A Woman Is...Glad To Be With Herself

In this episode, Life Coach Vanderly Cillo joins Shayla for an incredible conversation on how we can connect to ourselves and others to unlock joy & wisdom. Vanderly is a down-to-earth certified life coach who helps women and moms go from stuck to satisfied in their personal and family life. She empowers women to rediscover their unique lane and learn how to thrive there, Helping women become connected, confident and free.  She also happens to be one of  Shayla's very best friends, and a true treasure. 

Shayla and Vanderly talk about why we get stuck and find ourselves feeling overwhelmed or hopeless and the steps we can take to get unstuck and move out of overwhelm and towards joy and wisdom and becoming a more wholehearted woman.

She explains brain science and how we process life through our brains and how it affects our lives in an understandable way, she breaks down how to connect to yourself in a meaningful way and we talk about true self love being glad to be with yourself just as you are. And how this helps you connect better to others. Vanderly shares some exercises we can do to create emotional habits that bring true joy into our lives. 

There is so much to chew on from this episode, I hope you found it as helpful as I did.

You can find vanderly at @VanderlyLifeCoach on Instagram or on her website at www.vanderlylifecoach.com

Transcript

[00:11] Shayla: Hello and welcome to a Woman Is podcast. I'm your host, Shayla Raymond. I'm really glad you're here today. We have quite a treat for you. Today's episode is a conversation with light life coach, Vanderly Sillo. Vanderly is a DownToEarth certified life coach who helps women and moms go from stuck to satisfied in their personal and family life. She empowers women to rediscover their unique lane and learn how to thrive there, helping women become connected, confident, and free. And she happens to be one of my very best friends and a true treasure. Today, Vanderly and I are talking about why we get stuck and find ourselves feeling overwhelmed or maybe even hopeless, and the steps we can take to get unstuck and move out of overwhelm and towards joy and wisdom and becoming a more wholehearted woman. She explains brain science and how it affects our lives in a really understandable way. And she breaks down how to connect to yourself and others and even shares some exercises on creating emotional habits that will bring true joy into your life. I really hope you enjoy my conversation with Vanderly Sillo. So today we have the great privilege, I'm so excited to welcome my very dear friend Vander Lee to the podcast. Welcome. Hi.

[01:50] Vanderly: I am so happy to be here. This is going to be fun.

[01:54] Shayla: This is going to be fun. So Vander Lee is one of my dearest, dearest friends and she also happens to be a professional life coach. And before she was ever certified as a life coach or actively being a life coach, she was pretty much my life coach. We've been friends for about a little over 18 years now, I think, and I would definitely say that entire time. So I think I've racked up a pretty hefty bill at this point. For her life coaching services. VanderLey carries so much wisdom and I wanted to invite her to the podcast today to just find out why do women go to life coaches, why do we seek them out? I'm just curious, what have you seen as the most common reason that draws women to your services and what's kind of the common thread of need when we get to that point where we're asking for help and then kind of what can that help look like? What are some ways we can help ourselves? I know that's a loaded question, but yeah, sure.

[03:03] Vanderly: Well, what I've discovered over the years is there's two main reasons women reach out for life coaching, and the first one is just simply they don't have anybody else to go to and they are just looking for someone that they can connect with that will really see them, hear them, be understood by them. And it's amazing the results that come out of that as soon as there is some level of connection they're experiencing by being seen and known. But the other main and very general reason women come to me for life coaching is they're stuck in something. They're stuck in anxiety, they're stuck in fear. Sometimes they're just stuck in, I would call it being stuck in upset, whether that's present or past related. And as a result of the stuckness, they start to become disconnected with who they are. And the longer they go on being disconnected from who they are, they become disconnected with everything else as a result. And they feel that, but they can't really put their finger on what's happening and they're just looking to get unstuck.

[04:20] Shayla: And so what's kind of the first step you take when you're feeling stuck and you can't put your finger on it?

[04:28] Vanderly: Right? So a lot of women are going to come to me circumstantially. They've got specific reasons on why they're here. And what I've discovered over time is no matter what the starting point is with the woman, the entry point that we have to establish is identifying where is this level of stuckness? And often they don't realize that they're stuck in fear, shame and anxiety. And so in that starting point, we're going to explore how to supply themselves with connecting back to themselves so that they can actually be safe with themselves. They learn how to be okay with themselves even with such big emotions like fear, shame and anxiety. And once you discover how you learn to be okay with yourself, even with those, then we start moving into where did that even come from and how do we move through that? Because at the end of the day, no matter what you're going through, it's not so much about moving through the circumstance. It's about learning how to process pain, learning how to identify and triggers and process the pain so that you always come back to who you are, that you learn how to stay true to yourself. Can I still stay myself even when I'm afraid? Can I still stay myself even when I'm experiencing fear, anxiety, disgust, et cetera?

[06:09] Shayla: And where do you think a lot of that fear and shame comes from?

