How to Find Spiritual Balance

we are talking about how to find spiritual balance.

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 there are so many of us who are listening who are very spiritual, but we're missing something, or we're very religious, but we're still missing something.

So how do we get the full pie instead of just having pieces of it? This is something that I have been working on personally for the last couple years, so I'm excited personally to dive into it, and I know that we will all receive a lot of information from this.

Today I have with me Andrew Grunbaum, and he is a five-time entrepreneur, so right there we're gonna wanna listen in. This is somebody who- A

lot of chaos ...

yeah, had lots- Chaos ... of businesses. And what I've recognized is, especially with business owners or people who work in higher management, it is so easy to lose yourself while being successful professionally.

Mothers, you can even relate to this. You're taking care of somebody else, or you have a business baby. How do you take care of yourself- ... especially spiritually? And we're gonna talk about how there are different points within us and how they become disconnected, and I'm making sure to say it wrong on purpose so Andrew can come in and fix it.

But let me tell you more about him. He is an MBA professor, ICF certified coach who fuses rigorous business strategy with mindfulness, meditation, and soul-aligned leadership, so he's already my person right there. He has scaled multiple multi-million dollar companies and coached more than 4,000 leaders from Fortune 500 executives to seven and eight figure small business CEOs,

As a founder of spiritualbiz.org and Best Virtual Staff, he helps CEOs create owner-independent companies, rediscover their purpose, and grow with clarity and heart. His mission, empower leaders to work less, earn more, reduce stress, and build businesses that generate freedom, impact, and a legacy rooted in meaning, not burnout.

Welcome Andrew, and- Thanks so much.

I was very, lucky at like age 21 to discover something called the Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is the mystical part of at least the three, Abrahamic religions. It predates the Bible. The first book on Kabbalah was written 3,800 years ago by Abraham the patriarch. Abraham, who's revered, with Jews, Christians, Muslims, even people in the East, everybody knows Abraham.

He wrote a book before the Bible, which a lot of people don't know about, and it was the first book on spirituality, on mysticism. So that's where Kabbalah begins. And there's thousands and thousands of books, and many of the prophets and people we know, through history, have studied Kabbalah.

Not just religious figures, but the Founding Fathers . 70 or 80% of the Founding Fathers were Masons were Kabbalists. Also, people like, Isaac Newton.

'Cause it wasn't religious. It wasn't about creating a religion. It was the basically how is, why was the universe created? Currently, I run a nonprofit and a for-profit company, and I subcontract for two different companies, taking care of their coaching clients. So it's like I have four different revenue streams to balance.

I don't have four kids like you, God bless you. I have three, and they're also all home from school, I have a wife, and I have to take care of myself, so I balance all these things, and I credit Kabbalah with helping me do this.

Kabbalah is great because it doesn't matter whether you're spiritual and you believe in a creator, what have you, or whatever that means for you. I try not to even talk about God, 'cause it's such a loaded word. I have clients who are atheists and agnostics, and I gotta tell you, some of these people are the most spiritual people I've ever met.

And the way I define spirituality is people who understand there's a connection between us, okay? That what I do affects you, it affects everybody else, and there's some sort of connection, they feel or they sense. That's spirituality, that we're not alone here . That our consciousness affects other people, and their consciousness affects us.

To give you an example, one of my clients, who I coached, previously, they started a nonprofit that was solving poverty by creating sustainable jobs in favelas, in like slums of Latin America, and he created jobs, in the places that you'd be afraid to go.

He's created 6,000 jobs actually for women, for working mothers, in places like, Buenos Aires, the slums of Argentina, and the slums of Mexico City. So that's a spiritual person, even though he says he's, he's atheist, doesn't believe in God. I think he's connected to whatever God is, you know?

Whatever the creator is, he's connected to that. In short, a way of looking at Kabbalah is like, you can look at Abraham the way I look at him. He's like an ancient Tony Robbins . He was giving us all sorts of practical tools, to learn how to control this physical universe, and this physical universe we live in is chaotic.

We're going through change at such a quick pace. That's why Kabbalah is so even more popular today. He gave us tools how to manage this world.

this is the first insight, there's more to us than just our intellectual mind.

Intellect is great. I have a master's degree. I was a professor for 10 years. I love the intellect. I'm not poo-pooing intellect. Very important to be educated. But unfortunately, and this happens, with business owners, with moms, with dads, To navigate the world with just your intellect is very limited.

If all it took was a master's degree i should be more successful than somebody with a bachelor's degree, and a PhD should be more successful than me. Obviously, it doesn't work like that, right? Intellect only goes so far, and this is something that Abraham and then later somebody who expounded on his work, a guy by the name of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

See his books behind me. He has, like, 23 volume books. He wrote something called the Zohar, which is like a textbook on Kabbalah. About 2,000 years ago he wrote it in the Galilee in ancient Judea. And everybody since then has been studying it. For instance, Isaac Newton has his own copy of the Zohar in one of the British libraries, with his notes all over the place on it.

Some say you could credit the Zohar with the scientific principles he came up with. But that's one part of it. It's an intellectual study, and intellect is important. But then we have two other kind of, minds. The other mind is our emotional mind.

This is another part of us, and usually it affects us more than anything intellectual, our emotions. You know this very well, studying wellness. Emotions are really important. And, for instance, trusting your gut. One of the things I teach my successful founders, CEOs and business people, they trust their gut more than their brain.

They know their brain always messes them up. So they start trusting their gut, their emotions, when they're balanced.

