BUMPER RAILS

Hey you guys.

Welcome to the Karen Kenney show. Oh, I'm feeling a little

fresh. I'm feeling a little fresh and sprite. Just got out

of the shower. You can see my hair is still a little wet. And

today's episode kind of brings me back to my childhood a little

bit as well. So we'll just kind of dive into how I landed upon

this episode, and then we'll just get into the we'll get into

the thick of it. So as you saw from the title this this sucker

is called bumper rails. So when I was a kid, I was talk, first

of all, I was talking with my nephew who I saw recently, and I

was saying, Hey, we should all get together and do something

fun. And, you know, they have kids, and some of my nephews

have kids. And I was like, So what's an age appropriate thing?

And we got to talking, and we started talking about bowling.

Now, I come from like a bowling family. My mother bowled, my

stepfather bowled. My aunts, like people bowled in my family,

you know. And if you're from the West Coast, you're used to like

big bowl, big ball bowling. But here on the East Coast, we do

what's called candle pin bowling. So our pins are more

like, almost like straight, not those curvy. I'm doing the thing

with my hands. The shape of my hands. It's not like Baba Papa

shapes. Remember the baba Papa cartoon? That's like West Coast

bowling. East Coast bowling is more like straight up and down

pins and small balls, right? So that's the kind of bowling that

I grew up with. So we're like, oh, we should go bowling. And it

got me to thinking about Sandy's bowling alley. Now Sandy's

bowling alley, we was the place where we bowled as kids, and it

was in Salem, although technically I think it was in

Windham on route 28 but we all said it was in Salem for some

reason,

some of you, some of you, some of you East Coast kids, some of

you locals, some of you local Massholes. You might remember

Sandy's bowling, but my mother was in a league there. My

stepfather was in a league there. We were, there. I spent

so many hours of my childhood, and I remember all of a sudden,

at one point, like we all learned to bowl just by throwing

the damn ball. But at some point, all of a sudden, bumper

rails came onto the scene, and bumper rails were designed for,

I think, several different reasons. Number one, mostly to

just keep kids from crying.

Because little kids like, lose their shit when they can't

successfully bowl. And a lot of kids like, let's just call what

it is they don't have the coordination yet to know how to

like, step, step, step, I'm swung back, throw the ball down,

keep it on the lane, right. They would be would keep kids from

getting like, non stop, gotta balls. And kids in gutta balls,

they would cry because they couldn't do it right, and they

couldn't do it well, and blah, blah, blah. So all of a sudden,

some guy, some guy in Texas, I think, was the one who created

bumper rails. So I think he originally started using, like,

cod board tubes along the, you know, the go. So keep that, keep

the balls out of the gut. Is for his own son or children. And

then over time, they became these inflatable things. And now

they're like these mechanical like boom, these bumper rails

pop up. You can request them at the bump at the bowling alley.

So

they also, besides helping kids to not cry, to have more fun

bowling, one of the other things that they did is because

sometimes a kid like didn't know their own strength. They didn't

have quite, like I said, the coordination, the movement down.

And a lot of times their balls would, like, bounce from one

lane into somebody else's lane, and especially on League night,

like, they never let the kids bowl near the league. They put

the kids on the like, now they do like glow bowling and shit

like that, like glow in the dark balls and all that fun stuff,

and they just put them in a totally different section. But,

yeah, you wanted to keep your stuff in your lane and not have

it go bumping out. Okay, so why do I want to talk about this

today? My speedy and I were having a conversation, and we

were talking about somebody or a situation that we'd seen on TV

or whatever it was and or online, and we were just saying

like there were clearly no bumper rails in that situation,

right? There were clearly no bumper rails to keep that shit

from going wrong and bad and out of control. And I started to

think about this as adults, we do in our own way, still have

and need bumper rails. Now, when you were a little kid, the

bumper rails of your life were really usually your parents.

Your parents were the ones that kept you from running into the

middle.

Love the street of the road, from jumping off the building,

from climbing the fence and do it like just doing shit that you

shouldn't do stuff that was gonna get you hurt in trouble,

like arrested, maybe whatever, right. A lot of times your

parents were your first defense against you paying the

consequences of being yourself. Your parents were the safeguard.