[06:16] Vanderly: Well, this is when I start to nerd out on brain science. And a lot of the modalities in my life coaching is that there's an emphasis on being full brained and wholehearted. And I put an emphasis on the brain science of the right side of the brain. And so there's four levels of the right side of the brain. And what people don't realize is a lot of how you're experiencing life. It starts with the blood pathways and the neurological pathways that are happening on the right side of the brain. And so everything starts in that lower stem of the brain. They call that the reptilian brain. And these are where your bonding circuits and your survival circuits exist. So level one of the right brain is always asking the question, am I alone? Am I alone? Am I on my own? So if you've gone through life, whether it was perhaps a big traumatic event. Or maybe you didn't go through life where there was big trauma, but there was not enough good things happening to you which they would call level B trauma. And you just didn't get enough of the right side of your brain supplied with consistently experiencing with your right brain consistently supplied with I'm not alone. So what your right brain is looking for first is am I alone? And if it can answer that question, no, you're not alone. The next level, level two of the right brain is, well, am I safe and am I okay? And so that's why these are your bonding circuits and these are your survival circuits. Your brain is always scanning, am I alone and am I safe and am I okay? And if somehow life by a single event or a multiple of negative circumstances and negative relationships, especially with those that you're supposed to be bonded with, couldn't answer that consistently, your brain learned to operate always in survival. Well, maybe I'm not alone, but I'm not okay. I'm not alone, but I'm not truly safe. And so then that bypasses now level three, because then if I am alone, or maybe I'm alone, but I'm not safe and okay, I can't truly supply the level three of my brain neurologically with developing. This is where you're feeling seen, known. This is where emotional intelligence develops, which is why a lot of people don't have high levels of emotional intelligence because level one and two was always you're not really okay, you're not ever really safe. So level one, two and moves into level three. And this is where emotional attunement comes in. And you're now experiencing with those you're with those who are safe where you're feeling okay. I am seen, I am known. I'm actually even cared for. This is where you experience levels of empathy with people. And if you notice, can you see how the levels of the right brain, they're relational. Everything so far I've been describing has been emotions, experiences, and relationships. And this is how the brain was designed for you to develop into your fullness. It requires you to be fully supplied with processing emotions, well, positive experiences and safe bonds with people. Okay, so you're supplying yourself with level one two, level 03:00 A.m.. I am seen and known. And then now that moves into level four, which moves up into this is actually where your command center hangs out. And your command center sits right next to the emotion joy. And joy is a relational emotion. It's not your happiness like cherry on top. It doesn't exist. It doesn't get produced by accomplishments and achievement. That's more your dopamine, that's your happy chemical dopamine. This is more about oxytocin going from the bottom of your brain all the way to the top of your brain. And the joy is defined by, I am happy to be with you. I'm glad to be with you. And that actually wakes up and activates your identity center. And they're like a hand and glove. They need each other. You want your identity to be awakened. You need joy. And joy is experiencing safe, emotionally safe relationships that are communicating. I'm glad to be with you. And when your identity gets activated, your command center starts operating at its fullest. And that's where your will is. This is where it's the command center of the doing. And this is why when you are helpless, when you're hopeless, so when you're depressed, and when you have fear and you're caught in this freezing and this fighting and just learned helplessness, your command center, which is right, sitting right there next to your identity, it's sleeping, it can't operate at its fullness. So these women are coming to me in life coaching, and I exist now to help teach them how to engage that right brain back into safety. First just with themselves, to reconnect themselves back to God, reconnect themselves back to themselves and discover a safety with Him, a safety with themselves. So eventually they will know how to pursue again safety with other people. Because when you are reconnected with, I'm not alone, I'm safe and okay, you then reconnect back to yourself and your identity. Then out of your identity, wisdom starts to flow. And so when women are just coming to me with I just lack goals, I lack direction, sometimes we have to back up several steps and discover it has more to do with a disconnect to their identity. Other times, it's an easier entry point of coaching where they know who they are. They really just need more practical life skills to move them into goals and results.

[12:29] Shayla: So if I have a connected, belonging family of origin, that's going to directly affect my sense of identity. And if I don't have because that belonging, like the joy comes from belonging absolutely feeling like you belong. And so if we're missing that piece of belonging, then we're going to struggle with our identity. Absolutely. That's what you're yes. What if you have a sense of belonging but you still struggle with your identity? Maybe we aren't aware of where those pieces are missing.

[13:02] Vanderly: Okay, so if you have a sense of belonging but you're not in touch with your identity, or you can't articulate with your identity, I would probably examine with you your bonds. I would examine your bonds with people. I would examine your place of belonging. And because our places of belongings, what they do is they move us into shared identity. And when you start operating with bonded relationships, whether it's one on one or in a group within a shared identity, whether it's just two best friends or a group of people, you start to watch how people process pain. You start to watch, who are they and how do they stay true to that when things happen in life? So if your place of belonging couldn't provide that for you, well then that's going to definitely interfere with level four and level five of your brain, which is your identity. And level five is what I would call just that left side of the brain. When your blood starts to flow on over to the left front cortex of where you are reasoning, analyzing why things happen, that question is answered on the left side of the brain. And so you want to be able to understand the why and the how of things, but that's not meant to be answered without levels one, two, three and four on the right side being fully supplied and established. So a lot of people are answering those questions for themselves, why does that happen? How do I do that? But it didn't happen with level three which is usually that emotional attunement or identity being fully established. And so sometimes the shared belonging you had the group identity, bypassed identity. And they are highly intellectual, highly cognitive, where they dismiss and don't value emotions. There is a lot more cognitive thinking than living out of that right side of the brain where this is actually where we be and where we experience. Does that make sense?

