Do you ever feel like wanting to get outside of yourself? That somehow, the life you’re currently living now is not yet at the full expression you want it to be? If you find yourself reaching for something beyond what is in the present, then what you might need is a journey of wholeness. Much like the upcoming book of our guest, Serena Fennell. In this episode, Serena joins Margaret Graziano to talk about the challenges of adult life—how it can be quite exhausting to be playing that role as we try to manage stress at work and achieve the work-life rhythm. She then gives us a sneak peek at her book, A Journey of Wholeness, to talk about getting out of the state of thinking ahead of time and contemplating the past and into our present state feeling whole. Find out how we can achieve that as Serena shares insights about our inner child, going from reactivity to responsiveness, and the importance of compassion.
To learn more about the journey of wholeness, learn more at https://keenalignment.com/
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Journey Of Wholeness With Serena Fennell
I have my dear friend and guest, Serena Fennell. She is the author of a book called A Journey Of Wholeness.
What is a journey of wholeness?
It is when you realize that you're wanting to get outside of yourself. That sounds strange. What does that mean? That means you're not connected to being whole, that you see your wellness as, “Once I get this, I'll be whole. Once I get that, I'll be whole.” You never get present to now being whole.
In the spirit of the world of work, people are working. We know there are many people who are stressed out beyond anything they've ever experienced at work. There's something called The Mass Reevaluation or The Mass Resignation. How do people use a journey of wholeness to have a better relationship with themselves and others at work?
The people that experience their wholeness and are oriented towards their wholeness are the people that seem to have that charisma. When you are around somebody, you just feel good and want to be around them. A lot of times that is a person who has taken the journey. They might not have the easiest life, but they've learned from their life.
They've taken that information, gathered it, and are well with all of it. They're no longer these separate parts of themselves that are trying to get something. They're experiencing their wholeness. They have stepped away from the thing that is trying to get outside and they know they can find the solutions.
Give me an example. We did a retreat with a lovely client. They're an architecture firm in San Jose,. They're having a lot of trouble communicating, very stressed with deadlines, lots of mistakes, and problems during the transition. Each person in that group told us that they go home exhausted at the end of the day, from working with all these other people they like. Why does that happen?
There are multiple questions within that. The first one is you're with a great group of people. You're not blaming anybody outside of yourself, so it's not like they're wrong.
You do think it's the environment and not yourself?
You're not taking that moment to take a breath and settle in before you jump in to make solutions. You're jumping off balance. I'm a dancer. If I'm off my center and I take a leap, I could spray my ankle. What we do in dancing is we get low. You take a plié and then you move from there. You're in your own center. If you're off your own center, you're operating a little bit off. If the entire group is operating from the state of being a little bit off, there you go. You have created that environment.
If I'm at work and I'm experiencing a great amount of stress and I'm in the stress, the noise, and hyperventilation, I'm not grounded. I'm not centered. I'm a receptor for all of that other mischief, noise, or stress. I go home and experienced that stress even more. I take that with me. If I notice myself, “I'm stressed out. I got to catch a breath. I got to take a break. I got to get on my center,” then what you're saying is I have a better capability to have balance when dealing with all those other people.
The moment that you start acting from that state, you are creating that state with everybody else, good or bad. What we notice is when we come back into everything, “All the solutions are right here with me. I have access to hundreds of humans who have my answers,” then we can step forward with peace of mind and find the answers. It's not us making the answers. We have the access to them, but we don't have access when we're jumping ahead of ourselves.
What you are saying is the journey to wholeness is at some level a journey to presence.
Wholeness is presence.
Wholeness is presence. Wholeness gets you out of this state of thinking ahead of time and contemplating the past. All of that, the past, and the present are here now. You can take a breath and move forward from right now.
When you were part of our Ignite Power Program, we talked about the book. That book is a book that begins with the inner child. What is an inner child? Who is the inner child and why would anybody want to waste their time if they don't understand it dealing with an inner child? Tell me about the inner child.
