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okay good morning Linda thank you for joining true Hope cast today we've had some technical issues which the audience

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won't have experienced but you and I have been through a lot already how are you what's going well oh I am so

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delighted to be able to talk to you Simon and isn't it wonderful that today we had kind of an opportunity of dealing

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with some obstacles and how to get past those and the idea of just you just keep trying and you just keep going and even

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your comment that sometimes we just need a little reset and then things seem to turn out okay

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absolutely yep just restart my computer and everything was okay patience and you

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know perseverance I suppose how about just a little bit of an introduction would love to learn a

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little bit about about who you are and what it is that you do oh fantastic so my name is Linda Bjork I am an author I

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am a podcast host like yourself my podcast is called Linda's corner and I am also the founder of a non-profit

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called hope for healing where we help people become their best selves things like improving confidence and

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self-esteem managing stress overcoming depression and anxiety and just doing all those things that help us to live a

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happy fulfilled joyful life how did you get into something like that is that from a personal experience a

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personal transformation story absolutely you know there is a saying that your mess is your message and that

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is precisely what happened with me I was going along my Merry way I'm doing the

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best I can and I like to kind of divide who I am into two parts I was broken and

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I was crushed so the first part of just being broken is I grew up in a wonderful

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home with a great mother and father who did their very best and when I was about six years old my mother experienced a

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trauma in her life and that just shut her off shut her down she was emotionally unavailable for me but I

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didn't see it as oh I should have compassion on my mom because she's going through something hard all I saw was my

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mom doesn't want to have anything to do with me my mom doesn't love me she doesn't like me she doesn't want me

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around what did I do how old were you six it's like I I must have been I must have done

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something bad or there's something wrong with me I am unlovable and that became

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just the model for who I was I I am invisible I I don't matter I'm not important and that just kind of was the

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blueprint for my life I figured well this is the way that it is and you know I didn't want everyone to know that I

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was unlovable and so you kind of create a little bit of a mask and it's like you know uh I'm gonna try to pretend to be

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what I think you want me to be and if you knew the real me Simon you would know that I'm unlovable and you wouldn't

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want to have anything to do with me and so we kind of kind of create that sort of a little bit of a mask and a Persona

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and you know I found out you can live a great life when you're broken you just do your best and you move on but then as

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an adult I had a series of experiences that just uh were perfectly tailored to

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crush me into dust and I won't bore you with woe is me stories but just that the

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little tip of the iceberg I have had my jaw wired shut for six weeks to heal from a broken jaw I have survived at

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airplane emergency landing when the engine exploded I have arrived at the scene of a

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motorcycle accident in time to see my son's broken body lying in the middle of an intersection surrounded by flashing

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light and emergency Personnel it should have killed him but fortunately it didn't but it did break both legs he

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required multiple surgeries he was bedridden for several weeks he had to relearn how to walk I've been awoken in

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the middle of the night with a phone call that my nine-month-old grandson had had a seizure and he was not expected to

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make it through the night he was life-flighted to Primary Children's Hospital where they did emergency surgery to try to relieve the pressure

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on his brain followed by another very delicate brain surgery where they went from the top of his skull all the way to

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the base trying to clear out a blockage they gave us a 30 percent chance of

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success he did survive but unfortunately he did sustain brain damage from the

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incident I also have another beautiful grandchild who was diagnosed with cancer at age five months I have a daughter who

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is as a brain tumor I mean stuff stuff and and there was a point in my life

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where I felt like life stinks and I don't want to play anymore I it was more than I could handle and I slipped into

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depression and it was like falling into a deep dark pit where there were no windows and no

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doors and I was stuck and there was no way out and it was so deep that it was like sunlight and hope and happiness

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could not reach me and I thought well this is my new reality

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um but I had some practice at pretending to be better than I was and so I used

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those skills and I'm going to pretend that everything is okay and I'm going to do my best to not let you know that I am

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empty and dark inside and I was in this place for about five years but almost no one knew

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and uh about this time my sister who was training to become a life coach at that time she was hosting this women's

