59: The One Question You Need to Ask to Stay Present | Kevin Murphy

Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.

Hi there. Welcome to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed psychotherapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. I'm a life and relationship coach and a motivational speaker, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. My passion is helping women find their superpower, learn to embrace it, and share it with the world. Connect with me by texting the word join to 38470 Or go to my website at drzoeshaw.com. Today's topic is the one question you need to ask yourself to stay present. And my guest is Kevin Murphy. He's the author of The Three Rooms: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life. And I'm just gonna introduce Kevin real quickly and then we'll hop into my fails and wins. Kevin Murphy is a former Wall Street managing director. High school and collegiate wrestling champion. He's a community activist. He's a speaker, coach, and he's the author of The Three Rooms. And today we're gonna really talk about how the things that you think, which I talk about a lot, affect your entire life. And Kevin's got an interesting concept of the three rooms. So my Superwoman win, I'm very excited to say that I've talked a little bit about this keynote speaker opportunity that I had, and it happened last weekend and it went very well. And it's definitely a Superwoman win. I had— was really kind of overwhelmed by the amount of positive response I got from the speech that I gave. So it was a great win, professional win. Shonda Rhimes, how she talks candidly about her experience being a mom and a highly, highly successful professional. She has said in her book that when she's killing it in one area, it usually means she's failing in another. And so I had a couple fails. I was so busy this past weekend and past week. I had the speaking engagement. My daughter had surgery. She's doing great. She had a birthday as well. And I had so much going on that I literally did not get a podcast done in addition to a couple of other things that I just couldn't get to. And for my daughter's birthday, I totally was just winging it. We had just come off of the speaking engagement and her surgery. Her birthday was 2 days after her surgery. And I totally was just Doing everything last moment. I didn't wrap her gifts. I bought them last moment, which is hilarious because I was talking with Darlene Brock about her book, Raising Great Girls, and we were talking about how nowadays moms have Amazon Prime, so we don't have to be at Walmart in the middle of the night shopping for our kids' Christmas or birthday gifts because we can just order them, which I always do. However, I didn't get to it in time, and Amazon Prime does take at least a day. And I was literally at Walmart. I was at Walmart in the middle of the night getting my daughter's birthday gift and they didn't get wrapped. And, you know, it was an interesting day. I did everything last moment. She wanted to go to the Long Beach Aquarium. We went. It took us a little while to get going and everything I was just doing last minute and I was judging myself so much because I was thinking— I was kind of thinking through the eyes of another mom who would judge me like, you don't have it together. This is your daughter's birthday. You're getting a late start and you didn't even plan this beach aquarium thing and you're paying full price for these aquarium tickets. And I was kind of just beating myself up about the whole day. And at the end of the day, before we had even gotten home to open her presents that I hadn't wrapped yet, my daughter looked at me and she said, Mom, this is the best birthday ever. And it kind of hit me because I looked at her and I was thinking, I was seeing this whole day through my lens. My lens of I didn't do it perfectly or on time enough. And I sat for a moment and looked at this day through my daughter's lens. And she had an amazing day. She did exactly what she asked to do. She had got to relax in the morning while mom got everything together. We went to the aquarium. We went to Bubba Gump's and she had a great lunch and she got to touch sharks and anemones and starfish. And she got to see things she hadn't seen before because Another thing I was beating myself up about. It's been 4 years since we went to the aquarium, but she had a fantastic day and she hadn't even opened her presents and already told me it was the best birthday ever. It just kind of, you know, made me hit myself over the head again. Like, you know what? You're not going to be like other moms because you are super busy, but you know what? You rocked it. You got it together, girl. And you gave this girl her birthday. And instead of beating yourself up all day about it, just enjoy it and see this through her lens. Because she's not going to remember She doesn't remember all the stress that I went through because she didn't go through it. She just remembers that she had a wonderful day. So that was my fail, was that I did kind of drop the ball on a couple of things. But my win was that I was actually able to reframe that and see it through a different lens. And that's why I like to share those fails with you guys so that you can also learn to reframe your fails. Because we learn from them, and if we can see them through that different lens, it makes a world of difference. So next up is Kevin Murphy. We are going to chat about being present and really about how your thoughts change and affect your life. Okay, Kevin Murphy, thank you so much for coming on the show today. What an interesting book, The Three Rooms. Can you tell us just a little bit about yourself and how you got to the place of writing this book? I love the concept, and I talked to you before about how I really feel it's It's just strongly CBT-based, cognitive behavioral therapy-based, which is really the method that I like most as I do therapy. So that's why I really enjoyed your book.

