, like this person in the graphic design department department who was going to give me hell again today, my boss who wasn't going to like the idea we were pitching, the client who's difficult, and, you know, all this stuff. And I would really paint these horror scenarios right in the morning for my whole day and just live in that feeling of dread. And I didn't know, I didn't know that what my reality was created From, from my inside thinking and feeling.

12:35I didn't have any distance to that because I didn't understand how we work, right? And so that was just kind of that creating future horror scenarios was just kind of my modus operandi. It's how I went through life. And isn't it good to know?

12:56Lea WernliTotally. Yeah, and it's so innocent because we don't know. And sometimes we do it with the past. I did it a lot with the past, like, because of what happened, I'm the way I am, and trying to understand it, solve it, heal it. to change today. And it was totally innocent. And you did it with the future horror scenario.

13:37Shailia StevensNo, how do you say that?

13:38Lea WernliScenarios.

13:39Shailia StevensScenarios.

13:40Lea WernliYeah. Oh God. And this understanding is an invitation to come back to This point on the map. Or a bit faster, or a bit easier, back to now, back to, oh, I'm in the bed, it's morning, there is no whoever. And Somehow you— we, we are able to start to see that there is no need to solve an emotion, a feeling, and we don't have to protect us from life because we, we are able to feel all of that, even all the things that you just mentioned that you felt like. rejection and dread and all, everything.

14:46Shailia StevensYeah.

14:51Lea WernliBut somehow it's easier to really feel it when we are in the moment. You know what I mean?

15:00Shailia StevensTotally.

15:00Lea WernliAnd often it's totally made up and it doesn't happen. as it turned out for you. And we— there is a lot of energy and a lot of life that we waste somehow in this imaginary realm.

15:28Shailia StevensYeah.

15:30Lea WernliYeah. And the real life is a lot more fun somehow, or it's just different because we know what to do in the moment. We never know what to do in our head. We think we know.

15:47Shailia StevensYeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And I, I love how you also were talking about the innocence of it, right? Yeah, like sometimes I get I get really self-critical with myself because my brain is so— I find it sometimes just so crazy. It just will go off on some crazy mountain out of a molehill tangent. And then I think, oh, why does my brain have to be like this? Why am I like this? And just for you to know, in conversations with so many people, whether it's our clients, whether it's with other coaches and therapists. Like, so many of us have brains like that. It's like nothing to be ashamed of.

16:42Lea WernliMm-hmm.

16:42Shailia StevensUm, it's not— you don't have to worry about where it came from or how long it's going to be like that. You know, you're just perfect, like, the way you are. And the more you can just get a little bit of distance to it, you know, like, I I consciously talk about me, Shelia, the core of who I am, my essence, the observer of the experience versus my brain, my brain doing what a brain does, as Amy Johnson likes to say, you know, and that even that's just a little distance, right?

17:23Lea WernliYeah, totally. And That's just culturally, we, we identify with our brains. That's, that's really conditioned somehow.

17:37Shailia StevensYeah.

17:38Lea WernliAnd I mean, you did very well in school and had great grades and, and studied, and so this was really important, all the, the functioning of the brain. And it's very cool if it functions very well.

17:56Shailia StevensYeah.

17:56Lea WernliBut it, it takes sometimes kind of off into its own life and, and does and wants to help everywhere where it's not really needed. And also to see all the judgmental thinking, the making a big deal thinking, the wanting to solve problems in the future or the past thinking. It's kind of cute and it wants to help and it just blows it up and runs around and, and yeah, that's what we feel. And it's okay. And it's not us, as you said, this distinction of, oh, it's brain functioning.

18:48Shailia StevensMm-hmm.

18:49Lea WernliAnd that's cool too, that it functions.

18:54Shailia StevensYeah, totally, totally. Yeah. So that feels good for today, Leah. What do you think?

19:03Lea WernliTotally.

19:04Shailia StevensSo, well, now that you know that the product has been approved, anybody who wants to go have a look at it, um, it's our My Secret Life interview series. Uh, the link is always anyway under the podcast, www.mysecretlife-interviews.com. And, um, there are 21 amazing conversations with teachers of this understanding, um, where we look at, like, transformative conversations like this one's. Like, where were they in their life and what did they see that brought them out of the darkness and into the light? There are 8 bonus interviews in there. It's really, really cool setup.

19:44Lea WernliIt's very cool, and we talk very slow.

19:50Shailia StevensYeah, yeah. And we're all like in hope and, and yeah, love. It's a very transformative series, which is why I really wanted to get it out into the world. And so yeah, check it out. Maybe you'll, maybe you'll love it. Follow us on the podcast. Tell your friends and family so they can get some benefit out of these conversations. And we'll see you on the next one.

20:15Lea WernliBye. Bye.

20:16Shailia StevensBye.