They were the bumper rails between you and your own

sometimes stupidity, right? So now as adults, right? Our

parents may not even be alive anymore. They may not be around

anymore. So I started to think about this, and I started to

think about my own life, because that's the easiest thing usually

for me to talk about, right? Is obviously my own experience and

how I apply these kind of universal themes, these

spiritual themes, in a more personal and like down to earth

way. So I kind of nailed it down to like four Ps, the four Ps of

the bumper rails for us as adults, and why they come in

handy, because there are going to be times. This is why we kind

of need bumper rails. There are going to be times when we kind

of, I always say it's very helpful to just accept the fact

that in some way we're all a little insane, right? To just

accept the fact that we're all a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

We're all a little crazy. Okay? The ego mind is not to be

trusted. The ego mind is fickle as fuck. It is not to be

trusted, as we say in A Course in Miracles, the ego speaks

first, and it speaks loudest, and I always add, and it's

always wrong, right? The ego mind is all into you being

separate and special, and it will make you special through

arrogance, through superiority, or will make you special

through, you know, awfulness and shittiness. And you don't know

how bad I have it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So how

do we keep ourselves from going off the rails and doing things

that are not reflective of who we really are or who we really

want to be in the world, right? The choices we make, how we're

showing up, the relationships, how we spend our money, spend

our time, who we spend time with, all these things, right?

So it's like, how do we keep ourselves from doing things that

are like illegal just not good choices, not healthy choices,

not hanging out with particular people who maybe are not going

to be good for us, our well being, our mental health,

whatever. How do we keep ourselves from doing, I would

say, stupid stuff, illegal stuff, stuff that's going to get

you killed, hurt, put in jail or in a big pile of regret, shame

and guilt, and what are some of the things that we can put in

place as adults, our own bumper rails. So where before, you

mostly had your parents as children, and maybe once in a

while, maybe once in a while, you had a sibling that looked

out for you, but a lot of times they kind of wanted you to get

into trouble. So not always super reliable. Sometimes you

had your friends looking out for you, and in some cases, right,

maybe you had a really good school teacher or a coach, or

like a baseball coach, or somebody who kept an eye on you,

right?

But once we grow up, we now become responsible for our own

thoughts, words, actions and behaviors, our own choices, and

left to our own devices again, because the ego mind is a little

insane, we won't always get it right. That's path of the

course. But where can we like leading accidents are going to

happen, right? We're clumsy. We're just just, just by the

fact that we are in these human bodies, having this experience

here in the world, we're going to screw some things out. We're

going to make mistakes, and thank God we have the means to

forgive and to apologize, right? Make amends, because that's

really important. But when we're really trying to get somewhere

in life, when we're really trying to either transform

something about ourselves, whether it's like letting go of

an old habit or addiction or way of being or way of thinking or

whatever, it's wicked helpful to have tools, what I would call

like these tools, these 4p in place. So we're just going to

break them down, kind of like one by one, and these are the

things that I think about. So instead of like, keeping you

from going off the rails, right, kind of like in bowling, I'm

kind of like, what are the things that we have in place, or

can have in place to keep us on the path, to keep us on the path

that we have set out for ourselves, and whether that is a

path that is like there's a goal right that you're trying to

reach, or whether there's some old story that you're trying to

let go of, maybe it's some sort of a healing, mental, physical,

emotional, spiritual, whatever it is, there's a path that we

find ourselves on. So what are these four things that.

The four Ps that keep us on the path. Number one is people

instead of your parents. Now, now maybe your parents are still

alive, and they do still influence you, right? I've known

many, many adults who have said to me, Oh, my God, my father

would kill me if I did that. Oh, my mother would be so

disappointed if I do this. Right? I think at some point, as

an adult, you have to start living for yourself. You have to

make choices that resonate for you, and you have to leave some

of the, you know, the origin family kind of

contracts that you kind of have to sign when you're a child.

