The Come Alive Podcast

If there's something in your life that hasn't changed, is it that you don't have the tools, or is it that you're not willing to change it? What comes first, a willingness to change or the tools to change it? You can go to therapy. You can do life coaching classes. You can pray. You can go to church. You can use whatever means, methods, or modalities to create change in your life. But no matter how many tools you have in the toolbox, nothing moves without the willingness to take action and the willingness to change it.

Questions you can ask yourself:

- If you're looking at creating a life worth living and you're looking at making a change, how committed are you?
- What is that thing that you're not changing providing? What is it actually serving? What purpose does it have?
- What have I not been willing to change in relationships?
- What am I willing to be, do, have, create, and generate in my life? Is there anything that I'm not willing to be, do, have, create, or generate in your life?

An Exercise:

1. Make a list of what you have not been willing to change in your life. Ask yourself: What have I not been willing to change in relationships?  What have I not been willing to change in my business? What have I not been willing to change with my money flows? What have I not been willing to change with my body? What have I not been willing to change with myself and my image, my personality?

2. Go through that list and have a look at, what purpose does that thing that you won't change serve? And the purpose it serves could be considered positive or negative. It doesn't matter, but just have a look at it.

3. What are you willing to be, do, have, create, and generate in your life? Is there anything that you are not willing to be, do, have, create, or generate in your life? And if there's anything that you're not willing to be, do, have, create, or generate, what is underneath that? What are you willing in your life? What are you unwilling in your life? Unpack it. Have a look at the exercise again.

Let's get real in 2024. Let's stop looking at what we haven't changed as a way of judging that we're not changeable and let's get real about what you actually desire to change. If there is something in your life that isn't working that you've looked at over and over, what actions have you taken in the last year, two years, or three years time to change it? What's the motivation for the change? 

"Getting Real" is the energy of getting present with you and your life and what actions you can take to change them. I have watched the past few months at how many people are emotionally reactive and how we feel about a situation, but much slower on how or what is required to change it. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Don't judge yourself for staying where you are right now. Judging it doesn't change it, it will only make it grow and make you more reactive.
2. Give yourself permission and time to pause and ponder what is possible to change in the next year.
3. If you only look at what did change and what you want to change, but you don't commit to changing it, it doesn't matter. Are you committed to yourself enough to create the change in your life?
4. Be uncomfortable and willing to see what isn't working. If something is uncomfortable and our immediate response is to get comfortable again, we are only maintaining what we already have and are avoiding a possibility that could be had.

How To Stop Doing It:

• What future are you creating?
• Where would I like to go, where I like to be, what would I like to be doing and what would I like my life to be like during 2024?
• What is you actually want to create as your life? What is worth living for for you?
• What is it that you actually desire to change in 2024?
• What pragmatic step can you take to start changing whatever it is you would truly like to change?
• What can I add to my life to create the change?
• Now that you know what you can add, which ones are you capable of implementing, which would you like to implement, which would you not like to implement, and which are you actually going to follow through with?
• Are you committed to yourself enough to create the change in your life?

It's often easy to see how others are mean, abusive, or terrible in our eyes, but it's another world to see where we do it to ourselves. Where do you self-abuse and what does it look like? In this episode, I explore conversations I've had with clients, and myself, in order to explore four specific ways we can self-abuse. What if you were willing to be honest and present enough with yourself to change this for you and, in return, begin to change how others treat you?

Four Ways We Self-Abuse:

1. By making others greater than ourselves for the same tasks and talking ourselves down.
2. By making someone’s needs, desires and wants of you more important than your own.
3. By judging you for anything you do or don’t do, and choose or don't choose, rather than acknowledging it’s a choice.
4. By trying to make yourself fit into the way other people see you or desire you to be.

How To Stop Doing It:

• Acknowledge where you are great and be willing to see the beliefs you have about yourself.
• Communicate what you require in life and demand it of you and your relationships.
• Build a sense of who you are and trust yourself to know what's really going on. No more doubt!
• Be willing to reflect on where you do these things to yourself, be honest and present with yourself, and start looking at the steps you can take to change it.

What is it that you'd like to have as your life and are you willing to get uncomfortable? Some of the things you'd like to have in your life may require you to get your hands dirty and dig in, which isn't always comfortable. Are you ready to get started creating your life worth living?

Key Takeaways:

• Things that you look at changing or being different require you to get a little uncomfortable. 
• Sameness is comfortable. Being uncomfortable is an exploration beyond what you already have and to get to what you'd like to have requires change.
• You can't get somewhere new, if you don't know where you are.
• Questions you can ask: Where am I at today, where would I like to be, and where am I headed?
• There may be several steps you and Universe have to take to get where you'd like to be. So, where can you start? By waking up because what you do and choose today creates your tomorrow. 
• The difficulty in getting what you'd like is getting through the lies you've told yourself about what you can and cannot have.
• Stop looking at what you don't want and start asking for what you do.

Questions to Ask:

• Where am I at today? 
• Where would I like to be?
• Where am I headed?
• Where can I start?
• What would I like to have as my life?
• What is it I actually desire in life?
• What is it I actually desire as my future?

4 Tools to Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable:

1. Acknowledging
2. Choices
3. Starting
4. Question

Who or what do you trust? Do you actually trust yourself? Or do you look outside of yourself for what others are choosing, saying, validating, or invalidating about you in order to fit their mold?

Key Takeaways:

• Trust is not blind faith. Don't make assumptions about people, see what they will actually choose.
• Trust starts when you are a kid and first learn how to navigate your life. Trust comes from experience.
• If you use your relationships to navigate who or what you are you must be subject to maintaining that relationship.
• The only person who truly knows who and what you are is you...period.
• Start asking yourself what you know and begin to experience the things you believe you'd like to have in life.
• If you truly trust yourself, you can never actually fail.
• Trust is one of the ways to get out of the side effects and symptoms of having been gaslighted.
• The only way to create a life worth living is to first know what you would like to have.

