The Intelligence Of Your Heart with Mindie Kniss

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself second, and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome today's episode of the show.

Today we're going to be talking about a source of confidence that you might not be tapping into that much. Maybe you do on occasion, when the circumstances are right, we just fall into it, but not something that we consciously and repeatedly use. And what I'm speaking of is the source of confidence is your heart. And I don't necessarily mean that in a metaphorical way. I mean that in a very literal way. The capacity that you have to get out of your head, get out of your mind and get into your body, get into your heart is an incredible skill that I actually personally have been developing for years and that I train all my clients and students and other people to do because it is so essential. Our minds can be flipping back and forth all over the place, and if we're stuck in there, it's the only place we can reside. Then our confidence is going to be like a roller coaster at best, and often just way lower than we want because there's so many fearful thoughts, doubtful thoughts, questioning thoughts, and we gotta be able to go deeper. And I'm so excited because I could talk about this, but I have a guest who can talk about it way better, who has studied it way longer and is truly an expert of the heart. And so we're going to dive into this interview in just a moment. You're going to learn a ton about the intelligence of the heart, how, how to use that. First of all, what does that even mean? That's one of the first questions I ask her. What does that mean? The intelligence of the heart. And then how do we use that intelligence to feel more confident on a day to day basis, to have more confidence in our conversations, in our relationships, at work, in our lives? And the interview is fascinating. I learn a ton. I bring up some of my own personal questions about going into the heart and my challenges of doing so, what the blocks are to that and how we can live with more confidence and ultimately more trust in life. So let's dive into that interview now.

Expert interview.

My guest expert today is Mindy Kniss and she's an award winning humanitarian, international speaker and professional coach. And she had a cushy Fortune 100 career and, and she decided to leave that for adventure and entrepreneurship, which I think is fascinating. Talk about courage. Talk about trusting your heart. And she left corporate America. It happened to be the 2008 financial crisis and it didn't go so well. She faced foreclosure, eviction, and eventually bankruptcy. And then she had a period where she was living out of her car in a small office. Fast forward to today and Mindy is the CEO of Lucra, which is a company dedicated to helping professionals and speakers and coaches create lucrative lives, both personally and professionally. And she's also known as one of the leading teachers of heart intelligence that she shared all around the world. In addition to her work and training people, she also goes around the world and does acts of humanitarianism. She's been given the Global Health Fellowship. And based on her work with women and children in developing countries, she lived and worked in East Africa creating HIV AIDS prevention initiatives. And she also runs retreats now called Heart Path Retreats Core Coaching Academy, really teaching people how to get into their heart, among many other things. So just a long history and track record of doing this work, serving people and being an amazing human. So I'm so excited to be speaking with Mindy.

Hey, Mindy. So welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Well, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

So we had a great opportunity to talk not too long ago at a business event where we really started to dig into the heart. And I know this is an area of study for you for many years and I really want to have this episode be not just some interesting intellectual appetizers, but really help people get a felt sense of maybe a different way of being where we can really be less in our heads. Because I know when it comes to social anxiety and shyness and all the challenges with that, we can be so in our heads. And I think that's true for man, everyone, even outside of people struggling with anxiety and low self esteem. So how do we get out of our heads, more into our hearts, more into our bodies? So I'm really excited to dig into all of that and maybe you could share a little bit about your experience just so people kind of know where you're coming from. Of why are you interested in the heart why did you start studying it? What led you down this path?

