"No Matter What!" Paraliminal with Dr. Paul Scheele and Lisa Nichols

And it is time. We are live on Facebook. Thank you to all who have joined me on zoom, many of you for many months and I really appreciate this. It's my privilege and honor to do this work and it's been a really wonderful series that have enjoyed being a part of today's session is a parallel that I developed with Lisa Nichols, who did a work called no Matter What. Lisa is a marvelous African American woman who developed a profound.

Life mission to help teens become the full expression of who they are in their adult life. She created a program called Motivating the Teen Spirit. She created a company and did ipo. She is an amazing speaker, storyteller, teacher, trainer. I've adored knowing her as a part of the Transformational Leadership Council and when we had the opportunity to work together, it was my privilege and honor to develop this Paralympical. Now one of the things that she tells in her work called no Matter what is the difficult journey she took in her life. Getting pregnant at a fairly young age, having to leave in the middle of the night with her infant son to escape an abusive marriage and strike out on her own. And one of the things that she says is that the challenges that we face in our lives do not define us, but the stories we tell about them, the conversations we hold about them, those do have a tendency to define us. Our character is what she would equate to a series of muscles. And we can develop our character, the strength of our character under the guidance of a coach. And she uses the analogy of her time in high school to become a state champion athlete in track and field to describe this idea that we have a series of muscles like integrity muscle and our bounce back muscle. She says that with the help of a coach, we can develop any muscle necessary to be able to reach our personal summit. And if you can think about your life purpose as something which is a transformational.

Concept, it's living into the fullest expression of your life. It's more than just the sum of all the goals that you might set on a daily basis. But to attain the fullest expression of who we are in this lifetime requires that we develop the character muscles necessary to live that life that we have imagined. And so we talk about in this paralimal, the idea of being able to take any memory that we have, use it as a way, any experience that we have encountered and being able to turn that into a strength that will assist us in getting us where we want to go. So the metaphor in the change track of this paraliminal track 3 is that of an alchemist, where you actually stand, look over a bridge, at a stream, see a reflection of yourself and see all of these golden threads of all the memories and experiences that you have had in your life and begin to use those to define who you are choosing to become again. Those memories don't define you, but the gold within them, the learnings within them, the discernment and the wisdom within them, the strength building opportunities within them, help to give you all that you need to be able to achieve what you desire. The second concept that's essential inside of this is that we develop a very positive interior coach. Because if you think about it, what does a coach do for an athlete? A coach helps the athlete become a better version of herself, a better version of himself, the best version of his or herself. The idea is, whatever potential that may reside within you, the coach helps to draw that potential forward by developing certain aspects of, of that athlete's capabilities. Now, I don't know if you've ever heard me tell the story. I was doing a leadership program in Japan, and one of the people inside of that training that I was doing there, I think about 300 people.

And one of them was the Olympic coach.

For the Japanese whitewater rafting team. The Olympic whitewater rafting team. Now, doesn't sound so outrageous, but if you could imagine, the Japanese people tend to be a bit more diminutive in terms of their physique. And that particular Olympic sport is dominated by people who are giants. You know, huge upper bodies, massive muscles. And seeing the Japanese team arrive in a field of 17 countries was sort of the equivalent of the Jamaican bobsled team. I mean, it was, it was an outrageous idea to even imagine them participating. And the first year that they went out, out of 17 countries, they came in 17th.

By a distant lag. And the coach said, well, obviously we're not going to be able to compete on the basis of our upper body strength. But in observing the winning teams, you might have one person who pulls their paddle super hard, and then three others within the raft are compensating for that overpowering motion. Now, if we could eliminate all that, because what's our strength? Collaboration, right? We can operate as a cohesive whole. So if I can help us develop that and get our rhythm and our flow, we could actually have a possibility. The second year that they participated, they were number one in the world. It was very interesting to hear him tell the story, but it goes right back to this idea of our inner coach guiding us toward a massively transformative purpose. That we have in our life something that's written on our hearts and minds to do that may seem so outrageous, but we can't look at our history in order to define our future. We look at our history to recognize the challenges that we face, that we survive, and we use the memory of that to identify what aspects of our character do we have to develop to be able to take the next steps in the achievement of what's important to us. There's another critical concept within this work that Lisa has created, and it's the idea that we're going to achieve our goal. We're going to achieve what's ours to do, no matter what. That's the title of the parallel. But there's a concept that's embedded within that. Because if you attempt to achieve your goal and you don't, you attempt to take a step in the direction of your goal and you fail.

