 I think one of the big barriers to really having a felt sense of being one is the inability to love yourself and to accept yourself for who you are. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. We are now in our second annual partnership with the Transformative Technology Conference. We are now going to be talking about emotional fitness. We have Dr. Cynthia Phelps joining us on the show. Hello. Hi. Thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure. Really appreciate it. I'm super pumped to talk to you about emotional fitness and so much more. Let's jump into things with one of our favorite subjects to talk to our guests about. Are we really all one? That is my personal spiritual view. Now, how much I can execute that on a daily basis? You know, it really varies. But that is my core belief in that the more that we can break down the barriers between us and see the other as the same, we're going to be able to move past kind of our tribal nature and solve some serious problems. What has been your relationship with diving deep into that interconnectedness? You know, I was raised as a Presbyterian and trained as a scientist and so interconnectedness was not really something that was on the forefront. But I remember I was in a bookstore and I ran across this little little blue book and it was called Present Moment Awareness and it was kind of like I had just discovered something that I didn't know that I didn't know. And that was kind of like my first realization that there was something out there spiritually that I had never explored before. Present moment awareness. Yeah, I don't even know who wrote it. I still have the book, though, yeah, but it started my journey basically, my spiritual journey for myself. Yeah. And so then talk to us about how present moment awareness ended up really jump-starting that and also what have been these like main moments for you with feelings of interconnectedness, with ego death, with all of these different ways of tapping into that feeling of oneness. Yeah. So I think it was probably around 2004-ish that I ran into that, but maybe more like 2002 now that I think about it. And it was one of those things where the words and the language was very foreign and I really wasn't able to execute on it until much later. And in fact, I had experienced a series of traumatic events, some pretty serious personal loss. And I went through a period where I was coping with alcohol and if I'm going to be honest, I was an alcoholic. And so I went through this, I went through rehab and that didn't really fix my problem because my core problem inside of myself was shame. And I had this inner narrative of shame, like I'm weak because I have a mental illness, I'm squandering my opportunities, these types of shameful inner narratives were in my head. So, but I had this amazing experience and it probably the most nerdy enlightenment moment. I was reading a research article on self-compassion and I realized like, this is the thing that's really going to change my life. What the research shows is that this is the missing piece in my life. And it was at that point that my life really began to change and that was almost seven years ago now. Well, almost exactly. Whoa. And so then how did it, how did you work on the habits, the patterns, the feelings that ended up moving you away from shame and towards present moment awareness? Well, first I want to acknowledge that I'm still working on it. Yeah. Always a work in progress. Always, yeah. Yeah, I think so, for sure. Yeah. Perpetual kindergarten, as I hear that. Oh, I like that because the way you learn in kindergarten is by playing, right? I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, you know, I was trained as a scientist, I love to figure things out, I love to put the puzzle pieces together, I see things in systems. And I'm also a teacher, you know, I really love explaining things to people. And so as soon as I started studying self-compassion, I wanted to teach it to other people because I just, I couldn't hold myself back. And actually before that, a funny antidote was that when I first found the research in self-compassion, I probably spent, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but probably three months studying self-compassion as if studying it would somehow going to magically make me self-compassionate. It wasn't till like I had a second aha moment and I was like, oh, like I need to practice this stuff. And so, you know, I'm a little slow, but I get there. And this was the big thing, a practice of compassion. Correct. Towards yourself, right? Yeah, yeah. What was that like? Yeah, break it down. You know, at first it was, it was a relief because I had found something that I knew was going to fix me. And in such a profound way that like I set a sober date and I just never looked back and it was honestly much easier than I had thought it was going to be. Now, granted, I had gone through a scent of rehab and so I kind of knew the logistics of being sober, how to arrange my life to do it. But, but I hadn't treated the shame, right? And so it was maybe my sober date is January 1st. And so it was what year was that? 2013, 2013. Wow. So approaching seven years now. Wow. It's very exciting. And so I remember they still in San Antonio is it's a very big party city. And so they always have those very threatening, ominous, like drive drunk, you know, clever slogans that are still up, you know, past the holidays. And it was a I was sober now, I think for a couple of weeks at that point. And I remember driving under one of them and I had this feeling like I never have to worry about that ever again. And it was like such the opposite of what I thought recovery was going to be. You know, I just had it in my mind. I think that it was just going to be this like white knuckle, got to get through it, got to use a lot of grit, you know, and it really ended up looking a lot different. And then now I want to ask you also about, you know, you have this beautiful journey of yourself being able to get through something as challenging as an addiction to alcohol and also just getting through shame and connecting more deeply to the interconnectedness of all to this one. Then how about for all these