WHAT ARE YOU GONNA' DO ABOUT IT?

Hey you guys. Welcome to the Karen Kenney

show. I'm really happy to be here with you today, and I think

all I'm going to say to start this sucker is, buckle up for

safety. It's so appropriate, you know, I'm looking at, if you're

not watching this, if you're listening, I'm wearing my one of

my Batsy head Betsy heads, one of my favorite artists, and I'm

wearing one of my Betsy head sweatshirts, and this is my one

that says I will cause problems. That's just a warning for this

episode. I will cause problems. Here's the thing I've been

thinking about so much. I mean, how can you not How can you be

alive right now on the planet, and not be thinking each day

beyond our own very small, limited experience, right? So I

spend a lot of time thinking about what's going on in the

world, what's happening, obviously in my own life, but

and then you think your friends and your family and your friends

of friends, and just all the suffering, all the incredible

things, all the horrible things, the grief, the drama, the

deaths, the beauty, the births, right? There's like so much

happening. And then you think about like your neighbors, and

you think about like your community, your town, your city,

and then it just goes out, out, out, out, out. You know, you're

thinking about people on the other side of the planet that

you've never met and probably never will meet. But still, I'm

conscious, constantly and consciously thinking about

beyond my own little sphere of influence. But today's episode

is also going to be very much about our own sphere of

influence, and we're going to get to that. So let me stop by

this, saying this, I know just by the kind of work that I do in

the world, and the way that I work together with other humans,

and across the different things I do, whether it's as a yoga

teacher, doing Thai Yoga, massage, Thai Yoga, body work,

having a podcast, coaching people, mentoring people,

working one to one, having a group like the nest, I talk to a

lot of people, right? That's like part of my gig. I have

exposure to a lot of different people, and the one of the

themes that I know that is going on for so many people right now

is we just feel like the world's on fire. It's a shit show, and

people feel completely overwhelmed, people feel

exhausted, people feel helpless. A lot of people feel hopeless. A

lot of people are like, I don't know what to do. And I wanted to

just say this, you feeling hopeless, helpless in despair,

overwhelmed is part of the fucking plan, right? And I am

not. Let me say two things. Number one, I'm not a conspiracy

theorist ever. I'm also not the wonderful Heather Cox Richardson

who is a historian and a professor and is a super duper

smarty pants about politics and history and like putting it all

together in a digestible way. I'm just me. I'm just a kid from

Lawrence mass, doing her best, doing her best, right to doing

her best to like, help help herself, help other people, help

animals, right to love people like that's the gig. I'm doing

my best, but I'm going to be very direct and very honest in

this episode, the fucking plan, right? The plan of the people in

charge right now, the plan of the current administration, from

Trump all the way to Stephen Miller, all the way to whatever,

all those powers that be. The plan right now is they want you

to be overwhelmed. They want you to be distracted. They want you

to feel in despair. They want you to feel weak and helpless

and all that stuff. Because as long as everybody's too tired

and busy pointing at everybody else they get to do, they get to

run the racket that they are running. Okay, another thing I'm

going to say, and honestly, I'm aware, you know, I think

sometimes my sweetie worries about me and the things that I

say online and on my show. But look, there are just times like,

hello, my sweatshirt, I will cause problems. Here's the

thing, we have a convicted sexual predator as our

president. And as long as you have a sexual predator in charge

of anything, when you think now, hello, you're talking to a kid

who has been inappropriately touched. You are talking to a

woman who has had to put up with levels of sexual harassment that

would boggle your fucking mind. Ask this happens also to boys

and to men? I'm not saying it doesn't, but I'm just saying,

Ask any woman in your life, it is so rare. It is so rare. I

think I have maybe one friend off the top of my head I can

think of that hasn't been inappropriately touched,

sexually assaulted, raped or molested. Okay, but let me tell

you this the kind of mind, the kind of thinking, the kind of

behaviors that run rampant through a sexual predator.

Here's the thing, here's the things that they try to do. And

if you've never been inappropriately touched or in

these situations, I'm truly, genuinely happy for you. But

here are some of the things that we you might have experienced if

you have them. They try to scare you, right? They try to threaten

you. They try to threaten the people that you love and they

want you to comply. And if they try to use their size, their

power, their physical strength, over you, right? They tend to

try to pick on people that are smaller than them, weaker than

them, that don't have good community support or family

support, right? They try to get a hold of the smaller, quote or

weaker, like whatever ones. And then they when, when they think

you might say something about it, you might push back, right?

They threaten you. They say, Don't tell anybody. Or if you

do, tell somebody, I'm going to do something to your mother,

your father, your sister, your parent, your dog, like whatever.

So we have all these tactics. They try to scare you, they try

to threaten you, they try to threaten harm against those you

love, and they want you to comply. Now, when we're children

and when we're victimized, right, we don't have much say.