How to get balanced. There's some really simple tricks. But just even physically, right, we know we have, you know, say, go with, trust your gut. We often don't trust our gut, right?

We had a feeling we should've done it, and we didn't do it. Ah, I had a feeling that was the wrong way to go, and I did it anyway because my intellect told me that was the right move. Whether it's a relationship or a business or a job or whatever. Science has shown that we have these neurons, basically a brain about the size of a cat's brain, cats are very smart, right, about the size of a cat's brain in our gut.

It's literally another mind. So you should start focusing in on that gut and learning techniques to balance yourself, to emotionally regulate yourself, and then trusting your gut. You shouldn't trust your gut when you're angry or fearful or depressed or sad. Then your cat is in a fight or flight mode.

That's not good either. But if you can calm that cat within you let's call that, 'cause it's a mind, then you can trust it. And over and over and over again, hundreds of clients over the past few years who've learned how to trust their gut, their decision-making becomes much better.

Now, it's subjective. I just see what happens with my clients, but I see it all the time, every day. They start making more money. They start being happier in work. 'Cause they're making the right decisions with their gut.

The third part is our spiritual part of us, what I call your heart. When we say, "Who am I," people always turn to their heart. We know what the heart is. That's something that connects us. Every human and every animal in the world, every living thing can connect through our heart, and that's a really practical way of balancing the three.

Say, you have an intellect, and you have a gut, right? You have, like, a feeling center, and then finally you have the spiritual center. And that's the one, if you're spiritual, you can say that's the part that's connected to God or the Creator, what have you. But it doesn't matter whether or not you, believe in God.

Again 95% of people believe in some sort of creator, so I can speak to those people, but I wanna, be inclusive. Include people who are agnostic, I have family members who are agnostic. They're like, "Not sure." No problem. I can't prove God to you, but I can prove you have a heart center, that you can connect with people through this heart center.

And when you can do that, you become more emotionally regulated, and you can actually ask your heart... And we can go through that if you want, a very simple technique. We can ask your heart for answers, and your heart will oftentimes give you much better answers than your brain could ever do. And I have a huge brain.

I love my brain. It's very limited. I wouldn't be where I am today if I trusted just my brain.

I have, a client, and he is a spiritual guy, he believes in God, and he believes there's a connection between us, but he's in his head.

 Because he is in his head he just, he makes wrong decisions all the time. And he could be so much more successful than he is. He's in commercial real estate. He's made millions and millions of dollars but because in his head he's always worrying, you know, he's always catastrophizing, he's not happy.

So who cares if you make millions of dollars a year, if you're not happy and you can't enjoy it because you're always catastrophizing because we have something called our lizard brain. The, the ancient brain that's fight or flight, and his fight or flight brain is always engaged.

So who cares if you make a million bucks a year if you're in fight or flight? It's not enjoyable. We're working together, right, to bring him down. I'm teaching emotional releasing techniques and stress management. I recommend highly to people to learn mindfulness. Today mindfulness it's research-backed. I got my certification at Brown University. Most hospitals today have a mindfulness program. It'll help you with everything, and they're either free or, low cost. You can learn mindfulness, and you can use it to calm your brain through emotions which is also important, and and then you can think more clearly.

Meditation, mindfulness, this stuff is science-backed today. That's why I have a spirituality and business institute, because it's all science-backed. You could say whatever you want. I have data. I'm a professor. I have data this stuff works.

You gave us a really good example of somebody who's stuck in their head.

Yeah. And I have been there. I am still recovering from that. Give us an example of somebody who's really stuck in their heart, and then somebody who's really stuck in their gut. Because that spiritual connection in the gut, sound similar to a lot of people.

Think that will help us to understand the difference- and then those symptoms.

Yeah.

I'll give you a very simple, process you can use any time to connect with your spiritual center. Because your spiritual center, your heart is connected.

Through your heart, you connect to your soul, and your soul is infinite. Your soul is unlimited. Your soul has no problems, because it's connected to the life force of God all the time. Kind of like in the Matrix, our problem is that we're spiritual beings in a physical body, and the physical body's limited because it is connected to the five senses.

If you look at the five senses, you can look around and you can see chaos. You can see trouble all the time. So I'll give you a very simple technique, to use. This is something I've taught thousands of people. I've taught this on stage to a finance conference.

Everybody's doing meditation today, but this is something even simpler. It's a simple way to meditate. It's like three minutes. Let's do it.

 Think of a problem you're having in your life.

Think of a challenge. Now, you can close your eyes and slow down your breath, and with each breath, start slowly moving your consciousness from your head down to your heart. Every time you breathe out, your consciousness, your thoughts go in your heart. And after about three breaths, ask your heart to give you an answer or a solution to this problem.

Your heart, not your brain, not your gut, your heart. What does your heart say about this situation? It'll maybe come as a flash, as an idea, as an image, a thought, but something will be there. Now, when you're ready, open your eyes, take a couple breaths, and did you have a different perspective when you breathe, when you thought in your heart?

Yes. All right. Can you share it or it's private?

I was trying not to share it. Good, Kleenex are there. Ooh.

 I haven't shared this in any way, so this is the first time anybody's hearing this. Our dog's cancer came back with a vengeance.

Week and a day ago we had to put her down. We had less

than 24

hours. An hour ago, we picked up her ashes, our kids don't even know we picked up the ashes yet. Mine was how do I let go of this? How do I release? Yesterday was the first day that I haven't cried.

