Shifting Our Consciousness From Fear To Curiosity
how many of you want to make a positive
impact
or even want to change the world there
certainly seems to be a lot of things
that want to change these days
there’s a reason that the hbo sitcom
silicon valley joked that every app
startup wanted to use their platform
to make the world a better place it’s
funny because it’s true
we have an inherent drive for purpose
and meaning
today i want to tell you about my new
mindset on how i approach
making positive changes in the world
i used to want to cure cancer that’s why
i got my masters in regulatory affairs
and health policy
and at 23 years old why did i choose
such a goal
simply put there was a lot of cancer in
my family
every type and at young ages my uncle
was 27 when he became a victim of cancer
for the first time
it felt pressing it felt like i could
have a direct impact on people that i
loved
at the time i couldn’t think of anything
more important or noble to which i could
dedicate myself
i had made cancer the villain of my life
story
and i was going to heroically fight it
a year into my program my dad got cancer
followed quickly by my mom getting
cancer
my mom survived thankfully
and my dad died in the spring of my last
semester
the traumatizing loss of my father
resulted in my becoming disillusioned
with the medical system
the chemo didn’t help him it hurt him
i felt derailed i had lost my dad
and the collateral damage as i had lost
the inspiration for my career
i decided that i could have a greater
impact on fighting cancer if i focused
on preventative care
i shifted to the natural products
industry and nutrition
i became obsessed with health and
wellness
in a frantic attempt to avoid getting
cancer myself
i actually convinced myself that enough
green juice and crossfit would save me
fast forward a few years i was doing a
workout in a park down the street from
my house
and i got the world’s number one
herbicide near my face
while doing push-ups and i had a
life-threatening allergic reaction
so i looked into it guess what some data
showed was a risk of exposure to that
herbicide
cancer i couldn’t escape it
somehow by trying to avoid getting sick
by being healthy and working out i had
walked right into a huge exposure of a
toxic chemical
i had found a new villain in my story
the chemical companies
i dedicated my life and my career to
shifting the agricultural system away
from toxic chemicals and towards
regenerative agriculture
a few years later i was traveling around
the country giving talks at conferences
on nutrition and toxic chemicals
i was pregnant with my second child
and i didn’t feel good i was sweating
through my clothes every night
having frequent dizzy spells and
experiencing a pretty severe depression
at the time i just thought pregnancy is
weird
turns out however weird pregnancy may or
may not be
there actually was something more
concerning going on
you may be thinking why didn’t i see a
doctor
and the truth is i was in deep denial
and i had managed to bury my concerns
under a thick layer of stretch marks
i had blinders on around the very thing
i was obsessed with
when i was two weeks postpartum i got
diagnosed with cancer
i’m going to hit pause for a second here
this is the audience participation part
of the talk
i want you to take note of the thoughts
and feelings that are moving through you
in this moment
i was 32 with two young boys and i had
cancer
as that lands on you just notice what
you’re thinking about
it landed on me like a thud
i have cancer and it was at that exact
moment
that i woke up what do i mean by wake up
as a part of a leadership training
program at work i’ve become aware of the
concept of victim consciousness
this concept was introduced to me by my
coaches at the conscious leadership
group
and what do i mean by victim
consciousness
it’s the idea that we’re often walking
around with a sense of victimhood
without really realizing it it’s
actually completely normal victimhood is
simply a state of consciousness or a
mindset
it’s a way in which we experience life
as happening to us
we’re at the effect of the world our
parents
our significant others or lack thereof
our children our world leaders our
bosses
our homework our medical diagnoses
anytime we’re living in victimhood we’re
triggered or closed
we want to be right about things to make
us feel like we’re in control
we look around and we see problems that
need solutions
things feel serious serious is cancer
at the conscious leadership group we
call this being below the line
this concept immediately resonated with
me
i took my health seriously and my job
your dad dying when you’re 25 is serious
there’s a reason people say serious as
cancer
and i realized that my whole life seemed
somewhat serious to me
and it was at this moment that i
realized all along through my
whole life and career everything i was
doing working in medicine nutrition
fighting toxic chemical companies i was
doing all of it in large part because of
my fear
and if i’m really honest with myself i
wasn’t just scared
i was terrified
below the line we’re closed we’re
defensive
we’re in a state of threat and the job
of the mind is to scan for threats
to keep us safe it’s honestly how we
stay alive
but when we’re scared we have stress
hormones running through our body and
our brain
we literally aren’t in a brain state
that supports curiosity and openness
and creativity which come in pretty
handy when you’re trying to change big
stuff in the world
and with my cancer diagnosis i started
to realize how much of my life i was
living below the line
a researcher in the 70s named stephen
karpman studied and mapped victim
consciousness
and he identified three different
personas that live below the line
it’s really three different flavors of
victimhood
the victim the villain and the hero
and he calls it the drama triangle the
victim says things like
it’s hard i can’t this isn’t fair
the victim sees a person’s circumstance
or condition
outside of themselves as doing something
to them that causes the victim’s life to
be how it is
in victim we feel powerless
the villain blames the villain says
things like it’s his
fault he did it wrong it blames other
people
the world or you can even blame yourself
by saying things like
i shouldn’t have done that i’m not a
good person
the job of the hero is to seek temporary
relief
and the key word is temporary
the hero wants themselves and others to
always feel okay
so they do or say things to try to
remove tension even if it doesn’t really
solve anything heroes say things like
no i’m fine everything will be okay
don’t worry
it’ll all work out for the best or they
can become martyrs
seeing everyone as victims who need
their help
taking on things for other people at the
expense of themselves
oh well no one else really knows how to
do this work so i’ll just do it all
think back to when i asked you to take
stock of your thoughts and feelings
after i told you about my cancer
diagnosis
what was running through your mind were
you in the drama triangle
maybe you had some villain what’s wrong