Thank you very much. I know probably 5 years ago this would have been a very unusual conversation because I had been in the middle of a career with Citigroup and spent over 33 years there, and the thought of writing a consciousness-minded book never really came to me. But I had been on, let's say, a spiritual path for probably about 20 years. Then I finally started getting the premonition that I was going to write a book, and I didn't know what it was about.

Hmm.

Idea of 3 doors, and an image of 3 doors kept coming, and one was labeled the past, and one was labeled the present, one was labeled the future. And eventually, as I started describing the place our thoughts go behind the doors, it turned into the 3 rooms. That's kind of where the whole idea came and then it took off from there.

That's awesome. And I love that metaphor, just that mind picture. And so for, for all you busy women out there, if you think about that concept of the 3 doors, the past, the present, and the future, where of course do we need to stay? And it's so hard to stay. It's that present. So let's talk a little bit about, for a busy woman who's got so much going on, and we're often in that place of worrying about the future, worrying about what we didn't do or what needs to get done, what kinds of mind tools or little tricks can we do to focus on staying in that present?

Well, the number one key is awareness. The whole premise of the 3 rooms is that Our experience of life is not based on what we have or what we think.

And

our thoughts can only be in one of 3 places. They can be in the past or the present or the future. Whichever room our thoughts are in, or wherever they are, determines our experience of life in that moment. So the key is to know where your thoughts are. And so there's always a link to where your thoughts are and how you feel.

Right.

So worrying about something thinking about something in the future, people say, well, well, you know, you can't always be in the present because you have to plan for the future. You know, we learn from the past, so you have to go back and forth. And that's true. But the key is knowing which room you're in, knowing where your thoughts are, and we do that by how we feel. So if you're feeling stressed and we're going through these, you know, everyday life and all kinds of things are coming up and we start worrying about things, When we're feeling stress, that's our indication that we're in the wrong realm or we need to adjust what we're thinking. And just like if we're thinking things in the past and we're feeling bitter about something or angry with what someone said to us 2 days ago, those negative emotions, people say, well, how do I let it go? Well, the first thing is you have to be aware that you're feeling emotions in order to start to let it go.

Right. I think most people, and I should say I know that most people are completely unaware of what they think. And that's one of the things that I've love to do in therapy is to just get people to figure out what they're thinking and what they're saying to themselves. And they'll come back and they'll say, wow, I didn't even realize I was saying that to myself all day long, or, you know, every day. And when we start to really focus on figuring out what you're saying to yourself, then we can figure out what we need to say to ourselves to create really the emotional place that we want to be in our lives.

You hit something really on the button with what we say to ourselves. Because thoughts, you know, it's so critical to monitor them. We all know how important it is and yet usually do such a terrible job at it.

I don't even know that a lot of people really know how important it is. I think a lot of people are going about trying to make themselves feel better. They're exercising, you know, they're eating right, they're doing all kinds of great things and not really even I don't think it's on a lot of people's radar. I mean, they might hear it, but not really focus on what they're saying to themselves.

That's true. I think they hear it, and we hear more and more things about mindfulness and living in the present and being in the now, but—

But what does that mean, right?