Can't say that for today. Picking up the ashes totally did me in. But mine was how do I release her? And I could visualize how to release her. I'm releasing her spirit back to the world, sharing her again, but that does not mean that I am losing her, 'cause I already have in a lot of ways, right?

She still- Mm ... will be here. I can still feel her presence. She was always in the office with me, and I could totally feel her where she- Mm ... normally would be laying. Ooh, And for me it wasn't like anything business that I needed. I need this most of all. Because being a parent, I need to make sure that I am healing so that I can help our children heal.

She was our family dog- Sure ... and she went way too soon.

She was turning nine next month, like, and healers last for 16 years, so-

Yeah ...

and it's also hard this has been planned, not the timing. We plan to have two dogs and a cat right now. We picked up our kitten on Sunday, so-

how do I let her go so that I have room for the cat? Because the cat is supposed to be more mine and my daughter's. She wants to be a vet when she grows up, so like we want her- very much involved through all the stages with the cat. So definitely a lot there emotionally for

me. So how did it feel to connect with your heart and get these messages from your heart?

It felt good. It felt like there's space. And for anybody, I think you could relate to this way, it's when you have one child, you're pregnant with another, and that whole- Yeah ... how do I make sure I still have love and space-

for this soul, knowing there's another coming.

Yeah.

So kind of that idea.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's beautiful, thank you for sharing, and my condolences again to you. Grieving a pet is just as hard as grieving a human. People don't understand who don't have pets- that they become part of your family.

Because I have to grieve space for them, too.

And what happens when people grieve is because they go into a place of, you know, sadness and depression and victimhood, all these kind of negative emotions- anger, why did this happen, why'd it happen to me, why'd it happen to my kids? It's a vicious cycle, the emotions and intellect.

So what you gotta do is take a moment, relax, take a few breaths, and let your heart help you, 'cause it's the channel through which your soul is talking to you. I've had so many people had incredible revelations by just taking a few moments and talking to their heart about it. Really try to visualize almost your soul , however the soul looks to you, coming through your heart.

This also has been through science. There's, an organization called HeartMath Institute. Have you heard of them, HeartMath? I've heard

of them, but I haven't researched or anything .

actually, one of their executives is one of my business coaching clients, and they've studied all this since the '90s, how tuning into your heart has all sorts of physiological benefits. Maybe you had more calm and you're able to share this, and maybe you got some sense of balance irregardless of the spiritual aspects of the heart, just by tuning into your heart.

It's different than your gut, different than your brain. Or we can say speak from your heart. We all know what that means in every language, right? Why? It's because A- Abraham patriarch explained that it's a level, we can get into the technical class of the Kabbalah, but level of, tensphero, it's connected to tiferet, which is balance.

He was talking about this 4,000 years ago, how it's connection to balance and it's connection to our soul. Reach out to me, I can give some books, on, Kabbalah.

So this is something really simple you can do any time. Take a minute it takes you out of your head, and also takes you out of your emotions a little bit, let your heart speak to you.

What about the other direction? And I'll use myself as an example, still using the dog as an example as well, because I know business-wide and life-wise, people have had this. We put a deposit on this kitten, a Bengal cat.

We wanted a high energy cat to go with our- Sure ... high energy kids. My husband and I are high energy.

When we were starting to put the deposit on this cat, , I had the impression, and I told my husband several times, 'cause I wanted him to feel out, see if he was also getting this impression, that her cancer was going to be coming back, and it was going to be a really quick switch.

And every time I got that, I would, "No. Reject." Like-

get this out of the universe. This is not happening. She's my snuggle buddy. She's my baby. She's way too young. This is not happening." I wanted to repel that negativity, right? Mm-hmm. We've all had situations like this in our life.

How do we get to a point where we can accept it and bring that alignment in?

I'm not saying it's simple. It's a simple process. It may not be easy for some people, but the idea, is that your emotional balance, so we're talking about the gut now, how do you calm that emotional center?

If you can calm your heart and you can speak through your heart, it'll, calm your emotional center and your head also, so you'll be able to think more clearly and feel more positive. But let's say if you're in a very negative place, right? You're rejecting. You can't believe this is happening, and you're angry, and you're upset.

We have to understand this goes to EQ, emotional intelligence. It's been proven in like the '90s in practical ways. There's 30 years at least of really good research on this. Emotions are holistic, meaning that if you're, and we know this on an intellectual, let's say you're angry about something in your personal life, it'll affect your business life.

If somebody upsets you, if you have a tough boss in business, or you just lost a sale or whatever, you lost some business or you're stressed somebody's calling you and there's a fire, you know, you have to- Or

divorce ...

Yeah ... divorce, any sort of tra- divorce. It doesn't have to be in that extreme, just a fight between you and your husband, right?

That fight, if you're fighting and sometimes- People who love each other fight, right? So you can love your husband, but you're now fighting, and now you have to do a podcast. Your emotions are gonna be out of, out of whack. They won't be regulated, so it'll affect what you do.

What you can do is, emotions, if you learn, if you release somewhere else, it'll help with things that you can't really release on yet, that you can't balance. We can go through a a general, releasing on negative emotions.

I'll give you some, specific tools you can use. And if you can do that, you'll find that you'll be able to release you'll feel more balanced with other things. So give you an example.

And releasing any negative emotion is a choice.