I'm calling this an inner child book for adults because it's dealing with when things fall apart. What happens when things fall apart? Even if we have been in therapy for years, most of us have this part of ourselves that hasn't matured, wants to take over, manipulate, and control the situation, and think it's in charge. That part is already seen all the problems and is creating the problems in front of us because we're adding the stresses to it. We might be blaming people. We might be blaming, “There's not enough time.
There's not enough money.” We're not looking for the solutions.
That wholeness state looks for the solutions and lets go of what's not working and doesn't orient towards the failures, the missteps, what isn't there, what's not available, what would be the lack, the unavailability and starts orienting towards, “How do we solve this problem? How do we get this done?” It's not pushing how we get this done. It's not making it happen. It's knowing that there is a solution out there. You're being more receptive to the solutions and you're physically having to do less of what you don't want to do. You're allowing people who have the skills to take care of those.
There are about 1,000 things that I'm thinking of. In my own life, when I have an issue, something bad happens, whether there are rats in my hot tub, which is pretty gross, or something like I got COVID right before my son's wedding. He was not very nice about it. He was nasty, disrespectful, blaming, and shaming. As soon as he was responding to me that way, I responded in a way to protect myself. In the moment, I did not realize that was my little kid like, “He doesn't love me or like me. I'm a bad mom,” I shut down. I didn't yell, scream, or defend myself. I disappeared.
I did something even worse. I shut him off of social media, so I didn't have to see him or hear from him to protect myself. I didn't realize that was a whole inner child experience until three months later when I did something called The Hoffman Process. In The Hoffman Process, they have you look at all your patterns. Do you have victim patterns? “Somebody doing something to me.”
Do I have martyr patterns like, “I have to do all this work,” or blaming patterns, “You guys are terrible people. You guys are jerks. Why is this happening?” All these patterns that we have to seem like remnants of the inner child that didn't grow up. We matured, but we didn't mature in saying, “How do I deal with rejection, stress, disappointment, upset, exhaustion, and all of it?”
That would be your wounded inner child. The beautiful thing also is as adults we need to play. We needed to go and recreate. We need to get out there and enjoy ourselves out in the world. Even in the office setting, when you have that light feeling, creativity starts flowing, and new ways of doing something come up. We could also refer to that as the inner child. It's not that the inner child is bad. There's so much creativity that comes from that state of innocence and possibility that we don't have when we are strategizing.
We want to bring some of that creativity into our strategizing. That's what I call our state of wholeness. When we allow all of those parts of ourselves to work together and we find the skilled parts. We notice the wounded parts. We take time and pause when that comes up versus react. We step away from reacting. That's why I did it as an inner child book. It's illustrated. It takes you into a state where you can pretend like you're in your parent’s arms. You're reparenting yourself. Looking at the art in it, we found a beautiful artist to illustrate the story. You're walking yourself in and it goes deeper. It's not going into your conscious mind. It's going into your subconscious mind.
I'm reliving a retreat. The whole retreat is about having a team work as a high-performance, innovative, healthy human system. A third of the retreat is dealing with everything that's in our way, all of our resistance, stress at work, and dysfunction. There's another third of the retreat. We do low rope and high ropes. We give them games to play and brain teasers. One of the people said in the debrief, “It was so fun to play with my team.”
While I did not know I was doing it but it looks like I'm with people leading them through growing up their wounded self or their reactive self at work. Also tapping into turning on and tuning into their play part which creates innovation. It's like the mother of innovation. They did come up with good ideas of what they needed to do to bring their organization forward.
Given this as a work-liberated show, how does a person know that it might be time to tap into that part of themselves that forgot how to play, that part of themselves that is reactive and always defending themselves at work and having a hard time working with other people? How does somebody know, “I might want to pick up Serena's book. I might want to explore this thing called the inner child?” What are some signs that it's time that the doorway might be open for this?