You give yourself a second chance.

Interesting concept, but you're not getting booted off the team because the coach says you failed. What the coach does is says, okay, let's try it again. Let's try it in a different way. Let's try it in a way that can show some positive progress or some learning or some growth in the direction of where we want to go. So you give yourself a second chance. If you fail again, you give yourself another second chance, and you get a thousand second chances. And when you get to your 999th second chance and you're about ready to try it for the thousandth time, you get a thousand more second chances. It's a beautiful idea because this is yours to do, and you're going to accomplish this no matter what.

You can do it.

And this idea of high hard goals is what motivates all of the peak performers and all of the most extreme sports all over the world. This idea that you would have a strong determination, you would be massively persistent, and you would be your own best interior mentor and coach. It's not necessarily about going easy on yourself, but being very forgiving, very acknowledging, recognizing all of your efforts, allowing yourself to do whatever needs to be done to move the needle in the direction of where you're attempting to reach. And this idea of any summit that you would like to scale, you can find a way to do it. Now, I might not be able to tell you how to do it, you might not be able to tell yourself how to do it, but as you stay on the path toward it, when you. What you're going to discover is the right coach, the right Advice, the right person at the right time, and when you hear it, you get to discern.

Is this the advice that I need that's going to help me take that next step? And so you begin to rely on, no matter what anyone else says, certainly you seek.

Assistance as you need it. But what we're doing is we're using our own interior guidance system.

We're using our own interior guidance system to move us in the direction that we're choosing to go. And that inner guidance, that inner mentor, that inner coach is, it's a beautiful thing. Once that voice really awakens within you and perhaps you have it, perhaps you've heard it, perhaps you've recognized it. When I hear the voice of that, it's not the voice of my conscious self, my egoic self that's saying, oh come on, you could do this, this is really important, come on, motivate yourself, do it. It's not that. It's a very calm, very reassuring voice that gives me a lot of space. If I've fallen down, it's there encouraging me to stand up again, get back on track, take whatever next step. And there have been goals that I have set that I was sure I would get in six months.

Two and a half years later, I realized the goal. That's not just once or twice, but many times. As I've told the story, it was a 12 year journey to create the first paralyminal. And one of the things that I would encourage you to consider as you think about not only your transformative purpose that guides you as a summit, a guiding light, something that's more than the sum of all the goals that you've ever accomplished. And as you think about each of the high hard goals that you set for yourself to accomplish, that this interior landscape is one that's loving, supportive, forgiving and takes full responsibility and commits it, commits with integrity to yourself. You commit to what it is that you're choosing to do now. You'll hear a lot on this para liminal about the bounce back muscle and to me, this idea of giving yourself a second chance, being able to fail, fail frequently, fail forward, fail dismally and miserably, and continue to bounce back. Because each time you have an experience, you also gain that wisdom and insight necessary of how you might be able to do it differently next time. And this.

If there's been a theme for all of paralympical technology that I've shared with you, is that.

The resources that you need are within you. See, who you are is ever free, ever pure, ever wise. You are imbued with all of the resources necessary to accomplish any goal that occurs to you to set for yourself.

What we need is not to improve ourselves. This isn't about improving the true self. The true self is already fully resourced. It's about creating a space, an interior landscape, an expansiveness inside of us where we can make contact with that true source, make contact with those vast resources, and then channel those resources in a way that allows us to accomplish what it is we set our hearts and minds on. With an open mind, an open heart and open will, you have an open connection to this vast interior resourcefulness. The voice of that interior coach, it's there. Speak to it, ask it for support and guidance. And all of the para liminals that you have ever listened to are always helping to define that resourcefulness. And your ability to access it.

Is right now, right here. It's as near as your own breath and heartbeat. So technology of paralympicals certainly create a space and time in which you can do it. And I want you to know your thoughts are that prayer without ceasing that connects you to that power and potential every single moment of every single day.

And with that, I'd say.

That said the cat in the hat, is that. And it was really a pleasure to be with you. Thanks so much for joining and peace and blessings on this day. Hope to see you again very soon.