Coaching Through iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics: Conscious Choice

This episode includes our interpretations of copyrighted works done by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching or iPEC. 

Alex Cullimore: They're all different forms of internal resistance. I don't want to do this yet. I don't have time to do this. I can't do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be part of this new thing. Whatever that is, it's some kind of fear, or some kind of, I'm going to just stay where I'm comfortable. I don't want to do this. Those are the things when we really investigate it, we can figure out what's an excuse in our mind and what's really in the way. 

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens. 

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. 

HOSTS: Let's dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.” 

“Authenticity means going with your gut.” 

“Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.” 

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.” 

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.” 

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.” 

“It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.” 

[EPISODE] 

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. We are continuing our series, where we're dissecting some of our thoughts on iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics series. The core dynamic series, if you know, it goes through some of the influences on our energy. Now we are into the disciplines that we can practice to achieve some mastery and understand better satisfaction and just good practices in general for life. We are on, I believe, the fourth discipline now? Third. 

Cristina Amigoni: No, third. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Third. Counting was not only directed. 

Cristina Amigoni: Awareness, so Accepted. 

Alex Cullimore: Theoretical math. 

Cristina Amigoni: Conscious Choice. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, which is a really good. The first four especially really go in-line. All of them play off each other a little bit, but these first four are really good. You can think of them in a linear way. You can be aware of a problem. Then you accept what are the realities and knowing the realities that you're facing, you go into this one, which is the discipline of conscious choice, subconscious choice here. 

There is a great quote that I like from Carl Jung, that until you make the subconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. That is just a good way of thinking about all of our default behaviors and we have all of them, where we are built in with so many defaults, and so many things that we've learned without being more conscious about what we are choosing to do. Conscious choice is our mechanism to get into that space, where we're making choices that aren't just the default reactions, but more of the responses that we want to choose. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. I think conscious choice is one of my favorite disciplines. It's mainly because it doesn't give you a chance to get off the hook. After acceptance, once you accept that things are the way they are and really some of the judgment around it, you accept how you react to things, how you may not react to these conscious choices. It's really that interestingly enough, it's realizing that you do have control in what happens and consciously choosing is how you get that control, without being attached to the control. It's a little bit of a cycle in the conscious choice. It gives power. It also makes it very obvious when we're not making decisions based on conscious choice, when it's unconscious choicing. 

When you notice that in other people, I find that it increases empathy and grace, because it's a little easier to not take things personally, or to not judge as harshly when you look at decisions and reactions made based on unconscious. 

Alex Cullimore: Especially when you start to see those strong reactions that you don't know where they come from. Somebody you've known for a while suddenly has an outside seeming reaction to something. I think this is a great discipline for understanding that there's some trigger there. You understand that some button has been pushed and they are launching out of some subconscious place, or unconscious place, which we all do. From time to time, no matter how much we practice this, we're all going to have a lot of unconscious choice. 

Knowing that about other people helps you understand that you're saying, not taking it personally, and understand that that person has a set of defaults. I have a set of defaults. Getting curious about what your own defaults are, as well as what other people's could be is a great way of increasing your own empathy, curiosity and a good way to deepen some connections. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, and the dichotomy, I find that it's also, as you increase connections, you also become very clear with the connections that you may not want to have in your life as much anymore, because of that understanding of the conscious part of the choice. It's the understanding of the consciousness. Then you look at situations and relationships and people and decides to choose what's worth my energy? Do I want to live surrounded by less consciousness, or lower consciousness? 

I don't like the word lower, because it implies some ladder and hierarchy. Less conscious choices and more reactions. Or do I not? In those cases, what does that look like? There's my conscious choice in play is how much do I want to be around consciousness and acceptance and awareness and decisions that are made from a place of understanding and non-judgment and grace and empathy, versus a place of, in a way, finite game, and looking at things as zero-sum games, or even looking at things as a competition. If I do this, or if I give this credit, then that's taken away from me. 

Alex Cullimore: Some of that integrity of am I putting forward what I say I'm going to put forward? Am I going to be around the people who will do that, or not? That's a great example. Your example is a meta on conscious choice. It's an example of conscious choice, while describing conscious choice. Those questions you asked yourself, what is worth my time? How much am I going to put my energy into this? That's all key elements of making conscious choice. We are doing this based on understanding of what all of the information is available to us. 