[15:21] Shayla: Yeah.

[15:22] Vanderly: Something that interferes with people not really understanding and knowing who they are and their identity, even though there's a sense of belonging, has to do with the kind of belonging they are experiencing, it has to do with the kind of bonds and attachments they have. And you may have heard some of the labels and phrases being tossed around secure attachment, insecure attachment. So you're bonded and you have this place of belonging, but how secure is that attachment? Are you bonded on agreements? Are you bonded on being alike? And so that really ultimately is a fragile bond even though that's where you belong because you're not having the safety or the courage to even pursue, to explore and discover who you really are. Because if it's going to end up being a disassociation from the values that are shared in that bond and it breaks the bond, you might not ever venture into that. So a large part of people not discovering their identity, even though they can sincerely claim they have a sense of belonging, it often comes in the weaknesses of the bonds in the belonging.

[16:39] Shayla: So if I'm bonded with someone just because we agree on something, it's more fragile because if I just start disagreeing with that thing or then it breaks the bond. My identity is based on what we agreed on, not really my true identity, is that what you're saying?

[16:58] Vanderly: Yes. This is why unity and diversity are critical components of a healthy bond and a healthy place of belonging. More than agreement, more than similarities, shared identity and shared values are important. A like mindedness is important. There's something in the brain called the mirror neuron network and a mind site that you and I actually can discover or experience with one another. And actually, you and I, we have a lot of this. I can just look at you in our eyes, and I can't truly read your mind, but I know what you're feeling, sensing, or thinking, and we just know each other. And so in this mirror neuron network, you're often finding through just looking at each other in the eyes who we are by having this sense of I'm glad to be here with you when we're experiencing something. So when you can't get that affirmed by looking at someone in the eye, I'm glad to be with you. And it's because I'm different from you. My identity, I no longer remember. I go back down to the right brain. I no longer feel I'm alone. I'm not alone, but I'm not safe. See, I belong, but I'm not safe. So right now, my identity gets threatened in that because it's a threat in the brain. And I'm now scanning. My brain is scanning quickly. What do I need to do to eliminate this threat? Well, the gut response will be for most of us is to accommodate that moment quickly so that I can get that connection back with your eyes that you're communicating. I'm glad to be with you. And it might mean, though, that I had to let go of I compromised too much of myself over and over to keep that.

[18:48] Shayla: So if our brain is always scanning, am I alone? Am I safe? How can we tell our brains that we're safe? Because you're saying that's kind of the root of the fear and the shame and the anxiety, which leads to the helplessness or leads to the stuckness. If I want to get unstuck and I'm hearing this and I'm like, okay, well, I am alone and I'm not safe. I'm both of those things, right?

[19:21] Vanderly: And this is why past trauma induces a sense of I'm never safe even after I've become safe, because it's unprocessed pain that has now infiltrated my brain and body. That is, I'm not safe because it's unprocessed pain. So the first thing all of us need and deserve to experience is I am safe with myself. Yeah. And so that is even when I am feeling afraid, can I experience that I am safe with me? Can I even hold my own emotions? Because often the feeling of safety has this double message to me of if I feel afraid, everything is fearful, everything is unsafe, when really something outside of me that I'm experiencing doesn't feel safe. So it's a signal that I have, but it isn't who I am. And that's even proven in brain science. I have a threat, I have a feeling of fear, and that is not who I am. Level four of my brain is who I am. So and remember what activates that identity level four, that relational joy. I'm glad to be with me. Can Vanderly maintain a sense of van? I'm still glad to be with you, even though you feel so fearful right now, even though you feel so anxious and you're frozen, you feel so helpless, and maybe you even have shame because you just can't figure this out. And you have these expectations that you should have this together by now and you should know it by now. There has to be grace that I give myself and I receive myself first that says it's okay and you're okay. The big answer to that question is grace is always going to be the bonding agent to finding out that you're okay, that you really are safe even when you have these feelings. And if you are faith based, you understand that with God. Before I even had my act together, before I had life figured out, he saw me, he liked me, he wanted me, he chose me. And in his grace, it was his grace that pursued me to bond with me. His grace bonded with me first. And then in that safety did I feel attuned. I felt known. I felt seen, I felt cared for. And out of that, that activated my identity, because I was having this constant experience of, he's glad to be with me even as I am. I don't even have to have my shit together, and he likes me. He's glad to be with me. And so that's grace. I have to have the capacity to even receive the grace. And so in life coaching, I love to connect women to God, because that's the most expedient way to reconnect back to yourself. But for those where God might be even scary, no problem. He gets that. And he made the brain. He understands how the brain works. We just moved to a woman being able to be okay with herself. Can you experience, can you learn how to reset to joy in the middle of pain? To say, I'm glad to be with you? I just came out of years of grief, and one of the greatest gifts I gave myself while grieving in the midst of great pain that I was processing was I learned I was glad to be with me, and that brought a safety on me. And once I was comforted and validated, which is my level one and two brain being supplied, then I felt I became more attuned to what was happening to my body, to my mind. And then once I became more centered in that through that that's level three, then my identity starts reawakening again, and my command center is like, whoo, what's up today? How are we going to conquer today all in the middle of pain?

