Ever felt like your life was a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces or that the path before you was not clear? Join me, Gregg Berman, as we unpack the complexities of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and resilience in a world that's anything but perfect. I'll share how navigating life's messiness, including my own blunders, has taught me invaluable lessons. Discover the reality of living with ADHD and how those nagging stories of inadequacy and avoidance can bog us down. Through heartfelt anecdotes, like my adventures in self discovery while working as a kayak guide in Alaska, and the continuing adventure of creating this podcast, we’ll explore the profound impact of celebrating even the smallest victories and the essential role self-compassion plays in overcoming life's hurdles.
Looking to fuel your personal growth? Let this episode be your guide. You'll hear how your feedback shapes our journey together, making this podcast a space tailored to serve your needs. Find out how engaging through likes, comments, subscriptions, and shares helps us grow and support you better. Additionally, explore a wealth of resources on my website, inconnectionwithnature.com, from insightful blogs to coaching and EFT services. Let’s embark on this exciting adventure, carving out your unique path and embracing your true self along the way.
Ever felt like your life was a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces or that the path before you was not clear? Join me, Gregg Berman, as we unpack the complexities of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and resilience in a world that's anything but perfect. I'll share how navigating life's messiness, including my own blunders, has taught me invaluable lessons. Discover the reality of living with ADHD and how those nagging stories of inadequacy and avoidance can bog us down. Through heartfelt anecdotes, like my adventures in self discovery while working as a kayak guide in Alaska, and the continuing adventure of creating this podcast, we’ll explore the profound impact of celebrating even the smallest victories and the essential role self-compassion plays in overcoming life's hurdles.
Looking to fuel your personal growth? Let this episode be your guide. You'll hear how your feedback shapes our journey together, making this podcast a space tailored to serve your needs. Find out how engaging through likes, comments, subscriptions, and shares helps us grow and support you better. Additionally, explore a wealth of resources on my website, inconnectionwithnature.com, from insightful blogs to coaching and EFT services. Let’s embark on this exciting adventure, carving out your unique path and embracing your true self along the way.
Ready to unlock your full potential, join me, greg Berman. Your guide to self-discovery, self-acceptance and joy. This podcast blends life coaching, mindfulness and the power of nature to help you manage anxiety, cultivate self-compassion and embrace your true self. You'll find solace, guidance and inspiration as we develop actionable strategies to break free from self-doubt and limiting beliefs, to step into the fullness of who you are meant to be. Along our journey, we'll embrace the imperfection, fallibility and messiness of what it means to be a human with love, care and acceptance for all of who you are. This is your sanctuary for a more mindful, authentic and fulfilling life. Let's embark on this journey together, as we give you permission to be your full self. Well, if you thought last week's episode was a shit show, just wait for this one. I'm sure it will all work out and, as you'll soon discover, there have been all new issues I've had the opportunity to work through and I'm still working through them as I record this, because the system I'm using is brand new to me, so I'm still figuring it out is brand new to me, so I'm still figuring it out. At the same time, the truth is, I've been really touched and thankful for all the folks who've reached out to tell me how the last week's episode impacted them, to let me know something they took away from what I shared, or how it inspired them or created a sense of peace for them. Thank you to everyone who shared with me and to all those who took the time to post a review. It means a great deal to me. I really appreciate your efforts and it supports me as I continue to learn the process of creating this show.
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It seems one thing people really enjoyed was when I made a mistake last week and how I was able to move past it. I'm really happy that resonated for people. When I first last week and how I was able to move past it, I'm really happy that resonated for people. When I first got lost on what I was saying, my initial thought was oh shit, I'm exhausted, I don't want to have to record this over. And then immediately realized wait, this is perfect for a show entitled Permission to Be your Full Self, so why try and hide it? In fact, I was glad it happened. Of course, being a human being, I did have the thought oh man, what if someone thinks I scripted this into the show for effect? But that's okay, people are welcome to think, whatever they're going to think, and I can accept my humanness and my flaws, and even my insecurities about those flaws, even as I celebrate those very same flaws, while trying to minimize any negative impacts they have on me. I want to notice them, give love to those places and laugh with those places.