We don't do a very good job. And you said earlier about what we say to ourselves is so— words are really important. You know, what we say to others, what others say to us. And unfortunately, we let that, you know, define us so much, and that affects our emotions. And so when we say, you know, I am, our image of ourselves, when we add the word not because of what we hear from other people— oh, you're not good enough for that, or you're never going to be able to do that— or adding it to ourselves, we say, I know I'm not gonna— I know I'm not good enough. And we start to define ourselves That not, and that causes all of the negative emotions, that saps our self-esteem, and it really pulls us out of the present realm. We're listening to our own higher self, our soul.

Mm-hmm.

Our soul is never saying, you are not good enough, you are not— your soul is saying, you know, you're wonderful. And so it's, I am happy, I am healthy, I can do these. This is what our own inner soul is saying, and When we feel that, we feel joy and we feel confidence, and that's the voice we want to listen to instead of the voice of other people saying we can't. And the words we use to describe ourselves, that's what everyone should ask themselves. How do I describe myself? Am I saying I am not a lot, or am I saying I am, I can? We have to get rid of that word not.

I love that. So that's an excellent tip, is getting rid of that word not and replacing it with I am. That's beautiful. And as you talk about that, I think about something you said in your book about the difference between observation and judgment. So when we think about, okay, observing your thoughts, figuring out what you're saying. And the crazy thing is, is that when you start to recognize, and I say this all the time, so I know you regular listeners hear this and I'm going to keep saying it, that we talk to ourselves more than we talk to anybody else. And we talk to ourselves more than anybody talks to us. And when you start to really focus on the conversations you're having with yourself every day, They just pop up and you start noticing things that you never even realized you were saying to yourself. And so let's talk a little bit about the difference between observing our thoughts and judging ourselves.

It's a really good point. And in order to judge, you need to interpret, or it's based on our perception. When we just observe, you don't need judgment to observe something. You can just watch something. Whatever, if you're watching a ballgame or you're just watching the sunset, you know, and you're not judging whether this is a really good sunset or this is a really bad sunset. You're just watching it and you're appreciating it and you're observing it. Now, when we get judgment, we start to make assumptions and we start to use our perceptions about what we think, you know, is going on. But what we see and hear around us, it's all based on our perceptions and it doesn't have to be the truth. Sometimes we're convinced it's the truth. Sometimes we see someone, we're really mad at them because we know they said something negative about us. Yeah, she was talking to so-and-so about me yesterday. I know it. And you're angry and you carry that on, you know, with you for, you know, for days and days. And then finally you talk to the person, you know, the other person in that conversation you saw, and you say, you know, I know that, you know, Judy was saying, you know, negative things about me, but don't listen to her. And then the person says, well, she wasn't actually saying negative things. She was saying some really nice things about you. Then you say, oh, oh, okay. And now that same occurrence, that same action that you were seeing, that you observed, you made a judgment on that based on an assumption you had. Mm-hmm. And it caused negative emotions. And every time you thought about those 2 people, you had negative emotions. And, but it was really your perception and your perception was wrong. And now you have a new perception that, oh, she's not so bad. She was actually nice. She said nice things to me. And now every time you think of the same person, you feel good about her. So what changed? What happened didn't change, just your perception of what happened.

Right. And the words you were telling yourself about what happened. And Kevin, we women tend to do judging, I should say, really well. We women tend to judge quickly and we tend to do it often. And in some ways we're socialized to do that, which is not the healthiest, you know, pattern or thing that we do. But I think that that's a really important point that you make is the whole concept of perception. And the question is, how do we not do that? How do we change that unhealthy pattern of going straight to judging, not observing?

First of all, women don't have a monopoly on judging.

This is true.

Men are very good at judging people as well. But it really all does come down to, you know, how it makes you feel. Any situation, you're looking at something and then you keep thinking about something that's happened in the past and it's making you feel negative, you're looking at it the wrong way. You can look at it from one perspective, you can look at it— that's, that's not the same way that your own soul is looking at it. It's— you're interpreting it differently, and you want to look at it differently. Now, we can look at that, you know, from a point of attraction standpoint. If you look at the law of attraction, what you want to attract into your life— if you're judging people and feeling negative and angry, you're going to keep attracting more of that into your realm. And that's kind of how we can get stuck in different realms. So whether you're looking in the past, especially You're holding on to things. You need to let them go. And of course, the best way to let them go is through forgiveness. Unfortunately, some of us have different degrees of forgiveness. You know, I'm a forgiving person, but they crossed the line.