[23:33] Shayla: Yeah.

[23:34] Vanderly: Most people have this background, and they feel like they have to fix a problem to have peace. They have to resolve an issue for there to be peace, for there to be joy, for them to be okay. Well, when they're doing that, they're bypassing how the brain works on the right side of the brain and they're just hanging, jumping on over to the left side of the brain and they're only operating dominantly out of that left side of that brain and they're only intellectualizing their experiences and their emotions. But our brain was designed to use both sides. So the left side wants to explain what's happening to me, but the right brain wants me to process. So the left brain wants to explain my process, but the right brain actually is the processing and it always comes down to a safety being okay with yourself.

[24:25] Shayla: So we talk so much about, oh, love yourself and self love and people think, oh, I'm going to go get a pedicure. But really it's learning to turn off because I think for me it would be like I'm so critical of myself and so it would be Silencing the critic, which is me criticizing me. And instead how do I tell myself I'm happy to be with myself and mean it? It's like, oh, you're doing a crappy job doing whatever the thing is, failing in some way or being too emotional in some way. How do I sit with myself? Because you're saying that's the first step, the key. Even before I can really bond with other people and allow them to sit with me in my mess, I have to sit with myself in my mess but be really happy to be with myself in my mess.

[25:18] Vanderly: Yeah, there's a sense of even bonding with yourself with your pain. And I don't mean misery loves company. Don't commiserate with your pain. Can you accept and like yourself just as you are? So there's a sequence of personal growth in your brain. That first level is your bonding circuits and where a place of belonging is going to be experienced. So if you don't know how to be okay with yourself when you're not okay, you're constantly rejecting yourself. So that's what I mean when I say yeah, you have to bond with yourself. You have to not judge her and actually learn how to be okay non judgmentally forgiving her that you're not where you want to be in life. Things are a lot harder for you to deal with than you care to admit. Otherwise you're always going to be bypassing all those levels and hanging out in that left side of just and that's where anxiety is. Anxiety actually sits on the left side because anxiety is always coming up. It's looking for a solution for the future that you couldn't figure out in your past. And so that's why you want to go back into and engage your right brain to just say, yeah, I'm going to first bond with you and be okay with you. And that does mean can I actually hold space? Am I safe with me? Am I okay with me? Am I safe and good? I have to determine that. I have to reconcile that and when that's very frightening and scary. That is when you go get a therapist. This is when you go get a professional, and they teach you how to and they are safe with you if you can't do that on your own. So it's first bonding with you. And then remember I said, grace is that bonding agent? And this is actually where you're going to receive life and give life away. And your emotional intelligence, your just holistic growth as a person will be stunted. If your journey of personal growth, processing pain, healing is only individualistic, you must experience this with safe people. It can't be done just between you, yourself and I. So that level three requires authentic community, being connected to not just yourself, but to others that actually are going to show you how to stay true to yourself by you watching them and them watching you in an atmosphere of genuine, authentic grace. And what I mean by that is when values get violated, when belief systems get challenged, when people are not their best selves, there is a sense of, I'm still glad to be with you. I'm going to hang in there. I'm going to hold you accountable. There's going to be some healthy correction. There's going to be some healthy instruction alongside the comfort and the validation. So when you are practicing a sense of belonging with yourself, you're practicing a sense of receiving and giving out grace. You're practicing attunement this is what a sequence of growth looks like bottom up. Because the last but not least is now we're going to just, by doing life together, watch how we handle how we handle our ups and downs while staying true to me. And that literally is called a coherent identity. I have to figure out, identify, and establish who I am and then be able to see me in you and you in me. And we actually learn how to interdepend on one another, which is really not the American way. Independence is still highly valued and emphasized. And this is a big struggle going back to coaching women in particular, mothers in particular. We can't figure out even what feminism is. We can't figure out what womanhood looks like. We don't know our identity. We don't even know how to authentically connect, okay, to ourselves alone, to each other. And then you have in motherhood. You have all that, like, super mom's syndrome. And so it's not just about finding your lane and learning how to stay in your lane. It's actually learning how to be in a lane together. Interdependence actually is always going to be the sequence of growth in your brain for wisdom. Your identity center will always activate and enable just a higher level of wisdom when you're operating out of your true sense of who you are with somebody.

