EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever stopped to think about yourself and your story? If someone were to write your memoir what would it say? We all seek some level of authenticity but have trouble removing the labels and finding our whole story. Welcome to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. In this program we’ll explore diverse stories on identity to help determine what is truly yours. Now here is your host Diane Dewey.

Diane: Welcome to Dropping In everyone. Let’s talk about what’s going on. It’s a moment of awakening and others may stay sleeping but far more are tuning in. It’s a time when we see our true colors and as the song by Cindy Lauper goes and Marvin Gaye they’re beautiful as a rainbow. To help us find those true colors we have our guest Tallia Deljou, transformational coach. Welcome to the show Tallia.

 

Tallia: Thank you so much. So happy to be here today.

 

Diane: It’s lovely to have you. This idea of true colors I think it’s very apropos right now. You connect being authentic with purpose and with flow. I of course had to run out and get the book that Flow is based on. Before we delve in I just want to congratulate you that your practice is so well grounded in theory yes, but also really applicable relevant stuff that we can all use in our day-to-day life as we try to maintain in the new normal. Congratulations to you for such a sound practice in your in your coaching and your workshop work.

 

Tallia: Thank you so much.

 

Diane: I’m so excited because I’m going to give this a whirl. His name, this is a professor of yours at Claremont. Do you want to give it a stab? Go ahead.

 

Tallia: Yes it’s a mouthful. It’s pronounced Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

 

Diane: Okay. This book Flow it couldn’t be more relevant. I think what you’ve done is you’ve just taken it to the next level incorporating many other thinkers as well as your own personal brand which I find to be so warm and inviting. For those listening Tallia Deljou has a website and it’s TalliaDeljou.com where you can find just a whole menu of sensational resources, worksheets and conversations with Tallia so we’re really privileged to be having one um here today. We’ve got to find our superpowers now Tallia. People are feeling diminished by being isolated. How are you going about helping people to access their superpower within so that we can continue to manifest?

 

Tallia: So big part of this work is getting to know yourself, getting to spend time with yourself and starting to pay attention to times in your life where you’ve felt powerful, where you’ve felt that sense of purpose, where you’ve felt successful. I think many of us jump to thinking we don’t know and it’s just that we don’t know what questions to be asking ourselves or to be asked by somebody else. My role as a coach is to come in with questions and say again when in life have you felt this, when in life what would other people say about what lights you up and what your strengths are. Let’s go talk to them. Let’s go ask them questions. I think in the pursuit of finding flow and of understanding our superpowers and our strengths many of us stay kind of quiet and we don’t reach out, we don’t ask for feedback, we don’t ask for help.

 

We need certain things to be reflected to us so my first kind of instruction or step in the process is to reflect back, to start pulling out information and data from what’s worked in your life up until now and to then go and validate that with feedback from people who know you well in different parts of life, work, family, friends and start to see what the story that begins to emerge that you can feel confident and grounded in.

 

Diane: Well I think you’ve hit on a really key point and that is that rather than finding or searching for something we’re actually creating and we’re finding a way to instead connect the dots that enable us to create an identity. I think the cool thing about you Tallia is that I think you’ve always seemingly had this empathic desire to know when people spark and to be attuned to when they come alive or when they heat up. I think this is this is such an interesting combination to me that you take those moments where people feel resonant and then you build and help them build and see the way to create meaning and also to create a sense of self when we feel so self-isolated right now. That’s the magic of it and I think listening to your podcast Sincerely Me which I really recommend is something that has helped me in terms of staying connected because that really is the challenge right now with Covid 19 is staying connected to get this reflectivity, to get the feedback. Your role then becomes even more instrumental. You’re providing a mirror.

 

Tallia: Exactly, it’s exactly what it is. I think many of us are, there’s going to be resistance there too because a lot of us don’t want to see the things we need to do and don’t want to face those parts of ourselves but it’s unnecessary and important part of the process. I think you kind of summed it up so beautifully there and I think the main point here too is that we get so caught up in the roles and the titles and the identities and the skill set. Here’s what I do well and here’s what I’ve done and I think there’s so much that we miss when we just look at, when we just look at those pieces. The roles, the titles, the things you’ve done they don’t tell me that much about who you are as a person. They tell me again what you’re good at doing perhaps but I think that’s when people start to feel limited and constricted and isolated and a bit lost because the self-definition and self-description has become so closely tied to job perhaps or I’m a mother perhaps or some other one-dimensional thing.