other instances of you now having this trajectory? Have you, you know, seen this more with your friends that you are surrounding yourself with and their stories? And what do you and now tell us more about this? These these this idea of us all really being one? Yeah. So. I think one of the big barriers to really having a felt sense of being one is is the inability to love yourself and to accept yourself for who you are. Because that puts up a barrier to being able to accept another person for who they are. And so, you know, my journey, so much of it is about letting that go. And constantly practicing self-acceptance and self, you know, self-compassion and love of myself. Especially during the times where I feel like I'm suffering or I did something stupid or, you know, where where the judgment comes up. For me, that has been the way that I have been able to connect with people in a more deep way and actually have much more deep friendships with individual people. But also, you know, sobriety in itself, I think is very you have a clearheadedness totally that maybe you didn't have before. And you really can kind of see yourself and your own patterns and your own behaviors and the things that are keeping you in the thoughts that are keeping you away from not being connected with everyone else. You know, because I mean, it's easy to have a philosophy or a religious view that we're all one, right? But showing up every day in that space is much different. It's much more challenging. Yeah, showing up every moment of life in that space is so fascinating, challenging and beautiful to go through that process of every breath of air, every moment of time, every bite of food, sip of water, interaction with another human. And you're right. This first barrier in many ways is this idea of how much do we love ourselves? How much self-compassion have we done? Self love, have we done? Know thyself, have we done and then heal thyself as well? Yeah. And without that, then we can't actually see other people for who they are, for their beautiful, albeit there are cards that are dealt on all of our hands that can we see those traumas as treasures and all this type of stuff? So let's do emotional fitness. So this is obviously something that's probably one of the most pressing issues of our time today, especially going into the exponential technology age and also having the super ridiculous, unprecedented computational capacities in our pockets now. It used to never be that we could be distracted so easily as we can today. And the business plans behind the attention economy are also causing mental health issues. Did we see things like suicide rates and depression rates and anxiety rates? But it's so fascinating that technology can also be a solution, but also these feelings of interconnectedness like nature therapy. Like, do we have to really try and say like science is nature therapy? It's like, no, like really first principle, like, duh. And and yeah, so there's obviously non-tech solutions to get towards interconnected feelings. But let's talk about your work specifically with inner allies, specifically using technology to help augment mental health and emotional fitness. Walk us through your fascination with this and what this all is. Well, honestly, the the kind of core practices that I want to put into the applications that we're building center around self compassion. And so, you know, there's 16 years of research and self compassion now. And one of the interesting things that has emerged is that there's actually people that are very resistant to self compassion. And there is it's kind of like self compassion has a branding problem. Do we know why they're resistant? There is probably some connection with, you know, some of their childhood experiences where it's not OK to feel loved that puts you in an unsafe space. You know what I mean? So you might have had an experience where you were hurt while you were, you know, experiencing that feeling. And so, but even people that maybe we can't trace it back to any kind of trauma. Oftentimes, you say self compassion, they'll say, oh, it's going to make me narcissistic or it's going to make me weak or it's going to, you know, it's going to have some kind of like if I'm self compassionate, then I'm just going to sit on a couch and eat ice cream all day. Like, you know, and so, but when you look at the research literature and how people feel about the term, we actually know that people who are more self compassionate or more productive, they tend to be better at changing health behaviors. You know, they're more innovative, like the list kind of goes on and on. Yeah. And so what I saw was this problem is in another another issue is that right now, self compassion is largely being taught in an eight week class, very similar to mindfulness based stress reduction. And the classes tend to be filled with people who look almost exactly like me, middle aged white women. And so I saw both of those problems. I was like, you know, this stuff is so powerful and so life changing. Like, we need to bring it to everyone. We need to solve the branding problem around it, around self compassion. Yeah, this is a branding problem around self compassion and then the democratization of the technology into the hands of people that need it across all ages and all cases where it's never been heard of or they have heard of it and all these different entry points. Exactly. Well, and so my solution actually doesn't have to do with digital technology. It's really a process. And so one of the things, you know, that I spoke about just a bit about was I had this very shameful inner narrative. And so one of the practices of self compassion is to be able to take your narrative and make it kind and supportive, right? And so when I first started practicing self compassion, it was pretty easy for me to kind of weed out those toxic narratives. You know, they were not too hard to find. But when I tried to kind of place in a self compassionate narrative, it was like a void. I did not have the language of self compassion. And in fact, when I tried to do it, you know, like followed the rulebook, if you will, it felt awkward. And I felt embarrassed and I was doing this all in my own head. So I