[30:21] Shayla: So what if I don't know how to do that? I feel like in my life, I'm kind of natural at that. I've kind of been a natural at that. I've cultivated those kind of friendships my entire life and in my mothering. I think it helped me be a better mother because you and I were part of a mom and baby group when we had our babies. And I've always found, no matter what stage of life I've been in, I found people to be in that lane with, be together, be messy with, sit with each extend craze. But what if I'm someone who has never had that model to me? No one's ever been that for me. I have no idea how to do that. Where do I start that doesn't come natural? And I've never seen it done right.

[31:12] Vanderly: Because that's really how your coherent growth gets developed. It's literally doing it with people to see how it's done. So it's not about doing it perfectly. It's about articulating. Intentionally articulating. Did I say that right?

[31:33] Shayla: Intentionally articulating? I think so, yeah.

[31:36] Vanderly: Intentionally articulating how to do life together as a sense of intentional practice, not performing it and not even doing it perfectly. And what I mean by that is so you're first going to always start with safety. So really the answer to that is, how do I do that? It's by first making sure that you're safe with yourself. You're okay with yourself so that you know how to present an authentic version of yourself to those people and vice versa. So you're establishing, am I okay with me? And now I got to start operating out of that person I'm okay with. And now you're finding people who are similar. And then because of that, there is a self awareness and of safety and emotional attunement for one another. As long as you're really practicing that intentionally, that's when you really just start articulating and identifying expectations in relationships and groups. And so it is really important, actually to come up with a language with that group for that and even saying, hey, this is actually what I would love to experience with you in a friendship. Hey, when we meet, it's really important that I experience this with you and you see this side of me. Are you okay with that? Because the more and more you know who you are, you're so connected to her. That is always going to keep you at the height of a level of joy. Remember, not just happiness, but relational joy. VanderLey is glad to be with Vanderly legitimately. And so I want her to show up, and I want to find out who you are because I'm glad to be with you. So I'm glad to be with Shale well, who is Shaile, because I'm glad to be with her. And I want there to be a sense of we're glad to be with each other before I even know you. See, that's true grace. Otherwise, I really am only liking you based on where we are alike, where you are similar to me, because you just mirror me or reflect me. Well, you. Don't need to reflect me. I just need to make sure I show up. I be me. And I sense you're glad to be with me.

[33:54] Shayla: Yeah.

[33:55] Vanderly: And when if that's practiced on strong days, on bad days, I get to show up, be vanderly. And I'm not really her best self. And I'm aware of it because I'm intentional about still being safe. I'm intentional about still being okay with me, even while saying, I am really going through a hard week or a hard season. I'm dealing with so much grief, or I just can't seem to get past this mountain of anxiousness when I think about my future. And you can see how it's beginning to impact me. But I'm bringing that to you as a safe person, and you're still glad to be with me. And so you have to constantly learn that you're okay with you so that you stay self aware of what's going on with you. And then you bring that to the table and you show it, and you want that person if they're secure in themselves, they've learned who their authentic self is, they bring that to the table, and you both get to be glad to be with each other. That's just doing life together. Therefore, even in pain, even in hard times, we weep together and we rejoice together. That's love. And that's how you just learn how to be. You're just being with each other. We're not fixing each other's problems, but it always is going to start with a connection with ourselves, safety, and being okay with us first.

[35:16] Shayla: Yeah. Wow, it's good. I feel for people when people have struggled to find those kind of safe friends. I've always wondered how to help people find them. And I don't know that I think for me, I remember some of my closest friends and probably even like with you, it would be like, I would be vulnerable and share, and you'd be like, me too. Or you'd be vulnerable and share something that you were struggling with. And I'd be like, oh, me too. So there is that sense of me too. When we share something that we feel less the other person feels less alone because they were maybe afraid to say that they can't figure out X-Y-Z. They're like, I just can't figure out x y oh. And then there is some of that. But like you were saying, even if we're not on the same page, just being happy to be and giving that grace.

[36:09] Vanderly: Yeah, it's a practice. It's an intentional practice of showing up with your weaknesses. You got to flourish though, be okay with yourself to show up with your weaknesses. Because if you don't have any idea of how to be okay with yourself, you're going to expect everybody to constantly prove to you you are okay. So that's where misunderstandings and offenses happen. If I'm not okay with myself yeah. It's not your job to constantly tell me, I'm okay. It's my job and that's what I teach and that's what I'm building in women in life coaching, it's not your husband's job, your children's job, it's your job. Because the me too is not always sustainable because I might go through something you'll never go through. And take my divorce, for example. Some of my best friends will never go through a divorce, right? And they've had to watch me walk through losses that they can't relate to, so they could never offer me me too. But that was okay. What sustained those friendships and actually that what carried me was you looking me in the eye and no matter what was saying, I'm still glad to be with you even when I wasn't my best self. And that is a sequence of growth.

[37:31] Shayla: Yeah.

