The Power of the Positive Intelligence Group PODS

Hey there, Theresa Byrne here, and I am with my friend Rick Reynolds. Rick and I have been leading group coaching pods over the last almost year, and some of the things that we are seeing come up with clients have been amazing, and we wanted to share that with you.

Yeah, we had an interesting conversation, uh, after one of our pod discussions About the whole idea of regrets and self-forgiveness, forgiveness in general.

And imagine if all of the things— if you were to sit down and write a list of all the things that have happened in your life that you've either put off or that you regret not doing or that you regret doing, What would you have to forgive yourself for? Like, what is stopping you now? And one of the reasons I ask, one of the saboteurs that I have is called the hyperachiever. So every time I accomplish something, I achieve something and I get kudos for it, my brain instantly went to, yeah, but you should see the 30 things I haven't done, or you should see all of the things I didn't do over my life. And I was unable to pull in that sort of celebratory feeling because there were so many things in my mind that I wasn't doing or hadn't done or said I was going to do. Does that ever happen to you, Rick?

Absolutely. And it becomes a self-punishing thing. I don't celebrate. I don't reward myself because I haven't completed it all or achieved everything that I want. So it's delay, delay. delay, and that really is punishing yourself. Why do that? In reality, it doesn't motivate or inspire to get things done. It actually puts resistance in, and we're less apt to achieve and do what we want to do when we're in that state of resistance, when we're listening to a saboteur.

So let's talk about what a regret is. And if any of you watching can think of, like, what are some 3 things that you can think of that you regret in your life, that you regret not having done, or you regret having done? And how is that— how are those 3 things impacting you? And for me, at one point when I was a kid, I decided I no longer wanted to be in the geeky AP classes. So I flunked out of the high-level classes and moved into the regular curriculum. And for the rest of my life, I did not realize this, but I've been holding myself accountable for not following through on math and science and the things I really wanted to do. And so I took myself down the path. What would it look like if I forgave myself? Or what would it look like if I had taken that path. And what I saw was just more hyperachiever, not a focus on making the world a better place, but a focus on science and math and forwarding things and more logic and more hyper-rationality. And all of my life thinking that that was a regret when truly it was a gift that I decided not to, not to go down that path. And I'm sure there are other things that we see with our clients Where they think that there is a regret and it's not.

Oh, I absolutely— it's like the clients come in so full of guilt. You know, I work with a lot of couples that have come to Sedona to heal their relationship, and what oftentimes they're trying to heal infidelity. And I get tasked with doing the session of stepping into your integrity with the man while the woman's off healing her broken And her wound from all this. And the first thing that we have to get rid of or set aside is guilt.

Hmm.

Because what guilt— happens with guilt is I, I'm feeling guilty. It really is the least I can do. I'm not making amends. I'm not changing the circumstance. And because guilt feels so I'm not willing to let my partner have their pain. So the person sitting here in front of me isn't with— is saying things like, can't she just be over it already? How much longer do we have to go through this? And in reality, if he were not feeling— no longer feeling those feelings of guilt, And that horrible feeling inside, then he could be present to her anger, to her hurt, and offer comfort and see and witness her feeling and help her feel. Which, by the way, that's the mission. Feelings are to be felt, not fixed. Too many men in these situations try to fix the feeling. And the conversation goes something like, here's why you shouldn't be upset with me anymore. I've done this and this and this and this and this. And her reply is, don't tell me how to feel. And yet— and men, we all know that this doesn't work, but we keep trying the same technique over and over and over again of rationalizing people out of their feelings. So the pathway out of guilt and shame Is that higher sage perspective, the idea that there is a gift in absolutely everything. So helping men find the gift in their infidelity— boy, that sounds like I'm letting them all off the hook, right? There's the judge. But it's not that. There are— I mean, I worked with one man, and this is the 3rd relationship that he had destroyed through infidelity.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, a lot of guilt, a lot of shame going on. But I asked, well, what happened to that first woman that you were unfaithful with? What, what was the end result? And he's like, well, she met another man, and this man's probably the love of her life. They've had 3 children together, and she's very happy.

I'm happy today.

I'm like, oh, there's 3 beings in this world that wouldn't be here if you hadn't stepped out on that relationship. Yeah, we don't know for sure, but kind of the— his actions led to something positive for her down the line. And then we looked at the second relationship, and yes, she too met somebody else. and had 2 children by that someone else. So now we've got 5 beings in the world that wouldn't be in the world if they hadn't. I just kind of said, okay, maybe it's time to ask God for a new mission. You don't have to play that role continually again and again in women's lives. You've done it enough now. But, um, give up the feeling guilty about it. See the blessings In all of it. Trust that even when your actions hurt someone else, there's still a gift and a blessing in that hurt for them, and that's for you to grow as well.