That science has shown that. And it's hard for us, oh, I feel... I am angry, we say. No, you're not angry. You're having anger. You are experiencing an emotion called anger, or you're sad. I'm sad today. No, you're not. Then you're identifying with it. In laboratories they can add different sort of diodes and stuff, to people's brains, and they can make them cry by electrical...

they stimulate a part of the brain, or they make them sad or depressed. It's a physical thing. We have to understand, even emotions, because it's connected to our physicality, emotions are physical. They're not who you are. They're not your essence. They're not your soul. They're not your values and your purpose and, you know, the love you want to give to the world.

It's physical things, just like you have a physical pain, and this has also been shown. There's great data on this, like incredible data, that, just like, you have a physical pain, let's say you hurt your knuckle and it really hurts, it's the same sort of thing as an emotional pain. And just like you can heal a physical pain, sometimes you just take some ibuprofen, right?

If it's like a little pain you could take. You can do that with, with emotional pain. And by the way, they've shown, it's interesting, sometimes... I, I'm not a doctor, I'm not prescribing any medicine here, but in a jam, if you're feeling very anxious or depressed or sad, they've shown that acetaminophen or ibuprofen also works for emotional pain.

So it's like a real quick, I don't want to call it sedative, but like emotional balancer. Because emotional pain is connected to the physical. And I've tried this, 'cause when I read this data, I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." And I was feeling upset about something.

I've done that as a teenager.

Pardon? Are you telling me that teenage me was that smart?

Yeah.

I'm surprised. It's effective.

I've done that- when I had a hard breakup when I was a teenager.

Oh, you took ibuprofen or something? It felt like...

Yeah, it felt like literal pain.

So I took- ibuprofen for it, and I found that it helped, and I had that whole- is this kind of like, the sugar pill type of idea?

No, no, it's an actual, because it's a physical pain, it's not a placebo. But if, God forbid, somebody breaks a leg, "Oh, I'm not a broken leg." We don't talk like that, right? Or somebody has some disease, "I'm not my kidney disease," right? We don't talk like that, but we identify, which makes the pain worse. We identify with our emotions so even though I study spirituality and I am a spiritual coach, I separate this and I make it very clear through science that your emotions, you can release any negative.

That's the light at the end of the tunnel, is that may not be easy to do, may take a while, but we can learn how to let go of our negative emotions. And if something's really hard, let's say you're grieving or you're angry about, a loss like you are right now You can work on something else that's a little bit easier, or in general, you can work on emotional releasing.

So because science has shown that it's a choice, it's something that people have to try. I can't prove it to you that it's a choice to release negative emotions. It's something you have to try.

And a simple way of doing it is, using three, questions. I call this the yes exercise.

And this is research on emotional intelligence. When you have a negative emotion, all right? It's good to start studying emotions. We don't learn about different types of emotions. We can't identify when we're feeling bad, what are you even feeling? So there's different levels of emotion, and, the first one is feeling, like the lowest energy emotions are definitely depression, right?

When you feel despondent. You have no energy to do anything, right? People are depressed, people are suicidal. That's the lowest. And then there's higher level. It's still negative. Sadness. Sadness is different. People can't identify which one. Sadness, you can do things in sadness.

Depression is you're in bed, right? You're done. All right? And some people can be depressed for a couple days, some people, have chronic depression. I have it in my family, so it's something I've learned how to manage through emotional releasing. But if I didn't have this stuff, I wouldn't be where I am today.

I couldn't do all the things I do, 'cause I have it in my family. When I was very young, I'd always be just depressed, and I was like, "Is this how people are? This is horrible." And I've been able to, quote unquote, heal myself, without any drugs.

And drugs today are actually very, very good for depression. I'm not telling anybody not to use medication if their psychiatrist prescribes. But this stuff is at least as effective. We have to understand our emotions, then I'll tell you the questions. There's depression, there's sadness, or grief, and there's different types of grief.

Then there's fear. Fear's also fear, worry, anxiety. It's a little better than sadness, we can agree. Still not great, but a lot of people work out of fear, right? All day long, they're fearful, they're worried, they're catastrophizing like that client of mine. they're not as productive as they could be, 'cause they're in fear.

But it's still better than obviously sadness or depression. And then afterwards is impatience or call it lust. Could be, some people say lust is sexual lust. No, it's impatience for anything. You want it now. That's a type of energy. You're impatient. You want it now. I need this thing right now.

It's not really anger-

I've never thought of it that way ... it's impatience.

Yeah. And

I know I interrupted, but I wanted to like- No,

please ...

please pay attention to this, 'cause I've never thought about it this way. Have you guys that are listening? What do you think? Just take a second to think about that.

Yeah.

And then now keep going, Andrew.

Thank you. We have to at least explore the kinds of emotions we have. That's the first part, recognizing that we're having an emotion. Having an emotion is the first part of EQ training. Emotional intelligence training is to first be aware of what emotion you're having.

So find online, find a list of different emotions. Use ChatGPT to come up with different groups of emotions. Start studying them. You can cheat like I do, and I actually have the emotion wheel right there.

And you can easily find it online.

So there's, depression or apathy, grief, the fear, lust. The next one is anger. Anger is, is better to have than sadness, right?

With anger, you can action with that. You

can do things.

With

sadness, you're just stuck.

Your anger, doing things out of anger, and you're always annoyed. There's somebody you know, old people, they're always annoyed. They're always upset about something. Always... Let's put in the, in the bucket of anger. Different types of angers.

It always makes me wonder how their heart is.

Not good.

