23 – A Capital 'V' Vacation: Easy-breezy Stress-relief

0:04Shailia StephensYou're pointing at me because someone's going to start, right? We don't cut these, we don't cut these episodes. So we just like talk.

0:11Lea WernliYeah.

0:11Shailia StephensSo actually, I'm starting now. Hello.

0:13Lea WernliHi.

0:16Shailia StephensAnd welcome to a new episode of Time for You. I'm Shelly Stevens and coming to you from near Frankfurt am Main in Germany. This is my dear friend and colleague Leah Van Lee, who's in Zurich in Switzerland. Yeah, sometimes I like to say who we are for the new people coming in. Yes, that's true. And, um, on this podcast, we're nurturing love and presence and well-being, as you hopefully already know. And today, Leah, I wanted to chitchat with you about something that's been coming up in some coachings, uh, the last couple of weeks.

0:48And I don't really have a, like, fiffig title for it right now, but I'll just jump in with, you know, Sometimes we just need a vacation with a capital V. So I don't mean a vacation necessarily where you go off to some beautiful location and take, you know, a mini holiday, or I'm not talking about necessarily going outside and sitting on your balcony for an hour and taking a vacation, although you can do those things.

1:22Lea WernliYes.

1:22Shailia StephensThey can be part of— they can be part of the process. But sometimes we just need a vacation with a capital V from our own mental busyness. And so I'll just try to explain like what's been coming up. So I've had some clients recently who, for whatever reason, have been feeling a little bit stressed, a little bit overwhelmed with their lives, with their businesses. And the first kind of thing that sometimes happens when we get into that state of stress and overwhelm is one of two 2 things like that I see a lot also in myself in the past, which is we kind of almost go in the direction of wanting to change something on the outside.

2:12Lea WernliYeah.

2:14Shailia StephensSo that we can feel better on the inside. So that might be if you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you might be like, oh, I've got to get less clients in my calendar. I've got to get less work on my plate. So they're looking to change schedules, workloads, and those things can be very practical and helpful, and it might even actually be time to do those sorts of things. Some people are at a point that they just feel like it's gotten so much what's going on in their life that they just want to get away.

2:54So they get into this feeling of, I need to escape this situation, because they feel like the situation is the thing that's causing the chaos, right? And they might be looking to take a sick leave, go on a sabbatical, leave their job and do something totally different. But it's, it's kind of always like this feeling of I've got to change something on the outside so that I can get to a place of more calm. And then what happens is, though, then they start thinking about what needs to be changed on the outside circumstances, situations, and they can't even make a decision what to do.

3:36And why? Because they have no mental capacity to have a clear thought. So they're telling themselves, I need to change something as simple as I need to maybe, like, just as an example, tell my boss, like, I can't take on this much work. But not even a conversation ever takes place because it's just something they're thinking about in their head all the time, and they can't even find the way forward to do the thing. And so What, what I wanted to look at with you together today, Leah, is like how— and again, I want to, I want to emphasize it can really be true that we— it's time to change something on the outside.

4:21But I want to encourage people to first start on the inside. And that's a huge thing because this whole— the whole 3 principles of Sydney that discovered by Sydney Banks that we're talking about on the podcast all the time. time are also called by other people, for example, Michael Neal, this inside-out understanding.

4:41Lea WernliMm-hmm.

4:42Shailia StephensYou know, the understanding that, um, our life, our reality, our experience of life is created from the inside out and not the other way around. And so the first place to look is like, what is the amount of mental busyness that I have going on, right? Like, how much of my day am I spending thinking about this situation, trying to solve solve this situation, trying to make a decision about something, and how that all those thoughts are kind of just filling up and clouding our, our mental space.

5:20And kind of becoming aware that more thinking seems a lot like the logical thing to do. We've been taught sort of to think our way to a solution. But we're asking you to go the exact opposite direction. So like, literally, it's a paradigm shift for a reason. Like, the minute you feel you need to speed up your thinking about solving something is to take your foot off of the gas and take a mental vacation in a way. I mean, it's just a metaphor. It's not, you know, Mm-hmm.

5:56Which really means just like, you know, you're thinking too much about yourself and what's going on in your life, and you're not going to get any clarity for yourself in that situation. You almost literally have to forget about yourself for a while. And it might be a long while depending on how long you've been speeding yourself up. Like, I remember back, Leah, when I was working in advertising agencies and I kind of had this inkling that it was getting time for me to change careers or do something different.