Sure. Thanks for that. So I started studying this. Actually, it's kind of a funny story. I didn't intend to make this a big, big thing about what I was up to in life. I was finishing. Well, I had to choose a topic, actually, for my dissertation, and I was studying metaphysics and philosophy and all this other stuff. And I came across this book and then this organization called HeartMath. And I thought, you know, that's kind of interesting because I'm a very heady person. It's sometimes confusing because people get to know my work or they get to know me, and they're, oh, yeah, Mindy, you're so in your heart. And I'm like, no, not like, I study this because I need it myself. So it was. It was a combination between personal quest of just spiritual development and personal development and then also needing to write my dissertation on something. So I decided to take a look at the science behind the heart's intelligence. And one of the things that really appealed to me in that regard is that because I am so headstrong, I definitely rely on my intellect as my primary facet in life. And I've always kind of been directed and driven by my head. So much so that it actually showed up for me in a physical manifestation. A number of years ago, I had just returned from living and working in East Africa, and I was kind of reintegrating into the United States and back to my normal job and normal life and all this type of thing. And I had this really severe neck pain. So I had never been to a chiropractor before that. And I went to the chiropractor and they took some X rays and they said, well, yeah, Mindy, there's a really good reason why you're having so much pain. Your head is literally too far forward from your body in alignment with the spine. And I thought, what a goofy metaphor that is. That literally in my body, my head was more forward than the rest. And that's totally how I had been living my life. The problem was not only was that impacting me physically then, but in my relationships, in my just personal sense of my life and being, it wasn't really doing the job. So looking at this heart math stuff, this concept of the heart having its own intelligence, I was really fascinated because then I could basically bring the two worlds together. I could use the intellectual aspect and the science and all the facts and the data and things like that, but then combine forces with a more spiritual perspective and what that has developed into over the last number of years has become the primary thing that I do now. Like, that's mostly what I'm known for. If people know me as a coach or as a retreat leader, that's what they think of first probably, is the heart intelligence piece. So it was kind of funny how that began, but to me, it was not only lifesaving for myself, but I've been able to continue to help other people figure out how to do that, how to get out of their head.

Sure. And what a common path that is for someone to become focused on something for their own healing, their own growth, and then turn around. And that's their gift to share with others. So I love it. That's how it's supposed to work. So you said the heart has an intelligence.

What does that mean?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I don't know about you. You're a little bit younger than I am. But when I was in school and let me know. This might be the same for you. But when I was in school, they basically taught us in science classes or anatomy classes that the brain controlled everything in the body. The brain would essentially send signals down through the spinal cord and then out into the various parts of the body. And it really was the whole control center. So that was just kind of common knowledge. And that's how it was. Except that we have found now, with modern science and more advanced technology, that that isn't exactly always the case. They found within the heart that there are actually a vast amount of neurons, which used to be considered just brain cells, because that's where they thought they were, is in the brain. But there actually was such a strong grouping of them in the heart that that they began to call it the little brain in the heart. So that's kind of the elemental level, is that there is this section of the heart that is filled with neurons or brain cells, and it's able to not only receive messages from the brain, but send messages up to the brain, or sometimes not even involve the brain at all. The heart can communicate directly with various organs in various parts of the body and. And essentially act as if it's its own little command center and send out a variety of chemical responses to different things, whether that be neurotransmitters or whatever else that might be. It can act on its own accord. And it has this, as we could say, intelligence. Now, here's where it gets really, really, really fun. And this is the part where I like to kind of geek out on it because it's fascinating to me. So not only can it do that stuff on the physiological level, that alone, okay, it's kind of interesting, but there's way more to the story. What they have found is that they did a variety of experiments based on intuition. And they're trying to determine, you know, where does intuition come from, that, that knowing. And I don't mean intuition as like some weird woo woo thing. I'm like just talking about that sense of, you know, you walk into a room and you know something is not right or meet somebody and you just have this weird off feeling about them. All of us have had that experience, whether we think of ourselves as intuitive or not. So in these experiments they decided, okay, we're going to test this out and see how this happens, see if we can figure out where intuition comes from. So what they did was they hooked people up to all the different technology. In other words, they might have electrodes on their head or on their skin, testing a whole variety of things, everything from their pulse to their hrv, which is heart rate variability, which is a big term in heart intelligence work, to EEGs or EKGs, all the different things. They started showing different images on a computer screen to the person who was in the experiment. All they were doing was testing how their body was responding to these images. Now, three quarters of those images were something super benign. It was maybe a picture of a landscape or a picture of a cup or a table, something just very boring. They were not having anything to do with an emotional response. So the people, their testing was just completely normal. Everything just looked fine. However, the other quarter of those images were designed to elicit some emotional response. And that might be a picture of a bloody corpse on the ground or a snake that is ready to strike right at the camera lens, something like that. And here's what they found. This is so cool. They found that the body would actually react to the image of those images that were created to elicit an emotional response. The body would react up to 4.75 seconds prior to that image being shown on the screen. Now, the deal with the images is they were completely randomized. So nobody, not the experimentor, the experimentee, nobody knew what image was coming next. And yet their body, based on all of those electrodes, would respond before the image showed up. And guess where that intuition started from?

