Navigating the Map: Why Patterns Repeat and How The Create Perspective | 002

Friend, have you ever felt like no matter what you do, you keep ending up in the same place, frustrated, stuck and not any closer to your ideal outcome. You find yourself repeating patterns over and over and over again, even though you know that pattern didn't work last time, and whether you're trying to start a new habit or discipline your kids or lead the team that you are assigned to, or people that you're working with, people you know that understand the assignment, yet there's constantly this hidden barrier that's running interference. And regardless of which way you try to affect change, you keep arriving at the same outcome, overwhelmed, burned out, frustrated and emotionally drained, yet you're desperately seeking an effective solution, because you know that you know how to do this, and you know that you know what you're saying. What if I told you I might have a solution, and maybe it's not a solution, but instead a concept, a concept that could help you realize how and where these patterns were created and why they keep running so much interference from this idea that I'm going to share was the biggest aha moment of My life. It was in the creation of this tool that my explosive growth happened truly like I remember the version of Jody I was before I understood the map, and I'm going to share with you about the map and what I know now to be true. This tool helped me create massive awareness around my deeply hidden and deeply very destructive patterns. I didn't know they were there. So these were patterns that continue to repeat themselves regardless of how much work I did or how many things I learned, and I had zero conscious awareness of anything in the background. I also want to surface this and say, I've always been a master of masking my emotion, yet there were other pockets that I was pretty reactive in. I now understand both using this concept also as a disclaimer. I just want to surface the idea that this might not work for everyone, but it would completely behoove me if it didn't work for you. Friend, lean back and allow yourself to expand your mind. Here we go. I have a concept that at the moment that we are conceived, we're given a blank map. So imagine this map is like a crispy, blank sheet of paper. And know this too, every single person has their very own map. So at the moment that you are conceived, every single part of your life experience from that moment forward, will be recorded on this blank map, your map. So imagine that every sound, every color, every feeling, every voice, every argument, every hug, every high five, every high, every low, every face, every everything that you've ever experienced is recorded on your very own map, and everything that you've experienced now resides on that map indefinitely and at a highly unconscious pace. And I wish I could give you an example, because I'm usually using my left hand when I describe the map, and I'm I'm using it as a visual cue, right? So imagine that you have this map that's collected every part of your life, and your entire story is written on this map, and this map then becomes the lens through which you filter the world. Again, I wish that you could see me, because I then take my left hand and cover my eyes with it, which creates the idea that this map blocks our ability to see anything in the world unless we see it through this map. Right? This map becomes the lens through which I filter my life. I know kind of crazy. And so if we can imagine that I have a map, you have a map our kids, spouses, siblings, parents, neighbors, aunts, co workers. Everybody on the planet has their very own map. And understanding, if everybody has their own map, that means that their map serves as the lens through which they see the world. Which leads us to the idea that if you and I witnessed the same thing, it would make total sense that we would have two different recollections of what happened, because we're witnessing it and experiencing it through two different maps. So we might walk in. To a bar that has loud music, and I'm like, man, it's so loud in here. And you're like, This is amazing. Are we, like, walking to a store or a restaurant? And I'm like, it's so hot in here. And you're like, I love it, right? Or we're standing around and somebody makes a joke or a comment, and I think it was funny, and you're wildly offended I'm surfacing these examples to share that our map creates that subjective lens through which we experience the world, and it's why we're all experiencing a different space, even though we're all sharing this same planet. You I also surface that in saying, if we understand the map a little bit, we'll start to wrap our heads lightly. I say lightly right, we'll start to wrap our heads lightly around the idea that there's not really a right or wrong, there's just different ways right. It's not that I'm doing it right and you're doing it wrong or vice versa. It's that we're doing it differently, much like our opinions or our thoughts or our beliefs or our stories or our values or whatever they are, they're not right or wrong, they're just different. And when we start to understand what creates that difference, we start to have a little bit more grace, not only for ourself, but for the people around us. So the way that we interpret things is wildly dependent upon how they bounce off of our map. So understanding that if your map is your subjective lens, it creates your subjective perspective, as does mine and our maps are responsible for the way that we see things, the way that we feel things, the way that we understand things, and the way that we understand the world. How much sense does that make? And the reason why we see things differently is because we have different maps. We have different maps because we have different life experiences. We grew up in different spaces. We had different people around us. We went to different schools, we had different childhoods, and we learned at different times with different people in different places, and although we may collectively have all come from the same neighborhood or the same culture or the same church or whatever the collective system was, there's still huge differences in those spaces. For example, if if you grew up in a heavily Catholic or Christian environment, you might value religion really deeply, or you may not. If you grew up in a sports family, you may value fitness. If you grew up around really educated people, you might value education. If you grew up in affluence or in a lower class community that created the foundational beliefs from which you function from today, much the same way, if you grew up in survival mode, you might still tend to view things as threatening, or maybe you grew up in a really safe home, and You're not really sure why anybody would ever feel unsafe. It's because you may not have context for that, or it doesn't exist anywhere on your map. Or maybe you grew up in a two parent family, and you've normalized having two parents present, while other people grew up in a one parent home. They have zero context. What it would feel like to have two parents. Maybe they grew up with an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, whoever it was that raised them, but understanding that we all have different maps, and our maps carry our history and house our beliefs and influence our values, and we're constantly seeking confirmation bias in the world to validate what we're experiencing and to ensure us to create this level of safety. And we've been running these patterns since childhood because that's how we've learned to engage with the world. My goal in surfacing this concept is to understand that all too often we're running childhood patterns in our adult life, and we're running childhood patterns that are deeply ingrained and deeply influenced the way that we show up in the world today, and we don't realize other people don't have access to that space.