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retreat and she uh contacted me and said hey I've rented this condo in the

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mountains for and for three days and three nights I'm gonna do this women's retreat I'm gonna teach people how to be happy and live fulfilled and do you want

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to come and I thought no no way because first of all I was struggling with

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social anxiety I did not feel safe not anywhere not with anyone and I didn't think I could handle being around other

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people day and night for three days and I also had I was stuck in a dark

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place and there were no doors and there were no windows and there was no way out and there was nothing she was going to say that was going to help me and I

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thought there's really no point it's going to be miserable with no point but even though I didn't want to go

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the idea wouldn't leave my mind and so I gathered up all of my courage

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and I went and I'm so glad that I did because that

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decision changed my life it was as if my sister lowered a ladder down into my

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deep dark hole she showed me a way to climb out and I

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have learned that healing is not like flipping on a light switch where it's instant it's not like an elevator where

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you just press a button and voila you're where you want to be it's more like that ladder where it's slow and steady or

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like a sunrise where the changes from moment to moment might be small and imperceptible

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but it does come and so because of my experience of feeling broken feeling not

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good enough feeling depressed feeling anxious feeling stuck feeling hopeless

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I know what that feels like and I know that we don't have to stay there and that is what is so amazing

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having that experience of being able to heal and being able to change and grow and to be able to be happy again in fact

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I am better now than I ever was before because when I was broken and feeling

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like I'm not good enough and if anybody knew the real me you wouldn't really like me you'd know that I'm not really lovable and now I like myself and I know

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that if you don't like me that's fine but it's not about me that's your

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problem you know what I mean so it's it's very kind of different that way and so because of what I've been through it

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is matters to me very much that people know that they don't have to stay stuck they don't have to stay sad they don't

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have to stay miserable they can be happy and joyful and live a beautiful fulfilled life

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yeah it's always quite remarkable to me how traumatic events I mean you describe the

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compounding amount of different events but you know something traumatic whether that's a death in the family or disease

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or you know something they're really big happening in somebody's life that's usually a negative is what helps people

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wake up it shakes everything up it breaks down beliefs it breaks down old personalities that we've created and I I

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find what you're talking about when you're six years old and you know what was going on for your mother and then how you as a six-year-old was trying to

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um navigate that and just trying to trying to survive by creating this personality where you know you you're

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putting on this mask for a lot of other people and do you think looking back at that because you use that as a very

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specific example was six years at six years old Looking Back Now of what you know and who you are do you feel that

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that event really created a personality that was wrapped around

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like us more of like a survival mechanism oh absolutely absolutely yes

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um and you know what's interesting as we talk about the things that happen to us in our childhood I've had that wonderful

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opportunity to speak to many doctors and Physicians and I had one who's practiced

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for 40 years and she said you know research shows and my own experience

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verifies that a good 85 percent and above of the issues that people go to

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the doctor for are actually based on stress or childhood trauma these things become

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physically manifest as well as mentally and emotionally depending on how you

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respond to things but they affect us and they affect us until we take care of

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them yeah I think I've got a couple of examples in regards to that traumatic

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things have happened to me and within my family and I just think about how to

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that we don't really necessarily get the support that we may need and that's not

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to blame other people or governments or health authorities whatever but it's

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like it's interesting because because that traumatic thing is happening it requires our immediate attention and you

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might not actually have the time or the ability or the available energy to process and digest like what is

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happening you know I think that process of healing is very much like a parasympathetic rest and digest nervous

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system response but when you are in the traumatic event your brain is using completely different Pathways is using

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completely different chemicals and you don't actually have the ability to start like you know digesting the trauma just

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like you would digest food to obtain the nutrients everything and you eliminate the toxins I think it's very important

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that we attempt to do that with traumatic events but it's so difficult that um we don't really get the

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that you know check we don't get people who are like maybe checking in with us because we do put on this protective

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facade this mask that we are okay and we're going to be fine but in the moment that trauma that that's hit our nervous

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system and our body is like that's energy that is bound that has got to go somewhere and if it doesn't get like