In the heart.

In the heart. You're right. Most people think of intuition as something that comes into the head. And what they were able to find and prove scientifically is that it starts in the heart. And Then it sends signals up to the brain. And sometimes this is totally unconscious. You know, sometimes we have no awareness of what is actually happening, but sometimes it does kind of burst through that level of consciousness, make its way up to the brain, and then we're like, oh, huh, you know, I have a funny feeling about this. Or, you know, there's other intuitive capacities that we can have. But regardless, our body is reacting first. And it's that, that center point of the heart, which I just think is fascinating.

What also makes me wonder, what is the heart picking up on that it can see that quote, unquote, see that, or react to that occurring? Do they have any speculation or do you have any sense of speculation as to. Is it tapping into some sort of collective consciousness or something?

Yeah, Aziz, I love where you're going with this. So this part, of course, cannot yet be proven by modern science. I will say that as a preface. But what they think might be happening.

Science. Let's go into wild speculation and metaphysics.

Exactly. Purely metaphysical. What they think might be happening. And based on everything that I've read, because, you know, I'm looking at it from both the science perspective more recently, but even before that, my undergrad years ago was in religious studies and theology. So I have this like kind of spiritual, religion based knowledge and then this science. And really, I agree with everything that they're. They're thinking, and what they think is that it could be possible that what the sages and the saints and all the, you know, the ancients have said forever that the heart is the seat of the soul. So what if literally there is some connective point where the soul, you know, that. That piece of us that we can't necessarily define or see or touch or, you know, but it is us, we kind of have that sense. Most people have that sense. What if that. What if literally it is that bridging point from the physical and the spiritual and that happens through the heart? So that, yes, Aziz, you're right. Like there might be some greater field or collective unconscious or whatever else we want to call it, but that, that is the entry point from all that other information. And we can just kind of get glimpses of it every now and again, which I think, again, is totally fascinating.

That's really cool. And, and there's. There's so much there, you know, of useful information, guidance, you know, for ourselves, for. From the day to day, if it is coming from something bigger, broader, maybe less fearful and restricted than our mind often can be. And so to help kind of make the Leap. I have been studying this for a while and really found in my journey and exploration of confidence that, okay, change my thoughts, reframe this. Think of it this way. Only got me so far. And I could try to reframe something in my head and then still feel tense in my body or anxious in my body. And I said, okay, well, let me change my behavior. So I would take bold action and that would have an effect, and I could look a little more confident or even achieve something externally. And yet I found to really deeply experience a sense of peace and confidence within myself. The journey kept on guiding me deeper and deeper into my body and into my heart and a greater capacity to bring my attention to. To those places that are anxious inside of me and be with them and calm them. And yet I found that when I talk with people about this, some clients and other people get what I'm saying right away. Like, oh, yeah, in your body.

Right, right. Okay.

And other people are just like, what. What are you talking about? Like, I mean, I want to. You know, they're not resistant. They're not fighting me. They're just like, I don't. I don't understand. You know, where do you feel that in your body? Is what I'll ask them. And they'll be like, ah, I don't know.

They don't know.

I don't.

Nothing.

I want to help me. And so I'm curious, in your experience, I know you lead retreats on this, and how do people. Let's help make that bridge here. How do people go from the head into their body more into their heart, into feeling more?