Hmm.

There are really no lines in forgiveness because, you know, we know it frees us, not the other person, but we have trouble hanging on. So we have to just know that, you know, look, every time I keep thinking about that, it's causing me negative emotion. And the more I think of it, really negative emotion, you just say, you know what, I'm tired of feeling that way. You know, I want to let it go because I want to come back into the present and start focusing on my life going forward. And, you know, it could be just my perception of what happened.

Yeah, so that's what I call reframing, or I should say CBT calls reframing. So when you recognize that you're thinking a negative thought, the reality is that you judging others hurts yourself just as much as it could— I mean, it doesn't really hurt anybody else if they don't know what you're doing, so you're really just hurting yourself. And when you start to recognize that you're having those negative judgy thoughts or those, you know, negative thoughts, then what helps is to look at that thought and figure out how can I think about this event or think about this person in a more positive, realistic way, create that thought and replace the negative one with the positive one.

I couldn't agree more. And that goes with Also how we feel about ourselves.

Mm-hmm.

We're not feeling good about ourselves, you know, we need to start to change how we feel. And sometimes, you know, unfortunately we're in such a looks-conscious society.

Mm-hmm.

You know, the concept of the internal mirror within the 3 Realms, and the premise is that, you know, what if you can look into a mirror and instead of seeing your reflection, your physical reflection back of your external self, and you see all the blemishes in the, in the you know, the couple of extra pounds you gained on vacation and all of that, and you judge yourself based on that. What if you can see in an internal mirror what you look like on the inside? Hmm. Right? What would you see? Would you see kindness, compassion? Would you see bitterness or resentment or anger or stress? What would you see and feel? And that's a real gauge, you know, looking in the mirror and say, how do I feel? And that's what we want to get to, because now we're looking beyond this exterior.

Right.

Beyond this body suit we're wearing, and we're looking at the person inside. And when you can look in the mirror and like the person on the inside, look in the internal mirror and like that person, then it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. That builds the self-esteem. Nothing could be more empowering than that. And that means you're, you're looking at yourself the same way your own soul, your higher self, is looking at you.

That's beautiful. I like that. And when you talk about observing, I love that concept of the mirror, but the mirror looking into the self instead of on the outside. You spoke in the book about the fact that our physical body can really only be present. Our physical body is always present, but our mental body or our brain can be decades in either direction, right? It can kind of just travel at warp speed. And so with the concept of the rooms, Can you talk a little bit about what each room represents and how we can focus on knowing where we are at each time, mentally, obviously not physically?

Sure. And because it goes with the classic line of, you know, who am I? And when people are saying, you know, who am I, they're not talking about the I that everybody else sees. They're talking about the I that on the inside that they can see.

The

question, where am I, means where are my thoughts? Because To say, where am I? You're not saying, where's my body? Look down at your feet and you'll know where you are. You're right here. But our thoughts can constantly go back and forth. And so when they're looking into the past, it's fine to be recalling positive past experiences, intentionally looking to the past to remember something, how we did something, to learn from the past. Intentionally going to the past is fine. But when we're going back there and reliving negative emotions, That's what we call the past realm, and that's where you don't want to be going back.

Mm-hmm.