All right. No thank you. I don't wanna have that.

Raises your blood pressure.

Yeah.

By the way, also depression and sadness. Depression, worry, and fear has been linked to all sorts of diseases including diabetes, of course heart disease, all these kind of things.

Because it's a physical thing. It affects your chemistry. It makes me think about sludgy.

It's just doesn't work as well.

It affects your chemistry, your biochemistry, your biology. So there's anger, and then there's... the next one is pride. That's better to be prou- pride.

It's good to have confidence, like I feel I'm a confident person, but then there's pride. Like, you know who I am?" It's, Where healthy confidence is that alignment, and you feel good with who you are. Just that, that centered groundedness. Where pride, I think of it like over-inflated, like the balloon-

why is this happening to me? You

know? And you think people like that repel. So think about how much is being repelled.

Yeah. Now, being proud is better than being angry. I'd rather be with a proud person than an angry person, right? And it's better than being fearful or angry or sad, all those things.

It's still a negative emotion. W

here we wanna shift is into a place called courage. Courageous emotions. Happiness, excited, I'm gonna do it. I can do it. Those are action. It's a, a feeling of action. You get up in the morning and go, "Yes!" That's courage. Courage is also where happiness lays. You have a sense of fun.

You have a sense of excitement about the day. Now, how do you get there? You get there by releasing on these other emotions, and I'll show you a technique how to release on these emotions. But we should at least be in courage, and this is what I do. I'll show you the technique I used.

It was a little bit more than that, but basically, I did this with a lot of sales groups.

With this one sales group the first time I did it, it's about 20 people in a logistics company. Very high-pressure. They're cold calling all day trying to set up accounts for this logistics company. Tough job. And they were all stressed out. So when they came in, I came in as, I used to have a company called Sales Professors, where I re-engineered sales departments.

But a lot of stuff I did was leadership and the sort of emotional balancing, because I knew the data showed that if somebody balances their emotions, they're gonna do better in sales. So long story short, I created a five-minute thing for everybody to do in the morning, and I think, like, 19 out of 20 people committed to doing it, and they were doing it regularly.

The leaders of this company were very forward-thinking. They were great people, right? Who wanted people to do this sort of stuff, They were very open, I didn't go in there and teach them how to cold call better. I taught them how to release emotions and get to courageousness.

In about three months, their sales went up 30% in this company just by doing five to 10 minutes of emotional releasing every morning. That's it. And I told them they can also do it before they get on a phone, when they have sprints. They can do it throughout the day. But the feedback I got was that this emotional releasing, helped them in other places in their life too, because they were more balanced.

The more relaxed at work, when they came home, they were enjoying home more. And they felt better, and people around them, they saw the improvements. So that's why I'm saying this is holistic. Everything is connected.

And after courageousness, there's something called acceptance. We can feel accepting of where we are.

That's even higher than courageousness. A higher level of vibration, let's say, or even a more powerful positive emotion. And then the final one is peace . There's some people, Dalai Lama, people go through life just being in a state of peace. They're imperturbable.

Like nothing affects... Something good happens... By the way, being super happy is called being manic. That's also not good . Being super happy. Like, somebody's on drugs, like they're so happy. That's imbalance too. Some people can get to a place of peace where you're just okay or you're just happy.

Nothing seems to affect you. You're not manic or depressed. You're in, a place of complete balance.

So the first lesson here is start recognizing when you're having an emotion. That actually will help you balance your emotions quite a bit because you'll notice,

instead of saying, "I'm angry right now," "I'm having a feeling of anger. Oh, the anger's coming back." Really try to almost personify it. Or, "I'm getting sad or depressed." Instead of saying, "I'm getting sad," go, "Oh, there's this feeling of depression here. Oh, there's this feeling of sadness here. Oh, that's interesting."

And you could study it, and then it doesn't affect you as much. But the basic idea is this. When you're not feeling good, right?

When your gut sense is out of whack, you ask yourself three questions. You ask yourself, it's could you, would you, when. First question is

And let's try it with you. Think of a negative emotion. Go inward and think of a negative emotion right now you're having, okay?

Now, have you identified this emotion? What's the emotion?

This is why you have a poster nearby or have it on your phone or whatever

Okay. Yeah, I was right. The one that I chose, anxiousness. Anxious. You're feeling anxious ... bubbly feeling, the need to move-

Now, could you just for now, could you let go of feeling anxious?

Yeah, because what's underneath it-

is a little bit of fear. Okay It, it's something that is going to be stretching me business-wise, and I know I need to be doing it, but I've been putting it off. Okay. Does anybody else have that in their life? I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So you're feeling anxious or fearful, which is very similar.

Mm-hmm.

So this fear, this anxiousness, could you let it go just for now? Just for this, just would you let it go?

Yeah. It's a low level too. It's just a- small hum in the background.

When would you let it go? When?

I'm going to let it go in the ignoring type of way because- No ... I'm going to schedule it to do the thing on Tuesday of next week.

You're in your head. You're-

I am ...

intellectual. This is, intellectualizing it. I

do that all the time.

It's, here tell me I'm stuck here

when I ask you when, would you be okay with letting it go now? Just for now. Yeah. Could you let it go? Yes. That's it. It's a choice. So it's a could you let go of this emotion once identified? Would you, and when? And the answer should be now. Now, sometimes you can let it go by saying, "No I'm not letting it go."