We have no power. We are at the mercy of those people who are

bigger than us. But now, as grown adults, and yes, of

course, obviously, I want everybody to put on their

critical thinking and their nuance caps, right? Not

everything I say is going to first of all, a lot of you won't

agree with me. That's okay, but I also can't apply every single

experience right to what I'm saying today. Just just trust

that I'm doing my best to make a point knowing that other people

have different experiences. Okay, so my whole point is this,

as adults, we have a lot more say and control about right who

and how we are going to be. We're going to get into this in

a little bit. We didn't always get to control what happened. We

do get control now as adults, because when you're children,

you truly are victims, right? You have no power, no say, no

voice, no, no. You don't have your own money. You don't get to

choose where you're going to live. You are at the mercy of

the world as adults. Now we get we have some choices to make. We

get to have our own agency, autonomy, authorship, and, you

know, ability to to decide, right, like, who and how we're

going to be and what we're going to do about things. But my whole

point coming back to this whole sexual predator, and the vibe,

right, the vibe that this administration is kind of like,

like the ICE agents, like, we could just go on and on and on,

all the abuses of power, all the lying, all the bullshit, all

that stuff. Okay? And here's the thing, my attitude about all

that, on some deep level, is, fuck that. Like, fuck that,

right? Like, you want me to be scared. You want me not to speak

up. You want me to forget about the Epstein files. You want me

to, like, comply. You want me to comply with this insanity where,

like, where you're murdering people in the streets, like, no

fuck that. And I also want to say I do understand that it does

feel completely overwhelming. It does feel like too big, and I'm

just one person, and what can I do? And all of that. I know it's

scary, but this episode is all about what we actually can do,

not what we can't do. All the ways they try to get you to

think about what you can't do, they just want you to comply.

They just want you to lay there and take it. They just want you

to shut up. Right? Zip it. Shut up. Go back in the kitchen. You

know what I'm saying? No, fuck that. We will cause problems.

Okay, so I'm gonna start. I'm gonna kind of bounce all over

the place if I've already lost you. Hey, have a great, fabulous

rest of your day. If you're still with me, listen on. Okay,

so Mr. Rogers, he's famous for having this saying, and I even

did a whole, I think I did a whole episode about this, where

he talks about looking for the help is. And I'm going to read

you the whole quote that he says. He was being interviewed

one time on TV, and he said, you know, my mother used to say,

this is his direct quote. You know, my mother used to say, a

long time ago, whenever there was any catastrophe that was in

the movies or on the air, she would say, always look for the

helpers. There will always be helpers, you know, even just on

the sidelines. And that's why I think that if news programs

could make a conscious effort of showing rescue teams, of showing

the medical people, anybody really, who is coming into a

place where there's a tragedy to be sure that they include that,

because if you look for the helpers, you'll know that

there's hope, right?

So I've done podcast episodes about becoming the help and

looking for the help. Help is, and why helpers matter, and it's

okay to ask for help, right? Like, I talk about this a lot,

and people know that I'm a huge fan of Mr. Rogers. I have like,

all his all these books, and people always send me memes and

quotes and things about Mr. Rogers, because they know he's,

like, on my spiritual team. He's one of my obviously, he's a

mentor, but not a real life mentor, right? He's just been a

mentor over the years, growing up and learning from him and

being inspired by him, and hoping to have the kind of, you

know, presence and composure and, you know, the ability to

help. So he inspires me. Okay? So we know all about Mr. Rogers,

but right now, there's another thing that's going on, okay, in

all of this chaos and all of this insanity. And so there's

these memes that have been going around. And the memes, you know,

will start with showing like, Mr. Rogers saying, like, look

for the help is and then underneath it, it will say

something or somewhere. On it, it will say, but now they're

killing the help is okay. And even that, right? Oh, now

they're killing the helpers. And then people want to throw up

their hands and say, oh my god, now they're killing the helpers.

What are we going to do? Right? And I'm not being callous about

this. I told you at the beginning of this, I'm going to

be very direct. The reality is, is that they've been killing the

helpers for hundreds of years. The people that spoke out

against inequality, the people that spoke out about hatred, the

people that spoke out against violence, the ones who challenge

the existed the existing power structures, the ones who

challenge the unfair systems that have been designed to keep

people poor, to keep people disadvantaged to be keep people

held down, to keep people from having agency and autonomy and

authority and all of that stuff. Right? The leaders who have

spoken out and advocated we I'll list a couple of them for you,

right, who have advocated for civil rights, the people who

boycotted and rode the busses, the ones who have matched for

peace, right, the ones who showed up on Kent State, right,

all of that when you think about President Lincoln, Mahatma,

Gandhi, Medgar, Evers, Martin, Luther King, Jr, JFK, heavy

milk, Malcolm X, Bobby Kenney, right, they Have always

murdered, assassinated, executed. The help is the powers

that be do not like it when people start to go against the

grain, when people start to stand up, when people don't just

let them scare you and threaten you and threaten those you love,

and scare your neighbors and deport your neighbors and grab

your neighbors and grab little five year old boys off the

street right when they want you, like, when you think about what

the ICE agents are saying right now, it points right back to my

whole point of sexual predators, right, having power is that,

what do they say? If you just comply, then nobody will get

hurt if you just do what? This thing, this unlawful, this

behavior that we want you to do, which is just sit down, shut the

fuck up, and take it right, zip it. If you just lie down and

take it, then there won't be any problems, and we won't hurt you,

and we won't hurt the people around you and the people you

care about. And again, like no, so now they're executing people

in the streets. And we see everybody is like, it's

horrible, and it's horrifying when you see what happened to

Renee, good, when you see what happened to Alex Pretti, right?

Helpers. Alex Pretti was an ICU. He was a nurse. He helped

veterans, right? It's like, oh my God, they are literally

right, like, killing the helpers. I'm like, they've been

killing people, right? As I just said, they've been killing the

helpers for a wicked long time. Oh yeah, keiki, but now they're

killing them in the streets. Well, they've been killing

people in the streets, in black neighborhoods, way longer than

white people would want to admit. All of this has it's like

it's just coming back up again. Because what, whatever is going

on. And we can talk about the collective consciousness, we can

talk about like the power structures that be but here's

the thing, right? This kind of bullshit has been going on for a

really long time now. It's just really getting to a point where

people who have been like, a lot of wicked positions, the white

people, have been very comfortable for a long time, and

now getting to see what it's like when it feels like it's

starting to like, slip away, right? This, this idea of

safety. Okay, so I'm telling you all this because a friend just

wrote to me, and I'm gonna get you, like, again, stay with me.