thought, you know, if I'm having this experience of trying to practice this, this powerful inner narrative practice of compassion, I bet other people are having the same experience. This not having the language and then feeling really awkward about practicing it. And so what I created was actually a cast of characters called the inner allies. And they're based on something called core emotional needs. And so this was defined by something called schema therapy. And it's a portion of schema therapy that helps you understand what a person is kind of needing in their life. And so it was based on they basically took people who kind of came in for psychotherapy and by more or less their early childhood experiences, put them in these different buckets. And so like maybe you had the bucket where you didn't receive a lot of nurturing and love. And then so your core emotional need would then be nurturing our love. And do they have to submit answers to questions that you post for you to gain a psychometric analysis? I can, yes. And that is something I'm actually working on. It's actually very different than something like an enneagram or a personality test of some sort, because those tell you who you are, where the inner allies, like the team that you might want to build to help support yourself, they tell you what you need. How do you figure out what inner allies to give them? Like, so how do you how do you prompt them to parse for their needs? Right. So there was a variety of ways to do it. And so we can take those schema therapy buckets and create questions to try to find out if people had some of those childhood experiences that were troubling. So they do go answer questions about potentially troubling childhood experiences. Yes, but in a way that's not very invasive, you know, so we're not asking details. So, you know, to be I do coaching with people one on one. And I've been doing that with my and kind of honing this inner ally process over the last three years or so. And I'm actually really in the beginning stages of getting implemented in a digital technology forum. You know, had a few kind of tries and failures and kind of learned a lot out of the process. But one of the things that I've been doing all the time in the background is just really working on this process of how, how to actually work with people who, who have the same kind of inner narrative difficulties. Right. And so there's a variety of ways of going about it. You can go about it like, what kind of childhood issues did they have? You can look at from a cognitive behavioral therapy standpoint, there are some what they call difficult thought patterns that you can kind of weed out and then address. You also can do a meditation with people, a couple of different meditations, one where you actually walk them through like what is a core emotional need and then get them really still and kind of go in and ask like, OK, what do I what is it that I really need? And then kind of drop them deeper and be like, OK, what is it that I really, really need? And so that's a really good starting place to choose an inner ally. And there's also doing it within a relationship. And this is another meditation. So you're not actually with another person. But you think about a situation that was troublesome that you had with somebody who was close to you. It could be a work colleague. It could be a family member. And you take yourself back to that difficult situation where maybe you were hurt or you had some kind of difficult emotion around it. Right. And then you drop into you take them through a process which ends in basically like what did you need in that moment? Like what would you want to have had that person say or do for you? And that's another way to reveal like what are some of the core emotional needs that we really want? Because a lot of times that's what happens in in in interrelational conflict is like, you know, I say, hey, do you want to go out to dinner? And you say, oh, no, I have to work. And then I'm sad because what I really wanted was connection. Yeah. But I didn't say like, hey, would you like to connect? Connection exactly. And then in that case, you'd be like, I would love to connect you right after I do this work, right? And so and so we typically don't relate that way because we don't really come to the relationships knowing what our core emotional needs are. That's why I, you know, in the in my awareness around core emotional needs is key and the way to the way to engage with another family member, spouse or a partner or yourself, yourself, friends, etc. in a way that is conducive to being aware of your core emotional needs and is efficacious is paramount in emotional fitness. It's so interesting. I have so many questions. I want to ask you about this. You gave this example at the beginning, this idea that it's easy for someone to easier for someone to reflect in and see like a negative behavior pattern and to be like, OK, I understand that maybe extremely poor eating habit or not exercising for extremely long periods of time or sleeping really poorly over and over again is not good for me. So I will work on siphoning that back to a great state. But then this idea that maybe implementing some sort of a self compassion thing into my routine, like literally if I'm like in a workflow for a couple hours and it's like being like get up and stretch and it's like, well, but I'm in such good flow at work. And so I have to, you know, get up and do that or there's that part was really interesting to me about how to actually make these augmentations in people's emotional fitness. And then the other one that came up was what exactly do these like inner allies, what do they do for, you know, after you gain some knowledge about about my emotional needs, then how do these allies come up in my life and say, you know, Alan, it's time for some of that emotional need. You know, how does that actually, how does that happen? That's a good question. So, you know, and each inner ally, we have kind of stocked with a bank of compassionate language that centers around that core emotional need. So they're kind of like a cheat sheet for how you can begin to talk to yourself. And so when I use the cards, I have a card and it has inner ally