But that's okay too, because you recognized it. You've given it space to just be there. You recognize it. You know, you're having a feeling of anxiousness or a feeling of fear. So this is like, so it's could you, let it go? The answer should be if you can, say yes. Would you let it go?

Yes. And when? Now. So it's like a yes game. Make a game of it, and you'll notice, either you'll, like, giggle or something'll shift in your body, or you'll feel lighter, or 30 minutes later you'll go back and you'll be like... Maybe it won't happen then, but 30 minutes later you're driving and go, "Oh, I'm not anxious anymore."

Yeah, I can breathe better. Yes, because it was a physical, chemical thing in your body. Yeah,

I have more room in my diaphragm, and that's interesting- Yeah ... because think about- It's physical ... those times where you're hangry, PMS-y, it's, you haven't slept for a while, whatever has happened, right?

I think that includes everyone in the population next time you feel that, if you can get there before you have that knee-jerk reaction, try those three questions and see. Yep. And get back to us.

Yeah, get back to us.

Again regulating your emotions, you have to look at it because it's physical, like exercise. Meaning if you go to the gym once, if you try this once and go, "Oh, it didn't work," no, you have to try it every day.

Try it, you know, for a little while. Identify negative emotions you're having, and then could you let go of that emotion? Yes, just for now. Like, I always sigh, like when I'm doing emotional releasing, I'm just sighing, like I'm letting it out. Could you, would you, and when?

And if you can't let it go, the other question you can ask is can you just make space?

Could you allow this feeling to be here? It's just a feeling. It's all it is. Could you allow it to be there? Because we suppress our emotions. We don't allow ourselves to feel these emotions. If we can truly just allow them to be there, they'll pass right through us.

That feels better than the idea of you keep shoving and then it becomes the volcano.

Yeah.

And then once it explodes, you feel embarrassed, and you're like, "That wasn't even worth it becoming a volcano."

Yep. Expressing.

Most people either express their negative emotions, or suppress them.

They think, and spiritual people think, "Oh, I'm not gonna be a- they suppress it, but then it, you still haven't released it. You just suppressed it. So people who are angry, "I, I'm so angry. I'm a good person, I can't be angry at my wife or my husband or my child. I'm just gonna swallow it."

Well, then- Your blood pressure's still going up. That's like, back pain, all sorts of chronic pains, they're a, symptom of a really, quote-unquote, good person, 'cause they suppress all their negative emotions, then they have physical pains. This has also been proven through science that negative emotions, suppressed anger, like suppressed especially anger can cause physical pains.

There's 50 years of data on this. Now, again, most people don't accept this because You have to take personal responsibility, and people don't like taking personal responsibility. You're saying my back pain is caused by me, by my anger? Yes. Try it.

It could be.

What's interesting, and we'll bring this more personal for Andrew going for the sadness, depression side, and me going with anger, is asking those questions and then digging deeper made me realize the anger that I was holding onto in my body was not even mine. It belonged to my father. Mm. And I'm sure if he dug into it, how many generations back did it go?

Yep.

And once I was able to realize that and start doing the muscle thing, right, like really... 'Cause it's hard y- when you're in the moment to to- Sure ... okay, I'm gonna unplug for a second, realize and think about if it's mine or not. Yeah, but doing the work and letting it become that muscle until it was second nature, I was able to release it, and now I don't feel anger.

I can feel frustration, like it's all the lower level. Mm-hmm. I can't tell you the last time I felt anger. That's

great.

And it shows up differently in my body, and so many of the back pain and the, more the muscle tightness has gone away.

Yeah.

And now the ones that I do have that are stuck in my body are mine.

I can claim those. But it was

very interesting.

So how has that worked for you? 'Cause when you talked about sadness and depression and how you don't really have that, I think this will help people to relate and kind of be like- Well- ... oh, I have that ...

it can still come back, but now I have tools.

I've been practicing emotional releasing and learning EQ and emotional regulation, if it comes back, I can regulate it much more quickly. It's not like it's ever gonna... We're all human. Our emotional, biochemistry will create these negative emotions, and somebody pushes our button, we get angry, or hear something sad and we get sad or depressed or whatever.

But I've learned, one, it helps to know that it's really not me, it's not the essence of who I am, and I can learn to balance it much more quickly.

So again, it's like exercise. And sometimes you forget to do it, like exercise, right? And we know exercise is really good for us. We don't need to debate whether it's good or bad for us.

It's great for us, yet most people don't exercise, and some people do, and then they stop. So just like with emotional balancing, you have to do it all the time, and then it's kind of like if you exercise, you get stronger. You have to run up the stairs, you're going up the stairs, and you're not out of breath.

Or you have to run after your kids, right? Four little kids. If you're in shape, you exercised for a few months or a few years or continuously through your life, you can run after little kids, and you feel fine. And other people, they're like, "Oh, my back." You know, they can't... They run out of breath , a lot of people today are having kids much older also, if you haven't exercised, right, and you're 50 or 60 years old, good luck running after a four-year-old, right? So same thing with emotions. Look at this, like, exercise, like a fun exercise, that you can do throughout the day. I do it before I get on any of my calls. I do it when I get in the car.

I'll do a quick release, emotional could you, would you, when. I also go through, I try to identify if I'm feeling anything and could I just let that go. If something depressed me or something made me sad or I think about something in the past that made me sad, I bring it up and could I let go of that time I was sad?

I play with it. I bring up feelings of when I was sad or upset or angry. Or I look at a person I don't like. I visualize them in my head. Oh, this person really annoyed me, you know, from earlier today. And I go, "Could I just let go of my emotions around it?