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As I wrote in my blog last week, I'm really proud of the ways I've been showing up for myself in the creation of this podcast and all the not enough stories. I've moved through all the insecurities, especially when some difficult piece of tech came up, and while I don't intend to regale you each week with what I moved through or am moving through in the creation of this podcast, yell you each week with what I moved through or am moving through in the creation of this podcast, because it's such a new process for me. I want to celebrate my process, both because it feels good to recognize the ways I've not let difficult moments stop me and because I hope there are some insights here for you. For example, I mentioned my ADHD brain last week and the trouble with doing hard things. Of course, you don't need to have ADHD or any other neurodiversity to have difficulty doing hard things, but I remember as a child, reading the Mensa exams in Discover magazine, I knew I was mentally capable of doing them, but the thought of focusing enough in order to do them felt excruciating and, in general, I chose not to engage in that mental battle. Yet a part of me wondered why it felt so noxious to do something I knew I was capable of.
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It would be many decades till I got the answer to that with my ADHD diagnosis, and while certainly I've done many hard things in my life, including long before the diagnosis, there is a way I've avoided them as well. There is a way I've told myself the story that I just should avoid doing hard things, whether that was trying to make friends, especially in my shyest days, or learn a new skill, or work on a project, or even go grocery shopping. There is a way my not enough stories gotten away. Or the whiny parts of me that think, or the whiny parts of me that think, oh, this is going to be too hard. Or that have an internal temper tantrum of stamping my feet and shouting like a child I don't want to, I don't want to. Those parts that mean I don't want to work so hard. Why can't this be easy? Why can't someone come and rescue me. And yes, you heard me correctly say even grocery shopping.
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About 20 years ago, I lived in Alaska guiding multi-day kayak tours. I had to do many, many hard things in order to build the skills that qualified me for that job, which involved me meal planning for all my guests for a week route, finding through the wilderness, cooking and keeping people safe as we explored some beautiful but also potentially deadly places. And yet I still remember, more than 20 years later, my amazement watching the process. The other guides went through to make a meal. This was as we were living in our guide shack. This was as we were living in our guide shack. They thought about what they wanted, planned the menu, wrote out the ingredients list and then simply walked a few blocks to the store to pick it up, came home and cooked it. Can you believe that? How amazing. Well, at least I remember how amazing that seemed for me.
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After all, that was not a pattern I learned growing up. The model I had was first, you complain about what you don't have and how hard it's going to be to get it, and all the reasons why it might not even be possible, you fret and you fume, and when things get really critical or hunger motivates you enough, then you figure something out. But to just make a decision and then go with no wanting, no victim mentality, no frustration, I was truly in awe, and I was even in awe of how in awe I was at such a seemingly simple thing and how, out of the body of my experience that was, I didn't even know doing things that easefully was an option. Of course, we can all feel victim-y in certain moments and we can all find even simple things difficult at times, and it's okay to be compassionate with ourselves in those moments, to check in on what we are needing, to see what resources we need to avail ourselves of and to comfort the little child inside of us that is calling out. Of course, another option is to yell at ourselves, call ourselves stupid or weak or incompetent, to use any fallibility as proof that we are not enough, that we are not worthy of love and we don't deserve good things because there is something wrong with us. Of course, that's not the best way to do things and our language might not be that obvious.
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There are often more subtle and more insidious ways that we speak to ourselves. In fact, I wrote an article about the ways we speak to ourselves several years ago. You can find it on the website Tiny Buddha. I'll add a link to it in the show notes as well. So back to present day.
Speaker 1:
Figuring out tech for me is not fun, and this week the tech has been a nightmare. Each time I go to figure something out, it just seems a rabbit hole that never ends, because there are 50 ways to do something and each step has numerous smaller steps filled with tech lingo that means nothing to me. In the past I might have just gotten super frustrated and given up. Now I notice the voices when I sit down that say this is going to be hard, and I'm able to do several things. When I hear those voices, I'm able to speak lovingly and reassuringly to those parts that assume it's going to be hard and let them know. A you don't know it's going to be hard, greg. B you can do hard things. In fact, you have lots of proof that you can do hard things. And C like working out. Doing anything that requires more effort from us, that requires testing ourselves in new ways, is actually an opportunity to grow, and I can remind myself how good it feels after I move through something hard, and I can know that setbacks, discomforts and frustrations are all a natural and normal part of growth, and I don't have to freak out just because these things happen. In fact, if I so choose, I can feel excited because I'll know I'll be stronger on the other side, and so will you when you move through your blocks. I'm currently working on an article about overcoming a freeze response, where I'll share more on the topic.