with her why didn’t she go see a doctor
sooner
is she an idiot or maybe some hero
we need to help this poor woman
or maybe you had some victim this is
really hard to listen to
or maybe you said something like this is
getting a little intense
i think i’m just gonna tune out for a
minute and
think about my grocery list which is a
way that we hear
ourselves any judgment like why is she
up there trying to get us to feel sorry
for her
these are all examples of below the line
thoughts that we have from the drama
triangle
let’s go back to the moment i found out
about my cancer
i was lying on my side in a medical bed
naked but for a soft and worn out
hospital gown
i was receiving a colonoscopy one that
they couldn’t perform
while i was pregnant and i opted to have
the procedure without any sedation
because i was nursing a newborn
so i was wide awake when the doctor and
the two nurses got
up near the junction of my small and
large intestine
and saw a tangerine-sized tumor
all of a sudden the room got very quiet
and i asked what was going on and nobody
answered
and then when the procedure was complete
my doctor insisted that we wait for my
family members to arrive before we
discussed the findings
over that next hour about a million
thoughts ran through my head
and because the drama triangle concept
was fresh for me
i saw myself doing the drama triangle
dance in real time
i saw myself being the villain blaming
and criticizing the doctor for how he
handled telling me
forcing me to wait and giving me the
silent treatment
i saw myself jump into hero mode with my
family
assuring them that everything would be
fine even though i had
no idea whatsoever if that was true
and i saw myself as a victim
i’m 32 years old i have a 2 year old and
a 2 week old
and i have cancer why me
my awareness soared up it’s like i was
truly seeing myself observing myself for
the first time
and i thought oh i’m in the drama
triangle
and i had learned that there’s actually
nothing wrong with that it’s to be
expected
but all it really means is that i’m just
really really scared
i’m constricted i’m below the line
and i breathed a few breaths of
acceptance for myself
of course i’m scared
and in that moment something shifted
i became aware that fear was running
my entire life i had been denying
literally living in a state of
functional terror
doing things from fear is exhausting
you can never outrun it and when you
ignore it it tends to get louder
it taxes your body and your mind and i
started to see that i let my fear of
cancer drive
everything i did these concepts
completely changed my experience of
getting cancer
i started recognizing when i was playing
the hero villain or victim
and when i became aware i was a victim
consciousness i thought
i’m just scared and that sense of self
acceptance
washed back over me and something new
emerged
rather than believing all my thoughts
and judgments i started getting curious
about them
take for instance the judgment my doctor
should have told me differently
what if the way he told me allowed my
family to provide much more support for
me than i would have been willing to
give to myself
what if instead of being a hero and
trying to remove the tension from my
family
by pretending everything was okay
i chose to see them as people that i can
trust to have their own experience
around my diagnosis
how might i relate to them differently
when i see them as equals
and not people who need my help to be
okay
if instead of saying why me i could open
myself
up to seeing all the ways that getting
cancer wasn’t necessarily something that
happened
to me but how is it true that in many
ways it was actually something that
happened
for me that getting cancer was
supportive
in a lot of ways believe me the list is
actually quite long
i used to worry about getting cancer all
the time and now i have like 20 doctors
that worry about it for me
i didn’t know that i have lynch syndrome
a genetic condition that predisposes me
to many types of cancer
but now i’m rigorously screened every
year as are many of my family members
and we feel a lot safer that we’ll catch
things early
so as a result i worry less
how about the fact that i got cancer at
the exact moment in my life that i was
being monitored by medical professionals
since i was pregnant
so we caught it in time
what if cancer wasn’t a problem for me
but an opportunity
for me to learn and grow and evolve
now i mostly notice how getting sick and
getting a really clear
understanding of the costs of ignoring
symptoms and information from my body
taught me to trust my body and listen to
it well
and i can’t tell you how much that has
served me
now i find myself in deep appreciation
of getting cancer
when i shift out of victim consciousness
i’m
above the line about getting cancer
i’m in creator consciousness i’m in a
state of trust
openness curiosity a brain state that’s
available for learning and creativity
things seem less serious none of this is
to say
that there are not real victims in the
world there
are and this is not to say that
suffering isn’t real
it surely is and
through all of it there’s always a place
where we have some agency
and choice even with all the challenges
that are happening in the world right
now
for each of us the state of our own
consciousness
is actually something that we do have
agency over
to me that is very empowering
i’m still interested in creating change
but i realize that those changes begin
with myself and how i relate to the
world around me
and maybe not so surprisingly now when i
endeavor to create lasting change from
above the line
i’m more creative and i have more
gratitude
i’m not fighting against reality i’m
moving in concert with it
i’m here to tell you that how we relate
to the challenges of the world
is just as important as the changes that
we want to make
this one moment when my doctor told me
the news
has become a catalyst for me
all of this new self-awareness has
inspired me to move away from changing
the world from victim consciousness
i’ve become just as focused on changing
my consciousness
as i am on changing the world and now
when challenges present themselves
rather than seeing them as a problem to
fight against
i reframe things and i wonder what is
the situation here to teach me
rather than seeing everyone and
everything as villains and victims and
playing the hero
i now choose to experience the world
around me from curiosity and openness
i am often still below the line
but now i choose to practice relating to
the world from above the line
i found these concepts and structures
both
challenging and extremely supportive
i found it so life-changing that i
decided to become a coach myself
but i don’t want you to take my word for
it
i want you to test it out for yourself
so when you notice you’re in a
challenging situation ask yourself
am i closed and defensive or am i open
and curious i invite you to try it on
and see what might be here for you
because there was and continues to be a
lot there
for me and i hope that these concepts
support you
and your journeys of creating change too
thank you