Could I just accept them the way they are and accept me the way I am?" Let go of the emotion, feel better. So it's holistic, and it's like exercise. If you're really upset about something, maybe you're holding onto it really tightly, okay, work on something else. It'll help you let go and release on that thing, and it's cumulative, like exercise.

That's the best thing I can tell you, and they've done a lot of studies on this. You can look them up. High-pressure jobs, people have learned emotional releasing. There was a study on hotel salespeople who sold commercial accounts.

 This logistics company. It was A boiler room where people are just making phone calls all day long trying to sell. And when they learn emotional releasing... In fact, there's a guy on Wall Street, he makes a ton of money. All he does is teach this kind of stuff to people on Wall Street, selling stock.

Like, really high-pressure places, and he's a gazillionaire. So this stuff works. Use it like exercise. So that's, a long answer to a short question you had, but I think it was important so we don't get stuck. It's gonna affect your physiology. You can't be balanced if all around you things are upsetting you and you're staying with them. We all get upset. It's okay, these negative emotions, we all have them at one point or another. You just have to let them go.

Acknowledge them, identify them, have that chart or whatever you need to start, start identifying emotions you're having. You're having an emotion. Oh, I'm having an emotion of anger. You're already separating yourself from that anger, and you're acknowledging you're having it.

Don't suppress it. Okay? Acknowledge it. I wish emotional regulation and emotional intelligence, imagine what a better world we'd have if we taught this stuff in kindergarten to all the kids in elementary school, right? Every morning they get together-

So if all you do is just have a chart, you just identify the emotions you're having- You're gonna be so much more balanced and happy and fulfilled, meaning fulfilled from what you already have. As like this guy who makes a million bucks a year, if you're not emotionally balanced, you can't enjoy a million dollars a year.

Money won't solve it. Money, women, drugs, alcohol, food, none of it will solve it. Nothing in the physical world. Balance yourself. And then you can... you see some people, they seem apparently to have nothing in the physical world, but they're super happy and fulfilled ... And they have everything, because they have peace of mind.

And I think that's richness right there.

Absolutely. That's

wealth.

Yeah. Totally.

So it goes back to let's use different language for a second. Is there something in your life within yourself that you are just sick of your own stuff?

What is it that you are sick of in your own life, something that you keep repeating?

Can you use the same framework? Because chances are extremely high that it's something that you need to heal within yourself, and it's some kind of emotion. So let's get to that point where you can start to label it, but not label it as in, "I am this, so I'm always going to be this kind of person."

No. He's teaching us that's wrong, and we have so many examples in our lives, he's given us some too, of why that's not helpful. That gets us stuck.

Yep.

But the first time I heard this and I had the immediate reaction of, "No, that doesn't sound right, and I'm gonna prove it wrong," and usually when I have that reaction, it's like, "Oh, something I need to work on right here."

But we have an emotion that comes up, so think somatics i- is where I go. Mm-hmm. And then we attach a thought to it. That is- That's right ... an indication, yes. That's an indication that there's something that we need to heal within ourselves And this framework works perfectly for this, and I'm going to start incorporating it right away.

And I know that not too many years ago I was super stuck, and I started working with a positive intelligence coach and a- Mm ... somatics coach within months of each other. And this was when I was starting to plateau with therapy, and it made the biggest difference in my life. I was able to drop therapy.

I have not had to return to therapy. This is because of childhood stuff. And I have done some major healing. I no longer need to do somatics with a coach. I learned how to do it myself, same with positive intelligence, and I now share it with people that I coach, and it has made a huge impact, first of all, on my own life.

I like to be the guinea pig first.

Absolutely. Yeah, me too.

Yeah. And the biggest thing that helps me in therapy, besides EMDR, huge advocate- Mm-hmm ... for that, is figuring out how to label my emotions, because the only one that I knew how to label was sadness, anger, and happiness. That's it. That tells you how much abuse happened, first of all, and just how-

How disconnected we are from our emotions Yeah.

And it shows how much, how I was still an infant in that part of my learning and growth. Yeah. And we all struggle with this in some way, shape, or form, which makes me so excited that at least our elementary school is teaching our kids. I have one child in particular who he feels his emotions in such a huge way, and he's the reason why I went back to therapy Mm-hmm

because I needed to learn how to regulate myself so I could help regulate him.

Parenting really teaches you in the places where you need to grow.

Yep.

So thank you. You think you're so smart until you have kids.

I'm gonna be the best parent ever, and look at all these other people doing it wrong.

Yeah, like, these people, they don't know how to parent. I'm gonna show them how to parent, and these kids are like- I

love laughing at past versions of myself- And then wait till they're teenagers ... all the time. I plan to go back to therapy when they're teenagers.

I've told my husband this all the time. I'm going back to therapy when this happens. And also- How old is your oldest? ... you're gonna remind me to not take it personally, right? And he says, "Yes, all the time." How old

is your oldest?

He's 11 and a half.

Okay, so you still got a couple years. Yeah. But our- Something happens when they're like 13 or 14.

They become, a, almost like they have... somebody told me it's very interesting. It's almost like they have an allergy to their parents. So something happens. It's very... But that's part of it. It's like- Oh,

I've told him I'm gonna embarrass you just, I'm... And I remember young times embarrassing

you.

No, then they'll embarrass you. No, you- Yeah.

I'm taking a tally.