It might sound like I'm being really negative right now, but

I'm building up to the pot about, like, what are you going

to do about it, right? This is, this is where we're going. What

are we going to do about it? Okay. So a friend wrote to me

about the again, I told you, people know that I love Mr.

Rogers, and a friend wrote to me, and he mentioned, he said,

you know, he was talking about the Mr. Rogers memes where

they're saying, well, now they're killing the helpers. And

he said that it tears at his heart, because I'm seeing these

memes, and it's just tears at my heart. And. I wrote back this. I

said, as long as there are those of us who are willing to not

look away, those of us who will speak up, who will protect our

neighbors, who are willing to stand our ground, then there

will always be helpers, and we outnumber those motherfuckers.

And that is the truth. And I shared in my newsletter, and I

have shared this quote so many times. There's a reason why I

share it so many times. First and foremost, it's for my own

ears to remember. Okay, it's also because maybe you haven't

heard this before. I don't assume that everybody reads

everything I send or listens to everything that I write. It's a

quote from Mahatma Gandhi, right one, one of the non violent

leaders that they assassinated and murdered. And he said this.

He said, When I despair, I remember that all through

history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have

been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible,

but in the end, they always fall. Think of it always they

always fall. And for a time they seem invincible. And that's

where we are right now. We're in that time where it seems

inevitable and all of this stuff seems like they're invincible,

all of this hatred and violence and fear, all of this

separation, right? All of this just feeling like I can't trust

that's again. This is what and you get. This is what they want.

So here's the thing, if you're somebody who is feeling

overwhelmed, if you are feeling helpless, if you are feeling

hopeless, and you're like, I don't know what I can do. I'm

just one person. Look, I get it. I know that feeling in your body

when you're just exhausted and you're like, I can't it just my

sweetie described it as like, you know, you're already

exhausted, and you're already carrying a load, right, like, of

your own life or your own things, and then somebody puts a

friggin big concrete block on you, and your legs start to

shake, and then they put another it's like, every day you feel

like another thing And another thing and another thing, right?

And if we don't have our minds right, if we don't have our

heart right, if we don't have support, a Sanctum Sanctorum

ekna talks about it, this place within us that is like that. It

is so stable. It is so stable, and it's not hard, right? We

keep our hats open, but we're there's strength there, and

there's safety there, and there's this presence of silence

there, where we've it's an unshakable place that Sanctum

Sanctorum. And we need that. We need that right now. And so, you

know, when we're asking ourselves right now, like, what

can I do? And I kind of broke it down like this, there's a couple

of things to look at. What's my role? Number one, what's my role

and what's my capacity? When we're asking the question, What

am I going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?

Right, the question we have to ask ourselves is, what is our

role? What is our capacity? There's a bunch of other things

we can look at, but I don't want to overwhelm, right? We're

already feeling overwhelmed. So when I'm overwhelmed, right? The

things that I do is I look first and foremost, for tools to

resource myself, things that help me feel more grounded,

things that help me feel more safe or safe enough, right?

Things that help me feel more present, things that make me

feel like I have not gone right the fuck out of my mind, right?

Because if I'm out of my mind and I am hooked by anger, by

rage, and I'm not saying those are bad emotions. What I like to

do is give my anger a job, right? I like to give my anger a

job, right, but I have certain things that I do to bring myself

back into my own right mind, to bring myself back into my body,

right? I'm tapping my chest right now, right? Like to get

back in here. Sometimes being disassociated is exactly where

you should be. That's where the safe place could be, right? But

when I'm trying to be effective in this world, when I'm trying

to be a helper, when I'm trying to make a difference or do

something right,

and I ask myself, well, what are you going to do about it? Here's

what I know. I can't do shit if I'm completely dysregulated and

out of my mind and in that total triggered fear space if I am in

fight and flight, and my sympathetic nervous system is

just like pumping out right? Like there are times when having

cortisol and adrenaline and all those things in your bloodstream

is helpful. All like when the Tigers chasing you or somebody's

trying to hurt you in a dark alley or whatever, I want that

surge, but to stay in that place constantly, right? To just have

all that, all those stress hormones like pumping through

your body. This is how we get exhausted. This is how we get

fatigue. This is how we get IBS and headaches and TMJ and immune

you know, just all of it, right? The immune system, stuff, all

those things. So it's like, I look for the tools that resource

me. I've done a bunch of different episodes that talk

about different tools. I just did one a few weeks ago about

breathing exercises, because breathing exercises are one of

the most fast and powerful ways to shift your physical, mental

and emotional states. So I highly encourage you, it was

like three episodes ago, I think, to go give that sucker a

listen, right? Another thing that we can do rest is

resistance, right? There's that whole book that beautiful. I

think it's Tricia hair say she wrote, rest is resistance.