 

It’s about expanding and seeing the big picture and to your point connecting the dots and recognizing that you are so much more than any one thing you’ve ever done. If you’re in this time with Covid losing jobs, not knowing what’s next. These are the moments where the mirror becomes that much more important because the question is who am I without the job, who am I without the role and the title, who am I underneath all of those layers that I’ve just kind of been hiding behind for all this time. It’s not it’s not an easy question to answer but it’s an important one.

 

Diane: Well yes because we have to be flexible so we got to discover that continuous thread, the thing that remains our true color straight through no matter what is happening and so that we can build on it so we can remake ourselves in the next rendition. I think that lest this all sound very daunting. I want to absolutely assure listeners that Tallia is extremely you make it so user-friendly and you also relate clearly with Brene Brown’s gifts of imperfection. That we are enough exactly as we are that to take this journey requires the three the three elements courage, compassion and connection.

 

You have this revelation yourself in real time on your podcast Sincerely Me. I think that it’s really important for people to understand. Inner work, it sounds like we can’t do one more hard thing right now. We’ve got our plates stacked with hard things but it’s really the thing that’s going to create flow and make things that much easier. This is actually a way of being um proactive and defensive right now both to handle this crisis to remake ourselves. Do you find that people contact you about this kind of quest?

 

Tallia: About this kind of work?

 

Diane: Yes about this kind of quest in terms of well what do I do now? I don’t have that title. I don’t have that job. I may not even have the other trappings that I relied upon and the who am I question. It becomes scarier. You need to really be helping people by holding their hand. I just wondered how your role as a coach has changed during the pandemic.

 

Tallia: That’s a great question. I think part of me wants to say it hasn’t changed at all. The other part of me wants to say it’s changed a lot. I think it’s really that given what’s going on with the pandemic and the uncertainty I think people are now almost being forced to re-evaluate. In many ways it’s a blessing because it’s challenging people to slow down because there’s no other option right now but to slow down. Whether or not you’ve lost a job I think it’s still the pace has changed and priorities are shifting and people are a little bit more willing I think now to step back and to look at what they’re doing, how they’re spending time and why. There’s an interesting element here when it comes to like the isolation that we’re all feeling because yes, on a social level it’s incredibly difficult and lonely and at the same time I think it gives us a little bit of space to think for ourselves and to not be so pulled by other people’s expectations of us.

 

People can really take this as an opportunity and ask themselves what is the opportunity for me here and that’s going to be different for everybody but what is the opportunity that is presenting itself to you right now. Who do you choose to be in this time? Do you choose to be the victim of it? Do you choose to be someone who steps into it and reevaluates? Do you choose to be someone who prioritizes themselves and does the inner work? The inner work yes, it’s work but it can also be fun and it can also be playful and joyful. I think in many ways it’s changed my role as a coach because it’s brought a new sense of urgency and for me it’s kind of lit this fire to really put my work out there because as many entrepreneurs I know can relate sometimes it’s vulnerable to put yourself out there and to tell people how you can help them and we don’t want to come off as too strong or too salesy or too whatever but now is the time more than ever to step up and to offer these types of services and to support people in this strange and unprecedented time of transition. We’ve never done this before so we have to let ourselves be new at it and be patient and be compassionate throughout the process with ourselves and with other people.

 

Diane: I think too when we’re on the verge of losing, maybe feeling like I’ve nothing to lose by risking more. I have the ability to take a step like through a threshold that as you say with a sense of urgency around us it’s more like I can do this because actually we’re in a bit of a pressure cooker. We have to remake ourselves in order to survive. I think there’s a couple of really interesting passages. One is from a writer that I much admire Adam Gopnik who basically wrote a very short story in Town and Country Magazine actually about  witnessing the pandemic and isolation but he talks about how we used to be consider ourselves predators.

 

Man was the acquisitor. We would acquire things, the new thing, the next thing. Turn here, go forward and as you say often that was meant to be quite alone whereas now we’re more like a bird. We’re in our nest. We are just hoping that the next day is just as safe as this day was. We’re hoping that things stay the same. I also think that that sort of refractory period where maybe we’re allowing us to think a little bit more because the distractions aren’t there. The new shiny thing, the busyness and I look at your worksheet here I love.