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processed through therapies and you know other different modalities that might

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you know whatever works whatever works for the individual it sits and it goes somewhere and the energy is like bound

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to your physical body and as you say like 85 of like what what people going

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to the doctors for it's it's like bound stress it's trauma that you know if you're six years old like how are you

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you know you're not expected to be able to um you know digest a traumatic event because you know you can't really even

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translate what's happening you would just immediately go into a safety mechanism of just like trying to get

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through things and how that you know it ends up affecting you as an adult so it's like I think my question I suppose

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is like a lot of people experience drama and in the moment

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we're not excuse me we're not necessarily like supported what do you think is missing from from that equation

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because I think we can all EX we all know when people are going through something traumatic and we might want to give people space

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to deal with that in the moment but then there's the calm down of post event where we could be supporting people and

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creating community and you say you went with your sister to a retreat which I'm sure just being with other people in an

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energetic healing state just that was like powerful enough to start

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you know you brought up so many wonderful things and as we're talking about the uh is it okay if I got back

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for just a second on some of the things that you talked about oh please I love that you mentioned that as we're looking

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at traumatic events we're not looking for something to blame and that just kind of stuck in my mind

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because when we're trying to heal it is completely different from looking for

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something to blame of saying what's all your fault that I turned out the way that I did and it's all this person's

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fault and that experience is fault and there's nothing I can do about it because that process of self-awareness

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and becoming aware of where the source of the problem is is so important

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but if we stop there and say blame anger anger anger anger it can help feed and

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make the situation worse rather than going through that process of healing and I love that you mentioned that we're

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also in this our parasympathetic or our our sympathetic dominant states of where

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uh where where we're at right now and I love that you have such a sound understanding of this because not not

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everybody understands that this makes such a difference our bodies are so

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amazing they do it does so many things automatically I don't even have to think

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about I don't have to think about breathing I don't have to think about pumping my heart I don't have to think

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about uh digesting food I don't have to think about the body fighting off disease or healing from issues it does

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it all by itself through this beautiful autonomic nervous system but those branches that split off between the

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sympathetic and the parasympathetic this rest and digest in this fight and flight is something that a lot of people don't

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understand this wonderful fight and flight system is like a turbo boost it's to be able to

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help us get away from that tiger help us to be able to get away from whatever situation that's imminent danger this

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threat that we've got to get through and it gives us this turbo boost by redirecting the energy from other

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sources and so it's like okay let's take right now we got to get away from this

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tiger we got to get away from this this threat so uh we don't need to digest

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food right now but let's turn off our digestive system or turn it down and we don't need to worry about fighting

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disease right the second we'll take care of that later so let's turn off our immune system let's turn off our growth

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processes let's turn off or turn down our reproductive processes and it turns all these things and directs the energy

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elsewhere so that we can get out or survive this problem

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and then our body's supposed to switch back and then everything takes care of it just so beautifully but the problem

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is when we stay stuck in this uh fight or flight then our bodies and our minds

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everything falls apart because you cannot function long term when your

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digestive system isn't working you can't function long term when your immune system has stopped and your body stops

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healing itself and doing all those things that it was designed naturally to do and so as we learn how to be able to get

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back into that rest and digest state or that in other words they call it as the

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the relaxation response it helps us to be able to allow our body to heal itself

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in this natural and beautiful ways so it is so cool that you know all that which

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is wonderful because not everybody does how important it is to be able to not

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stay in that constant stress mode and what it does how it affects us

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physically not just mentally and emotionally everything is connected and

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so that is awesome now I think forgive me the question that you asked before I went off on this was about what can we

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do to step in and play a support role and I think part of that is first that

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we want to support the person and show trust in them

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there's a very different mentality of saying oh you are a mess and I am going

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to fix you uh it doesn't go over very well for the person who is not in a good

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place when we are able to at any any possible level to empower them

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through through teaching through compassion through invitation

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um as much as possible not forcing I know there are occasional situations where you do have to really do an

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intervention but as much as possible show trust in that person and what they

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are capable of because when it comes down to it real true healing comes from the inside out not from the outside in