Here's the funny thing I always say, rarely do we realize how outdated our map is. So imagine that we all have a phone nearby, right? Imagine if that phone that you're using is the same phone you've been using since you were born, and it's never been updated. I don't know about you, but my phone yells at me. For probably twice a year, and it mandates me and demands me to do the update or else some of my apps won't work. It won't function properly if the update isn't done. So imagine right now, if we're walking around with this crazy, outdated map. That might be why we think that guy was rude, or that guy was offensive, or that place is too loud, or we're constantly finding fault in external things because of the way we internally process it. Let's pause for a moment and acknowledge a couple key points. Once we have an awareness that we have this map, life gets a whole lot easier, because now we can ask ourselves, how or where is this anchored to my map, and why is it running so much interference? Or, better yet, we might say, How old was I when this got anchored to my map and what part of me is still housing these old feelings? We can start asking more questions about the map, versus trying to change the world to fit our outdated map. Imagine what the world would look like if it had to fit each and every one of our maps in any version of ourselves that we were in. It would be chaos. Learning how your map works. Is life changing? I feel the map becomes this intermediary that I can then say, Hey, how is this showing up on this map, versus having to say, Hey, what's wrong with me, or what's wrong with that guy? Instead of just saying, Wow, I wonder how that's anchored on his map, right? So how much more access do we have to our kids, our spouses, our friends, our family, our teammates and all the people that we're leading? If we instead get curious around their map and the tool that they're using to navigate this planet, when we get curious about their map, it's a lot easier than if we make assumptions as if they had access to our map right. And allow me to say there's no judgment here. We're all learning this together. And like I said, when I learned this concept, it changed the way I viewed the world. I'm going to pause a little bit to let this sink in, like, how much more access and how much more effective do I become as a mom when I get curious about my child's map versus assuming they have access to my map. Or how much more effective do I become in my classroom, whether I'm teaching or leading or whatever I'm doing, how much more effective do I become when I get conscious around all the maps in the room and what might be bouncing off of them, versus assuming they have access to my map, right? I can help fill in the gaps, versus being exasperated that I don't like the way they're processing it. How much more effective do I become as a coach, whether it's in athletics or in a professional environment, when I get curious about my player's map and who he may he or she may have played for before I got there, or whether we're in a corporate environment and I'm leading people, and I don't understand what's happening in the room, because I'm expecting that my map is the authority, instead of understanding where did people learn from, what might be running interference, what might be anchored on their map that's running interference now that we're not arriving at our ideal outcome, right? And how much easier is it to get curious about someone's map versus demanding that they execute a skill they might not have access to. So I might see the skill in my brain and on my map, it makes sense, but on their map it doesn't even exist there yet. And I feel like I'm pausing before I say this one, because this is a big one. Rarely does anybody kids included intentionally repeat a pattern that doesn't work for them. So think about what happens to a kid who can't perform right they end up in time out. They end up in the hallway. They end up by themselves. They end up getting ignored. They end up not getting their needs met. Or if they're in a sport, maybe they get benched, or if it's in a leadership position, they never get the promotion. And what if instead, it was because there was this little glitch or anchor on their map that was holding them in in peril versus allowing them to stay in flow and in those moments, whether you're a child or an adult, when you're left on your own or you're put in time out, or you're. You're benched, or you're put in the hallway, you're then disconnected from the only source of safety you knew before that moment when kids are experiencing gigantic emotions and they don't experience them in the manner that we need them to our society has normalized the concept that we should further isolate them, and we should leave them to their own devices until they can regulate their emotion and get it together, because this is the way it was anchored on our map. And what we're teaching them is every time that big emotion comes back, I'm going to leave you on your own to figure it out, guys, this is where limiting beliefs are born. This is where the kid, or maybe it was us as a kid, starts to say, I must not be important, I must not be valued. Maybe I'm not worthy, maybe I'm not smart, maybe I'm not capable of succeeding, maybe I shouldn't play this sport, maybe I don't need the promotion, and all these crazy things get anchored onto our map and or if we're repeating a pattern, that's the limiting belief that pops up. And this is true for us as individuals, or for our kids, our students, our players, or whoever it is that we're trying to lead. These people are left believing when my emotions get so big and scary, even the grown ups can't help me, and so the option that they lean into, not consciously, is to disconnect, right? So