 

You’ve got a year in review but you’ve also got this excellent one on moving through fear because you do think people feel fearful right now. You asked these questions who am I in the process of becoming? Where and when did fear show up most? Where I feel the most ease and flow. There you’re building on strengths which I think is a beautiful thing and something that is much more guaranteed to create real foundational strength for us to go forward and to maybe just say we are interconnected even better.

 

I can barely talk regular words but I am going to try to say Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It’s not even good.

 

Tallia: It’s hard.

 

Diane: He talks about man as a social being and about fear. That’s why I think it’s so applicable that you deal with moving through fear because he says it’s in his book that one of the things that frightens us is the fear of being left out. Only people who were witches and shamans were historically comfortable spending time by themselves. In most human societies the worst sanction the community can issue is a shunning and often people become depressed and even worse neglect themselves physically, mentally, emotionally and don’t have their support systems and then languish and perish sometimes.

 

That’s I think what we’re up against here in some ways. Technology has come to the rescue though. You are able to reach your following which is extensive. You had through your maven your workshops on with women over 200,000 people. I wondered if you really feel that technology it really is connecting us and you’re able to reach the people in ways that are supportive to them as well. Do you continue with your workshops or will they, are they expanding even? We’d love to know and people would love to know how to join in.

 

Tallia: I think absolutely there’s a beauty. There’s a beauty to technology and at the same time it shouldn’t and it can’t be a replacement for one-on-one, real deep, intimate connection. Yes, I mean I think the reach has continued to grow especially right now because people are looking for resources online. I do teach. Every Wednesday I do a pop-up workshop and these are on topics ranging from discovering your strengths to defining success for yourself to uncovering what’s holding you back which is a personal favorite. This past week we did one on one of my favorite theories in psychology called the possible selves theory and it essentially presents to us that at any given moment we’re being shaped by three possible selves.

 

It’s our ideal self, our feared self and our should or expected itself. I had a lot of fun exploring that with the with a group of people. Outside of that I teach through General Assembly which is kind of a global network of ongoing professional development offerings for folks all over the world. We’ve been doing some workshops there. There’s always something going on and a way to bring this information to more people but at the end of the day it really is for coaching work in the one-on-one that you’re actually going to have the time, space and that kind of container to really look at you and what needs to come up for you and how to apply the information to your specific, challenges, obstacles, aspirations and the vision you have for yourself. I think that’s where most people right now are feeling lost.

 

They had this vision for what the year was going to look like or who they were going to be or what they were going to do and now they’re being asked to redefine that vision and to recreate it and redesign it. Go back to the drawing board.

 

Diane: Exactly and Tallia, the strange alchemy that occurs when people do connect. You also have a virtual book club. There’s lots of other resources. We’re going to get to them when we come back. There’s so many really interesting thoughts that Tallia, I hope that you’ll share with us that I see you as just a prime mover in the awakening force. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back on Dropping In.

 

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You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

 

Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Tallia Deljou, the coach that you need to know about who is so connected to both inner work and a sense of reality in the practical, physical world. Very in tune with what’s going on. As an empath Tallia I think I just so appreciate your really having such a grasp on both where we are in the inner moment and the outer moment. I know that I have read a good way to become more fearless is to cultivate tenderness as we expand our capacity to feel compassion and affection. We have less to be afraid of. This is by a writer blogger that I appreciate Rob Bresni.

 

It is the opposite of conventional wisdom though that says that you become brave by toughening up and reinforcing your psychic armor but you’ve gone deeper and you’ve pulled out the strands and said no, that’s not it. It’s really the inner work that’s going to pave the way to fearlessness. I just think this is such a beautiful, it’s just such a beautiful concept that people now do have the chance and it kind of you know coalesces your moment in this time.

 

The great part about all of those folks is that when you look at Tallia’s website you are so completely human. First of all you admit to eating chocolate chip pancakes and second of all you have the cutest dog and also you talk about things that are real like keeping it real. We mentioned your virtual book club which I think is a fantastic idea. People can connect with books that help you thrive and have the conversation together.

 

At the same time you’ve said in your podcast Sincerely Me sometimes words just sit on the page. They’re not jumping off and you need to help them engage. I wondered how does that work for you and how do you draw out of yourself continuously and maybe even how do you renew yourself and replenish yourself as a coach?