on the front and on the back. It has it's lined. And so what they do, what I do in coaching is we have them actually customize their own phrase on the back because it's it's really interesting to have the language that hits your heart. Like when it hits your heart, you want to you want to have like a or or or or, you know, these are the the sounds of the feelings of compassion. Like, oh, yeah. And so it's important to keep tweaking the language until it hits right. And that's one of the things I envision the mobile app is going to be able to help us with. And so, you know, the inner allies as characters, you know, we used pretty archetypes that are pretty common in games and so forth. There was no kind of science behind choosing the characters, just the core emotional needs. But how I view them is it's kind of like, you know, when you dress up for Halloween and you put on a costume, all of a sudden you're you're able to kind of do things you wouldn't normally do and say things you wouldn't normally say. Because it's not you, right? You're now you now have this other persona. And so with the inner allies, it's kind of like you can put on the persona of the inner ally and then speak to yourself in that persona. And it takes away that awkwardness and that that fear of like, oh, like I'm not allowed to speak to myself this kind or something. You know, the piano is going to fall on my head if I am this nice to myself, right? And so some of those misconceptions kind of fade into the background because it's you're working with an inner ally. You're not you're not on your own. Yeah, I this one is so relatable to everything that we go through in life where it just there's a feeling that comes up. That is that there's some sort of like a persona or some sort of like a thought or emotion that we're maybe not aware of that comes into our lives, into our worldview and it somehow triggers us to say some sort of feeling of disconnectedness from other people or disconnectedness just in general. And then what I love doing at that point is I do really put on like an interconnectedness persona at that time. And it just it's like a oneness persona that kicks in is like, are you really going to be in that state right now? Or do you really believe in the one? And like it really helps me get back to the one. And it's it's like to really be able to have a true authentic dialogue with yourself and make it a part of like a beautiful process. Like a oneness superhero that you get to like call in and like engage with. And I love that. So it's something that maybe if, you know, if we had children that had oneness superheroes. Yeah, yeah, that could be world changing very fast. I love that oneness superheroes. Yeah, to do some work on that. Let's do some work on that. I love it. I love it. Oh, so then hit us with the future of where you see this going. Well, so, you know, I have been playing around with this in my coaching office and working with my clients on it. And I'm in San Antonio, Texas right now. And our tech scene is about seven years old. It's about as old as I am from my enlightenment moment. And so I have tried with a sweat equity team and I've tried in a variety of different ways to raise funding locally and haven't been able to kind of get it off the ground. And so one of the reasons I'm here at this conference, I'm going to be pitching in our ally tomorrow is that I am ready to get this product into the marketplace. And I know that I am the content expert. Yes. And that I need a team of people and the people here are just truly amazing, like the skills and the insights. Like it's yeah, it's just so nice to learn so much from everyone and and to to sit at the table and be a part of a team and know that everybody is like one. And that's actually one of the things that's practiced in this community is how do you run an ethical company? How do you run a business that is that treats people well, right? That people feel held and and I mean, that is amazing to me. And so I can't think of a better place to be looking for partners to bring this to fruition. Like and this is one of the things that's happening is, you know, we're at the point now where mindfulness has broken through into the popular, you know, everybody knows about it. And if people are beginning to understand that mindfulness and meditations are critical skills to flourishing. And I know the research for self compassion actually is even stronger than for mindfulness in terms of well being. And it is it is like coasting about five years behind the wave of mindfulness research in the US. And so now is the time to build the digital product because it's coming. And I want to have these tools available for people. I want to hit the millennials and Gen Z so that, you know, imagine if I had emotional fitness, if I had practiced with my inner allies, like if I knew what my core emotional needs were and how I could meet them both with my inner language and in my life and relationships, you know, running into the trauma that we all inevitably run into, right? And it's some in some form. What would that have looked like if I had if I was emotionally fit? Yeah. Right. And that's what I would really love to see for our young people today. Let's give them let's give them some tools so that so, you know, they've got a fighting chance. And we know that depression and suicide and anxiety are all skyrocketing. As CDC just put out a study that was a decade long and showed that the suicide rate among young people between 10 and 24 went up 56 percent and it is continuing to trend upwards. And so now is the time. So this deploying inner ally to especially millennials and Gen Z, this is going to be in like a freemium style where it's like a free download. And then there is additional that you that people can subscribe to. Yeah. Yeah. OK, cool. Well, you know, when I first time I pitched this idea, it was in 2013. And, you know, calm and headspace were two very leaders in the market now. You know, didn't didn't exist. Or they were not popular yet. It was so interesting when you mentioned the efficacy of self-compassion versus mindfulness and meditation. That's a fascinating stat that I think can get deeper, especially personalized feedback around