Right in this house, we do this in our house. We don't talk

about that here. This is how it is. As long as you're under my

roof, this is how it's going to be, right? Well, once you're out

into the world and you're making your own choices, right, your

parents may not be as strong of an influence in your life if

they ever even were to begin with. A lot of times, sometimes,

right, a lot of times, sometimes parents are actually posted

children for how we never want to do it, how we never want to

do it. I call that accidental teachers, right? They taught us

how we never, ever, ever, ever want to be in some ways. Okay,

not throwing out. You can't throw out. Look at I always say,

if we're going to blame, if you're going to blame your

caretakers, your earliest caretakers, your caregivers,

your parents, your people, right? Your guardians. For

everything that's gone wrong. A lot of times, the thing that

that went wrong also made us who we are. So we gotta give some

credit where it's due. That's, well, that's a whole of the

whole of the episode for another day. Okay? Number one people. So

who are the people that you're surrounding yourself with like

in the physical world, who are the people you spend the most

time with? Because these people are either going to help you get

where you want to go, or they're going to distract you. They're

going to detain you, they're going to screw things up for

you. They're not going to be setting good examples. They are

not going to have the discipline, maybe, for the goals

that you have and stuff like that, you know, and you've,

we've heard 1000 times that you add the sum of the five people

that you spend the most time with,

I don't know how much I believe like that in its entirety. I

definitely think the people we are surrounded by can be

influential, but I do think that sometimes we outgrow certain

behaviors of certain people, and we can still love them, but

maybe we just don't spend as much time with them. Maybe we

spend some time with them. So I think, you know, in this day and

age of the internet, it's really easy to try to do these quippy

little sayings, but there's so much nuance in human

relationships, right? So yeah, but we are influenced a lot,

certainly growing up, certainly growing up, because we are so

suggestible and highly hypnotizable and influence

influenceable, right? We are so easily imprinted upon to make an

oppression on us as little kids, especially between, you know,

literally the third trimester in the womb to about eight years

old. You know, all that stuff is kind of from our parents and our

environment and the experiences and the events and all that

stuff is getting imprinted on us. But So still, as adults, the

people that you have in place around you, your sweetie, your

siblings, your family, your best friends, your coworkers,

whatever, these people, and I'm talking like maybe a handful of

people, are people who you really want to know. You really

want to know your goals. Really want to know what your dreams

are, the direction you're heading in, in the path that

you're on, because when you start to slip, when you start to

slip and get off the path, and whether this is a mentor,

whether this is a community of some sort, whether it's a coach

or somebody that you're not paying, it could be, like I

said, family or friends. You want somebody or or a group of

somebody is to say, Hey, I noticed this. I'm not judging

you. I'm not judging you out of curiosity, though I'm curious,

like, what's going on with this? Because it seems to me that you

said you wanted to do X, Y and Z,

and yet you're making some choices that maybe aren't going

to be in alignment with what you say. Like, I always say the

assignment is alignment, right? Some of these choices don't seem

to be in alignment with what you told us you wanted to

accomplish. So having people there, not as gatekeepers, not

as babysitters, not to, like, wag their finger in your face,

but as gentle reminders, like, Hey, you said this thing was

important to you, and I'm just wondering, like, what's going on

with you? Have you turned a corner? Have you decided to drop

this goal? Are you no longer in pursuit of are you just gonna

take a break? Like, what's shaken because the voice in our

head can be so loud and so critical and so dis.

Deceiving. So deceiving that ego mind, right? It is not our

friend, and it can really get in the way, and it can take us out

at the knees, and it can sidetrack us. So number one,

right? Your bumper Rails is adults. Number one is people.

Who do you have in place around you, to support you, to guide

you, and mostly just to remind you of your own hearts, desires,

dreams, wishes, plans, goals. Okay. Number two, having some

practices in place. Now, people who come to work with me, we

always talk about having a DSP, a daily spiritual practice.

Because one of the things that I know, and it says it in A Course

in Miracles, and it is said in other ways and other traditions,

is that, you know, an undisciplined mind can

accomplish nothing. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. One

of the great things about having a daily spiritual practice,

especially if it includes meditation, contemplation,

prayer, these things that you do on a daily basis, meditation

specifically, can really help, not only to quiet the mind,

right, but it doesn't always quiet the mind. Sometimes

there's a lot of chatter, but sometimes you might, and

sometimes you might need to bring your mind back to the

present moment 1000 times, but that right there is the training

of the mind to be able to place your mind where you want to

place it when you want to place it there, so that you are not

just being bullied by your own brain, by your own voice in your

own head, that you have some authority, some agency, some

authorship right, some autonomy away From the chatter of your

mind and being able to have a daily DSP, to have a daily

spiritual practice, right? And for some people, it's doing

their rosary beads. For some people, it's doing like a mantra

on a mala bead. For some people, it's passage meditation, right?