 

Tallia: I’m still trying to figure it out. I don’t sit here as a coach having figured it all out and having all the answers but it’s about continuing to check in with yourself and to recognize it’s a relationship. I think and many of us as women tend to think about and serve and give to everybody else but ourselves. Like anything else it’s a practice. What is that relationship to yourself look like? I’d love to also touch on fear since you brought up the idea of fear. It’s also a relationship right and I think my approach to fear is not that it’s something we shouldn’t feel. It’s in fact something that is here for us to keep us safe. Fear wants you to be successful and safe and to survive just as much as you want to be successful and safe and to survive.

 

Fear is something we have to learn to work with instead of work against recognizing again, it’s on your side. It wants the same thing for you so how do we look at that and treat it as a relationship. How do we talk to fear? Write a letter to fear? To answer your question I write letters to myself. I did it yesterday. I’ve been coming up against some major blocks and some fears of my own. The thing that I kept coming back to was it’s important to meet this resistance with kindness. There’s some information that is here for you and you have to hold the space for it to show up and to reveal itself without the pressure to do anything about it immediately but just to look at it, be curious about it and then see again who you choose to be with this new piece of information.

 

For me it’s constantly engaging in letter writing. It’s constantly tuning in and not just being in my head about it but tuning into my body, what emotions are holding on to my body and how do I start moving through whatever needs to be moved through with compassion with kindness, with patience. It’s hard. I’m not sitting here saying it’s easy to do but it’s part of the work. It’s the only way you’re going to get yourself into those places where you’re willing to look at the parts that are not so pretty and that are maybe attached to some guilt or shame and that requires some self-forgiveness and requires taking some responsibility. I have a coach like that’s my ultimate answer to this is how do I do it for myself is I also recognize what I cannot do for myself which is why I’m constantly working with a coach or a therapist.

 

Each of them kind of serves their own purpose but I also need the mirror held up. There’s only so much I can do for myself and I can’t ask people to do the work if I’m not willing to go there myself as well.

 

Diane: Exactly and it’s the interactivity, the dynamic of communicating. It’s just so important to bring things forth in ourselves. I love the idea that fear is an informant. It’s here to teach us. It’s also here to protect us as you noted. I think there you see the connection between fear as a protector and also into instinctive and intuition. Intuition is something that gets blocked. It’s intuit is to look over but sometimes that all gets blocked because we’ve got so many logical rules in our head about things we must do that it just becomes way too easy to overrule intuition.

 

We’re going to come back to that subject. I think there’s so much there and I think you’ve really accessed quite a lot and the fact that you do this work simultaneously and congruently with the people that you work with is just so inspiring to me because again it’s the real real. I’m glad we got to know you as a person. Maybe imperfect but well enough person because I want to give people the actual background on you now. At the outset it’s far too intimidating but to hear you and being so relatable much better.

 

Tallia Deljou believes that we all have a purpose and place in this world. She’ll help you find yours. I’m quoting from her bio. Her insights have been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, Monster, Nerd Wallet and Real Simple. She says that stepping into your power and finding your purpose is really about finding yourself. You have conducted workshops and spoken to audiences such as Mailchimp, General Assembly, Spanx, Michigan’s Law School of Business and more. You have a Forbes featured blog called Sincerely Me.

 

On top of all of that or just these amazing credentials you’re a positive psychology expert and transformational coach with a background rooted in mindfulness, stress reduction and deep transformational coaching. You have a master’s degree. You’ve shared insights alongside of Deepak Chopra, Jen Cincero and Adam Grant. I mean we’re talking about the real deal here and Tallia is still willing to be I think so wonderfully humble and human as to share your own experiences which I think that’s really important.

 

You really do work with both sides of the brain don’t you. I feel as though there’s a very, you have this intuitive resonance with people and yet you’re also working with a very logical side. You are a self-proclaimed nerd. I love that from this I think people should also even though you try to not have distance and are just as democratic with people who you coach I also want people to see it’s not easy being a coach. It takes a lot of study and time but would you describe, how would you describe your skill set? Is seems very well rounded to me and holistic.