It's going to be different for everybody. One of the biggest things that you're going to notice is that you're beating yourself up, putting a lot of pressure on yourself, and taking on the world. That is a great time to realize, “Maybe I need to give myself a little bit of break or a space.”
It’s martyrdom. You feel like a martyr. You feel like you're giving and doing too much. That might be one sign.
This goes along with martyrdom. Nobody is doing anything right. Everybody should be doing things differently. The timing is off.
If everybody is doing something wrong, we call that the villain like, “Nobody is good enough. I can't trust anybody. These people are stupid. I need to work with smarter people.” You're impatient. “I'll just do it myself. I'm the smartest one in the room. They can't do it right.” There are people that go through work that way and become very aggressive. If you find yourself being super aggressive or impatient, what else?
Another time is when you are realizing that you're no longer engaged and you've lost some of your own sparks. What have you lost inside of yourself? Contemplating this story, I don't want to say that it cures everything, but it brings you back to you. We all need to come back to ourselves and adulthood stopped that.
When you've lost the passion, you've lost that loving feeling for yourself even, for your work, and what your craft is. You're finding yourself separate and disengaged from life. You're going through the motions. We talked about martyr, villain, and disengaged. Tell me about the victim because we had some victims in the room.
We did talk about the victim when everybody out there is doing it wrong and also harming us.
We find ourselves powerless. Those are some warning signs that you might want to do some inner work. What I loved about the book is it's about a little girl that finds herself having conflicts with other people like, “This person is this way.” She finds herself being judgmental, but she doesn't know she's being judgmental. She's experiencing, “That person's mean. That person's this.”
She goes in and says, “I might be those things,” then she picks up the pieces of all her fragments and experience peace of mind, happiness, and joy. It's a delightful book. It's thin to read either for oneself or even if you have a child to help that kid understand what might be going on with their emotions. Let's put this into what's going on in the world nowadays.
As adults, we need to play. We needed to go and recreate. We need to get out there and enjoy ourselves out in the world.
That happens a little later in the book. She goes through several cycles of pausing and orienting towards her wholeness. It's constantly coming back to, “How do I start being kind to myself?” Usually, what's happening, if we're pointing anywhere else, we've definitely done some disconnecting from ourselves. She starts reconnecting herself. At a certain point, she steps away from the whole journey. Part of it is realizing we're going to be on every different level of the path.
Let's look at the path when we look outside of this studio that we're in and outside of our lives. This is a tumultuous time in our country, the world, and organizations. What's going on? That's a big question. In your opinion, you wrote the book to help people what's going on and why do people need it now?
One thing I hear about this time is that it's scary. Another component I'm hearing is it's calling people to rise up. We are polarizing more than we ever have. I'm finding in a lot of the circles me, we’re coming together tighter than we've ever come together. We're having to trust each other and find that. This time is testing us. Are we going to polarize? Are we going to point fingers at all those people who are doing it “wrong” who are different?
We can have all the judgment words that we want to say on any side. Are we going to buy into that? Are we going to step into finding solutions? Are we going to find ways to interact with each other that cultivate kindness and add that charisma of inspiration for solutions that weren't seeing when we were in that step tight spot?
It's a work show, but like a team that is separating from each other, working in silos, that would be similar to polarization. I don't agree with the way you do things, but then when the team comes together and says, “We are one team. We can tap into the collective intelligence way beyond my wisdom, but my wisdom, your wisdom, her wisdom, and his wisdom.”
With that, there's usually at least 1 or 2 strong values that everybody's going to hold. That is what would be you be orienting within your wholeness. if you take kindness, you've got love in there. It's very kind to be productive and to set clarity, so people know what rules are happening. All those things end up feeding each other and those values.
What we noticed in the Deep Alignment Workshop is at the very end, they came together. We start in a circle. We end in a circle, not a tribal circle, but kind of. Everybody is, “I am complete,” when they're done. What people said over and over is they got to know each other at a deeper level. Some of these people have worked together for 8 and 10 years. There were a few new people who never felt connected because it's a remote work environment.