[37:32] Vanderly: So you don't always need a me too. You just need a few safe people to just say, I'm still glad to be with you. And that doesn't mean that you're never void of correction from that person. You're not void of being challenged. It doesn't mean I'm glad to be with you will only be the soft stuff, like comfort and validation. To truly grow with people, you'll need both. You'll need the comfort and the validation and then that the strong instruction and correction. Yeah, but you have to show up with your weaknesses, vulnerably. But that's hard to do if you don't feel safe, right? I wouldn't even encourage anybody to just do that blindly either. Like a shot in the dark. You learn to do it with yourself. You learn to do it with a coach or a therapist, and then you intentionally find one person to practice it with and you let them know what you want to practice. And even when I was changing, my lifestyle was changing. When I went through separation and divorce, I had to bring all that to the table with my friends because we were now in different worlds and different schedules, even different lifestyles, from staying at home to a full time working mom to parent income to single parenting. I had to bring it to the table of what I needed. Well, that was vulnerable. Am I okay with me, though? Or do I shame myself for being too needy? Do I judge myself for not having it together enough to even ask that of them? See, that's the process and that's the inner work you do with yourself first.

[39:06] Shayla: I feel like being okay with ourselves is like a lifelong process. It is because I would say, oh, well, maybe I'm okay with myself in this area, but in this area, I want to pretend that I'm okay with myself, but I'm not. Truly, deeply not. But maybe in another what's the first practical step if I'm to be okay with ourselves and be okay with oneself?

[39:30] Vanderly: One of the first exercises that I call these emotional habits, you want to grow in these emotional habits and they're exercises that will turn into habits. And it's moving yourself through memories of appreciation and joy that will help you reset joy in a relational way in your brain. And I'll tell you what the exercise is in a moment, but resetting your brain to a place of appreciation and joy. One, it's going to turn on. Well, to do it, you have to practice the skill of quieting.

[40:09] Shayla: Okay?

[40:10] Vanderly: You're going to practice the skill of quieting, which that's a huge habit for people who struggle with overwhelm. It's enabling you to turn on your relational circuits in your mind, which your relational circuits need to be woken up and activated to even want to bond with yourself. The emotions of trust, faith, intimacy, that's all bonding emotions. And that's all through oxytocin. And you can release oxytocin through memories that you experienced with people. You can release that through yourself. So you are now going through memories of joy and appreciation to rebond with yourself. Remember, because joy is relational. I'm glad to be with you, bond with God and see some history of faithfulness that he's had in your life, if you can do that, or with others. And then I call some of those memories golden memories because you can go back to some of those joyful memories over and over and over, which really you're training the pathways, you're making those pathways so deep in your brain that they're never going to go away. So the moment I'm quieting myself and I'm moving into the habit of pausing and I'm just physically pausing from any kind of movement activity in my brain and in my body. And I'm pausing and I'm breathing. And now I'm going to just move into what is something that I feel grateful for. What's a memory? And if you say something, you're only going to think cognitively like a list. Well, I'm thankful for my kids, thankful for my house, thankful for my job. That's thinking, not remembering. A joyful memory is experiential and it involves your emotions, where you really want to sit and notice the memory in your mind's eye, you replay it in your mind, which requires that's why you pause first. You have to really quiet your whole body and mind to do this. So you're going to pause. You're going to ask yourself, what's a memory? That where I have felt really grateful. It doesn't have to be a big one, doesn't have to be a long one. It can be just today, it could be last week, years ago, or what is a memory I have that has brought me joy? And so immediately when I say this to you, my eyes prick with tears. I have a file right there in my brain and I can immediately can you see it on my face? I immediately go into joy. And so right now, as I'm sitting across from you, see it, you hear it in my voice. You see it in my eyes. And I have this file box of joyful memories that are these golden memories that just reset me to joy, where I am glad to be with me. I'm glad to be with you, Shailey you're in some of those memories. I'm so glad that God has been so faithful to me in some of these memories. And you just play them in your you close your eyes and you replay it over and over in your mind until you feel the memory through your body, and you just take it in and you title it. You always want to title your memories. And the one that I immediately gone to was Eliana's birth. There's a lot of good reasons for that. And then if you really want to really access wisdom, because remember, wisdom activates out. It of it's in the top of your right and your left side of your brain. It's activated when your identity center is also activated by joy. So when I'm resetting to joy, which is the exercise I was talking about, and I'm recalling a memory, and I've now noticed it in my mind. I feel it in my body. I feel the emotions. I can feel a reset and a calm come over me, and I'm I'm playing it around. And then I ask God, or I ask myself, what is it about this memory that I want to notice? Or what that my intuition is noticing? God, what is it about this memory that you want me to pay attention to? And it is amazing how often I have recalled Eliana's my daughter's birth. And different pieces will be highlighted, and then just a one liner will kind of just flow out of my innermost being, which is that's the wisdom being activated in my mind and my consciousness. And that is often the very thing I probably needed that day or that week just to get me through, but I didn't even see it coming. But your mind does. The way God designed your mind and your consciousness, it knows. And so it quiets. So joyful memories, they quiet you. They calm you. They move you out of overwhelm and pull you into a pause. They reset your joy, where they remind you that you're glad to be with you. And others, you see a history of faithfulness, so it stabilizes you back into safety. And then if you practice it enough, it'll flow. Wisdom will flow right out of those memories over and over and over. And this is actually how I go to sleep every night.