if I can't handle my emotions, I'm going to disconnect, I'm going to push them down, I'm going to ignore them, and I'm going to build a workaround. I'm going to build an adaptation, because I can't manage those and neither can anybody else around me. I'm going to pause for a second, and I'm going to circle back to the disconnections and the adaptations in a later episode, because I want to finish with the map, and the adaptations and the disconnects are a whole episode on their own. So I promise I will circle back to them, but I just want to lean back into this idea. More often than not, people say to me, but Jody, who created the map, like, how was our map created? And I'm here to share with you that your map was created by the trusted voice. This is truth. The Trusted voice is an idea that I came up with. I think the trusted voice is comprised of four different voices, which are parents, teachers, coaches and healthcare professionals, and whether that healthcare professional was a pediatrician, a doctor, a nurse, a dentist, the nurse in the ER or whoever it was, all four of those sets of voices hold authority in a child's mind. And I also just want to say too, not authority as an authoritative but authority, as in, I should probably trust you, because you're a grown up and so understanding that the trusted voice is this collection of voices that a kid leans into. They're the most influential players, not only in creating a child's map, but for the rest of a child's life, the trusted voice creates the map. So whether you lean back in now and think, and I'll repeat them, parents, teachers, coaches, oftentimes that's also athletic coaches and healthcare professionals, these are the people that help kids build values, build beliefs, build morals. They help a child's brain grow, and in that same space, they're often unknowingly held responsible for helping kids build limiting beliefs. I want to pause too and say the trusted voice is the most powerful voice in a child's life, regardless of its validity. So I share that in saying if a child has a parent that criticizes them, that's what the child takes away. And if a kid has a teacher that says, man, you're a bad reader, or you're really bad at math, or they have a coach that says, hey, you're never going to play the front row. Or they have someone telling them that they're too tall or too short or too wide or too small, or too this or too that those words are forever cemented onto a kid's map because their map is so wide open and because the the trusted voice has so much authority. I

want to share a fun little story about myself. For anybody that knows me knows I'm pretty tall, so I think I've been 511 since I was 12 years old. I've also had a size 11 shoe since I was also 12, and I was towering over my peers at a really young age. Much, and I share this to say neither one of those things that I have any control over, right? We're not in control of how tall we are, nor how big our feet get. But I share that in saying what deepened the madness for me was that my sport of choice back in the day was figure skating, and so imagine being 511 and constantly filtering the madness about how tiny figure skaters usually are. I had zero control over how tall I was, yet it was deeply anchored on my map that I was too tall to skate. It was deeply anchored on my map that I was an outlier, which that part fit the bill right? And I just wanted to candidly say I'm obsessed with being 511 so this isn't like a cry for help or a Oh poor Jody moment. It's just a moment to share the context and the things that we say around kids, especially if we are a trusted voice, live on their map forever, or at least until they find somebody as crazy as me that wants to go in and edit their map, right? So whether it's intentional or not, the words that we speak into kids become who they are, much the same as the words that were spoken into us allowed us to become who we are. Friend, let's digest my goal here is to really share and enlighten people on all the things that are possible. I love to educate people on the power that they have and the authority that they have over their own life. Now, I love to help leaders understand the power that their voice holds in a child's life, because I think it's really cool when we start to separate and then connect those two spaces and so creating some really deep awareness around where that voice emanates from, right? Let's understand why we believe the things that we do present day, and where those beliefs and limitations were created. So surfacing these things as adults allows us to start processing some of the haphazard or dysfunctional patterns that were handed down to us by somebody else, probably very unknowingly, right? But imagine how invincible you would be today if somebody stopped and sat with you and said, hey, it makes total sense you're having a really big feeling right now and not to dive off into a gentle parenting space. But it's kind of that same concept. What would you have access to right now if your feelings were a really fluid space, and how do you start to make some room for that. So what would be different in your world if you were allowed to use your voice or lead with authority or stand in your feeling or experiencing them as they come and go, and how cool would it be to intentionally create a generation of kids moving forward that we're emotionally resilient and ready to lead friend I share all this with kindness. And for any of you that know me, personally know that I always come from a really gentle yet really direct space. We're capable of healing. We're capable of so many more things than what people are talking about right now. So as shared before, I'm not here to place blame or to introduce any level of shame. I'm here to create