One of the words that kept coming up was community and synergy. It came up probably sixteen times. Of the seven levels of effectiveness, the lowest level is hopelessness and despair, which is what people often feel when they're alone.
They're solving problems alone, working alone, or even in a sea of people, they feel alone. Synchronicity or synergy is what people feel when they come together and they accomplish something that they couldn't have accomplished. When you talk about your journey to wholeness, I look at when people are under stress, when they are feeling desperate, lonely, frustrated, or anxious. They're at a low level of effectiveness.
I would call that fragmented.
In our workshop, we call it Ignite Culture. We say that people are more fragmented and fragile than ever before. As leaders, we need to understand that people are fragmented. How do we bring them courage, engagement, innovation, and synchronicity? It sounds like you're saying it very differently. Keep saying it because it's working. You're saying, “They get to connect with their inner self.” When they're more connected inside, they can be connected outside.
With the book, in particular, taking a step back from the task-orientedness of life and looking at beautiful images, outside of that book, taking moments to get into nature matches so good at this. It is having that commitment to expanding our awareness of art, nature, and those things that we're here to serve our purpose and our mission through work. The rest of our life also feeds it. The family feeds it. Our connection with nature and community, all of that is feeding into what you're creating in the network.
From a neuroscience perspective, there are two networks in our brain. There's a task-positive network. That's, “I got to get this report done. I have to do this podcast. I have to send that email. I have to clean the rats out of the hot tub.” When the task network is high, what people might not know is the default network is low. It's like a teeter-totter or a camera.
When the aperture of the task is wide open, you can be very focused and productive. This aperture of default which is connected to the self, to others, to the community, walking in nature, and experiencing the essence of life, and creativity, it's very narrow. Our brains don't even have access. What you're talking about is in the brain science part. We need to tap into this for health, wellbeing, creativity, connection to other people, friendships, and relationships.
We need to tap into that also because when we're just in the task mode, at a certain point, we're going to get fatigued. In that task mode, we're going to start going down in the quality of completing those tasks. We need to go back and forth. If we don't allow ourselves or if we constantly are on that, we're going to start seeing our family and all the performance suffering. It's not just that we need one or the other. It's that they feed each other. We need the teeter-totter to move up and down.
I flew to Canada. I was on a late flight. There was an issue at the airport. Accidentally, we checked a box that said, “I was experiencing COVID symptoms.” I was one hour in that line, and then I barely made my flight. By the time I got to the hotel, I was fatigued, but I couldn't fall asleep. I'm laying in bed and my brain is spinning. At 3:00 AM, I fell asleep. I woke up at 7:00. That's four hours of sleep, and the best recommendations are we need seven and a half on average sleep every night. It was the worst presentation I ever gave. I got horrible feedback. I didn't connect with the audience. The partner that was with me, I love her, is like, “Don't worry. You were great.”
I said, “They don't think I was great. It doesn't matter what you think.” We didn't work harder. We relaxed, collaborated, changed the presentation, added a lot more pictures, took away 1/3 of the content, threw it away, deleted it and the next day went back. We took people on a very narrow journey to the self and how they show up as a leader. It was those nighttime activities, getting to bed early and nurturing myself. It was a classic case of putting too much work in and then the performance suffering. None of us want our performance to suffer.
This all-nighter thing that we learned in college. While it might've worked one time to take a test, it's not a way of living. What I hear you saying is balanced even though you didn't say it. You said, “We need both sides of that teeter-totter.” We need to plan fun, play, ease, and rest into our work activities. When I coach clients specifically at the C-Suite level, we'll tell them they need to put white space in their calendar. They resist because they think white space means, “I'm not doing anything,” which means, “I'm not being productive. I'm lazy.” What do you want to say about that?