[45:09] Shayla: Wow, that must be why you're so wise.

[45:13] Vanderly: And if I'm a stressful and I'm uptight and I'm wound up, it's because I haven't been doing it.

[45:18] Shayla: Yeah. So stop, pause, be quiet, and do.

[45:23] Vanderly: That with some untensing your body and breathing and best is like, get comfortable. I sit real comfortably and try to put my feet solidly on the ground.

[45:35] Shayla: So you're pausing comfortably, breathing. Then you move into activating joy by.

[45:44] Vanderly: Experiencing a memory, asking yourself, what is a memory where I felt grateful? What's a memory where I felt joyful?

[45:53] Shayla: And when that sinks in, it activates that wisdom. It gets you into a place of joy. It does. Where you're happy to be with yourself.

[45:59] Vanderly: And you and others depending on what it is, what's it about. And that appreciation and joy activates your relational circuits, which is important because you want to always stay connected to God, stay connected to yourself, to stay connected to people. And see, people often want to get connected to others to connect with themselves. But that's a dangerous order. You'll lose yourself if you try to connect to yourself by only connecting with others first.

[46:31] Shayla: So then you lose yourself in that yellow mix.

[46:33] Vanderly: Yeah.

[46:34] Shayla: Which you can see that. I can see that happen. And then you're like, wait a minute, where am I in this? Finding so much of your identity in the group.

[46:45] Vanderly: Yes. And you'll compromise yourself.

[46:47] Shayla: Yeah. Wow.

[46:52] Vanderly: And then the deeper you do that practice, you can just ask yourself all sorts of things that wherever it is when you're processing pain or you're feeling stuck in something, what's a memory? So like, if you're feeling overwhelmed or anxious, where is a memory where I felt peace? Where is a memory where I felt God's presence? If you want to reconnect with that, for those who are pursue a relationship with God, what is a memory of where God was really faithful to provide for me? Where's a memory of where I really experienced grace in my life when I really didn't deserve it any? You just go deeper and deeper. But you always start with joy and gratitude first. But you can go real deep with all those memories and you just get a file box up there in that brain of yours.

[47:41] Shayla: Wow. So I remember you talking before about you talked about this the other day when we were talking why sometimes the affirmations don't work and you were saying you need to experience it. So is that what you mean? Instead of the affirmation doing this exercise?

[47:59] Vanderly: Yes.

[48:00] Shayla: Then you can have affirmations talk a little bit about that. Yeah.

[48:03] Vanderly: Because being whole brain, your body was designed to be relational, to have experiences and process emotions as signals to discover who you are and about life. And then the cognitive, the left side of the brain explains what you experienced. So if you stay detached, relationally to yourself and to others, you have a disassociation and a disconnect to just your experiences. Well, your brain is still going to your left side is still going to be always working. It's going to try to explain it while being disconnected and then it won't be full wisdom. So that's why you need both. And so what happens with affirmations, which I love and believe in, but it's just how I approach them. For them to be truly effective most people approach affirmations very cognitively. It's just something they want to think and believe. And they really hope one day they'll really embrace it and believe it. And so they just have an intentional or random list that they just keep saying over and over. And it won't suffice for you to really be wholeheartedly operating out of those affirmations. For affirmations really to operate out of those affirmations in a genuine way, you want to experience them. And you can do it through memories. And so when I'm asking my intuition to speak to me, I'm asking God to highlight something in a memory of what about this memory is so significant today? To me, something personalized will emerge from that. And then I can rewrite that one liner as an affirmation. But now I have experienced it, I felt it, and that makes all the difference that is going to connect me more to a genuine belief behind the affirmation. Feeling it and experiencing it, being connected to it, experientially and emotionally makes all the difference. And that's how I do affirmations.

[50:00] Shayla: So if I'm feeling weak, for example, and I do the exercise and I remember a memory when I felt strong and powerful yes, then I can have the affirmation, I am strong and powerful. But it actually is rooted in something experiential, not just absolutely me wishing I'm strong and powerful. Maybe if I can wish the weakness away by saying this chant of I'm strong and powerful, over and over, it will be more effective. Rooted in that recollection. That's what you're saying?

[50:28] Vanderly: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. And then for those who follow the Scriptures, I do that same practice with Bible verses where you're going to enter a Bible story. You're just going to go into that verse, and I'm going to ask you to engage in that verse, not cognitively and intellectually, but engage it on that right side of the brain to see and imagine however you're interpreting. That verse or understanding it. And if possible, depending on what the verse is saying, putting yourself in the verse and then letting the intuition and the wisdom just flow out of that. It's amazing what people come up with. And that can become a prayer that can anchor you. I call those declaring truths and that you'll just anchor yourself into and constantly go back to over and over.

[51:16] Shayla: Yeah.