It is the repetition of a passage in your mind, or

repetition of a mantra or whatever. But being able to have

practices in place. For some people, it might be breathing

practices, a yoga practice. It might be that you run or that

you strength train, that's your practice. You go out into nature

and you commune with nature. That could be your practice. For

some people, I know some people who swim, and for them, swimming

like gets them in the water, it puts them into this buoyant

state, and then it's breathing and movement. It's meditation

and motion, right? So having practices that keep you from

going off the rails, that kind of keep you on this path, so

that you are able to you

know, put your mind where you want to put it, and to be

guided, and to be able to slow down enough that you can hear

the wisdom from your own internal teacher, your own

internal voice, your own divine intelligence, whether you call

that Spirit, Holy Spirit, intuition in a teacher, gut

instinct, whatever it is that you have some practices in place

that consistently put you in touch with yourself, with source

and with spirit, I have found this to be highly not only

invaluable, but incredibly practical. You know, people

think of spirituality sometimes, or spiritual practices as being

like, you know, like, oh, like, I don't want to say, woo, woo.

That's more like the more esoteric, like the tarot cards

and the,

you know, divination tools and, you know, why can't I think of

the word incense, and like all the enneagrams and the human

design, like all those things, all those systems, right? And

I'm not, there's nothing wrong with those. I'm just saying,

right? I'm talking like things that you actually are using on a

daily basis to remind you of who you truly are to remind you of

the path that you are choosing to walk on, and to be able to,

and I don't mean control your mind. It sounds so like it

sounds so like rigid, but to be able to place your mind it will

where you want to, so that you are not thrown about, like when

the ego mind gets crazy. So just double A men hands, if you're a

person who has anxiety, double A men hands, if you're a person

who has some sort of depressive,

depression, panic attacks when you feel like, what are they

called, not ruminating thoughts, but like obsessive thoughts,

when you can't stop thinking about something that is a mind

that is now like is puppeteering you, and we want to be able to

bring ourselves back to the present moment and to make

conscious choices so we are not being Ping ponged around by the

external world and by by chatter in our.

That is not helpful. I mean, I can just keep talking about

that, but let's stop there for number two. So we have people is

the first P right? And practices things like, like, I said, daily

spiritual practices of some kind. For some people, it's like

writing and journaling. For some people, it's like making art.

For some people, it's dance, like, whatever your I always

say, like, it's not for me to tell you how you are supposed to

commune with the divine, but I am always really interested in

helping people creating personal practices that support them

on their spiritual path. Okay, number 3p the number 3p is

principles. So you can think of your principles as kind of like

these core values, how you identify, like who you are. An

example of that is you might have these things where you say,

I'm the kind of person who, or I want to be the kind of person

who, so that when your actions or your thoughts are starting to

get a little wonky, a little wacky, a little like, out of

alignment, when you're starting to maybe make some choices that

are raising some eyebrows, or, like, getting some side eye,

making little side eyes and waggling my eyebrows right when

people like, what's up with that? Or you might even be

feeling that, like, What the is wrong with me? Like, why am I

doing that?

If we can have some principles in place that say, like, this is

a line that I never cross, this is not something I would do. I'm

not going to steal from I'm making these up, right? I would

never steal. I'm not somebody who's going to

lie on behalf of whatever. I'm going to do my best to always

tell the truth. I'm not going to like cheat on a test. Blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. We get some principles in place when we

get a little tempted, because you will be tempted by this

world to abandon your values, to abandon your morals and your

ethics. I mean, hey, take a look around at the world right now,

there's a lot of moral bending. There's a lot of bullshit that's

happening out there under the guise of, like, quote, unquote,

religious beat what? Don't get me started, and we're back.

