 Hi, welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee, the first podcast of June 2023. Welcome to Pride Month. We are halfway through our year. Can you imagine? So, let's pause for a moment and think about where are you going to be this time next year? Huh? Huh? How about it? Can you even look back and for a moment, let's reflect on how far we've come to get to this place, this point in time. Where were you this time last year? June 2022, what was that like for you? What was your world like? What were you stressing about at that time? What were you working on? What did your family look like? What were your relationships like? What did you like to do? Like, what was your big thing that you were doing a lot of, you know, how we get on kicks where we like, love to go running for a short amount of time, or we change our diet and we try some new cool coffee drink or something like that. What was that like? Let's take a moment and reflect. Can you even remember? Just think back to when the weather was warm. That might be a clue. When school ended for the kids. What were you doing? What were you thinking about? Where was your life? This might be a good time to pause this audio and actually to journal, journal about it. I'm going to make mention that you might hear the wind in this audio because I am outside and I'm near the lake actually on a nice long walk today. I'm sitting at a bench right now under a picnic shelter and just really appreciating the water. You might actually hear the noise of the dam also in the background. So we've got the water element and the air element flowing and blowing and moving, helping to create some change and recognition of how far you've come since this time last year. Who are you today, huh? Who are you this June 2023? I have been spending some time journaling about this. And today I'd like to talk to you about healthy boundaries and comes, it comes from a place of contemplation where I can actually considered, I know I can create healthy boundaries like for my body, like what I put into my body, what I eat, how I spend my day, like, you know, schedule focus, that kind of thing. I mean, organizational wise, I know that I can create healthy boundaries for that. I know I can create healthy boundaries around in relationships and such. But what about in my thoughts? Okay, think about it. Think about thought boundaries. Do you, do you think that's possible? So I wrote this question down. Can I maybe make some healthy boundaries around my thoughts? And the answer was a resounding yes. My intuition screamed, yes, yes, absolutely. So what would this look like? This does not look like trying to control, but it looks like a system of awareness, awareness that creates recognition. And when there's recognition, then we can respond in a way that is enlightened, that is conscious. So when you have awareness, there's recognition, and then we can respond. But between the recognition and the response, there is a moment of pause. We have the power in those moments to allow ourselves to step back, to reflect, to take in and to make a decision upon how we are going to respond. Or instead of reacting, let's make a choice, a conscious choice to respond. This is where the power is. So the awareness creates the recognition. And then comes the response, but the response does not have to be automatic or autopilot. Again, awareness, recognition, pause for the response. And in that state of pause in between the recognition and the response, you have choice. That's where the power is. And we've said this before, but with our thoughts, it doesn't always seem that way because it's so patterned, it's so regimented. Things are so ingrained within us that we get triggered. And instantly, this flood of information sensory comes through the body and then triggers some thoughts, some phrases even, which really are not your own voice. They are other peoples that you have taken in as your own. And you have adapted them to make them your own so that they become part of your identity and part of your lenses, your glasses, and how you see and perceive the world. This makes sense. This is about how we're reared, how we're raised, how we have the earlier experiences in our childhoods. This is based upon our different cultures, the neighborhoods we grew up in, the families we're around, the type of family that we have, the way we are perceived and receive information in our classrooms and in our organizations that we belong to our clubs, whether it be Girl Scouts or your church or archery team or whatever. Whatever it might look like for you, there is so much, so much information that creates this rhythmic pattern of thought that comes from some very core solid values and belief systems about ourselves that we get from other people. We don't have access early on in our baby brains to be able to create values or belief systems that are our own independent ones that just are sourced from inside of us at the purest center of ourselves, our soul. And that's why you notice that children are so beautiful and truthful and honest and just express their feelings and emotions freely until they're learned not to. They're learned. They're learned, right? In lots of different ways, but they are schooled on how not to. And because of that, in a sense, the spirit is broken apart from