Speaker 1:
So back to the podcast. After spending months figuring out how to create it and the system to record it, I got the first episode done and then, before I even figured out how to get it out into the world, the online studio I used told me they were closing as of immediately. No warning, just that's it. See you and good luck. Well, actually, they did not say good luck. They tried to spin it as a part of the way they were trying to support their clients, but honestly, I did not feel very supported in that moment. In fact, initially I was crestfallen, frustrated and demoralized. How could they do this with no warning? I wondered, especially after I had been communicating with them for months about the studio process. But fairly quickly, I made a mental shift. You know what I'm choosing to know. This actually works in my favor, even though I initially had no idea how it was going to work in my favor, and I did move through it and found a better system to help me get it out into the world.
Speaker 1:
As it turned out, the company that I chose to work with made the process much easier, and if I had not been so upset, I might have just continued dealing with a company that was not serving my needs because I didn't know any better, but I allowed my frustration to be fuel instead of a barrier, which gave me the drive to figure things out. That has been the case multiple times along this journey. I've gotten the opportunity to step up to a new level, an opportunity to not simply marinate in struggle but to grow, because I've made the conscious choice to grow. When things got hard and while the process of publishing the podcast became easier, I was, in fact, back at square one as to how to record. In fact, when I typed this script, I had just spent a nine-hour marathon exploring different options, which meant there were several other projects that did not get done today, and I still have not found a new system with the features of the last system I used. Maybe in the end, I'll discover that the systems I have access to have better features, but at the moment that's out of my awareness, and the reality is I've probably been creating more work for myself and trying to find one that replicates the old system, though I had no idea of knowing that would be the case when I started my search.
Speaker 1:
At this point, even though I've done a test, it is still a mystery exactly how this will turn out. In fact, as I record this right now, I hope that this recording is going to be usable, but if you're hearing it, I suppose that it was Either way. I already have a sense of greater resourcefulness after all that I went through to post last week. I have a sense of internal trust that I will figure it out, that I can do what needs to get done and I can learn something new in the process. And you know what? The worst case scenario I don't get it out tonight and I end up taking a few weeks off from posting to regroup and to find the resources to support me. It won't be the end of the world. It would be a bummer for sure, but it does not mean I'm not enough or less capable.
Speaker 1:
Whether the obstacle is an internal one, such as tech and logistics, or an internal obstacle or insecurity or poor response to frustration, it simply means there was a struggle to overcome and I was invited to explore the ways I get to show up to deal with that obstacle. It is, in fact, an opportunity to cultivate more inner resources and more self-trust. Is there something in your life right now that is calling out for you to gain new resources, to cultivate more trust in yourself and to show up more compassionately with yourself in the struggle? If so, reach out to me. Let's have a conversation. I'd be honored to support you.
Speaker 1:
In the meantime, I'm going to continue figuring out the process of creating this show and making it the best it can possibly be.
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If you have any suggestions at all for things that would serve you better, topics you'd like me to cover or any other suggestions to enhance the experience, please let me know.
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You can reach me through my website, inconnectionwithnaturecom. If any part of this episode resonates with you, I'd love to hear what you're taking away from it, and it would mean the world to me if you would put a like and a comment wherever you get your podcast and, of course, subscribe and share far and wide with anyone you think this might speak to. That will really help me to grow. The more I grow, the more resourced I can be for you and I want to be there for you, and I'm excited to see where this journey takes us. And remember you can find your own way and have permission to be your full self. If you need support around that, I'm here to help you. I've developed a host of resources to support you, which you can find out more about by either signing up for my blog or viewing the coaching and EFT pages, all on my website again, inconnectionwithnaturecom. Well, that's all for this week. I'll see you in the next episode. May you have an empowering week.