6:31But I kept myself 6 long years in that situation because my mind was so busy around it. My clarity was so low, like this massive fog over myself, like driving in fog. You know how that is. You can barely see your way forward. And all I really needed to do was just kind of stop thinking about all that so much. And life presented me a huge turning point with the death of my brother, which, you know, Leah, Yes. which suddenly, like, just put a you know, a stick in the motor and stopped everything from working.

7:10And I just couldn't. I had to stop. And then I went on a sort of long kind of, I don't know how many, 8-week sabbatical because I had to. And in that time, I had the good grace that my mind could settle down a little bit. And the more my mind settled down, the more little gaps started opening up, and I started to be able to see what was necessary to do. And so I don't know if I, if I was explaining that very well, Leah. It sounded very abstract to me. But yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of— I'm trying to think of the word— it's the opposite of what you think. So what are you hearing in that, Leah?

7:56Lea WernliTotally. And it's, it's Sometimes that's the most difficult thing to do. It sounds so simple, and sometimes it's not because our head is really persisting and annoying and telling us that we can't stop thinking about the thing and it's going to get worse if we stop thinking about it.

8:23Shailia StephensRight.

8:23Lea WernliSo the the content tells us not to stop, and that's so effed up. So that's why often we, we don't trust that that could be the way out, because it seems as if dangerous or—

8:46Shailia StephensYes.

8:47Lea WernliOr whatever it— when we don't when we're not thinking about it, something really bad could happen. So that's what I often see with people, that they somehow know, but it's so, um, it's so strong, like the content. Mm-hmm. About the illness, about the job, about the marriage, about money, about— so to really let go is, is, takes courage in a way.

9:24Shailia StephensYeah.

9:26Lea WernliAnd that's why sometimes it's easier to really experiment with this idea and to start to, to let go of your thinking with small stuff, like just to, to Build a muscle, like, oh, here, okay, I'll try. Oh, with— shall I buy, uh, black or blue jeans? I don't know, I, I'm making something up. Or— and just let it go and, and have a look. Oh, I don't need the jeans. Or, oh, I really want the blue one because actually I have 3 black ones. Oh, interesting.

10:14So Just to somehow— it could be a possibility to exercise. And I mean, in the Three Principles Community, they— hello, police. We often say, there is nothing to do, there is something to see. And I think there is something to do. In the awareness, we can play with reality, we can play with our thinking, we can play with, is it really true?

10:43Shailia StephensYeah.

10:45Lea WernliAnd that also helped people who were really, really into this, whoa, I have to think my way into the solution.

10:55Shailia StephensYeah.

10:55Lea WernliAnd often middle-aged, well, people who have a good job or family or are educated or have businesses, or I just put it out, it's not true, it's a A hypothesis? A hypothesis, or, um, that we think we did it with our brain.

11:25Shailia StephensYeah.

11:26Lea WernliAnd our brain helped. So for the, the grades, the universities, the degrees, so we don't really believe that it would help not to take our brain as a helper. And yeah, there to just try it out, like in more neutral stuff or things that do not matter that much.

11:54Shailia StephensOkay.

11:55Lea WernliCould be helpful. So that was just what came to mind to kind of invite you to experiment. with that.

12:08Shailia StephensI love that, Leah. And maybe, maybe it'd be a really good time to kind of like— I just— what just came to me is to introduce people to this idea that we have 2 types of intelligence. Maybe they don't know. And, and what you're talking about, Leah, is like, we do have an intellect.

12:24Lea WernliTotally.

12:25Shailia StephensAnd we have access to experiences, things we've learned that are saved on the computer that is our brain. We can access that sort of intellectual intelligence. And there, there are times when it totally makes sense to do that. Like if you are studying for an exam and you need to, you know, understand the principles of law that it's coming up on your law exam, you, you're gonna access your intellect at some point to do that.

12:55Lea WernliYeah, totally. And what I see with teenagers, I work with teenagers as well, sometimes that's a very crucial time when they're like in high school and they have to start to really learn and use their intellectual brain, they start to worry as well at the same time.

13:17Shailia StephensInteresting.

13:19Lea WernliIsn't that interesting?

13:21Shailia StephensInteresting. Yeah.

13:22Lea WernliSo we, we start to misuse our intellect.

13:27Shailia StephensYeah.

13:28Lea WernliThat's the point. So it's very helpful in certain areas, and it's not helpful at all in others.

13:37Shailia StephensExactly. That's really interesting, Leah. Oh, that might be a whole other podcast episode to talk about that. Yeah. So we have this type of intellectual intelligence, but then we have a deeper intelligence, right? We have this intelligence that— so it's got a million names in a million different philosophies, right? You might call it that little voice inside of yourself that's guiding you to more health, to more clarity. Yeah. My intuition. Some people say it's listening to your heart and not your head.