the mind. And so this is where that disconnection or that feeling of separation comes in and where we really truly have a desire for wholeness or reconnection. And so what I'm suggesting is that by creating this opportunity for boundaries, that's how we can come to terms with not just not rejecting everything we've learned about ourselves through others, not at all, because that's information, right? Not to accept that as one piece of the multifaceted circles that create who we are, right? And so because of that, when we are in that awareness, then we have that recognition. We have a space, a pause, a moment to step into this powerful place of this pause and then determine how we are going to respond. And the response comes through the thought before it creates the action. So when we have awareness of a thought that doesn't fit the pattern, it feels uncomfortable. It feels triggering. It feels not like us. It feels invoking and infuriating or embarrassing or harsh. It is triggering other experiences that have already occurred from the past and bringing them forward to create fear and to create blocks and to create barriers to keep us small and to not allow you to be free in the thought. Because the idea is, is if your mind is so free and flowing, that means you're not going to focus. You're not going to be a productive member of society. You're going to be dingy or air-headed or flighty and not respected. Again, another energy, energetic of value system that has been created early, early on that we've all gotten into. Now if this is nobody's fault, but it is your problem, because blame and looking backwards doesn't help. So what we do is we focus on the present moment and we create a healthy boundary about the thoughts. So right now what you could do is you could create the intention or a mantra that will help you to practice that pause in between the recognition stage and the response stage. It might be a deep in breath and a big exhale. It might be physically stepping back in a moment. It might be doing something with your hands like shaking your hands or stretching the sides of your, your neck or your back, putting your hands on the small of your back and arching it. Having simple sensory or somatic could really help you create a boundary, a healthy boundary, which is that pause, that space in between, then you can make a choice about how you truly feel and what you actually believe instead of automatic, auto-response, repeating a cycle that really is not helping you. Is it? Is it? So I'm going to do this for myself. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to first, when I come into awareness of a thought that doesn't feel good, I'm going to recognize that. And then I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on just breathing out. There's actually this, there's this method, there's a really simple thing to help relax your anxiety when you get anxious. And it's two sips in for breath and one exhale out like a, and you can do it with your mouth or you can do it with your nose, but the exhale comes out your mouth. And it instantly just breaks that energetic hold. And I don't know how it works or why it works, but it works. It's a somatic thing and it works to interrupt, disrupt the pattern. So often we get distracted. We use things like vices to numb ourselves, right? So let's consciously embrace the idea of boundary that creates a healthy energy around us through the choices of our thoughts. And then we can create a new thought. How would I like, what would I like to think? And sometimes just pick a word, you don't have to formulate a whole thought, pick a word, how I would like to feel instead of this feeling. What is the opposite of that feeling? Or what I really believe to be true for me. What is true for you? What is true for you? Another tool I suggest to my coaching clients, ask yourselves, what is true for you right now? What is true right now? Because the energy of the rush of the flood of the emotion, the embarrassment, the whatever you are feeling, that fight or flight, freeze, fawn energy, jettic, that is being triggered right there, is not what you, it's true for you today. That is something from the past. It is not here today. That threat is not here right now. It is something, there is something there that's different than that. In this moment it is not here. It is not alive. It's not here. It's not now. It's a trauma response, right? Okay, so this is kind of deep. I didn't expect it to be so deep, but it is what it is. I hope that this Sunday morning coffee podcast episode got you thinking here on Above Life Channel YouTube. I know I do these on Sunday and often I will try to do them live streams too, so keep an eye for that. Check out the playlist if you want to get inspiration on lots of other intuitive and real life topics because I believe that spirituality, spirit, intuition has got to be applicable. It needs to be realistic and make sense for us, or we're not going to be able to embrace those aspects of energy that are intangible that really can help us out and resource us. But it's got to make sense. It's got to be practical. I hope I've inspired your spirit today and filled you with hope and encouraged you to live your life as always. It's your life after all, and you get to live it. Just live it. Thanks for being here.