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and in order to heal from the inside out you have to have the cooperation of the person who needs to be healed

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yeah I think I think it's very difficult for a lot of people to understand things

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like energy and frequency because it's not something that we see it's not something that we can you know you we

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can identify with our senses and and you know kind of translate it into other things in the world but I think when you

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do have an understanding especially of just like the you know the basic biology of how our nervous system works and and

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what it was originally designed for and how you know we might not be running away from lions and tigers but you know

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our biology is very very similar there's no it's exactly the same as it as it would have been back then and we cannot

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have a sustained long-term period of you know a sympathetic fight or flight response you know because yeah as you

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say so many systems are shut down when we're in that in in that state you will be able to digest some food but your

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capability goes from you know let's say 90 to 100 when you are in a relaxed state to you know like five to ten

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percent you'll digest some food and you could probably get away with that for a long period of time but at some point you are going to have a dis-ease and

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it's going to be a problem and you know hopefully you work with a good practitioner that can you know

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not necessarily just like jump to jump to a pharmaceutical book and you know work with the fact that okay you've been

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this issue is 20 years in the making now it's like got to a point where your body

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can't can't deal with it anymore we've got to go back to root causes we've got to go back to fundamentals and Basics

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about you know how often your body is experienced experiencing a stress State

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and I love that you're talking about healing is an internal experience because I think because we do have these

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very limited senses that we believe create our reality we um we blame and we have anger and we

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have Rage of all the things that don't work for us and we're just constantly like giving our energy away we're like literally like it's coming out of us and

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we've just got this you know this this pot of resources that we have day to day that gets added that gets um allocated

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to different areas of the body you know like we only have a certain amount of resources to be able to do that but if you're blaming everybody and everything

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for even just like minor things or the you know all the really big things you're constantly just like giving the

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energy away your frequency your energy is like coming out from you but if you actually want to hear root causes and

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get into that trauma get into that thing that happened to you that is the complete reversal of that of that

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energetic shift you know you are you know putting focus on the areas within your body that just like might not be

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working but when you start like using meditation or you start using yoga you literally change the direction of your

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energy potential and where you put your energy where you put your awareness is where you put your energy and once

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people start to doing that you know when you see breakthroughs in using therapies or using meditation there's so many

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amazing options out there for for people who you know like to try different things but when you start sitting with

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yourself and start sitting with those thoughts sitting with those feelings start sitting where there's behaviors that you're exhibiting that might not be

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serving you we you can have absolutely profound impacts because you are unable

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to change anything within your physical body by you know expecting the outside world to

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do it because you're playing this blame blame game but if you're going in inward you're going internal you can do some

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absolutely remarkable things because you can literally redirect your immune system to start healing you and when people just don't quite understand that

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yeah I think our school system massively fails Us in regards to what we're teaching people in biology but like if

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they start to teach people that you know you can have anger you can have rage you can have frustration it's a very normal

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human emotions and responses but understanding that emotion understand what understanding what that

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biochemically does to you and if you don't get that under control that will

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inevitably cause a physical problem within your body if you're under you know if you can't bring that chronic

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um stress or that chronic thing down I'm really associated with it and like and

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digest what's going on for you and just like be able to sit back slip back into that rational mind a little bit rather

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than being driven by this like Reptilian Brain constantly all the time so I think there's so many things that we can do in

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regards to a supportive nature but it certainly starts with our young people and it certainly starts with our you

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know our school systems being able to like you know telling kids that they've got they've got this unbelievable power

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within themselves to do remarkable things and to get through seemingly

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impossible things and you know you you use your example of six years old dramatic event and you start to create

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this personality you know we're talking like what a couple of decades until you like have a you know you start breaking

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that down that's like it's for some people it's 20 30 40 50 years of of um

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not being your true authentic self which has unlimited potential

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wow Simon it is so exciting to be able to talk with you and to feel that we are

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on the same page and it just it elevates the ability and the potential for the

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conversation and I love that you're talking about the root causes that to me

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is just so delightful you're probably aware of root cause analysis and one of