That's a really powerful book for me, reading is resistance as

well, right? Educating myself, listening to smarty pants like

Heather Cox Richardson's and others, right? Like reading and

learning and hearing like, okay, as a country, we've been here

before. Oh, okay, we've been through something similar, like

this. This is what happened in the past. You know, Ryan Holiday

is always talking about, like, if you want to understand what's

happening right now, read books about our history. Read the

truth about the things that went down. It puts things in

perspective. So we don't feel like, oh my god, this is the

most unprecedented time ever. It's like, no, it's just like

old shit coming back to revisit. Because a lot of white people

don't like, right? I'm not, hey, I'm a white person. Sorry to

pick on us guys, I guess, right, no, because here's the reality,

when you see the Christian nationalism, when you see all

the white supremacy, and it's not even white supremacy they

want. They think they're superior because they're white,

wake up call. You know what I found so fascinating little

segue here, you know, in a in over however many years. Let's

call it. I'll just for safety. I'll say, like, 567, years,

right? There's been a lot of calling for people on whatever

land you live on to acknowledge, right? The original people were

on this land, so you might get on a zoom call, and they would,

somebody would say, like, I'll just use myself, right? Be like,

Oh, I'm Karen Kenney. I live in, you know, New Hampshire on

Abenaki land, right? And you would name the tribe or

whatever, that would have been, right, been here first. PS, and

when you think about all of this bullshit, all of this insanity

about immigration and ice and deporting people and whatever,

when we are the original immigrants, white people hate to

break it to you, we're all immigrants. Pull your head out

of your ass. We came over to this land and took this land

like we showed up. It was us. We were the original ones. All

right, and I'm back. Okay. So resting can be really good.

Breathing exercises can help regulate your nervous system

right when you're feeling too low. Certain breaths can bring

you up when you're feeling too high. They can bring you down a

little bit when you need a little more balance. There's a

breath for just about everything. Okay? There's also

emotional freedom. Technique, EFT tapping. EFT tapping, right?

If you look it up, it can be like a really long version, and

then there's also a really short version, and I can just teach it

to you right now, a wicked short one. I learned this from my

teacher, Melissa tears. It's a little like, it's just a spin

off of the longer one. And I'm going to keep it so friggin

simple, if you are not watching this right, if you're just

listening, you take three fingers. I tend to use my

pointer finger, my middle finger and my ring finger, and I tap

right. I have strong hands, and I like to tap firmly. You might

be a lighter taper, tap it, whatever pressure makes you

happy. I want you to think of the crown of your head, not your

forehead, not the back of your head, right in the middle of

your head, and you just tap on your forehead. I'm going to keep

this so simple. So whatever it is that you're feeling

exhausted, overwhelmed, scared, anxious, stressed, whatever it

is, right? Angry, whatever look sometimes being a little angry

is good. You can give it a job. But I'm just saying, if there's

something you're feeling inside, not to gaslight yourself, not to

bypass it, not to label your emotion is bad, but you're like

right now, this is not helpful for me. It's making me feel

crazy and dysregulated, and I need to get back to my center,

right? I need to come back to a place where I feel aligned and

regulated and resourced and capable, then this is a way that

you can love and help yourself. Okay, so those three fingers

point up, middle finger, ring finger, tapping the crown of

your head, right? And I like to tap. They'll say, you tap three

times, five times, seven times. I tap as long as I need to in

that spot. And if it's feeling good, I just stay there. And I

just say, I really. Release this and let it go. The thing I'm

letting go, right? I pause my tapping to talk the thing I'm

letting go. Like I said, it can be whatever that emotion, that

feeling, that thought, That thing was that wasn't very

helpful, that was keeping you stuck in the spiral of

helplessness and hopelessness and despair, right? And you

might tap and you say, I release this thought, I release this

feeling. I release this belief, whatever it is, right and let it

go. I release this anxiety and let it go. You move from the top

of your head to right between, like your eyebrows the edges so

that your two fingers, your middle your pointer finger and

your ring finger will hit the edges of your inner eyebrows.

And you just tap right there, and again, you say, I release

this and let it go. If you're having a hard time, right? Like

some part of you, you can feel wants to hold on to it, then

simply say, I'm willing to release this and let it go.

Okay? Because your subconscious knows when you're full of shit.

You just say, I'm willing to release this and let it go. And

then you move out to the outer eye, the bone, the bony part,

not on the soft part of your temple, on the outer edge of the

eye, right the edge of your end of your eyebrow. And you tap

here. You say, I release this and let it go. And you come

right underneath your eye, and you tap on that bone, right the

bone, if you feel your cheekbone, the top of your

cheekbone, and you tap right here, and you might say, I

release this shit and let it go. This is a super fast this is

wicked fast E at EFT. So you go from the crown of your head to

right between the eyebrows, outer eye, to under the eye, and

then you go right to your chest with the collarbones right into

the collarbones, and you'll see I have an open palm now, and I'm

just pounding my chest, right? I'm tapping it with a flat palm.

Say, I release that and let it go. I release that, whatever it

was, that feeling, that thought, that belief, and let it go.

Do that a few rounds, right? You gage where you're at when you

stop, man, I'm like, at a 10, I am out of my mind, right? And

you do that a few rounds, and you check back in, and you're

like, Oh, I'm like, at a six. Oh, now I'm at like, a four. Now

I'm like, at a two. It's incredibly, incredibly helpful.

There's other things, like havening techniques, where

you're like, sweeping down your arms or you're holding your

face. There's like, so many different techniques you guys

right, to get yourself regulated, because you can't

figure out what your role is, right? If you can't first get

your capacity, you got to know your capacity. And our capacity

can be a bunch of things our energy level, like, literally,

what's my capacity today? I have no energy. I have no blah, blah,

I'm feeling this way, right? Your capacity could be like, how

much time do I have? Can I volunteer? Right? Like, what's

my what's my ability? Like, am I working three jobs versus

somebody who maybe has more free time, right? What's my capacity?