Don't get me started. But we want to have some personal

principles in place so that when we find ourselves starting to go

a little bit out of the lane, a little bit off the rails, we can

look back on that and say, That's right, this is important

to me. I have a code remind Note to self. I gotta do that episode

about codes, right? You gotta have a code and your principles,

self principleing, because there won't always be your people

around there are going to be moments when you feel tempted.

Let me give an example. I remember speaking to a friend

one time, and I would love to hear from people about this, but

I remember speaking to him, speaking to a male, an old male

friend of mine, one time, and he is convinced. He is convinced

that all men will cheat on their partners, male or female.

Given if you were to say to a man, right, you will not get

caught, like if you could somehow give them a guarantee,

right? In this magical, in this magical like

story that he is telling me this. Imagine a world where you

can cheat on your partner and never get caught. He said to me,

every single man would do it. And I looked him in the face and

I said, I don't believe that.

I don't think they would.

I said, I think there's a lot of men out there that have certain

principles that they would never do, that they wouldn't do that

to their wives. They wouldn't do that to their family. I'm not in

PS. I'm not judging anybody if you have or haven't or whatever.

I'm just saying I don't buy into this whole all men think with

their dicks, and all men can't, like help themselves. I know

some highly principled people, and I said to him, I don't think

that's true. And he just laughed and shook his head, like poor

me, like poor me, because I'm such a sucker that I believed in

the goodness of people, right? The goodness of some men

somewhere. Oh, my God. But you know, maybe I am a sucker, but I

do choose to believe that there are still some really principled

people out there, right? So having principles

keep us on track right, keep us on that path. And then here's

this protocols in place for when maybe you slip, for when maybe

you lose your way. You slip off the path, you lose track, you

get diverted in the woods, and you take a path less traveled,

right, or maybe a path you shouldn't be on, right, and all

of a sudden you're like, Oh, shit. We got to have some

protocols in place. It's like, okay, I left the path. Now?

What? Now? What do I do? And it doesn't help us to just kind of

stay in the shitty diaper, in the victim loop, feeling sorry.

It's like, no, if there's somebody to make amends to.

To own your shit. Own up to it. I slipped, I screwed up, I made

a mistake. I did X, Y and Z. I lost my way. I forgot. I forgot

to check in with my people. I let my practices slide. I

haven't been doing my DSP lately, right? I didn't check in

with my principals because I didn't want to think about them,

because I just wanted to do the thing that I wanted to do, even

though I knew it wouldn't end Well, right? When that kind of

stuff goes down, we want to have some protocols in place. Step

one, this is what I'm going to do. Step two, then I need to

make amends. Step three, and sometimes who you need to

apologize to is yourself, because you might not always be

hurting another person, but sometimes the things that you

choose to do, you only end up hurting yourself because you

lose self respect, you lose your self integrity, right? And then

you start to get yourself into shame and blame and guilt and

all these regrets and things that are not very helpful. So

having protocols in place of this is how I get myself back on

track, you know, in an AA and in different things, that's why

they give like chips, right? They give those chips, like your

24 hour chip, and then you get like your day chip, and we and

it goes on, right, your month and your years and whatever.

Because when you slip, one of the things, one of the

protocols, is now you start all over again, you go back, and you

start and you get your next chip, right? You get a 24 hour

chip, right? So there's things in place that help you to stay

on the path. And here's the thing, if you slip on the path,

it is not going to feel good when those bumper rails are not

in place, and we go outside, when we go rolling into somebody

else's lane, or we are in the gutter, in the gutter, in the

gutter, making choices that keep us in the gutter. It is not

going to feel good. It is not going to feel good even Gandhi.

Even Gandhi talked about this, Mahatma Gandhi, and I love this.

It's called the path. I call this the path, right? And this

is what, this is what Mahatma Gandhi said. He says, I know the

path. It is straight and narrow. It is like the edge of a sword.

I rejoice to walk on it. I weep when I slip

God's word. Is

he who strives, never perishes.

I have implicit faith in that promise, though, therefore from

my weakness, I fail 1000 times I shall not lose faith.

I shall not lose faith, because here's the thing you guys, you

slip off the path right. You get yourself back up. You get back

to the business of love. You get back to the business of being

right a person of their word, of like relearning to trust

yourself again. Keep your word to yourself. Keep your word to

other people, etc, right? He who strives never perishes. So we

don't just throw our hands up and say, I blew it. Too bad. No,

you go back to those P's. You go back to your people. Maybe you

get a sponsor. You go back to your people. Maybe you join a

group like the nest, right? My group, mentoring program, right?