14:13Like we call it sometimes in the Three Principles community, mind, your deeper intelligence, right? And it's realizing that if you're in that state of stress and overwhelm and thinking that your outside circumstances definitely need to change or you need to escape them, that probably, or I don't know, I'm going to say 100% of the time, eine gewagte Aussage. A brave statement. Is, you know, all that's happened is, is you've just gone, you're using your, your intellectual intelligence too much in an area where it's not needed.

14:49And that little vacation to put it aside is the way to calm your mind, your personal mind, and to then access that deeper intelligence, right? That deeper intelligence that's going to be showing you, oh, okay, maybe, maybe I need to get a little more rest and take some, some time. Maybe, you know, maybe there's nothing to do. Maybe I've just gotten myself up into a tizzy thinking too much. Oh, maybe, maybe I do need to raise my prices as a coach and have less clients on my books, you know, like whatever the thing is.

15:26Lea WernliMhm.

15:27Shailia StephensBut it's kind of switching to that other type of intelligence. And sometimes when I would be talking to Dick and Bettinger in some of our mentoring calls, he would be saying, something like it's about finding the balance between, between those 2 types of intelligence. Right. And as you pointed out, Leah, you know, at some point, for a lot of people at some point in their life, and maybe a lot of them as teenagers switch over to that intellectual intelligence, and then they get stuck there and they start using that for everything. And then the intent, the use of intelligence gets out of balance completely. Right.

16:04Lea WernliYeah. Totally. So yeah, and actually, that's, that's a huge thing for me as well in my everyday life. Um, sometimes I put it a bit strange. I say I really, really love to become dumber in a way. Like, I was so dependent on my intellect and analyzes. And I, I really also was proud of it in a way, but I mean, it effed me up as well. I was scared and anxious and overwhelmed, and, and this wrapped-up thinking just wasn't good for my life.

16:57Shailia StephensYeah.

16:58Lea WernliAnd it led to really bad behavior and addictive stuff. So, um, in the overdrive mode, it's just not good for us. And to, to be willing to explore something else could open up a whole new way of being, as it did for us. And it's a lot cooler, guys.

17:23Shailia StephensIt totally is a lot cooler. It totally is.

17:29Lea WernliYeah. And I really love my brain when I need it. Like, it's cool, we can think, we can write, we can read, do stuff, but that's it.

17:39Shailia StephensYes.

17:40Lea WernliAs I think it was Einstein, but I haven't found actually the, the, the quote, but I heard it a lot. It's like we, we started to put the, the brain on a pedestal and and didn't worship the gift of like, um, universal mind. And when we start to change it and, and let mind lead and little mind follow, then it's just really cool, as you said, and they can as well.

18:19Shailia StephensYeah, that's so cool. That's so, so cool. And I, I hope that everyone who's listening to this later can hear just a little something in that, that That shift, deeper intelligence, is so life-changing.

18:34Lea WernliYeah.

18:34Shailia StephensUm, you know, it can, it can catapult you out of that overwhelm within seconds. It's not even something you need to, you know, to do and practice for a long time. It's like a pretty— it can be a pretty quick effect.

18:49Lea WernliYes.

18:50Shailia StephensYeah.

18:50Lea WernliAnd for real, one thought away, as Sydney Banks always said.

18:55Shailia StephensYeah, definitely.

18:56Lea WernliA different feeling.

18:57Shailia StephensYeah. So our invitation to you is like, go look for yourself, because, you know, we don't want you to believe everything we're saying, but feel into your own heart, your own intelligence, see what you can see, hear what you can hear in that. And we hope that it will help you transform your life to the positive. Hope to hear you on the next episode of Time for You. Don't forget to follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Um, or tell a friend. Leah, did you want to say something to them? Yes, yes.

19:32Lea WernliGood. And for the deeper feeling, there is My Secret Life online, and it's on our website. You can just, um, put your email in and get it for free. And it's— ah, I mean, I look a bit stoned the whole time, but because I was in such a deep Connected feeling.

19:54Shailia StephensI was in the spirit feeling.

19:56Lea WernliLike, whoa. But it's really cool because it touches you beneath the brain, and that's just all we are— we want for you.

20:11Shailia StephensSo yeah, totally. So you can also get that at www.mysecretlife-interviews.com. And, um, yeah, we hope to see you there. You can spend a lot of time with me and Leia there. We're on a lot— all the So see you on the next one. Bye, guys.

20:28Lea WernliBye.