My resources? You might have more time to give. You might

have more money to give. You might have more physical

resources, financial resources, energy resources, right? You got

to figure out your capacity. What am I able to do? Right?

What am I going to do about it? Well, that starts with, what am

I able to do? Okay, so we got to start there, like, what's my

role? What's my capacity? Because we want to be able to

make this is what I always say. I do these things because I want

to be able to make good, smart, creative, helpful and in my

right mind choices. You know, you ever have somebody who's

trying to be helpful, but they show up and they're making the

situation worse because they're so out of their mind, and

they're not regulated, and they're not thinking clearly,

and they're not in their bodies, and they're reacting from a

place of fear instead of being really grounded in responding

from a place of love and reason, right? You know what I'm saying?

They're not coming from that Sanctum Sanctorum. They're

coming from, oh shit, I'm triggered, I'm out of my mind,

and they fucking lose it. That's not helpful, right? We don't

want that. So I like to use different resources and tools.

And like I said, whether it's using somatic tools, whether

it's using breathing practices, whether it's my spiritual

practice, for some people, prayer, using a mantra,

chanting, praying, right, all of these things for some people can

be incredibly helpful. So I often think about it like the

four table legs, right? I try to do something physically. It

might be drinking enough water, staying hydrated, getting some

rest, moving my body, going for a walk while I repeat the

mantra, right? So I try to do something for myself.

Physically, I try to do something for myself. Mentally,

I try to do something for my emotions. I might add my sweetie

for a hug. I might Vox my best friend. I might say, hey, I need

a different perspective on this, right? You send up a flare. And

of course, in miracles, we kind of talk about like whoever is

saner at the moment, whoever is sane at the moment, right? Is

the one. So if I'm not feeling quite. Pain, I call in help, and

that help might come from, right? God's source, my

spiritual team, going out in nature, petting my animals,

holding Toby pajamas, snuggling with bunchy our animals can be

an incredible co regulation resource as well. Right? For

some people, it's going to the gym and working out, right? I

know some people who say the gym keeps their mental health, you

know, really balanced and strong and helpful. Therapy, whatever

it is, you guys, this is what I'm saying. There's 1000 ways to

help ourselves, physically, mentally, emotionally and

spiritually. We don't want to forget the spiritual one, and

we're going to come back to that. One of the other things

that I do when I start to feel a little overwhelmed is I remember

A Course in Miracles. As funny as this might sound, A Course in

Miracles has a lot to me. To me, not saying anybody has to agree

with me, of an underbelly of connection with stoicism. It's

just like to me, I just see it like there's a lot of

connections there. So I might turn to spiritual books. I might

turn to books like Victor Frankel's Man's Search for

Meaning. I might turn towards the stoic right, the stoics in

the stoic books. And one of the things that I was thinking about

the other day is I was like, you know, if I start to feel

overwhelmed, it's because I've ignored one of the first tenets

of stoic philosophy, which is understanding what is and isn't

in my control. This is a big thing, right? So here's the deal

stoic stoics have taught us, this we can't control what

happened. And this is the thing right now, part of what feels a

little overwhelming, is the powers that be keep trying to

tell us that what happened didn't happen. They try to twist

it. They try to lie about it. They try to gaslight you into

thinking you didn't just see with your own eyes that they

murdered a woman in her car while she was trying to pull

away, that they just murdered a guy who was using his body in

the street, he was just filming, and then a woman got pushed

down, and he put his body between them, you know, the ICE

agents and the woman that was pushed on the ground, and he had

a camera, right? And yes, he had a gun, but he was permitted to

carry that gun unconcealed, and he didn't reach for the gun, he

didn't take out the gun, et cetera, et cetera. And when you

look and you break down the videos. This is why the the

people who are willing to not look away, the people who will

look at what, look at it and see it and say, no, no, no, no, no,

you're not going to gaslight me. You're not going to tell me that

isn't true. I know what I saw with my own eyes, right? So we

can't control what happened. And it did happen. This is the

thing. It did happen. Okay? We can't control what happened. We

can control, though, these things. What we control is our

energy, our time, our creativity and our resourcefulness, right?

That's where our energy needs to go, not into, right? Not into

what we can't do. We don't want to focus on what we can't

control. We need to focus on right, what we're going to do

about what happened. That's the thing. It happened. It's in the

past. Can't stop it from happening. It happened and it

did happen. The question now, the work now for us is, what are

we going to do about it. What are we going to do about what

happened? So here's this principle in stoicism that I

find helpful. And I know today I'm just, I'm just like, sharing

some things that might be, might be helpful for you too. Okay, so

the stoics would say something like this, that peace of mind is

achieved by learning to focus and act upon what is in our own

control. What's within our control? This is the thing I ask

myself, what right now is in my control? There is so much that I

can't control. I can't control the fact that we just got like,

18 inches of snow. I can't control the fact that it's eight

degrees outside. I can't control the fact that, you know, we have

an insane friggin sexual predator in the White House. I

can't control like so many things. What can I do? Okay? I

can control my own beliefs. I can control my own judgments. I

can control my own thoughts, words and my actions, while I

can accept and let go of the things that aren't in my

control, whether or not people like me, other people's

opinions, other people's actions, I can't control any of

that other stuff, right? We know so much suffering happens when

we refuse to accept that what happened happened, right? And

when we refuse to accept that we cannot control other people's

thoughts, words and actions. What? What is in my purview,

what is in my power? I can only control me. So the key to

happiness and the key to inner peace, partially, right? Is

pretty simple. No matter what happens in your life, we always

have to focus on what's within your control. Ryan Holiday has

this great quote, and he said, If you don't know Ryan Holiday,

he's an author, he's a speech. Guy. He owns a book shop in

Texas. He's written a ton of books. You can see back there,

like I have a bunch of those back there in that little table.