A spiritual community like you find, like I said, in the nest,

right? If you want to join or check it out, just go to

excuse me. Karen kenney.com/nest,

N, E, S T, maybe you go back to your yoga studio or your church

group or your whatever it is. You get in touch with your

family, or an old mentor, or you hire a coach, or you hire a

spiritual mentor, like I work with people, etc, etc, right?

You get back to your people,

you get back to your practices. Because one of the things that I

find, especially with clients and people in the nest and

people I've worked with over the years, almost always when

somebody says to me, I've been having a hard time lately, I

will say to them, how's your DSP going? And they'll inevitably

say to me, I haven't really been doing it lately,

and it's like Exactly, exactly. And so the practice is the DSP

keeps us locked in, keeps us on track. Okay? And then you have

those principles, who you are, what you stand on, what's your

code, what you really believe. Those principles will keep you

from making suspicious decision, right? Choices where it's like,

Mmm, that sounds a little too good be true. That sounds a

little crooked, that sounds a little off, right? Do your

homework. Make sure right. Check in with your principals. Am I

the kind of person who would do this, buy this, say this, you

know, all that stuff. Support this,

vote this way, whatever, and then have those protocols in

place, because it is inevitable, man, that we are going to slip.

We are going to make mistakes. And I'm not saying slipping,

like with sobriety, but just we're clumsy. We're going to say

a thing, do a thing, and then afterwards go. I should have

thought about that longer. I should have been a little more

patient. I maybe shouldn't have, like, said yes, like, whatever

it is, and it's just the nature of being human. And this is why

forgiveness is such a powerful practice, and having grace and

mercy and compassion for ourselves and others when we do

slip up. So this is the question I want to leave you with. What

do you have in place currently to keep you on the path?

Just pause. Take a big breath in,

exhale it out twice as long.

And think on this, what are the people you have in place? What

are the practices, the principles and the protocols?

What do you have in place to keep you on your path?

And if there's some place where there's some gaps or some holes,

and you want to work on that stuff. You know where to find

me, right? Just go to Karen kenney.com

but it's important that you take time, I think, to answer this,

because it's so easy to go on autopilot with your life, to

just go through the motions, to just get through the day, to

just survive the day. And we stop living intentionally. We

stop living with intention and attention, and we kind of just

start to become little robots going through the motions,

right? And I get it. I get it. Being alive on this planet,

being human is wicked hard man. It's wicked hard. It's

especially hard right now. I mean, it has been hard when I

look back. I mean, I haven't been alive through all of the

awful things that have happened in this country and in this

world, but when I look back and I think, like, you know, we

often say there's that phrase, right? We need love now more

than ever. I'm like, I don't know. I can think back to like,

1940s when we really needed love in the 50s and the 60s, when we

were I just think we need love all the time in the most

capacity possible, and maybe the world would look a little

different. And that's what I think about these four Ps,

right? The people, the practices, the principles and

the protocols, these are ways of loving. These are ways of loving

ourselves and keeping us, keeping us on the path of love.

So I

think that's what I got. I'll probably think of something in

20 minutes, and wish I had said it. But for now, that's what

I've got. I hope it's helpful in some way and beneficial. And if

you feel like it has been for you, maybe it will be for

somebody else that you love. So share it. Spread the link. I

don't know, tell somebody about it. I always, I always

appreciate it when people let me know and reach out and say, Oh,

I sent this to my cousin, or I sent this to my auntie, or I

sent this to my friend. So just thank you, and thank you to

everybody who is a loyal listener. New listeners.

Welcome. I'm so happy to have you here. As I always say, you

can find all things on Karen kenney.com if you want to get

this podcast directly into your email inbox every Thursday

morning, bright and early, just go to Karen kenney.com/sign

up. It's wicked easy, and that's it. Okay, wherever you go, you

guys, may you leave the animals the people, the planet, the

environment and yourself better than how you first found it.

Wherever you go, may you and your energy and your presence

and your love and your bumper rails

be a blessing. Bye, you.