 

Tallia: I think it’s definitely a collection of life experience and education, the school of life. I think I’ve learned and that’s probably my biggest strength is that I’m very quick to go through something and immediately be able to say here’s the lesson. I want to teach other people this lesson. I’m kind of quick to pull the opportunity in the moment and then want to talk about it, want to get on the podcast and share about it, want to write about it.

 

The skill set yes, I think is multi-faceted and multi-layered in that I bring in the research. I bring in the positive psychology frameworks and perspectives and numbers and statistics and at the same time we’re tuning into the emotion. We’re understanding where emotion comes from and how it’s either motivating you to take action or stopping you from doing what it is you want to do. It’s mental work. It’s mindset work but it’s also being in the heart and becoming familiar with what that even means and what that’s even like the kind of analogy I’ve come to talk a lot about recently is that many of us come to value our mental selves, our mental bodies as the MVP. We think we can think our way through any problem and we value ourselves because of our intellect and how we think and how we can solve problems but we forget about the other players that are sitting on the bench the emotional body, the spiritual body, the physical body.

 

There’s so much insight and information that we have that we kind of neglect or that we just don’t place as much value on because of I don’t know the way we’ve been taught, the things we’ve been told and the things we’ve been praised on. I think it’s making sure we’re looking at all these different parts and pieces of us and bringing our full selves to the table to our work, to our relationships and into our lives.

 

Diane: It’s also fear. I mean if we trust something that is a gut level intuition or based on an emotion and emotions are real then we take such a huge risk. We step out onto the unknown. We can’t find reasons for it. What if it doesn’t match up with those other, those things that you mentioned before, our expectations from others. All those what-ifs that are blocking the way.

 

I think you are talking about a person as though we’re a team. There’s the MVP and that’s shifting and the team how well is the team playing together is more what you’re asking. That kind of makes it, that does make it more enjoyable. I think that you talk about, you focus on mindset, identity and meaning and also vulnerability and happiness. I really like the vulnerability and happiness equation. That seems to be related to one another but so is mindset. Right now the challenge is to keep a positive mindset and which is also key to our manifesting and staying focused, not getting wept up in the panic but as you say this time is one where a lot of things have been stripped bare.

 

Now we are looking at unpleasant truths about ourselves that there’s things that have been overlooked. Racial injustice and the importance of Black Lives Matter and the identity of who we want to be before and after. You talk earlier. To me it’s really interesting that you relate, well first of all this team but also you talk about your personal experience. You are a first generation Iranian here in the US and you say in your post that you were raised Jewish. I wondered if those interesting cultural cross sections led you to become interested in this field.

 

Tallia: That’s a beautiful and very interesting question. I’ve never really kind of connected those dots. I mean I think in many ways an influence there might be that I never really fit into one box. It’s rare to be Jewish and Iranian-American and to have an aunt and uncle who are Greek Orthodox. It’s like we kind of have a little bit of everything and I think that has definitely lended itself to a certain open-mindedness and almost it forced me to recognize that we are all so much more than any one thing. No single thing defines anybody yet we are so quick to define ourselves by one thing. I think perhaps in that sense and I’m just thinking out loud with this now I think there’s definitely been some connections to the way I see myself and then the way I encourage other people to look at themselves and see themselves as all the pieces, as the full team, as more than just what they’ve done, where they’ve been and what they know.

 

Diane: I think you’ve successfully busted out of all the labels for anyone who um visits Tallia Deljou’s website you’ll see a beautiful young woman who just is the most inviting presence that you could imagine but I love this idea that you didn’t fit into any one box. I do think that helps in terms of being empathic for others who might be struggling to identify themselves whether that’s gender or ethnicity or any of these things that have come up now in the new awareness.

 

When we come back, we’re going to take a commercial break right now and how time flies speaking with you Tallia. When we come back we’re going to try to figure out how to not be controlled by the shadow of fear that prevents us from doing what’s necessary and from living to our fullest with all of these challenges that surround us. Don’t go away we’ll be right back with Tallia Deljou on Dropping In.

 

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You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

 

Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Tallia Deljou and we’re having such an interesting conversation. You do have a focus somewhat Tallia on women’s issues. You have as of 2015 you were the co-founder of Mavenly and Co, a career and business platform for women eventually reaching over 200,000 women through women work plus worth podcasts, the annual conference and workshops and coaching programs. I wondered if that was a focus for you and if you’d like to please, we’re begging and dying to know how to best access you for people out there who have questions.