I'm pointing at her, a bunch of his books. And he said this, we

don't control when things get hard, but we always control how

we respond. This is very course in Miracle z2 this is what I'm

saying, right? Of course, in Miracle says, you know, we can't

control the world. We can change our thinking. We control how we

think about the world. I can't change the world, but I can

change the way I think about the world. What can I control my own

thinking, my own thoughts, my own words, my own actions. He

says this, we don't control when things get hard, but we always

control how we respond. We can show patience, courage,

humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice and creativity,

the things that test us make us who we are. And if you want to

get even more practical about it, you know, because I was

thinking about this, because it's really easy, right? It's

really easy to look around and say things like, well, they

should be doing this. Why aren't they doing that? Why isn't this

person doing this? Why isn't that person doing that? I'm

like, Look, I can't control what those people do. I can only

control what I do. So our next piece is the invitation right to

get really clear with yourself about what your role is, what

your capacity is, what you are able to do. And this means we

have to have some self awareness, we have to have some

self reflection. We have to get really honest with ourselves

about some things. Now, if we're to look on a larger scale, if

we're looking at a more kind of like collective or organized, or

we look at the systems of like, everything from being an ally to

being an active activist. You know what I'm saying?

There's a couple of resources, and I found these because I do,

I do research, right? It sounds like sometimes that maybe I'm

just babbling away on here, but I do think deeply about what I'm

saying, and I do think about like, sharing things that might

be helpful. So there's this one piece that I loved, and this is

from a woman named Marilla on a Rio, and she's a Human Resources

exec, she's a dei agent of change, and she's a social

responsibility advocate, and she talks about this on a two level,

a two pronged approach and a two level approach. One is our own

awareness journey, right, who we are as basically citizens, our

own awareness as people, and then how our awareness will show

up in our actions. So I'm just going to take, I'll just hold it

up real quick. You can see it. It's a it's a little sheet of

paper, and it goes from left to right, and this is what it says

First, on our awareness journey, we're unaware, right? We don't

notice or understand some social changes being demanded by other

people. We're disengaged from the conversation. We're not

interested, right? We're just unaware. We're asleep at the

wheel. I think this has been a lot of people for a really long

time, and when we're unaware like that, what that makes us is

a bystander that makes us people who just stand around and we

don't act because we don't know how to or why. So when we're

unaware, we end up being a bystander. Okay, we move over.

We grow a little bit, we get a little more awareness now. Now,

when we're aware, she says, we realize that there's something

going on that we've been blind in some ways, and you begin to

understand other people's perspectives and demands, and

then you start connecting your story to their story. That's

where you are on your awareness journey. You're now aware and

our actions to reflect that could could make you an ally?

What does an ally Do you assist in support, in an ongoing

effort, activity or struggle. So now you've moved from unaware

and a bystander to now being aware and possibly being an

ally. Well, the next phase of that is that you become active.

Okay, in your awareness journey, you've moved from just being

aware of shit to now, maybe I'm gonna do something about it.