I was working with a client not long ago, and he had been in a situation where, boy, I think 20 years ago, the worst thing that he'd done in his life was cheat. Ended up in divorce. And this gentleman has been beating himself up for the very worst thing he's ever done and paying his penance for the rest, for the next 20 years, and not really being able to find a way to forgive himself and find that self-compassion or forgiveness for a thing that happened. And we oftentimes look at cheating, and, and neither Rick or I are saying, yes, cheat, it's totally fine. It is a betrayal of trust, and it takes some, some things to heal. But there are 2 people in every relationship, and being able to look at the components of it makes a huge difference in self-healing and then healing the relationship, even if the relationship isn't going to continue. But imagine the worst thing that you've ever done is your definition of yourself. That's hard. It's hard to get past. It's hard to be somewhere else from that.

And it doesn't make things better to feel guilty. Really, you're so selfish. Your attention is all back on you. And then, so how can you make amends? How can you be there for a person that you wronged? You know, if you're all Caught up in your own hurt, it really does put a wall between you and the other person and allowing them to feel their feelings. Like, just— it's— if I am no longer guilty and triggered, then I can sit with my partner and have them tell me how hurt they are, how angry they are, how upset they are. And I can be, bring it on. Tell me more about that. It sounds like you felt really betrayed. It sounds like you were really hurt. And the idea is to shift into what we've learned to call the sage perspective. Now, this is the notion that there's a gift and blessing in absolutely everything, that ultimately things turn out for the greater good. And if you trust that, then you see what is possible. Then your mind opens to all the other gifts of the sage.

And what if— I'm going to throw this out at you, those of you who are watching— what if, if we're living so deeply into our regrets, we struggle to bring on the gifts, to see the gifts, because we're so deep in what we call the saboteurs or the sabotaging thinking. I've also had clients who've stayed too long in relationships, and that's a complete judgment call. What is too long? Is a relationship over when it's over? Is it over when, when you say it's over? And what— how do you define, or how do you decide to hold yourself accountable for not leaving a relationship sooner What if there was a gift in staying until the moment that you did? What if, yes, you ended up ending a relationship, but it was for the best for both people? And just judging yourself for hanging on too long is just another way of, you know, hitting yourself. But you stayed too long, you stayed too long, you're too giving, you're too caring. And that's just another way of creating a distance. from, well, I did stay this long, it's not too long, it's just we, we dated for this long, or we were married for this long. And being able to ease into that, it is what it is, or it's just what it is. And the sage perspective would have us say, okay, what good came of that? It's the silver lining. And I've had clients that ended up having kids with someone they thought, you know what, I should probably leave this marriage, but they had amazing children or they learned some other life lesson. And what if those regrets, the things we've done or we haven't done, or the things we've said we were going to do and we didn't do, what if those are a way for us to stay stuck? Rick, have you ever seen clients who are not moving out of a situation Or mindset, because that is a way to stay stuck and not accept a new energy. What do you think about that?

Yes.

And there's some secondary gain in staying stuck.

There is.

It's like all of the sabotaging voices have their something, their gift, their—

Their why.

Something from it. So staying in that victim place, a victim of a relationship, which you hear a lot, you know, the client is where they're at usually, you know, that for a period of time people are going to feel very victimized by an infidelity or a situation in a relationship. And I've watched it, people come in 10 years afterwards.

Hmm.

That the betrayal and the anger and the hurt of the betrayal has now lasted longer than the relationship itself. That they've had a more intense relationship with this person as the villain in their life. And, uh, and sometimes I remember the man that was calling his soon-to-be former wife the terrorist. Oh, and you just know, how's that going to work out, right?

Not well.

So the reframing on all of these has been to move that person from terrorist to teacher, from villain to teacher. You know, what is it that I am learning in this situation, and how can I learn? How can I grow? And that's all that Again, that sage, that higher mind perspective, what is possible now? Everything, everything brings an opportunity. There's no situation without it. Now, we're not always ready to see the opportunity. So it's important to acknowledge and feel and experience the pain. And it's okay, have your victim voice for a while. You know, that victim gets sympathy, empathy from others, gets some need met.

Great story.