 

Tallia: Thank you so Mavenly was kind of where my entrepreneurial journey began as a coach for about the first four years. It was as you said career business platform that was focused on elevating women in their work. Since then I have kind of parted from that niche and have broken off into my own practice now. I will say yes, the majority of people who come to me are still women but it’s not because the work is gendered or specific to women. I have a handful of men who come to me and who really struggle with the same things which is I feel lost, lack of purpose, lack of meaning. I don’t know what’s next and I just need that inner compass. I need to come back to myself and figure out what I want, what I value, what my strengths are and what have you.

 

In terms of how people can find me Instagram is probably the most fun platform for me right now. My handle is @TalliaDeljou and then my website that Diane has mentioned several times TalliaDeljou.com. I do have a podcast and full transparency we have not released a new episode in a couple of months now. It takes a lot to run a coaching business and to do all the things I do as a one-woman show. It had to take a bit of a back seat but there are about 50 or so episodes there all around personal development, inner work and then in terms of working and doing this work with me one on one is my bread and butter.

 

I work with folks in a three to six month capacity bi-weekly. Then my community is called the Inner Work Collective and that’s the book club Diane mentioned briefly earlier and every month we pick a topic like vulnerability or happiness or manifestation and attraction. We talk about it every day or two in this community. I pose reflection questions, exercises, practices and we choose a book as well to kind of support the learning as a community. To Diane’s again earlier point, many of us read a lot of things, consume a lot of information but the words kind of just stay on paper. It’s not until we can engage with the content, integrate the content, talk about it with other people that we actually transform from it and apply it in ways that actually result in some kind of change.

 

That community is also a membership based community and we have folks from all over the world who are joining and I’m super excited to see how that continues to grow and where that community continues to go. Those are the primary ways and as we’ve also talked about there are a couple worksheets on the website and other offerings but the one-on-one coaching is really where the magic happens.

 

Diane: Absolutely. It’s just so cool to me that you have these practical tools, the worksheets that you were talking about, letters to fear or letters to self. It’s like journaling but it’s much more directed and I think that that helps become more specific about the idea of resetting your inner compass. There are so many juicy resources and even in the podcast, even if time management, I can’t understand how you don’t have time but they’re just delicious. They’re juicy. You can tune in to Sincerely Me on your website. It’s been a real treat for me.

 

Now I’d like to also just take us through, I hope you’ll help us with we’re talking about moving through fear to get to flow basically. Flow is the title of the book by I think one of your mentors, certainly your theoretical mentors Tallia. He talks about flow as here we have the specifics about what flow actually is in case anybody’s wondering like as I did. There are clear goals every step of the way. That’s number one. There’s immediate feedback to one’s actions. There’s a balance between challenges and skills. Your actions and awareness are merged and dimensions are excluded from consciousness like time, space. It’s only the here and now. You suddenly exist. You find out oh my gosh, I’ve been writing now for two hours and I haven’t let the dog out and it’s just an amazing thing.

 

There’s no worry of failure, self-consciousness disappears, the sense of time I mentioned we forget all about and the activity becomes autotelic which is Greek for that which is an end to itself. Give us that mindset that helps to break through all these concrete dimensions that the world is too much with us now and how to how to gain a footing over this threshold.

 

Tallia: When it comes to mindset and moving through all of these things. My kind of first invitation to people is to not jump to the positivity or the how can I be grateful, how can I be happy, how can I think positively about this. I think that’s step two. Step one is just is a return to neutrality is what I call it. How do we get out of the judgment, the fear, the story we’ve created about what’s happening and just return to a place of neutrality to just look at the facts, to just be as objective as we can about it because our minds are our meaning making machines. I think the numbers are we have 60,000 thoughts a day, 80% of which are negative in content, 95% of which are repeated. We’ve thought if you’re thinking it today you’ve got it before, you probably thought it yesterday.

 

It’s helpful to just kind of know what it is we’re working with out there. Then to understand that whatever happens to us in life this is one perspective that I use in my coaching approach is that whatever it is that’s happening is a neutral objective circumstance. We then attach the thought or judgment or story to it. The thought is what leads to the emotion which leads us to taking action or not and then we see a certain result because of that behavior if you want to see a different result, if you want to get unstuck, if you want to change, if you want to see change you have to look at what is happening and what is the thought that your mind has created about what is happening. Is that thought conducive to you feeling good or not so good? Is that thought conducive to you actually taking inspired action or is it keeping you in a place of stuckness and fear.