self-compassion and what that does for well-being in comparison. That's a really interesting stat that you mentioned. Well, I think you're I mean the in 2003, I think maybe it was the first Western medicine article published on self-compassion. And and it's just gone like whoosh, like the research has taken off in self-compassion. And so now you're seeing it like how can we address burnout with self-compassion? You know, how all these different things. And I, of course, am interested in addressing addiction and helping people in recovery gain these skills as well. I really would love anyone tuning in. Please, please, please support Cynthia. Please support inner ally. Please support them as much as you can, as you can. We'll would love to have this in our world as fast as possible. I love it. Thank you so much. I have some more questions that I want to ask on the way out. Do you know I have my cards with me? Would you want me to get my physical cards so I can show them to the camera? There's 16 of them that they all don't have to come to the party. Let's I just have a subset of the inner allies. Here this one is actually my favorite. This is the grandmother grandmother. And so this was the very first inner ally voice that I had in my head. And this is the superpower for the grandmother is nurturing. Yeah. You know, and when I say superpower, I'm talking about core emotional need. Yeah. But I don't want to use that terminology, like, you know, with the application because I really want it to be accessible. I don't want it to sound scary. And oftentimes when people hear core emotional need, they think, oh, it's needy, but it's actually more like I need water. It's something you really need to flourish. And so with this card, we can talk about what would the grandmother what would it sound like if you spoke to yourself in the voice of the grandmother? Yeah. And then what they do on the other side is lined and they would write out their their own personalized customized way that the grandmother would speak. And oftentimes it's situational because people are struggling with a particular situation. And so it's customized around that situation as well. Yes. Yes. And so the grandmother. I love that. That's my favorite one. So we have the lover where's the superpower of intimacy. OK. We have the cheerleader where the superpower is worthiness. Oh, worthiness. And we have the citizen where the superpower is community. Oh, they have the companion where the superpower is support. And the captain where the superpower is freedom. The monk who's superpower is serenity. And this is this is one of my core emotional needs. The knight whose superpower is security. Interesting. And that's a subset of them. Wow. So this is eight eight of the 16 of the 16. The knight security, the monk, serenity, the captain, freedom, the companion, support, the citizen, community, the cheerleader, worthiness, the lover, intimacy and the grandmother nurturing. So beautiful. Love these. So the so the future is when we feel like we have some sort of a an emotional need that's not being met, we can be gain this assistance from something like inner ally and and feel the grandmother, feel the citizen, feel the night and and that can really activate that maximizes our well being. I love this. I love it so much. It's like an easier way to access what's already in you. Like we really already have the ability to meet our our core emotional needs. But nobody's taught us. And and also sometimes we feel like we don't have permission. Yes. Yes. OK, the last last question that I can add that I can ask you on the program. They're both very short questions. The first one is, do you believe that the root of all of our issues in our world is due to our feelings of separation? You know, normally my answer is is fear. But I think I think separation and fear are probably go hand in hand because, you know, we're human and, you know, we are literally pack animals. And we know that if somebody goes out into isolation, they actually shorten their lifespan and there's all kinds of bad health repercussions. And so that would be the ultimate fear, right? Is isolation from community? And so, yeah, I think you're right. Interesting. Yeah. I love those two together. Fear and separation being the root of the main issues. And it's all about getting to the roots. That's why we ask the question, not the symptoms, the roots and then catalyzing feelings of interconnectedness and all the other things that we need. Last question is, what do you think is the most beautiful thing? In life. Yeah, I think the most beautiful thing is that sense of expansion that you get. And it comes in many ways. It comes when you learn something new. It comes when you realize that you're more than what you realized you were. It comes when you realize when it can come in relationship, right? When all of a sudden you realize like, oh, I love that person. And it's that that I think that's really the most amazing thing. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for this incredible episode. Thanks for coming on the show and teaching us about what you're doing. Dinner, ally and emotional fitness. Thanks, Cynthia. It's such my pleasure. I'm happy to be here and to share. I want other people to experience what I have been able to. Yeah. And what a cool way to democratize it. I love it. I love it. And hopefully, like we said, everyone, please do support in our ally. However, you can get supporting as much as you can. You find the links in the bio below to that. Also, check out the links in the bio to Transformative Technology Conference. Check out their ecosystem links. All those links are in the bio below an incredible partnership for us again. Thank you, Brady, for co-producing with us. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much. And also support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the spiritual leaders, the organizations around the world that you believe in in your community, support simulation, you can find all of our links below our PayPal, Patreon, cryptocurrency links are down there. You can design cool merch and get paid. All those links are down there and go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon. Bye, everyone. Peace.