I want to go back a moment with what you were saying about pushing ourselves. There was this great interview with a man who did Ironman Triathlon. He did it in record time. They talked about how amazing he was. The people who ran that thing in twelve hours are the people who I'm in awe of because the will that it takes to do that is insane.
His being able to do it in four hours seems insane to most of us. He's like, “I'm programmed to do that. I've put in the time outside of it, so I'm not wearing my body. My body is efficient.” When we give ourselves more of that open space, we become more efficient at work. We need to be doing the tasks regularly, but we also need to give ourselves the rest like athletes need to push their bodies. They can't keep on pushing their bodies. They have to rest.
They have that recovery period.
A lot of people refer to work-life balance. I like work-life rhythm so that you realize there's a downbeat or upbeat that you're constantly keeping that tempo. If you think of balance, that would mean you're stagnant. You're just staying on this one thing. You're never going up and down. We were just talking about teeter-totter. We want to take in those times. That is part of our mission. We come forward with more charisma, connection, ease, and passion.
If you take kindness, you've got love in there.
More energy.
People enjoy being around us more and we enjoy being around others more.
Tell me what inspired you to write this book in the first place?
This came out to me many years ago. It happened when a friend and I were in a fight. We got in this fight and then I left. I chose not to engage in the fight anymore. I went and wrote in this story poured out of me. From there, I looked at her and I was like, “We're two little kids.” I got that. The other component was I'm highly dyslexic. For me, editing is a big process. I realized, “I think this is edited,” after many years. I talked to a friend and she knew this amazing illustrator. I connected with Darren to illustrate it.
If they want to get a copy of the book, where do they go?
I am getting ready. By the time this is posted, we will be doing a kickstart campaign. We'll have a link somewhere to get on my mailing list. You get on that mailing list and you'll know all about the kickstart campaign. If the campaign is done by the time you read this, you will know where to buy the book.
You were inspired because you had your own break-in relationship and insight, like a moment of clarity, “We're just two little kids.” That's great. That's wonderful. That's how The Three Principles started. Sydney Banks was witnessing his wife and her mother bicker for way too long. He had an insight that it wasn't even bickering. It was like their lowest level of thinking that was doing that. I'm also listening to Esther Hicks a lot. She has these rampages about thinking and thinking about thinking. It makes us crazy. Unless our spirits, hearts, and heads are in a good place, our thinking probably will not be in a good place.
When those are all in a good place, when we feel in alignment with that, we’re infectious. People want whatever we got going on, whatever that is. More people want to be in projects with us. More people want to be whatever team we're in. We become that person versus that person.
We all have the capability of being both at any time. It is a choice, but it doesn't always feel like a choice. There are rats in the hot tub and my sister's coming to town. I can be cool about it. We don't need to be in the hot tub and the rats aren't in my bed. We can choose our response. It doesn't always feel like that. Let me ask you. What are some hacks, quick and easy ways to go from that reactivity to responsiveness or peace of mind? I know you have lots.
The first one that came to mind for anybody here who watched Byron Katie. She has the work, “First question. Is it true?” Usually, we're making up a story that has some falsehoods in it. Can we move through those falsehoods? Can we find out something that's deeper?
I'm upset with my boss, which typically happens. The boss said or did something that pissed me off or rubbed me the wrong way, and I have thought about that. You're saying the first thing is, “Is it true?”
Usually, we mean that boss is a jerk. He's totally rude, so then you can think of three stories that go different than that. Boss had a hard day.
The boss is under a lot of stress.
We can start pivoting what we're thinking about that other person. If you turn it inward and you go, “I messed up. I fucked up. How do I get compassionate with that?” Sometimes that for me is a lot harder when I'm thinking I did bad and I'm internalizing that. Instead of internalizing it, all of a sudden, “How can I improve this? Where does the shift happen?”