 

I’d say for people as a starting point is to look at whatever’s going on and try to see it in as neutral and objective as a way as possible and then you get to choose what the story is about. You get to choose how to think about it. That to me is power. You get to decide what this means and we forget that. I think we forget that we choose the story. It’s like fear or judgment or whatever else. Is this true?

 

Diane: This gives us agency and freedom to choose. It is incredibly powerful Tallia and I think that you unlocked it and unpacked that very well in terms of basic concrete terms that we can understand. I mean there is a way in which those of us who have been “well brought up” just have too many rules going through our head about what we should do. Those things become very reflexive. They are not challenged enough. I think they’re not examined. They’re not held up as you say the neutral in the neutral space as information. They’re accepted as fact. What you’re talking about I think is uncovering and taking away the truthness of these so-called facts and saying hey wait a minute is this or is this valid for me any longer.

 

It seems to me that you’re also helpful in helping people grow since identity is a continuum, grow going forward that you’re giving people actually tools that they can use themselves in order to make these choices consciously about their life. What a gift that is. You have a retreat in Bali. This I have to ask about. Of course with the pandemic just feels so precarious everything. Will something like that take place in person? What are your thoughts on that at this point? When you convene I’m sure it’s super special to be together. You have a partner in this and that must be an incredible experience to have a very focused and consolidated workshop in a beautiful place.

 

Tallia: Yes so unfortunately we’ve decided to cancel the retreat to Bali for this year because it was supposed to be held this October and we just don’t know what things are going to look like in October and just didn’t want to put anybody in a compromising situation. For a retreat like that we want people to feel comfortable and safe and not have their guards up and not be afraid and not be cautious with every move they make. It is going to be postponed until further notice for some time in 2021 but I think there’s something so beautiful about coming together and getting out of your environment and sharing space with people who are thinking the same things and looking for a connection and looking for tools and resources and another way to do life because for many of us we’ve gone to a point where we realized if I keep doing what I’m doing I’m not going to, nothing’s going to change until something changes.

 

Unfortunately Bali’s on hold. I had another retreat planned in April with my sister that we put on hold. We’ve had to adjust and make some changes based on whatever is going on in the world. In some ways yes, go ahead.

 

Diane: We’ll see. I mean in some ways I think maybe what you can certainly finish that thought. In some ways it’s beneficial. Is that what you were thinking?

 

Tallia: Well in some ways it’s beneficial in that it’s challenging you to be creative as a business owner and to find other ways to help people feel connected. If we can’t meet in person or get on an airplane what else can we do? It’s not that or nothing. How else are we going to cultivate that and facilitate these connections and engage in these conversations? For me it’s been a kind of a fun way to get creative and find new ways to serve people.

 

Diane: Well it’s delightful and meaningful and very valuable that you do and that we enjoy this platform, this virtual platform of people coming together. I know that there’s we’re missing the tactile elements, we’re missing the visual elements but those components we’re exchanging other meaningful ideas and I think feelings and pointers to life as you say to help us do life better and certainly right now we feel very passive and not at all in charge.

 

I think how do we become less reactive to that and as you say take off the judgments that we have and show ourselves a little bit of compassion during this time when we most need it. I think also trauma plays a part and we are being collectively somewhat traumatized and in that version of things where you can’t process what’s happening sometimes you do switch over to the logical left brain and lean on it more rather than relying on your intuition which is the strongest guidance, your deepest wisdom. I think I believe and correct me if this is not true. I mean I think you are trying to guide us to our deepest wisdom.

 

Tallia: Yes 100%. Turning you back to what it is you know because I think we’re all very quick to assume that somebody else knows better.

 

Diane: It’s perfect ending for us today and thank you Tallia Deljou for such a wonderful time. We will be saved by compassion and love. I know that’s true but until then everyone. Stay safe. You such a positive gift to us Tallia and thank you for dropping in. Our crew and our producer, most of all thank you listeners and until next week be safe and thrive. Thanks for dropping in.

 

Thank you so much for dropping in. Please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.