By the time you learn how to manage at, you know, in a sort of half, halfway little kids and, and preteens, then teenagers come, and then there's nothing you can do.

The thing we learned that'll also help you balance you, going into your heart, letting your soul speak to you.

You have to do it all the time, and then after a while- You'll find your soul or your heart or your gut, whatever you wanna call it, speaking to you. And you will know you're making progress when something that used to upset you comes up, and maybe... And instead of upsetting you for a whole day, maybe it didn't upset you, or you were annoyed about it for, like, five minutes, and then it just went away by itself.

Similar to something that was very difficult to do, because you've been exercising, somebody asked you to help them move sofas, all this stuff, and you're fine because you exercised. You didn't move sofas without any muscle training.

You did the exercise, you've been doing it for a couple years, and now you helped your friend move, and you feel fine. That, and you go, "Oh, my God." Same thing with emotions. You have to look at it like exercise, and do it every day. It's simple, but it's not easy.

And I'm looking around at my desk like, "What can I use as an example?" So picture a line, and this is the peace line, right? Everybody wants peace in their life. Whenever I ask people, "What is the one word that you want in your life?"

Yeah. It's usually peace.

Yep.

When you dig down to it, right? They want wealth, they want blah, blah, blah. But really what they wanna feel is peace. So happiness is above there, all the negative emotions below there. And you wanna be able to live here enough that you can feel the thing, and then you go back-

Yep

to here.

You don't get manic. That's right.

Mm-hmm. Or you feel the anger or the sadness, then you can come back to here, right? Mm-hmm. It's not you're going from here to happiness. So I think of this, and then also my husband and I enjoy weightlifting.

It makes me think about how it's not powering through the weights. It's you need to slow down. Think about this life-wise. And you need to focus on making sure that you have the correct posture so you don't hurt yourself, and so you're actually getting the muscle group that you want to get, the main muscle group.

And it's not going to be right the first time. So when you're first doing things, you're doing less weight, and you're making sure that you have the right posture, that it looks right. And then you start adding more weight on. How do you take , what I'm saying about weightlifting, and put that same framework into what he's talking about?

This is what he's really getting at, is making sure that you realize and you're giving yourself that yet at the end of the sentence, knowing that you're going to get there, and it's going to be messy, but you're going to be able to perfect it along the way. It makes me think about-

the old radios- That space ... where you had two different dials to get the right radio station. And it was so frustrating when you know that you're close, but realizing that you're getting closer, and you're better than you were yesterday or at least a couple days ago. You know, we have days where we regress, and that's actually a learning day if you think about it that way.

And that's okay.

Yeah. It happens. We're we're human.

Yeah, give yourself grace also. We're

not

robots ... you can still get upset or s- your husband or wife or somebody, if somebody'll tell you something, or your child, and you'll get upset and you'll be sad. So just, you know, acknowledge you're having these feelings of sadness, and then let them pass, but they may be there for a little bit, and that's okay.

Just don't suppress them.

Don't take out your anger on somebody else.

And also, if you do, the best thing for any relationship and what really strengthens a relationship is the repair. You did not completely mess up. You did not implode everything. You can work on it

Hugs.

10-second hug.

 where do we find you?

People can find me Andrew Greenbaum, there's only one Greenbaum out there, so, business people can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. I primarily use Facebook and, LinkedIn. They can find me there.

Reach out to me. Also, you can go to spiritualbiz.org. That's my nonprofit where I do spiritual coaching, and There's a couple webinars and some white papers using these sort of techniques for business primarily. It's for everybody. Whether you have your own business, you're working for somebody, or you wanna start a business.

On leadership and emotional and spiritual intelligence. And they do cost something, but if you contact me, and maybe we'll put the code. I'll send you the code so the people who listen to this podcast can get it 100% discounted.

Look in the show notes and you'll find it there.

If you wanna follow me also, go to newsletter.spiritualbiz.org and sign up for the newsletter, and then every couple weeks you're gonna get a message from me and what I'm doing, and you'll also have links to different webinars I'm doing, and I try to do a lot of free content.

I don't send a lot, maybe every couple weeks, sometimes every week. I don't overwhelm people.

I don't wanna overwhelm- So you only talk to us when you have something worthwhile.

Exactly. I do it when I have something to say. And it's around spirituality and leadership and emotional intelligence, and how especially leaders are using these techniques, to improve their lives and the lives of their people. So it's very practical. And that's also on the show notes.

Thank you for this. Thank you very much. This was amazing.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me ...

I will definitely be using the three steps in my own life.

Thank you for those who have listened in and for those who are sharing this. I know that especially lately

I have people coming to me, that are talking about this disconnect. People are recognizing it, and they are trying to fill the void that they are recognizing. And this is a great episode to really share this is what's happening, this is what you can do to fill the void.

And for those who are ready for the next steps, Andrew's ready for you. So check out his website. Here to help ... thank you for being here and for joining us, and for giving us a piece of your day to share with Andrew and myself.

See you guys. Thanks.

Thank you so much for joining our discussion. If you enjoyed this, please like, subscribe, most of all, share the love with others. Please share this episode so that we can help other people really recalibrate every aspect of their lives so they can be the best version of themselves, and I will see you in the next episode.

I want to have my quick disclaimer here that this is not a one-size-fits-all. If you want one-on-one coaching, let's talk, and we will make sure what wellness means to you is really put into your life, put into practice. I am using my undergrad in applied health and my life coaching experience to bring this podcast to you