Right? And, and sometimes we have to— like, okay, my personality type, I like to make molehills out of mountains. So it's important for me to acknowledge that, yes, I'm a victim of all this and this shouldn't have happened. Rather than minimize it and push it aside. But when I'm ready to rise above and transform the experience into a healing and a growth and a lesson and go out and make my life better because of what has happened, go find that next relationship that is the love of my life, and then— No regrets, then only gratitude for the situations that ended the previous relationships.

I love the idea of bless and release. One of the ways that we teach people in our coaching groups and our coaching pods is to retrain their brains. And after 20, 30, 40, 50 years of the same brain patterning, the negative neuron pattern, we have 6 to 8 weeks to be able to help people shift into a different way of thinking. Now imagine if— and I'd love for Rick to talk about this— but imagine if all of your life you have thought the world or you was a certain way, and every time a situation occurs, an event happens, circumstances show up, you have an anxiety response, you have a fearful response, you have a worry response. And if that's in a relationship, if that's in work, if that's around money or finances, you have the same programmed imprint. And what we're really teaching people to do is how to shift their own thinking. But to do that, you've got to find metacognition. And metacognition is being able to think about your thinking and recognize, whoa, I don't like how I'm thinking. I don't like what's coming up. One of the examples that we talk about a lot is the way that we were raised or the way that parenting has looked. And oftentimes we're looking to parents, or we looked to parents to solve certain problems for us, but then in reality they created different problems. And if we don't stop the patterning that's unhealthy, we might continue into that toxic cycle. And, uh, I'd love, I'd love for you to share your take on that. I do love—

Yeah, um, what I have been noticing, especially the past few years, is a realization happens again and again in this one-on-one work that I'm doing with people where they go back to the past. And, you know, they'll be caught in this desire for love from a parent that could not give it. You know, they— maybe mental health issues, maybe alcoholism, maybe drug addiction. Maybe that parent had an abusive childhood themselves, just not capable of giving my client the love and attention that they truly craved and deserved. And oftentimes there'll be a sibling that got all that. And so they'll be saying to me, oh man, I wish I had got the love from my mother that my brother got. He was just the favorite. He got all the attention all the time, all the accolades, all— and I was left to fend for myself. I got nothing. And there's their victim story, right? And I'm rising above it, looking at it going, hmm, I'll ask, and how did all that love work for your brother? Is he just the most amazing human being these days? And almost every time they're like, oh, hell no.

Oh.

The worst. He's the most like mom, the most like dad. Uh, he's an alcoholic. He's got, Uh, a personality disorder. He's got some horrible problem. I'm like, oh, so all that love you were craving that your brother got didn't help him one bit. In fact, it was quite toxic, wasn't it? So oftentimes we do not get the toxic love we thought we needed and were missing. And had we got what we thought we needed as a child, We'd be worse off and not better off. It's like you dodged a bullet on that one. And how many times that just comes up again and again and again. We get exactly the love we're supposed to get. I think that's the bottom answer. Our childhoods were exactly as they needed to be to create us as we are today. And if we can let go of the negative belief system that we picked up along the way, Mm-hmm. Embrace— remember what our soul knows to be true, which is you are enough, you are lovable, you are deserving, you are worthy. It's always safe for you to be your true and authentic self. Everything, no matter how it appears, is unfolding for your greater good and the greater good of all, because you Are not your body, not your mind. You're an amazing soul, so you are always safe. The worst that can happen to you is you hang out with God, you know, like go back to the planet.

Yeah.

Universe, Creator, whatever that is. So there really are no mistakes, and you can't make one. That's the ultimate in that sage perspective, the blessing in everything. Everything includes you. It's so funny how many people exclude that one piece, right? It's like, yes, everything unfolds for the greater good, but no, I could mess it all up.

We're— it's called magical thinking in psychology that you have. And we are magical beings, but thinking that you can mess it all up. Each of our souls, I believe, Rick, I think you can concur, are here to grow. And one of the ways that the judge character, saboteur character, shows up is by judging ourselves. Another way, judging other people. And the third way, judging circumstances. I'm wrong, or this is wrong, it shouldn't be this way. Anytime that we feel like life is awful, or we're doing it wrong, or someone else is doing it wrong, there's always judgment. And in that judgment, there's no growth, there's no opportunity for it. We're using a whole different side of our brain that doesn't allow for innovation, intuition, creativity, the sage that Rick is talking about. The part of ourselves that are here to serve and make the world a better place and to make our lives better. Think of all the unanswered prayers that you have, people that you thought you should be in relationship with that you weren't. And if you ever look back at them on Facebook, you're thinking, whoa, dodged a bullet on that one. And also the situations that you were in, because it's brought you to today, it's brought you to now. And one of the gifts of the sage is being able to bless and have gratitude for exactly where we are right now, because the sage is all about being present. Your wisest, uh, highest part of you is all about Being in the now. If we're worried about the past, or if we're thinking about the past, we're, we're stuck. We're in anxiety. We are in fear because things have happened in the past that have been difficult. If we're looking at the future, we're future tripping and we're full of, oh my gosh, what could happen, or feeling hypervigilant or worrying or anxiety there. We're not in that present moment. And the present is really where that sage, that higher part of ourselves, the wisest part of ourselves live. And learning how to get into that takes practice. Learning to find your sage, it's not something— it's something we did as kids, right, Rick? I remember you telling a story about driving a car with your dad. Your dad has got you on his lap and you're driving the car. You were magical. You were a being of innovation and wonderment. But over time, we moved away from that. And half of the work that we do is getting people back to that present, back to that self, back to empathy. Back to acknowledging the beautiful soul that you are and what you came here to do.