Yeah, I love this. So there's two things that I would say first and foremost. The first is you need to get past. Well, you know, anybody listening to this needs to get past that concept of like, this is what I believe, or this is what I know. When people show up to my retreat, oftentimes they are fairly set in their ways and their belief systems. And, you know, this is how the world works according to them. And I will tell them straight up on day one, I'm like, you know, it doesn't really matter to me what you believe. I actually don't care at all what you believe. What I am interested in is, what are you experiencing? And maybe a harder question is, you know, what are you feeling? And Aziz, I agree with you. Some people, they don't necessarily know that because they're so cut off from it. They're so used to keeping that space within themselves, numb to whatever's going on. That they, they actually don't know what they're feeling. So, you know, a way that I talk about that is what are you experiencing? And sometimes that's a little easier pathway for them to, to follow. But really here. And I'll actually tell you another story because this is so fun. I really enjoy the skeptics that show up to my retreat because those are the best ones because they're like, hey, you know, what are you, what are you here to teach us? And they've got their arms folded and they're sitting back in their chair, you know, ready for me to talk some woo woo stuff to them. And I don't really go very woo woo. I'm just keeping it mostly in the intellectual and the science based because that's, that's where I tend to live. But I did have this couple that came from Oregon to the retreat. It was the first time they had been there. I had not met them previously. And the woman has ms, so she uses a wheelchair to get around. And at the retreat I took everybody through this meditation experience. And then after the meditation I usually ask for people to share and talk about, you know, what did you experience? Or whatever. And I was surprised actually, because these two were definitely skeptics. They were, they were tough cookies. And this woman raised her hand and I'm like, well, this should be interesting. So she's very much pausing as she's talking. It's as if, because she is really smart, she's very intelligent, very bright. And I could see her trying to come to terms with what was going on because I knew that it was something that she maybe hadn't experienced before and also couldn't logically explain, which to her that was problematic. So she starts telling us about the way that her legs normally feel because of the Ms. Symptoms. She has often this tingle or this just general discomfort in her legs. And it's most of the time. And she said it's been going on for basically since I was diagnosed with ms, so a long time, years in the making. And she said the weirdest thing was when I was doing that meditation, I was just listening to what you were saying and my legs were completely calm. I didn't have that tingle anymore. I didn't have that discomfort. And everybody in the room was just kind of like, whoa, that's really cool. But then her husband, who's sitting next to her has tears in his eyes because to him, he knows that that's such a distinct difference from how our normal experience is. And so then the two of Them, like it doesn't, it still doesn't matter to me what they believe in. But they had a unique experience and those two have come back more to my retreat than anybody else. They keep coming back. So that is an example of what I mean by saying like, it doesn't matter what it, what your belief system is, what that intellect of yours is telling you. It's like, what are you experiencing? And here's little story so that I can describe how I share with people to get underneath all that head stuff. So when my brother and sister and I were young, we grew up in Chicago and my parents every single summer would take us to the beach at North Carolina. So we would go out to the ocean and rent a beach house for about a week or two weeks and just play in the waves and, you know, soak up the sun. And I noticed something when we were younger, we would try and we would look at the bigger kids and they would be out like playing in the ocean and we would try to get out to where they were because we wanted to be cool like the older kids and be out there too. And we would start going out. But then what happened was the wave would come in and we would get pushed back to shore every time. And so we're looking at these older kids and we're like, how do they get out there? We keep getting pushed back to shore. This isn't working. But we notice something is what those kids were doing is when a wave would come, they would just dive underneath the wave and then they wouldn't get pushed back to shore. They would be safely and having fun on the other side of the wave, further out from the shore. And we're like, okay, cool. That's how you do it, I guess. So we tried it and lo and behold, it worked. So we were able to get out to where all the fun was happening. I used that metaphor in the same way because that's exactly what we need to do when all of the head stuff, the waves that come into our lives, try to push us back. And by back in this case, I mean more to just existing in our head, living from the neck up, having a completely numbed out body below our neck. Those waves come in the form of insecurity, scarcity, jealousy, envy, anxiety, all this negative stuff. You know, any type of fear based thought that can be a wave that can push you back. But what's cool is that we all are able to dive underneath those waves and maintain our position or actually progress in our development. In other words, get out further into the ocean. You know, I always talk about the brain as that's where all the insecurity lies. That's where the fears and the frustrations and the anger and you know, put in any other negative word, it's all in our head. None of that stuff is in the heart. The heart is joy, the heart is love, the heart is peace. So it's not even there. You know, people a lot will say, well, I have a broken heart. I'm like, your heart is not broken. Your heart is just fine. Your heart probably went through some experience and that's just the same as lifting weights. You know that muscle is going to tear and then it's going to grow back stronger. But that doesn't mean it's broken. Well, the heart has the same thing. There can be grief and there can be loss and sadness. But again, that's not what's in the heart. That stuff is in the head.