Because your own soul's never going back there. It's always right here in the present and going into the future. Instead of looking to the future and stressing about the future and worrying about things and thinking of worst-case scenarios, we can imagine the type of future that we want, or we can imagine achieving a desire that we have. And what would it be like to, you know, have achieved that? How would that feel? And come from the place that it's already done. Now you're looking into the future and you're thinking about the future, but you're doing it from right here and you're imagining the best-case scenario. And when you do that, when you start to imagine that as if it's already happened, now we start to feel really good about it. We talked about earlier losing the word not, or the I am not good enough, I am not. If you replace that word with Already. I already am. It's so empowering because you're, you're envisioning a future where you've already accomplished something. You know, I don't want to be happy. I already am happy. I already am healthy. You're coming from the place of it happening, and then everything in your life keeps moving you towards that. And even if something hasn't manifested in your life yet, you come with your thoughts and you really think and feel About having— I already have achieved that. It's really, really empowering. And that's why it's so important in the present room.

It is. That is super empowering. And that's a fantastic exercise. And so basically, as you start to observe your thoughts, figure out, yes, I have them, and there are probably a lot of negative ones there. One of the first questions you want to ask is, where am I? Am I in a past room, a present room, or a future room? And then when you do that, Work on reframing any of those negative thoughts. And then I love what you said about saying, I am already, when you're talking about the future. That's beautiful. Excellent exercise.

Think about it. Just the ability to answer the question, where am I? Where are my thoughts? You know, which room am I in? In order to answer that simple question, you must be aware of where your thoughts are.

Right.

So you have already connected with that awareness or that consciousness. That is the same consciousness that everyone else is connected to. That's what we want to tap into. That allows us to observe without judgment. That's the consciousness. So the simple asking and answering the question, where am I? Or which room am I in? You have to be aware of your thoughts. That's something that we can ask all day, every day.

Excellent. So tell me, How has this practice affected your life?

You know, I keep getting, you know, the messages, well, you wrote the book, now live it. So I do. Every morning I meditate. I center myself in the present room. And I think a lot of people meditate in the morning, but then as soon as you go out into the day and you're driving your car and someone cuts you off and spills your coffee, you get all mad. And, you know, so I'm constantly asking that question all day long. Where am I? What room am I in? And I'm constantly visioning a future. And I started a vision board because my son said, you know, Dad, you should have a vision board. I know you think about things. And I put them up there, and I really do come from that place as if they've already happened. So it's just like with the book. I knew that I was a mystic author long before, while I was still writing it. And I even wrote it in the book. I said, you know, I know I'm a mystic author. This just hasn't been published yet. Mm-hmm. I'm still working for, you know, an international bank, and someday in my physical experience it will happen.

Mm-hmm.

Making a movie, and, and I'm working on, you know, campaigns. I've created campaigns to raise awareness for drug addiction and the heroin and opioid crisis. And, you know, have ideas and visions and then just keep following through on them. And because they're already coming from the place, they've already happened, they just haven't manifested. And I And I smile about it because you stayed in intention. You know, you align in that present moment, you envision it happening, you feel the joy of it already happening, and then you trust the process and you have faith in it. When you do that, you know, wonderful things come. You're not making things happen. You're allowing them to happen because you're coming from the place as if they've already happened.

Right. I love that concept. Thank you so much for sharing that and teaching that to us, Kevin. Is there any last thing that you want to share with my listeners regarding your book and the whole concept of the 3 rooms?

The main message is that we do have control over how we feel. It all depends on whether we let what we see and hear in the physical world determine how we feel inside or whether we let how we feel inside determine what we see and hear. Start with how you feel inside. Focus on positive thoughts, focus on gratitude, focus on appreciation, and that will really allow us to change our experience of life.

Thank you so much. What a wonderful, different kind of way of looking at CBT, but that's going to be my new mantra. Question, where am I? And then affirmation is, I am already. Thank you so much for joining us, Kevin.

Thank you so much for having me on.