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the most famous kind of examples of this is in a building in the United States called the Jefferson Memorial building

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which is a very famous in Washington DC this beautiful Monument and at one point uh people were very

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concerned because the beautiful Stones were deteriorating on this precious

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monument and they thought oh no what are we going to do and so they used this root cause analysis to try to figure out

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why why are these Stones deteriorating and they found out that the reason uh

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probably was because they were using these high power pressure sprayers every two weeks to clean the building and they

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thought okay well why are you using these high power pressure washers every two weeks that seems kind of frequent

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they said well we have to because there's bird poop everywhere and you can't have bird poop on a national monument so they said okay I think

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that's it we got to get rid of the birds and so the first solution was let's put bird netting all over it let's try to

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protect it from the birds didn't work super ugly the birds found a way to get in

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back to the drawing board why are there so many birds and they said well they

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come to eat there's so many spiders and then the question why are there so many spiders that's really creepy they said

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well because there's so many bugs for those spiders to eat why are there so many bugs and it was

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because they were drawn to the lights the beautiful bright lights that they had shining on these buildings all night

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long and so they thought well if that's the root of the problem

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then I guess what we need to do is not leave the lights on so much we'll we'll

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you know turn it on a little bit in the evening and then we'll shut it off at night and then when they did that they had 90

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percent less bugs which had less spiders which had less uh Birds which had less

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bird poop which had less necessarily cleaning which made it so that the building wasn't deteriorating now if you

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start from just the beginning and you say okay I have this very precious building that

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needs to be protected and it's deteriorating and you come up from then say then I think you should turn out the

25:13

lights when you hear that kind of a an answer your first thought is

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you're not taking my problem seriously you have no idea what is actually going

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on and it's just this I mean it sounds kind of ridiculous

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but when you understand the process that you're not dealing with just the symptoms but you're working all the way

25:36

down to find the root of the problem and that actually solved the problem then it

25:43

kind of helps us to be able to understand why when we're talking about things like we have health issues we

25:51

have mental and emotional issues people are struggling with depression and anxiety we have people who are suicidal

25:57

we have so many issues and we're talking about something that on a surface level

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might not sound like it's addressing the problem but it's actually addressing something deeper as we go back and we're

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able to find out those root causes of these problems all of a sudden a law of

26:16

the other layers just kind of magically take care of themselves so I I love that

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you keep talking about that we go to the root and we address the root

26:28

yeah I mean it only makes sense really in regards to if you're looking at an individual from a functional standpoint

26:34

you know I think that we have been unfortunately I mean conventional medicine does some miraculous things and

26:40

it's wonderful that we even have it as an option but um the kind of addiction to a quick fix

26:47

that not just Physicians have and the and the medical community but like us as

26:52

individuals are just as consumers you know we want one thing that's going to take care about take care of that

26:57

problem like right away and for a lot of people the side effects are just you know they're just collateral damage you

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know we want to take our pain away we want to you know be able to do this that this and that because you know honestly

27:08

at the end of the day like looking back at yourself and looking at like what the root cause of these issues are it's not an easy thing to do it's not an easy

27:14

Journey like by any means it takes a lot of hard work it takes a lot of um diving into the unfamiliar and the

27:21

unpredictable and you know we don't really like that as human beings we like things to be you know really like

27:27

really common really familiar to us so diving into that that kind of like um

27:32

Dark Places is tricky for people but at the end of the day if you want a new result if you want something if you want

27:38

change in your life or within your physical body you have to start you know diving into those

27:45

scare potentially scary places but that's the place where creativity happens you know and like a remarkable

27:51

things happen so yeah it's just it's a shame that it takes traumatic events for people to step into that in into that

27:57

realm because we always have the potential we've always had the potential to do that even

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from like a very young age because we are so unbelievably energetic at that at that age we do have this power we do

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have this ability to be resilient to do remarkable things um my question in regards to

28:17

healing and the journey and how that begins like what does is there a commonality between like what what are

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most people's healing Journey looks like excellent question I like to say that