Let's slow a little bit. The boss is a jerk, which everybody does. Even at the retreat, the first-day people walked in, the boss was being a little bit of a jerk. She's exhausted. She's got health issues, issues with her child and her family. Her sister is sick. The company's struggling. The boss has a lot of reasons to be moody or upset. If I say, “The boss is a jerk, is it true?” most people will say, “It's true.” When you ask that question, “Is it true?” how do you go deeper? She's got a script and it doesn't need to be perfect because she's not on the show. How do I know if I'm making up and I believe it's true or if it's really true?
A jerk is subjective by its nature. Anything above subjective doesn't necessarily land on truth because it depends on your perspective.
The first thing, “Is it true?” Questioning and going down the question cycle, she says, “Is it true? Is it real? Where does this show up inside me?”
Pivoting is another important quality. What you'll see in this story is little Emma, the main character, is constantly having to pivot for attention in her awareness. We demonstrated it earlier with this jerk boss. We pivoted from their jerk to, “They're holding a lot right now.” I noticed if you get mad at somebody and then you find out they had a cancer diagnosis, all of a sudden, you're not going to be mad at them. You are like, “You have a hard time.”
Here's Byron Katie, question 1, “Is it true? Question 2, this is the key, “Can you absolutely know it's true?” If you're being honest, most of the time you can't.
Anything that's subjective can't be. Even positive or if that person is amazing, you subjectively cannot prove somebody is amazing. They did some great things.
People say things, but you don't really know what they mean by that unless you get curious. You said that thing and I took it this way, “Is that what you meant?” We don't do that. You say something to me and I say, “She's a jerk. ” I go off and I replay what Serena said to me over and over again, which is not healthy. I believe it to be true then I worked myself up. In The Great Resignation, a lot of people quit jobs over a misunderstanding and then they take themselves to the next job. It’s the same situation, but different boss, and then the next job.
Back at the retreat, we were always doing this whole skit in which I get very animated. I said, “My boss is a jerk. I'm going to quit and go find a better company.” The person goes to the better company and pretty soon people over there are jerks. The question to ask is, “What's the common denominator?” Everyone started laughing, especially a brand new person in the company who was like, “I'm reliving my story again and again.”
Anything above subjective doesn't necessarily land on truth because it depends on your perspective.
I love what you said there earlier that it is just that moment of getting curious, “What stories am I making up here?” A lot of times, we don't even think. We don't even have the thought they're a jerk. We have the reaction they are. It’s seeing our own reaction, “What am I reacting to?”
When I have a reaction and I'm not even present to that, I'm thinking, because this is real for people, how do I know I'm having a reaction? What are some signs that I am reacting to something? People that are reading can say, “That means I'm reacting.” What are some signs since you're very embodied?
Starting with embodied signs, we're holding our breath. We're tensing our muscles. Usually, we don't even know we're tensing. We don't even know we're holding our breath, but we do know that we are pushing ourselves away from the situation. We are distancing ourselves in whatever way from what makes us feel uncomfortable. We're pushing our way in and trying to make it better. Both of those are tensions.
An embodiment could be holding your breath or disembodiment, clenching your jaw, your fist, so it can be like a knot in your stomach. It could be scowling. Sometimes you scowl and you don't even know you're scowling. Another way is to either retract, remove yourself, or force. All of those are reactions.
Another one that we did mention yet is just freezing. That one gets scary in the work field because you sometimes can blank out. You can't access your thoughts.
You become a deer in the headlights. Fight, flight, or freeze.
They're adding a new one to that. A piece is close to cuddle. Cuddling is when you are over-complimenting and being super friendly, but people don't feel it because it didn't even authentic.
It's one of the patterns in need of approval, constantly caretaking and, “Are you okay?”
It makes somebody's skin crawl when you're acting from that reaction
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Back to Byron Katie, “Can you absolutely know it's true?” is the second question. Three, “How do you react? What happens when you believe what you thought?” That's the part of stopping and checking in with ourselves, “How do I know it's true and how am I reacting? What's happening in my body? What's happening in my thoughts? ” It's taking a minute to check in before being certain of whatever you're making up. Thank you, Byron Katie, and thank you Serena for bringing it up. The last question is who would you be without that thought? If I could let go of that thought, who could I be? Who would I be?