Hmm, that's fascinating. I like that image of diving underneath the waves. And I find that can be almost taken literally in that you can drop your attention, you can notice that it's getting hyper focused in thought and you can drop awareness and scan into your. I love the breath for this because you can breathe into your chest right around your heart and you can also breathe deeper and tune into your belly and it's like you're diving underneath that. And I want to touch on something you just said there, which was that a lot of the pain is really from our mind. And what I found is that as I do more kind of this depth into my body work that I'll say in a morning meditation or go for a morning walk with no headphones, just almost like a meditation walk. And on a daily basis there's usually 20 to 30 minutes of feeling in my heart. Diving underneath the day to day thoughts and to do lists and this and that and just a sort of discomfort to feel in my body and my heart. And it's, you know, it's almost like the processing of the day before what's going on. So maybe there's a little insecurity about X, Y and Z. And I drop down and feel in my heart and kind of feel it for a few minutes and then it passes. And then, then sometimes it's like I don't even know what I'm thinking. There's not even a specific thought. It's just, oh, there's an ache in there or there's a squeeze in there and I just keep staying in it, stay in my body. And then usually after 30 minutes of this give or take on the day, I feel happier, lighter, more free, more open. And I'm curious what your thoughts are about that. Is that a typical experience you've seen? Is that a lot of residue of just a lot of mind based living from the day before, from that morning? What are your thoughts about that?

Yeah, I think that a lot of it is that's just how what we're used to, you know, I mean, I very much resonate with what you're saying because it can feel a little bit uncomfortable. But I also believe that that's simply because we're just not used to it. So it's just something different. I have a client that I've been working with for years and I love quoting her because one of the assignments I gave her was to start writing a gratitude journal and to write three things every evening that she was grateful for. And she was doing it for a couple weeks and then she got back to me and she said, mindy, this gratitude shit does not work. And I said, you know what, you're right. If you're doing it like you're doing it, because here's what she was doing. She was making it a very logical activity that involved no feeling at all. And I told her, I don't really, again, I don't care about the logic of it. What I care is the experience of it. So if you can think about that thing that you're grateful for, but you have to go beyond that. As you said earlier, Aziz, there is mindset and, and that can be very, very helpful. But I don't think it's the total package. I don't think it's the full story. There's so much more that we can add on to that, and that's that depth that we're talking about is just getting into our body, getting into our heart. And you know, I love what you were saying earlier about you can actually shift the point of awareness. That's one of the activities that I do at my retreat, is have them experiment with that and see how that feels. And the same thing happens, especially if they're newer to this world of meditation or just the world of the heart or the body, like being embodying yourself, it can feel really uncomfortable. And there are people that are like, I don't even like that. The other thing that's very interesting in this instance is that you can actually, and I'd recommend you try this, Aziz, just because I'd be interested in what your experience was. You can actually have a Conversation. You can facilitate a conversation with your own heart. And what happens is that sometimes people will say, hey, you know, heart, is there anything that I need to be doing now? Or it works even better if you can ask yes, no, or wait questions, you know, because the heart is very, very simple. It's not all complex and analytical like the brain is. So it's very, very simple, very basic. And sometimes people have said, you know, heart, I'm so sorry for having neglected you for ever. Maybe my whole life, potentially, or many, many years since I was hurt earlier and then just kind of closed off to it. I think that that's another piece. You know, I'm just kind of thinking through this as I'm talking. Another piece of the puzzle with that discomfort is probably why somebody closed off their heart in the first place. Most of the time. My guess is that there was some kind of traumatic incident. Now, that could be, you know, huge trauma, like maybe they were bullied or maybe somebody was raped or, you know, something extreme. Or it could be something that just seemed very traumatic to that person, even if the outside world would not necessarily categorize it as such. But so there's this thing, and then what we often do is to say, well, screw that. I'm not going to feel this crap anymore. I'm done. So we just shut down, keep the body numb, live from the neck up. And then anytime we're asked to go back down into that depth, we're like, yeah, no, thank you. That feels terrible because it brings up some sort of residue from the old stuff, the old trauma. So it could be that. And I just recommend, you know what, use your brain in that, in that time to talk yourself through it, because in your logical intellectual brain, you can say, okay, I know that I am safe right now. I know that I'm in a safe space. I know that I'm taking good care of myself. I know you know all these things and utilize that intellect to be able to get through the feeling. I always say it's not one or the other. Brain versus heart, we have to use both.