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every journey to Healing Begins With hope using hope as kind of a

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as a acrostic I guess where each letter stands for something the H stands for

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having a hunger and a hunger is is a desire but it's not just a little bit of a

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desire because I think on some level everybody wants to heal I mean who wants to be sick but it has to reach a Tipping Point and

28:56

that is when you want to change more than you want to stay the same and sometimes that's why we have to have

29:03

a traumatic event to make us realize I can't stay in this place anymore smart

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people are going to figure it out before then some of us who are not so smart we have to go through some dips but if we

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have that hunger then all of a sudden the world opens up to us because no one can heal without their consent

29:21

the O stands for openness when I was struggling with depression and anxiety I

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was just tight tight tight trying to hide I was like a little armadillo rolled up in a ball and they do that to

29:32

protect themselves and that's precisely what I was doing I was in survival mode I was just trying to survive

29:39

but we can't heal in that place until we begin to open up and it doesn't have to

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go from super super tight to Arms open wide that's pretty unrealistic for me

29:50

one of the first steps was admitting to another person I'm not in a good place and that was I

29:57

know that sounds like a simple sentence but it was very hard to say and to admit and that was the beginning of allowing

30:04

someone else to be able to help me so we also have to be open to some new

30:11

ideas like you mentioned we have things that we understand and that are maybe traditional and well accepted but

30:17

sometimes the things that work are a little less understood and a little less well-known and so we have to open up our

30:25

minds to some possibilities we also have to be open to change so that openness is

30:30

very important for healing the P stands for positive expectancy and a positive

30:36

expectancy is expecting a positive outcome when we worry we're expecting

30:42

something bad to happen when we're feeling hopeful we're expecting something good to happen having that

30:48

positive expectancy is so important because healing takes work and if we

30:54

don't think it's going to do any good we're not going to give it a try so sometimes that positive expectancy comes

31:00

from seeing someone else's experience and realizing huh it worked for them so maybe just maybe

31:09

it'll work for me the E stands for empowerment and when

31:15

we're feeling just low low self-esteem low confidence victim mentality

31:20

depression anxiety all of these things were very fearful we feel very powerless like

31:27

there's nothing we can do about it and and we're just sort of victims to circumstance we have to recognize our

31:34

own power and in order to get that empowerment it comes from a combination

31:40

of learning and doing learning is a very important step but by itself it's not

31:46

enough we have to change some of the things that we do there's a book called Atomic Habits by James clear that I I

31:53

love and he has a quote in there where he says the most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do and

32:02

so that's why I always include action steps of small simple things that we can

32:08

do to help change the way that we feel I love the openness part of that so

32:15

you've got hunger openness positive expectancy and empowerment I really love the openness piece in regards to Healing

32:21

because I think that when we as we spoke about before without a traumatic events and you know our stress response kicks

32:27

in and we're just trying to survive and get through it and then you know we'll hopefully want to kind of turn that off

32:32

and then be able to like you know rest and digest that experience you know like I always imagine you know you've got a a

32:39

deer in the forest here's a little twig snap has a little look

32:45

realizes the threat is over and then just goes back to like eating the grass you know that is a very beautiful very

32:52

simple example of how our nervous system like kicks into gear but when the threat is over it will just

32:58

like down regulate and put us back into a you know a healing State and there's

33:04

no way we're going to be able to start healing from within if we're not

33:10

going to be open to the people around us within our communities within our families and being open to being

33:16

vulnerable being open to healing and being open towards you can't go through something traumatic

33:23

and try and heal and heal from that just on your own you need that support you need the energy you need that

33:29

connectivity with other human beings who who can understand what you're going through you know we can all might not be

33:35

able to understand exactly what that person is going through but I can I have a connection with what despair looks

33:41

like I have a connection with what um you know rage and anger and you know

33:46

hopelessness feels like I have a connection with those emotions so I can you know I can tune into that I can be you know very empathetic to an

33:52

individual if they were to open up with that but yeah we're kind of wild human beings are very very interesting because

33:58

like the one thing that's gonna like help us and get us through years and years of trauma is simple like