Right? This is when you become active. You're proactively

working for change, and you're supporting those who need, who

have needs or are underrepresented or

marginalized, and you stop pushing outside your own comfort

zone, and you're about to find your voice as your actions

become visible and your actions become a priority for you. So

when you become more active, how it shows up in your actions is

you could either be an ally or you become an advocate. And as

an advocate, you aim to influence with formal support,

so you acknowledge and utilize your privilege to engage in

controversial situations on behalf of marginalized people

and groups who can't afford to do so in order to make social

and political change. So we're moving up the scale, and maybe

some people stop at being active. They're an ally, they're

an advocate. And then there are people who go on in their

awareness journey where they start to advocate, and when you

advocate, your voice now is capable of transforming society

and bias systems and other social. Social and political

issues. Okay? So this is when you basically, it says you take

calculated, personal or professional risk to shift

behaviors. This is when you're really going for it, and when

you're at that level of where you are an advocate, right? Or

when you advocate, this makes you either an advocate or an

activist, a true activist, and as an activist, you act on

behalf of solving social and political issues, and you're at

the forefront of a movement, and sometimes you're compromising

your own energy, and I would also say safety, and we've seen

that again and again again at these protests, where people are

going out there on behalf of their neighbors, on behalf of

their community, on behalf of quote, unquote, others, and they

are putting their own privilege to work, and they are putting

their own bodies even at harm, right? And that's a big one, and

then another one, just to show you, since we're talking about

it, I'm holding up this piece of paper too, and this is from the

four rules of social activism. And you can find it on Commons,

library.org, and instead of talking about it like as being a

bystander, an ally, an ally, an advocate or an activist, right,

this talks about it by being either a citizen, a reformer, a

rebel or a change agent, and it talks about being, how we can be

ineffective and effective in each of these roles. And this

goes back to what I was saying. What is your role? What are you

going to do about stuff? And look, most people, if you're

listening to this show, you have some sort of device that you're

listening to me on, which means you can google some shit, and

you can find out about some of these things for yourself. I

just want to put you in point, you, like, maybe in the right

direction, and send you some like, resources and stuff like

that. Excuse me, I have to keep taking drinks of water because

my throat is dry. Okay? So here's the thing. Now it's time

to reflect on right? Like, what can I do? And when I think about

this, I think about a couple of different things, right? So I am

a person who believes in the power of, you know, spiritual

practices, obviously, or I wouldn't be a spiritual mentor,

I wouldn't be a coach, right? I believe in, like, looking

internally and asking for support from whether you call it

again, your higher power, your inner teacher, your intuition,

your gut instinct. Spirit, Holy Spirit, divine intelligence. I

don't care the voice for God. I never care what we call these

things, right? But I think of Martin Luther King, Jr, who is

another one of my mentors, and another one of my, you know,

main guys on my spiritual team who's inspired me endlessly over

the years, when I've been afraid, when I've had to speak

up, when I know I'm about to say something that might make me

unpopular, whatever, I always dig deep into his energy, and I

lean on him, and I ask him and all the angels that be to

support me and guide me. And you hear me say this, and you know,

in A Course in Miracles prayer, that I say all the time, and if

you know me, you've probably heard me out of this prayer 1000

times, which is simply, you know, have me go where you would

have me go. Have me do what you would have me do. Have me say,

what you would have me say, and to whom. Please use me. Please

use me. Please use me.

And Martin Luther King is, you know, proposed to have said, Use

me God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what

I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself. I'm

going to repeat that. Use me, God. Again. If you don't like

the word God, insert your own happy word, universe, higher

power, highest self, right? Use me. God. Show me how to take who

I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a

purpose greater than myself. I think of this a lot, and I ask

myself, what can I actually do? And this is my invitation to you

to sit down, spend some time with yourself and ask yourself,

right, what makes me uniquely me? What are the talents, the

time, the resources, the capability, the creativity, the

wisdom, the knowledge, the experience, like, what do I have

that I can do to help? Because again, remember, the plan is to

keep you feeling helpless and hopeless and overwhelmed and

without power and in despair. And we don't want that doesn't

help anybody except the racket that they're running. So if

we're gonna, quote, unquote, call it fighting back, pushing

back, resisting, taking a stand, right whatever you know, as

Swami karpali used to say, don't fight the darkness. Turn on the

light. So what's your version of turning on? The light, how are

you going to be a helper? If we're looking for the help is,

how are you going to be a helper? And this is when we have

to look at ourselves and say, What do I have? I look at my

sweetie, right? My sweetie is a musician. He has a lot of

talent, and he has written songs and albums, right, putting out a

particular message in certain songs or whatever, but also his

role is, and it might be just be like, Oh, he plays music. So

what? No, I can't tell you how many people have come up to my

sweetie after a gig and said, Man, I was having the worst day,

and you just turned my whole day around. Oh, my wife and I were

out. This is our anniversary. You just made our night so

special, on and on and on and on and on. You know, waiters and

wait staff bartenders saying, you know, you're the nicest guy

that plays here. We always love that you're here, my sweetie and

just his his way, that he is, his energy, his presence, his

kindness, his compassion, his talent. He makes a difference

out in the world, right? You might be somebody who has the

money and the time to donate, right? Maybe you can't show up

at a protest, right? And again, we have to look at our own

capacity. Somebody who is able bodied might be having a

different skill set than somebody who can't go out into

the world unassisted or whatever, right? You might be

somebody who's really good at organization or find or doing

research or finding resources for other people. You might be

somebody who's a matchmaker, somebody who can put people in

touch with one another. I don't know there are 1000 ways to

help. This is up to you to figure out, like, what you can

do. When I look at myself, I ask myself, like, Oh, am I even

making a difference in the world? Right? And these are real

conversations. I sometimes ask like, what can I be doing? What

should I be doing? What could I do better? What could I do less

of more of whatever? And I think to myself, every class that I

teach, everything that I do, whether I'm working with

somebody one on one, whether I'm talking to people in the nest,

my group program, whether I'm putting my hands on somebody

doing Thai Yoga massage, you know, Thai Yoga body work, Thai

Yoga massage, Thai Yoga, whatever you there's different

names we can call it, right? But Thai Yoga massage, to me, is the

physical application and practice of loving kindness. It

is a way that I can put my hands on another person and help them,

right? It's co regulation. It's helping them to feel more in

their body. It's helping them to feel more calm and peaceful and

in a state of meta loving kindness, right? That's the

whole heartbeat, right? Teaching a yoga class, helping people

right, to come back to themselves in their breath in

their body, teaching people about the Foundations of Yoga,

the Yamas, which are totally all about. You know this,

ultimately, yoga is about liberation and freedom, knowing

who you are to whom you belong, and that connection. And part of

that is that liberation and that understanding that we're all

connected, and that until everybody is free, I'm not free.

That's why other people's suffering means something to me.

Yeah, you could look at it as, like I always say to people, you

can just approach it from a totally selfish point of view,

like, I want you to be free so that I'm free. But none of us

are getting out of here without helping the others. That's the

deal, that is the spiritual contract, right? Yoga is all

about liberation for all. It's a collective consciousness of

understanding that I don't want you to suffer. I want peace and

happiness and freedom from suffering for all the animals

the planet, the people. That's the gig. Okay? Okay. So when I

think about my own work, whether I'm doing a podcast or I'm guest

teaching or guest speaking or I'm like, you know, leading,

whatever I'm doing, I try to think about like, okay, how can

this actually be helpful? And, you know, I often wish, man, I

wish I had more money. I wish I could donate more. I wish I

could set up things. I wish I could start animal sanctuaries.

I wish I could do this. And I'm like, Well, you can't do that.