massive awareness, because I know that massive awareness opens doors that weren't open before, and I know from one of my favorite humans, Maya Angelou, that people who know better do better. And so I think the more I help people understand, the more options they have, and the more they can go, You know what? I'm not going to say that, or they're going to, you know what? I understand why that kid's frustrated. Let me ask a couple of questions and help this child explore their mat. Maybe it's a teammate, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your neighbor, maybe it's your boss, but starting to ask people questions and allowing them to explore their own map so that they can then self discover that little limitation allows them so much more power and access in their own life than we if we just assume they have access to our math or we offer advice, because that's what worked for us. Right? Massive Action or sorry, massive awareness creates massive options. I'm sharing this and saying, If I have a huge challenge with a certain tone of voice, and I then embody that tone of voice, and I hand it down to my kids. I'm repeating the pattern. And for all of you that know I'm guilty of that, I did that, but I share this in saying if I instead, now pause and go, Man, what is it about that tone of voice that just sets me off? You? What is it about the way that person said that to me that makes me really mad? Or how old was I when this feeling first started? How old was I the first time that tone set me off? How old was I when that arrived on my map, and when I start getting curious with myself and allowing a little bit of grace, and I start to explore that pocket. I realized that the tone really has nothing to do with that guy. It has to do with my map and the way that it was anchored on my map, and even though maybe he's not being his best self right now, I don't have to be offended by it. I can then say, Hey, thanks, and walk away, even if it was intended as shade, I still don't have to engage or dance with that energy. I can then take my map and go, Oh, I'm going to process this later, right? How cool is it when we run into something that would usually I want to say, set us off if we really said, Hang on. What am I making this mean? Right? So when somebody doesn't call you back or text you back, or doesn't respond to the email, or the person who whatever, whatever the scenario is, the person you're trying to lead, isn't following, or you've told your kid 4000 times to empty the dishwasher and they're not doing it, to pause and to say, hey, what am I making this mean, versus allowing ourselves to get so emotionally charged and stay in the old patterns that take us outside of ourselves. So I share that in saying if I'm offended today by something that I've been offended for my whole life and I've been mad for decades, how aware am I of the inflexibility that I've normalized, and how, how ready Am I to become curious about the idea that I could start playing in these pockets and start asking myself questions about how that's anchored on my map, and how cool would it be to start engaging in the inflexibility or the offensiveness, and give it some flexibility and give it some grace. And I ask that question, saying, which one gets me closer to my ideal outcome, and now that I know this whole idea about my map, how many more questions can I ask now, and how am I now conscious of how or why I get offended? So how cool would it be for me to hear somebody use that tone now and be like, man? I wonder if that guy knows what he sounds like. I wonder if that guy knows I used to super get offended by that, but I don't care anymore. Or how cool would it be for it to not even hit your radar anymore, because you can hear somebody just hammering out in the background, and it doesn't even faze you, because you've processed that root system on your map. I know earlier we were talking about seeds and planting seeds, but imagine that there's the tiniest seed grows the biggest thing. So maybe one time in our childhood, someone said something to us, and maybe there was no intent, but the way that they said, it planted the seed, and that seed is now a gigantic oak tree that does all kinds of things and runs all kinds of interference. It's absolutely in our way. And I get it. I'm laughing at myself. I know that oak trees don't grow from seeds, right? It would probably be an acorn, but I'm just sharing that and saying the smallest thing creates the biggest rift, much the same that if I go down and I start to identify what that seed was, and I pull the seed, I'm like, okay, cool, eventually the branches will die. Eventually the tree is going to die off, right? It's not going to run interference anymore. I candidly said this thing, and in the book I wrote a couple years ago called healing your map, I said it's kind of like raking the leaves and hoping that the tree dies, like we have to get really conscious of where the tree came from.

Allow me to pause there and just say understanding the presence and the role of a map in your life and in the lives of the kids and the spouses and the siblings and the neighbors and the parents and the students and the athletes all around you, allows you to ask more questions and allows them to invite new answers and understanding the role that we play as a trusted voice in anybody's life allows us To then speak with a little bit more intention and to be a little bit more kind to each and every person we come across, because we're not really sure what's anchored on their map. So I want to close this episode and just say you can either be judgmental or you can be curious, but you can't be both at the same time. So be curious friends, ask more questions and allow the answers to just leave some space and always be kind.