[51:17] Vanderly: And that's part of how when I'm doing my time, my alone time on the porch, I'm going through memories past and present, how I heal myself, process pain through traumatic memories and good memories. It's how I walk through the Bible with Jesus of just putting myself in it, constantly engaging it, even in worship for those who love to worship. But you just find that you're in this disconnect and you just feel detached and you're not really feeling it's. Just remove yourself from the moment, hear the words and engage yourself and put a picture in the words in your right side of the brain and just see what starts to unfold. And what you're always doing, though, is you're activating the bonding agent to continue to either bond with God, bond with yourself, you're keeping your relational circuits on. And as long as those are staying actively present, all that right side of the brain is going to keep getting supplied with. I'm safe, I'm okay, I'm known, I'm seen. And then your identity, blah, blah, blah, blah, just keeps going. Just keep circling that around over and over.

[52:27] Shayla: And that's how we get unstuck and release fear and shame and become wholehearted women.

[52:34] Vanderly: Yes. Full brained, wholehearted women.

[52:37] Shayla: Full brained, wholehearted women. So I think what I hear, if I'm someone who just goes from one thing to the next and has never processed trauma, never process pain, feeling like I don't even have time to think about a life coach because life is overwhelming and busy, the baby step, the one nugget to walk away with would be just start sitting in silence, which we don't do.

[53:01] Vanderly: Most people don't do.

[53:02] Shayla: And just take time to just start. That's what I'm picking out of the nugget. If I'm someone who all, this is a little too much for me, but I want a baby step because I feel overwhelmed, maybe that would be my first baby step is sitting.

[53:17] Vanderly: And if that's too difficult, what I would say to a woman, if that's too scary and difficult, I would never encourage a woman to do that. I would actually really one, I would want to hold her and say, I'm so sorry, this is so hard.

[53:32] Shayla: Yeah.

[53:34] Vanderly: But you aren't meant to do this alone. And somewhere you felt like you have to do this by yourself. So please go talk to somebody. Even if you can't afford it yet, just find someone to talk to if it's too overwhelming to be alone.

[53:56] Shayla: If that's too intimidating, the first step is actually to reach out for help first.

[54:00] Vanderly: And anything that just feels too difficult and too overwhelming, sometimes you have to be your own best friend first before you hope for a best friend. And sometimes that just looks like you really just sitting with yourself and going, I'm sorry I don't have it figured out, but I'm not going anywhere. And just telling yourself that.

[54:24] Shayla: Yeah.

[54:26] Vanderly: And I would just tell that woman, please stop being so hard on yourself.

[54:30] Shayla: Yeah.

[54:33] Vanderly: If you could at least even try to talk to yourself like that. Give yourself compassion the way you wish people would give you compassion. Give yourself compassion the way you probably do. Give others compassion. You need it. Your brain needs it. Your brain will heal and your whole body will heal. Your soul will heal if you would just give yourself a little compassion.

[55:01] Shayla: Yeah. And sometimes those emotions that we're experiencing is our body's way of being our best friend. Like if we're angry. Yeah. Because this wasn't okay that this happened to you or if we're sad. I feel like sometimes our body is giving those emotions are giving us messages. Kind of like a best friend. Like, hey, that's not okay. It's kind of a signal.

[55:24] Vanderly: Yeah, it is.

[55:24] Shayla: Being your own best friend first. Your body might be doing that. Your emotions might be doing that for you already and just take yeah.

[55:33] Vanderly: And many women don't know how to trust their emotions. That's part of not feeling safe with yourself. And if either you were taught that somehow and we won't go into that again. But that's why compassion is an antidote to yourself.

[55:48] Shayla: Yeah. That's beautiful. So this is so much I feel like I want to re listen to this like five times to let it sink in and process it. Brain science is so awesome and so like I know. Wait, so let me think about this again.

[56:04] Vanderly: I do love to nerd out on it.

[56:06] Shayla: So if people want to reach out for help and they want to reach out to you as a life coach, where should they find you? Should they go to your website first or your Instagram or where would you like them to find?

[56:17] Vanderly: Yeah, I would try the contact form on my website, vanderlylifecoach.com or my Instagram handle, Vanderlylife Coach.

[56:26] Shayla: Okay, great. And I will link all those in the show notes. Okay. So if you're looking for that spelling and all that, I'll put that in the show notes so you can click that.

[56:34] Vanderly: Okay.

[56:35] Shayla: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing.

[56:38] Vanderly: This was fun.

[56:39] Shayla: So much wisdom. This was fun. I feel like you need to be a regular guest a lot more of these, which we'll have to work out the geography on that one, but that's.What the internet's for. Shayla: So I'm excited to do future episodes with you and thanks for being here.

[56:53] Vanderly: Thank you, Shayla.

[56:56] Shayla: Wow, there is so much to chew on from this episode. I really hope you found it as helpful as I did. If you are ever looking for more information from this or any other episode, make sure to check out the show notes. The notes should be linked below the episode wherever you listen to your podcasts. Or you can check out our website, A Womanistpodcast.com, where you'll find our show notes and links to all our socials and our patreon. Becoming a patreon helps keep this show on the air. Patreons provide monthly support as little as $3 a month. If you are loving this podcast, it would mean so much if you could please leave us a rating or a review. Also, be sure to subscribe or follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.