I love it.

Yeah. And I resonate a lot with what you're saying and my exploration of it. When I converse with my heart and slow down, it's a pretty clear, consistent pattern of where the main sensations are coming from, and it's actually related to being a parent. So I have two young children, and as I raise them, they're two and a half and four and a half with my wife. Through different ages, I feel a lot of my own Childhood experience. That's when I started to shut down when I was young, especially in relationship with my dad. So by giving to my children this sort of presence and attention that I didn't receive, there is a lot there that's requiring that attention in me to heal. And it feels like as I do it more, it's like, I don't know, fulfilling something. It's meeting some need, some reason why I shut down and went into my head and, you know, all kinds of other things that come from being in the head, like constant distraction and video games and porn and pot and food and all these things to try to stay numb in the body. You know, there was something that you said in there that I think is really interesting too, which is that we close down. It's almost like there's. We kind of put this armor around the heart, to use that metaphor. And then inside, though, is like all the good stuff, right? The love, all the stuff that we want. We're like, no, no, I don't want to go in there. And it makes me think of the Joseph Campbell quote, like, you know, the thing that you most want and most fear are in the same cave.

But.

And we have to be able to go into that. And I think there's this tremendous courage it takes to go into those uncomfortable feelings to really get to the other side. And I do think that it's possible to resolve them by going in. I do have a question about this. And this maybe brings us back to metaphysical, because I love that stuff too. So, you know, we go deeper in. Let's say we kind of work through some of the outer layers of pain and armoring, and then, boom, we're in the. We're in the. More the core of it. Maybe there's feelings of love or peace or connection. And also if that's like the plugin to sort of the superconscious divine, whatever, the noumena, whatever you want to call it. There's something about that that I think, at least for me, is kind of inherently terrifying to my mind, to my thoughts, that almost doesn't want to go there.

And it's almost like, why do you think that is? I'm very interested in this. Like, what about. Is about it creates that sense of terror, because that's a pretty strong word to use.

Well, it's almost like in order to go into that, I need to be fully in my heart and not like sort of not existing in the mind. So they're not necessarily working together in that way. Terrifying. I would say it's a sense of groundlessness, emptiness, nothingness, vastness, infinity. That is that if I go into my head can create noise of like emptiness, futility, nothingness, what's the point of it all kind of stuff. Whereas if I can just stay in my heart with it, then it can actually be very peaceful in that space. And I always just assumed that was like inherently human, but maybe it's, maybe it's me, maybe it's my messed up brains.