This is Real Talk where I answer questions from my listeners and share my own musings and encouragement. Please reach out if you have some questions you'd like me to address on the show, and all questions are anonymous. I take your confidentiality super seriously as if you were my own client. You can email questions to zoe@drzoeshaw.com or connect with me me on any of my social medias. This question coming up was curated from my column at the Grit and Grace Project. You can also submit your questions directly to Grit and Grace Project, and I can answer them on their platform and mine as well. So the question from the listener is, I have been asked by several of my girlfriends who have watched me struggle and somehow survive, how do you deal with disappointment? One of the largest weaknesses I have is how sensitive I am to other people and their inability to step up and be better people, be better adults, better community members, better friends, better family, better employees, better leaders, better parents, and better partners. I want nothing more than for all of us to strive for better character. I'm seeing more often that women seem to have more frequent and often higher expectations than men, and then we take it harder and make it personal when what we anticipated for or hoped would happen or dreamed would happen or prayed and planned for doesn't become the result. Our reality didn't turn out the way we thought it would. That feeling when my heart breaks into a million pieces because I feel like I lost the battle. If the quote goes, be the change you want to see in the world, and no one is changing, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I'm disappointed when this happens to me. I hear, it's because your expectations are always higher than realistic. That's a tough pill to swallow. What is the line where the standards or expectations are healthy on one side and too high on the other? That was a very long question, but it was a good question. And first, my question to you is, what's the story? Now, this goes back to what we heard today. What's the story you tell yourself about what it means when people let you down? So you're right, no one will ever live up to our expectations 100% of the time. So disappointment is a necessary Mm-hmm. Part of human relationships. And it's not really that disappointment is the issue, it's how we deal with the disappointment because if disappointment is a given, then the differences we see in people is how they deal with it and that starts with the story that we tell ourselves about it. What I've seen as a therapist is that most relationship issues have to do with the pain of unmet expectations which is exactly what you're talking about. Most people don't even realize that their expectations were never even spoken. We tend to have this belief that the people in our lives should just know. They should just know what we want, especially if they care about us, or that people in the world are on a similar page as we are. And then we get disappointed that our unvoiced expectations aren't met. Meanwhile, other people are totally clueless about what you want and what you need, or that you even wanted— ever wanted something to begin with. So the basic point is, if you have an expectation, You must speak it. You need to make sure that you let people know clearly what you expect from them, and it's perfectly fine and healthy to have expectations. But when people don't meet them, you only hurt yourself if you create a story about it that probably isn't true. Like, if he loved me, he would dot dot dot. Or if they were a good person, they would whatever. Or if they were really an honorable, you know, loyal, whatever person, then they would do these things. My next question to you is, how do you know that people aren't trying and aren't striving to be better people? You said in your question that they weren't, but my question is, how do you know that? That's a judgment that might not be based on truth. And when you don't meet other expectations, It also doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't trying or striving to be a better person either. So be careful that you're not assuming the same about others when you see their deficits. My experience as a therapist has actually been that most people are really trying. They're really wanting to work on themselves, and most people do want to change, but everybody's deficits are different. And it's easy for me to look at somebody else who struggles in an area where I'm totally strong And question, why can't they get their act together? But they may be strong in an area where I'm weak. And to answer your last question, you can deal with your disappointment by speaking up, setting healthy boundaries when necessary, giving grace for other people's weaknesses, and figuring out how to get your own needs met when you're in a relationship and that person can't or won't meet them. Anytime we're relying on somebody else's behavior to determine our feelings, we're treading on super dangerous ground. And I know that might be a hard pill to swallow, but that is my advice for you based on your question. Look at your thoughts, pay attention to the meaning that you're creating with them, and make sure that you're not making stuff up that's not necessarily true. Thank you for tuning in to the Dr. Zoe Show. New shows go up generally on Tuesdays. Subscribe so you don't miss a show, and if you're interested in coaching or therapy or you just wanna get a little more help, go to my website at drzoeshaw.com or any of my social medias at that same handle, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Join my free newsletter by texting the word JOIN to 38470, and I look forward to speaking with you wonderful ladies on social media throughout the week. Thank you. Have a great week.

You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, redefining your superwoman with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your mind in the superwoman game. Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends and subscribe. Subscribe to her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of the Dr. Zoe Show.