34:05

connectivity and openness and honestness and I don't know if it's a a cultural thing that's kind of taken out of our

34:10

communities but um it's remarkable how long people go without you know recognizing that you

34:18

know there's other people can support us and can heal us but we have to be willing to to do that and we

34:24

have to be open and we have to be vulnerable and it's not an easy thing for anyone to do

34:29

so yeah it's just it's just an interesting standpoint in regards to like where do we start beginning here start beginning healing and for everyone

34:36

it's kind of different but it's usually today anyway it's really far away from

34:42

when it when it should be you know it can be decades yes it can take a long time to get there

34:49

and I love the comments that it takes a community it takes help there are some

34:54

things that I really don't think we can handle by ourselves and things like

34:59

depression and anxiety are very challenging and I it messes with the way you think and so it really requires

35:07

another voice another someone to be able to help and support to be able to get through things like that and I love that

35:14

we're having this conversation today because when we're struggling with feeling like we have to hide for

35:20

whatever reason that might be or feeling very afraid I think people feel a lot of

35:26

afraid and to be able to open and to be vulnerable takes courage and it can take

35:32

it can be hard to get there when you're not in a good place and so sometimes just listening to someone else's

35:39

experience and that providing a podcast provides a very safe place to be able to

35:46

reach into someone else's and then that hopefully will give us a little bit more courage to say oh

35:54

well here's something I can do and someone else has been that through that too and I'm not alone and I don't need

36:02

to stay stuck so I I love that we're talking about this and creating really a

36:07

safe place for people to help build up their own courage so that they can take their own first steps

36:13

yeah I really don't think that we are designed to um deal with what we deal with in 2022

36:21

on our own anxieties depression stress I always think back to 100 000 years ago

36:27

is when we're living in smaller communities let's just say I don't know 10 to 20 people and you wouldn't be able to hide those

36:34

emotions from people that you know you would but you wouldn't need to hide them first of all but like you would you know

36:39

you you were part of a community you were part of an organism that like helped each other and you would have

36:44

roles and if you know if you were stressed or anxious or depressed about something it would be quite clear to the

36:50

to the group to the community and I like to believe that there would be circles within that community that would create

36:56

like a healing space and you would be able to very naturally very organically work through that with other people

37:04

um don't quite have that in 2022 for most people I think that if you have to be

37:10

quite enlightened and aware of yourself as an individual and then be able to like you know

37:15

communicate with people that you do need support you do need help and you can do that in like kind of like a healthy manner it does unfortunately these days

37:23

take a lot of self-work and Enlightenment and you know changing your mind to be able to to do that but yeah I

37:30

think back to these really small communities where they would have had anxieties they would have had depressions and traumas and no doubt

37:35

about it but they would have had the support Factor within their group within their organizations to be able to deal

37:41

with that in a timely manner and you know move on and not forget but like move on and evolve and change and be

37:48

different and use that dramatic event use that depression use that anxiety as fuel and motivation to move you forward

37:55

to you know Advance yourself I am going to agree and a little bit

38:00

disagree I love the idea that you talk about how wonderfully necessary it is to

38:06

have a supportive community and the differences between maybe then and now and I also loved how you talked about

38:13

creating a circle I think whether we're in a community of 10 or 10 000 or 10

38:20

million we can still find that circle of people who can help us to be able to get

38:26

the support that we need and it might take a little bit more effort if it's not every person you can trust

38:33

but it's still those people exist we're here we're here

38:38

yeah our little tribes right and they are they are certainly out there there are certainly people out there that I I

38:44

genuinely think more more people than we think really want to help you really

38:49

want to um even if they're strangers you know like I think a lot of people have got

38:55

examples of seeing people crying in the street I like to think most people don't like want to run away from that but they want

39:01

to connect with that they know what being sad feels like they know what grief is like you know and we don't want other people to go through that you know

39:07

we're very you know we're very remarkable human beings when it comes to emotional connectivity so I think yeah

39:13

being able to find your your groups and your tribes and you know seeking them out and then you know working with them