Exercise:
Give yourself 5 minutes and ask yourself:

• What do I know about business?
• what do I know about money? 
• What do I know about relationships? 
• What do I know about family? 
• What do I know about myself?

The only answer you cannot use is "I don't know." As you're writing your list be present and have a look at what comes up for you in these areas. Is the first thing that comes to mind what you know and what you believe or is it all the things you don't know and can't believe? Is it all about the problems or the possibilities? This isn't about what's wrong with you, it's about getting clear in your life.

Want more on this topic and gaslighting? Join me for a 2-day workshop on "Shutting off the Gas to Gaslighting" on January 28th, 2023. For full details, please visit www.john-wheeler.com/gaslighting

Gaslighting has become a buzzword and everyone is talking about it, but who really knows what it is? When it comes to creating a life worth living for you, this is one of the ways we allow ourselves to be at the effect of another and create a sense of self-doubt.

Key Takeaways:

1. Gaslighting is a systemic use of manipulation that's often subtle.
2. Happens so frequently and so subtely you often don't know it's taking place.
3. Designed to get you re-orient your life around this other person and their truth.
4. Often becomes a basic function of your relationships.
5. Gaslighting can appear in all relationships including romantic relationships, the workplace and religious institutions/organizations.
6. The main purpose is to get you to lose your sense of self.

Tactics of Gaslighters:

• Complisults - A compliment with an insult attached
• At the start, they tell you how great you are and make false promises

Tips to Deal with Gaslighting:

• Don't make it right/wrong or fighting it, it's about being aware that it exists or is taking place.
• Get the value of you and how valuable you actually are.
• Pay attention when you're gaslighting yourself and the systemic negative beliefs you have about yourself.

Exercise:
Give yourself some time to reflect on the different messages you have had from other people and yourself. Were they empowering and inviting you to something more? Or are they designed in a way to make you doubt yourself and to make that person, project or company greater than you? Again, it's not about fighting and judging it, but just acknowledged how it has looked throughout your life. 

Want more on this topic? Join me for a 2-day workshop on "Shutting off the Gas to Gaslighting" on January 28th, 2023. For full details, please visit www.john-wheeler.com/gaslighting

What if questions were about getting clarity in your life? Not from a place of figuring anything out or getting to an answer, but from opening the doors of what’s possible. For anything in your life that you’d like to change or see different the place to start is a question. What change in the world are you aware of that you're not asking for?

Key Takeaways:

1. Question is not about figuring anything out or getting an answer.
2. What if there is nothing wrong with you?
3. What if what’s been missing all along in what you cannot change was a question?
4. One thing that really stick you is if you make something relevant for you that really isn’t.
5. What if right now you gave yourself permission to acknowledge all the changes in your life?

Exercises:
Right now, look at some area of your life that won’t change, can’t change or hasn’t changed. Now grab some paper and run through these four questions:

• What is this?
• What can I do with it?
• Can I change it?
• If so, how can I change it?

Access Consciousness® Tools:

• Always be the question, never have the answer.
• Four questions to change anything in your life.
• Is this relevant?
• Acknowledgment

What if saying nothing says everything? How often do we respond to something when nothing is required to be said? What if, in some situations, silence is the greatest thing you can choose?

Key Takeaways:

1. Have a look at: Does what they say require a response?
2. What is your need to respond?
3. If someone desires to hear what you have to say, they will usually ask you a question.
4. What’s the purpose in saying what I’m about to say? What’s it actually going to create?
5. How many convos do you have in hopes to get some result or response from someone and how often does that show up?

Exercises:
Have a look over the last 1-2 weeks at the interactions you’ve had with people. How many times was a response to those people an automatic response, or where you felt obligated to say something? What were you actually responding to?

What if you give yourself the challenge of going 5-minutes with silence? That doesn’t mean no sound, but not needing to speak or respond, and being present with everything going on around you. And, if you can’t do 5-minutes don’t make yourself wrong, just notice what you’re aware of.

Access Consciousness® Tools:

• Silence
• Is this relevant?

Whether you are looking to grow something or change something, if you don't acknowledge it, it cannot change.  

Key Takeaways:

1. What you don't acknowledge, you cannot change. 
2. Acknowledge is seeing what is. Getting present in a moment and seeing what's under the surface.
3. Don't see what can be or ought to be, see what is.
4. Be willing to give yourself permission to acknowledge all areas of your life.
5. To change anything in your life you have to first be willing to see it for what it is.
6. If you acknowledge what is actually true, you get to relax.

Exercises:
Right now if you look at your life, what are 3 things you can acknowledge?

Before bed or when you wake up, give yourself the job to acknowledge one thing.

Access Consciousness Tools:

• Acknowledgizing

Wherever you put your energy...grows? Whatever you're focusing on, looking at or looking for is exactly what you will see and in return create. So, have a look at what is or isn't working in your life and ask, "Where am I putting my energy?"

Key Takeaways:

1. What would change if you changed your view?
2. When things aren't working out for you, acknowledge what you are doing and allow yourself the opportunity to move forward.
3. You do not have to change anything you do not desire to change.
4. What if every day you are one of the priorities for that day and you were just grateful to be breathing?

Exercise:

• Right now listening to this podcast, where would you like to put your energy? Now...what questions can you ask and what actions can you take?
• Next time you're having a bad day, give yourself 5 minutes to be with it and ask yourself, "Where am I putting my energy?" (This can also be done as a morning exercise to start your day)

Access Consciousness Tools:

• Ask a question.
• Acknowledge what is and what you are choosing.