When you embrace this concept fully, then you get that everybody played their role perfectly. The villains in your life deserve an Academy Award.

I love that.

That's a meme. You did it perfectly. Congratulations, right? So gratitude Is the feeling. So we don't need to forgive.

Even ourselves. We can be grateful for the actions we took, even though they felt like mistakes at the time, even though it may have been hurtful. Everybody grew. Even if we were the villain, we were playing our role perfectly, right? And so the mission is, how do you get people out of that negative self-talk and the self-sabotaging patterns and get them to live in that higher place of what's possible now? What's the opportunity here? How can we turn this into something good? How can I use this to inspire me in going forward.

And the people in our lives. What, what are we offering to others? What are we a role model for? If you've got children, um, how do you help them not be as screwed up as you felt you were? I'm kidding. But, um, you know, oftentimes we don't think about what am I modeling to my children? Um, what am I modeling in, in my life? And being able to step into that sage version Truly, if you know anything about mirror neurons— I struggle saying that— mirror neurons, there's an emotional contagion that happens when we are living our best, when we are in the highest part of ourselves. We invite other people to step into that as well. So we all start to become more sage-like. We all— the higher parts of ourselves start to come out because that's what's present for us. And that's what Rick and I are hoping. We're inviting you. If you'd like to check out more information, we'll put a link, but we'd like to invite you to come and play with all of this with us. Positive intelligence and learning how to get into that best part of yourself.

It's pretty exciting that we, a little over a year ago, stumbled on a system that helps people actually grow the neuropathways and the gray matter that it takes to stay in the higher, wiser perspective. I mean, you can have moments of insight and glimpses and understanding from the work that both of us have done with people through the years, but now we have something that helps people hold on to that by physically changing the structure of the brain in a real simple, easy way that takes only a few minutes every day.

And it comes with an app. So we also have an app that will help you stay on track. And I have to say, from the Clients that we've worked with, their brains are changing. What used to be patterned behavior of overgiving or pleasing others or judgment or control, they're starting to lighten up and they're seeing a huge difference. So I often say whatever got you to now was great, but it might be time to go forward. We're seeing clients into what's next, what's possible when all those pieces that maybe worked for a certain amount of time but aren't going to get you where you want to go anymore, when you're able to release that. And we're seeing people change their brains, change their lives, change their thinking about themselves. themselves, waking up lighter, happier, having more success, having deeper relationships, or even in a difficult relationship, sitting back and saying, huh, isn't that interesting that that's happening? And not being triggered by those negative neuronal, neuronal patterns. They're no longer being activated into the not great part of themselves. We're seeing people literally shifting They're thinking, and it takes 6 to 8 weeks. And we have people who've been doing this, I don't know, 7, 8 months, who are continually changing, shifting.

Right, right. You're getting to work with them over time in a supportive way. And it's really great to have a group dynamic.

I—

there's a lot to be said for one-on-one individual work, and it's great and perfect for making Big change. But this group experience is something magical and powerful and inspirational. I, I get a lot out of watching each person grow and seeing each other grow and everybody supporting one another. And sometimes you and I just sit back and the group runs itself, and they chime in and offer suggestions and stories from their own life of using the tools that we've given them, and they help one another, and it's just beautiful. It's like, uh, the, the mission here is to change the world.

Okay.

What happens when the majority of humanity is operating out of the higher-wise brain? And we get to see in a little way what happens when a group of people Changed their lives and are in this state and what is possible collectively. And we're creating a really wonderful space in virtual space. And if you'd like to come be a part of that, we'd love to have you.

If you have any questions for either of us about the program or about the work that we're doing, Please reach out. We'd love to share more with you.