39:20

is without question going to be one of the best things we can do to you know kick start that transformation what

39:27

uh I want I want you you've got some books out there I would like you to tell us about them you've got crushed a journey through depression

39:34

and another book called you got this an action plan to calm fear anxiety worry and stress

39:40

why did you write those books and who were they for excellent question so I wrote crashed it

39:45

is the my personal journey of going through what I did and going through that healing process and it's not

39:51

something that I wanted to write and it's not something that I wanted to share because it makes me very

39:58

vulnerable however it was inspiration something that I was told to do and so I did it

40:05

but I've had such wonderful responses from people because it's not really about me our experiences are Universal

40:12

even though the specific events that I went through are unique to me the feelings the thoughts they are so

40:20

relatable and I've had so many readers come to me and say I cannot believe you said what you did but I'm so glad you

40:27

did because it felt like you were in my head it felt like I was reading my story

40:35

it felt like someone understood me and it gave me hope that I can heal too and

40:43

that's really what it's all about is to let people know you're not alone and that uh the experiences that we have

40:52

are normal and they're hard and they're okay and that we can heal from them and

40:58

so I I love to be able to to share this with people because of the the wonderful

41:03

responses that we have the one that I wrote about you got this was prompted by all of the fear that has

41:10

come from kovid where people feel just so helpless and fearful and so many people

41:18

have thought you know what what's going to happen is my life over what you know just so much uncertainty and so much

41:25

fear and to be able to know that there's something that we can do to empower

41:30

ourselves to be able to feel in control we're not in control of everything that

41:36

happens in the world but we are in control of ourselves and our responses

41:42

here's a beautiful quote from Victor Frankel who wrote the book man search for meaning where he talks about there

41:48

is a space between stimulus and response and that space is our ability to choose

41:54

our response and in our choices lie our happiness and our I can't remember all

41:59

the words exactly but the idea is that whatever happens we have this ability to

42:06

choose our responses so through this book it includes action steps those small simple things that we

42:13

can do because learning isn't enough we have to do and when we change what we do

42:19

it changes the way that we feel and so I want to help Empower people to be able

42:24

to get through their own challenges and to be resilient and to be able to live

42:30

joyfully in spite of whatever life hands us and to know that we're going to be okay

42:36

even if we don't know what okay looks like wonderful and you have a podcast as well why don't you tell us a little bit about

42:41

that and where people can find it my podcast is called Linda's Corner faith

42:47

family and living joyfully and of course you can find it on Apple and Google and Spotify and every place you find

42:53

podcasts I also have a website it's called Linda's cornerpodcast.com and it

42:59

is my privilege to talk to amazing people from around the world to help

43:05

share those things that can help make us happier and healthier we talk about

43:10

physical health and mental and emotional we talk about emotional eating we talk about overcoming trauma we have experts

43:18

in child psychology and in families and just all the kinds of things that might

43:25

that might that might affect us in our daily lives and business and money and just I love it I love it because I get

43:32

to talk to awesome people and I get to learn from every person that I interact with and so I really appreciate talking

43:38

with you today and and learning from you well I'll make sure that the website and

43:44

social media and the links to your books are available in our show notes but

43:49

honestly Linda thank you so much for joining me today I thought this was a very powerful conversation and yes I've

43:56

learned I've learned a lot as well and I it's wonderful yeah being able to have this podcast and speak with people from all over the world who do have

44:02

um worldly different experiences but I I love the fact that it always comes back

44:07

down to energy and and hopefulness and yeah it's just it's wonderful that that's you know a very very common

44:13

experience that a lot of people who are out there attempting to support people and let them know how wonderful and

44:20

awesome they can be so wonderful chatting with you today Linda thank you thank you so much awesome well that is

44:27

it for this episode of True of true hope because the official podcast for True hope Canada if you're listening on

44:32

iTunes please leave us a review I'm pretty sure you can do that on Spotify now I'm not sure um but check that out and don't forget

44:39

to subscribe if you haven't yet and that is it yeah we'll see you next week guys thank you

44:45

[Music]