I think, I think that, no, I think that you are very inherently human. I think that is a common thing for many, many people. And the, the word that I would use, you know, when I hear you talk about that is trust. To me, there is this vast amount of trust that I have in myself, in my process, in the universe. And you know, I just feel like our journey along this life path is really to just try and glean as much wisdom and development and, you know, beingness as possible. And that level of trust. I think, you know, because I, I don't personally experience that terror, but I, I can tell you that it's not that uncommon because I've heard similar things from other people. And you know, you, you mentioned the word courage earlier and I want to go back to that, to touch on the etymology of that word. So the word itself is of the heart. If you think of the word courage, it comes from the French. The word coeur in French means heart literally. And that if you trace it back even further, it comes from the word cor c o r which is Latin for heart. So the very word courage itself is based on heart. And to me those two things are one and the same. It's not like this heart is this kind of weird, metaphysical, feeble thing. It is this power source, this courageousness, this, you know, you've heard the term lion hearted, like just powerful thing that we have inside of our chests. Most of us are not even accessing anywhere near the capacity that it has to really propel us toward our purpose and to just light a fire within us that is then so contagious to other people that they want to come and work with us. I mean, it's really amazing when you get tapped into that. To me, if you think about and Aziz, you probably know this, but in the body, the physiological response between excitement, fear is basically the same in terms of physiological. So if somebody jumps out, you know, from a dark alley at you, a lot of things are going to happen in your body. Your pupils are going to dilate, your heart rate is going to increase, the blood is going to flow to the extremities so you can have fight or flight sweating. You know, all these different things happen in the body. Well, at peak points of excitement, the same exact physical things happen. So my deal is, okay, if it's exactly the same in the body, we are just naming it something in our brain because the body doesn't know which it is. Am I afraid? Am I excited? So for you, I might say, take that terror and turn it into fascination, turn it into exploration and be like, this is an adventure. Let me go figure out, you know, what's going on in this heart. And it's pretty cool to go check it out because the body physiological is going to react exactly the same way.

There's probably a valence there of excitement, means discovery, something interesting, something new, Whereas the fear side of it is something threatening, something dangerous. That's going to hurt me is kind of how you're holding it. I love that idea of courage being of the heart and residing in the heart and that being related to trust. So maybe if you could share a few more of your thoughts about that, about how we can develop trust. Because I know, you know, confidence with faith, with trust, right? So how do we develop more trust? What have you found in your own life? How do you build that? Almost like a muscle. Maybe it is the muscle of the heart being built. And so I'd love to get your perspective on how we can build and live with more trust.

So awesome to even think about this. And this will probably resonate with your listeners a lot because I imagine that, like, you and I, they are probably very heady people, very headstrong people. So I actually utilize the power of my mind to be a great force for my own development in this case. So people say, well, how do we learn how to trust? You know, how do we do it? How do you get started? And I say, this is very simple. All it is truly is a decision to do it, to trust, deciding how you see the world. You know, I love. I love there's a book out there called Pronoia by a guy named Rob Bresney. And he basically said it's the antidote to paranoia. So instead of, like freaking out about everything that happens, he's like, no, everything that happens is happening for your greatest good. It's happening, you know, not to you, but for you. It's all for your development. It's all for your greater experience of the planet. It's all for whatever you came here to figure out and grow into. So it's all Good in that sense. And to me, trust is about deciding how I want to see the world. And in my view, I totally agree with Rob Bresney. And I'm like, yeah, because you know what? Even if I'm wrong, when I'm dead, first of all, I'm not gonna care anymore because I'll have no ego left around that. And secondly, I will have led a really positive and fun and adventurous life, not one cowering in fear and terror. You know, I'm all about the adventure of both real life adventures in the wilderness and of the mind and of the heart. So to me, it's a decision of how do I want to see the world? And then the word actually decide is meaning desidere in Latin, is to cut off. So to cut off the other options, Cut off that whole idea that there is, you know, there are bad things that could happen or my heart is broken, or, you know, any of these other things that we say as a just kind of commonplace. But it's deciding to say, I trust that everything that happens is for my best. And also, every person that comes into my experience is coming in to teach me something that I need to know.

I love it. I love it because it's not waiting around and hoping that it'll just happen. It's really cultivating that as a personal philosophy and as a practice to build that capacity, to really live from that. And I'd imagine as you live from that, more and more it gets reinforced, so it gets stronger and you build that muscle.