You're not there yet. What can you do with what you got? What's

my role? And not everybody is meant to be a speaker. Not

everybody is meant to get on stages. Not everybody is meant

to be at the front of the room, there are 1000 ways to serve

love. There are 1000 ways to serve love. Which brings me to

my next point. If you're too busy judging other people's

roles, then your focus is in the wrong place. There was this

culture for a while where people were really getting off on

calling out other people, and I'm like, Look, I can't control

what other people do. I can only control myself, coming back to

the Stoics, I can only control my own thoughts, words and

actions. I can't make people with way huge or bigger

platforms in mind not have sociopaths on. Program helping

people to get elected, right? Like, I can't control that. I

can control who I have on my show and what I do. I can't

control that. There's a lot of violence and hatred in the

world. What I can do is work on my own right, and any amount of

violence, any amount of hatred I have in my own self, that's what

I can work on I can't control a shit ton of things. I look to

myself and I say, what is in my power? I get to be the loving

alternative. I get to be the alternative to the things that I

don't like. I don't have time to waste calling people out and

pointing fingers and saying, Why aren't you using your platform?

Why aren't you using your voice? If I'm doing that, I am wasting

my God given talent time and energy, right? What? What God

given what God given talent do I have? That's a question for

another day, but my resources need to be spent on what I can

do, not worrying about what everybody else is or isn't

doing. So if you're too busy calling out other people, your

focus is in the wrong place. That's all that I'm saying. We

all have our own ways of showing up. We all have our own ways of

showing up. And if we just spend our time again worrying about

what other people are doing, spend our time judging other

people wondering, like, if they're performing up to, I

stand it, or whatever. You just totally, you're just, you're

missing. You're missing the whole damn point. Your focus is

in the wrong place. Okay, so we want to take time now to reflect

and focus on what you can't do or can do. I mean, whether

that's calling your senators, calling your representatives,

some of you might be actively outside protesting, you know,

the ice facilities that are supposedly, you know, coming to

New Hampshire, although Kelly Ayotte says, Oh, it can't be

happening, because I don't know anything about it, whatever,

right? I'm just saying, right? Like, what can you do? You can

use your voice, you can use your time, your talent, your energy,

your creativity, your support, be kind to your neighbors. Make

somebody who's sick some soup, right, show up and, you know,

just be a helper. How can you help? You might be housebound.

Maybe you can't do anything, but maybe you can, like, you know,

babysit somebody's kid. I don't know. There's 1001 ways. It's

not for me to say what you should be doing. This is a you,

with you and you and Mother Nature. Are you in the universe?

You and God time? This is when you get to sit with yourself and

figure that out. And I'm going to share some final reflections

here that is very that, I think, is in line with this, with this

whole episode about, you know, what are you going to do? What

happened? Happened now? What are we going to do about it? What

are you going to do about it? Something to keep in mind is the

Serenity Prayer that has been known across the world for

forever, for 12 step programs, right? And and recovery

programs. God grant me the serenity to accept the things

that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I

can and the wisdom to know the difference. We can change what's

asked to change, but we can't build a better past what

happened has happened. It's like, what are we going to do

now about what's happened.

Ryan Holiday also sends it says this, so I shared his book. It's

the daily stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance and the

art of living. These two quotes come from that he says, control

your perceptions, direct your actions, properly, willingly

accept what's outside your control and then focus on what

you can control. Okay, and this is the last thing I'll share.

And if you're still with me, thank you for hanging in there.

I know this episode was a little all over the place. He says some

things are in our control, while others are not. We control our

opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and in a word,

everything of our own doing. We don't control our body,

property, reputation, position, and in a word, everything, not

of our own doing. So the question is, what is of your own

doing? What can you control and what are you going to do about

it? And I'm just going to end right there. Thank you for being

here with me. Thank you. If you're a loyal listener, I

appreciate you more than you know. Thank you. If you're a new

listener, I'm so happy to have you here. And I just want to

say, look, a lot of times my I'm usually laughing way more in my

episodes, but there's some serious shit going on, and this

is serious times. And it's, it's time for us to grow up and,

look, I'm just going to say this as well. I really believe in

this. You know, people poo poo, spirituality. And I. Get it. I'm

also in the crowd. That's like your thoughts and prayers are

not enough, however, however. And of course, in miracles, it

says prayers are the medium of miracles. And I do think that

directing our minds in a powerful way, and I don't mean

manifesting in that way, or what I'm talking about literally

using our minds for the purpose of love. You know, we need to,

and I'm not doing light and love. I'm not talking about

that, and I'm not sometimes I make fun of it, but what I'm

saying is there is spiritual aspects when, when Abraham

Lincoln talked about the angels of our better nature, Dr Martin

Luther King, when you think about a lot of the movements

that came out to abolish right slavery, to talk about civil

rights, they often came from spiritual backgrounds. There is

a power. There is a power in starting to slow down and

connect to the inner power to the Divine that lives within

you, that spark of divinity that lives within you, and calling

upon that right spiritual power. Right, love is fierce. We often

think about love is just being like, just kind of like, weak

and sweet. And it's like, love can be fierce, and that's the

only thing that's going to turn this boat around. That's the

only thing that is going to turn this ship around. And around and

keep us from just annihilating each other, is that we have got

to be a force for love. And when I say that prayer, have me go

where you would have me go. Have me do what you would have me do.

Have me say what you would have me say, and to whom. Please use

me. Please use me. Please use me. I always say, May I be in

service to love. May we all be in service to love. Bye.