These are steps on how to get curious. This story is pointing to how do you be curious about why you shut down or opened up. The moment you relax and get curious, possibilities start opening up. You start seeing them. If you get curious about how things aren't working, that's shutting yourself down. I'm going to reframe that. There are ways of getting curious, where people start pointing and accusing. I wouldn't call that curious. Curious is looking at possibilities and how to make things work, how to collaborate, and what are the possibilities then you're in that open state?
There's another piece of that. In the world of neuroscience, there's a guy who wrote a book called The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor. It's great for anybody who wants to be liberated at work to read. It says that our brain will go to negativity. It's like a Velcro. We look for what's wrong, “What did they say that was wrong? What did they say that hurt me?” versus, “What's working about this situation? What can I appreciate?”
“That person's passionate. That person's hurting and emotive. How can I connect to that?” From a brain science standpoint, most of us have been trained to look for what's missing or wrong. If we could start to look for what's right, we'll be happier and more connected. Serena, what are the main insights that you want people to get from the book Journey To Wholeness?
At the start of the book, something awful is going to happen. There always is going to be something unwanted that will happen. We can't change that.
Being accepting that we live in a world where shit happens and some of the shit that happens, we don't want, but when we resist it, it doesn't work.
When something happens, turning our attention to our wholeness, which is getting curious about how this unwanted thing is going to resolve itself versus resisting the unwanted thing, constantly letting go of those walls that are trying to keep things in the status quo. The status quo no longer works. Our computers upgrade every couple of weeks. Things are always shifting. How do you stay with the shifts?
It sounds like putting the period at the end of the sentence. Computers are always upgrading. We need to upgrade our own computer, reactivity, and ability to respond, so we can experience wholeness and have others experience wholeness in themselves. There's going to be conflict, stress, and disappointment, but who do you be in the face of it? Any last words of wisdom?
The component of compassion for ourselves is not aggrandizing ourselves and not, “I'm the best person in the world.” It's connecting to ourselves and our experiences. Once we're connected and kind to ourselves, we have that compassion. We can offer it to others and then we can become team players from that state.
For many people, when they make a mistake, fail to do something, or forget, the first place they go is in shame. That is a very old conversation. When any human being is in shame and agony, the natural response from childhood is to point out and push out there. As Serena said, when we point out there, the other three fingers are pointing back to us.
The last note is from that state of kindness and compassion, starting with ourselves and with other people, we can put all the needs on the table. They can get met from that state of kindness because it's inclusive. It's no longer pushing away and aggrandizing. Now everybody has a place at the table. All the needs on the table can be met because everybody's looking for solutions.
This is where we started and ended our deep alignment. It's all about agreements. Things are not working, “The boss is not happy and I'm not happy. It's not working. How can I be part of the solution? What do you need from me so that you don't have to feel stressed out?” Almost nobody says that to the boss. They expect the boss to do it. We saw that shift happen with this team.
In the beginning, she was the one who needed to fix the problems. In the end, they said, “She's not the one who needs to fix the problems. We are being paid to fix those problems,” and then they came to an agreement. They all were part of the solution. It sounds like whether it's business, home, friendship, or relationship when we feel whole and complete, we can be a complete part of the solution. Thank you so much. Do you have a website that you want people to go to?
It is a landing page to get on the mailing list and get all the information. The emails don't come out too often, so you don't have to worry about getting bombarded once a week at the most.
Thank you, Serena Fennell.
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About Serena Fennell
Author of Journey of Wholeness, a book for people who are going through difficult times. It speaks to the little one within us that tries to manage and cope with the hardships in life.
Sign up for updates on the book on the landing page: https://mailchi.mp/f5792f209747/untitled-page