Yeah, absolutely. It's very active as opposed to being passive. And in my line of work, I'm assuming yours too. Most of what makes a difference is when somebody takes action, whether that be just changing a thought process or actually, you know, physically doing something. That's what changes things. It doesn't change things to, you know, sit around and cower and just be afraid of everything. I'm so fascinated, and I love, Aziz, the work that you're doing, because, you know, I haven't necessarily specialized with anxiety and looked at it as. With the depth that you have, but it's so fascinating because to me, anxiety is a lack of that trust, because anxiety is looking, you know, maybe ahead at the future and then feeling the fear of it right now. Or I also talk about depression as like, looking at the past and feeling that right now, but really in the right now, you're all good. And if you decide to have that trust in yourself, in your power of your heart, you know, connected to that infinite intelligence, whatever that might Be in the universe at large, you know, in other people. Like, it's just so much easier to make your way in the world and then to do really cool stuff, no matter where that path takes you.

I love it. That's a fantastic conclusion to that. And it reminds me of what's her name, Feel the Fear and do it anyway. Susan Jeffers. You know, I love that book. And in it she says the kind of the core solution to any fear, because we can have a million and one things that we're scared of about the future and such that you were talking about. But the core solution is I can handle whatever happens, whatever comes my way. And that's the sense of that active trust that you're talking about. I really love that. It's very different than kind of wishing and hoping things go my way versus no. I'm going to handle whatever happens. And I know it is serving me in my life. So it's a very empowering philosophy. I love it. I love talking with you. Feel like we're always just dipping our toe in the water. But if people want to go deeper and really learn this ultimate life skill, I think because you can use your intellect to earn a bunch of money, grow a business, and maybe even build some relationships, but to really feel and enjoy the richness of those relationships, of what you're creating, of the money, feel the fulfillment we gotta live and get into our bodies and into our hearts. So I love the work that you're doing and helping people bridge that. So for those who want to go further, learn from you, look at retreats. Where can people go to find out more?

Yeah, actually, if they're interested in a little bit more of the science, some of the stuff that we talked about. I have an ebook that's available on my site and that's free. So that might be a great place to start for folks. And then obviously coaching retreats, you know, I do all this stuff and everything can be found on my website, which is mindykinnis.com Mindy Kinis.

That's M I N D I E K n I s s.com and we'll have that below in the show notes as well for anyone. So just go to shrinkfortheshyguy.com if you're listening to this on your phone or whatever, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com, look up this interview and that will have the link for that. Because I think I'd highly recommend spending time around Mindy. And thank you so much for being with us and answering all these questions today?

Absolutely. Thank you, Aziz. This was awesome.

That is the end of the interview, but before we go, let's turn it into action.

Time for action. Action, action.

Your action step for today is to practice bringing your attention out of your mind and into your heart, into your body. And if you've had experience with meditation or other things, then that may be something you're familiar with and it might be something totally new to you. Either way, whether you know it or not, have done it a lot, or not knowing how to do it and residing in our bodies are two very different things. And so I encourage you to, like, inhabit your body more today. That was a goal that I had for the beginning of the year. In 2018, I said, okay, for this year, one of my core goals is to reside in my heart, to live in my body. And I mean that in a very literal way. Like, my attention is more in my body. So even as you're listening to me right now, can you bring your attention? Can you feel what it's like to drop your attention into your chest? And the breath is a fantastic way to help us do that. You can fill your chest full of air and just feel that inside of your body with nothing to do, nothing to change, nothing to fix. And I encourage you to bring your awareness into your heart as much as you can throughout the day, as you go about your daily tasks, as you drive, as you walk, as you cook, whatever it is, bring that attention into your body, into your heart. Connecting with your heart, building that connection. And of course, you want to go deeper. Check out the heartmath solution. Check out Mindy's resources. There's tons of stuff. Or just general meditation as well.

Thank you so much for joining me and being with me today.

Hope you learned as much as I did in the interview. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep.

Level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziza. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sam.