Again, going back to that acceptance piece of really accepting all of the reality that is at our hands and what our reactions are and what we might want to have happen and what we might be aiming for, that's when we start to make more conscious choices. Instead of reacting, we go into response. There's a good section here. They talk about responsibility. It sounds like responsibility, but it's response-ability. What is your ability to respond in this moment? How close are you to being able to make an actual conscious choice? How much are you being influenced by subconscious bias? Where are you on that scale? Knowing that what could put you in a better place where you can be able to respond, instead of feeling like you are in a reaction space. 

Once you start to get aware of those times when you are reacting versus you are responding, it becomes pretty addictive to see what you can do more consciously. What can you be more aware of and what would you like to do? It takes a lot of effort. Like all the practices that get a little easier over time, but it's a continual practice. You have to apply it every time. 

Cristina Amigoni: I love the response ability and the tie to integrity. Maybe that's why conscious choice is one of my favorite disciplines. Having integrity is a high up on my values, or my core values, and one that we were just speaking offline how I have a physical reaction to when I see things out of integrity around me, because it's such a strong value. Conscious choice is when you can truly choose that integrity is when you can choose what you are going to say, because you know you’re going to follow through. 

As opposed to just saying what you may think needs to be said, to be liked, or to be accepted, or to keep the peace, or all the other reasons why you may want to say something, or not say something. The conscious choice really plays into very well into integrity, because you are not just making a choice on your action, but you are making a choice of your words. You are making a choice of how you show up. You are making a choice when you don't speak, or show up and what happens there. Hopefully, you make the choice. When you don't, it becomes very obvious that you didn't. Then you can look for a chance to make it up, or you can remember for the next time. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it, because there is so much conscious choice in creating our own reputation. If we have a reputation for being reactive, we’re probably not doing a lot of conscious choosing, or that is where our default lies. When we can we can start to dissect the ideas a little bit between a conscious and a subconscious choice by thinking of these in terms of things like a fear-based choice, versus a purpose-based choice. When we are being driven in our heads by all kinds of language like, I have to do this. I need to do this. I should do this. 

That might be pushing on some kind of fear. It might be that we are trying to avoid something I believe we have to be something that we aren't, or feel like we're not good enough yet. Whereas, if we are more in the purpose-based choice, we might be accessing some things that align with our values and feeling like, this is something that I am choosing because it is important to me. I want to do this, or the things that might come out. It might be a need to, but not that “Oh, I need to do that.” It's, “I need to do that. I need to be part of this. I feel compelled to do this.” Rather than. “Oh, yeah. I need to work out more often.” 

I think that's an easy go-to example of like, we all know that we technically, probably need to, but are we actually feeling like we want to? Are we in the place where we're making the conscious choice to do that? It's great to investigate our own language, as well as the language we start to hear from others when we can sit to parse out whether they're in a more conscious place, or a more unconscious place in our decisions. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, the language is key, I think, for conscious choice. The language in our heads, the language that we use with others and we also hear from others using needs, have to, should, instead of I choose to. It's a big difference. In coaching, we definitely bring that up fairly often when we're talking to someone who shares something that they want in the future, but they may be using the languages – they may be using the words have to, need to, should. 

Understanding, how can that be shifted to a “I choose to do that, or I choose not to do that.” Then you can really get to the core of, is this an external driven idea, or is this an internal desire? Until it becomes an internal desire, there's really no conscious choice possible to move and walk into growth and walk into learning, if we look at even a comfort to growth scale. Fear is very much of a have to, need to, should. If you want to be learning and in growth, it's important to move to the I choose to do this. 

Alex Cullimore: They're all different forms of internal resistance. I don't want to do this yet. I don't have time to do this. I can't do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be part of this new thing. Whatever that is, it's some kind of fear, or some kind of, “I'm going to just stay where I'm comfortable. I don't want to do this.” Those are the things when we really investigate it, we can figure out what's an excuse in our mind and what's really in the way and what we do to address it. 

Again, there will be obstacles when we try and do things, or try and grow, so what are our conscious choices around those obstacles? What are we going to do when we hit those? If we're immediately hit an obstacle and we're like, “Well, I guess I tried that.” Maybe it wasn't that important to us, or maybe we're letting that be bigger than it needs to be. Getting to this conscious choice is incredibly powerful, because otherwise, you might not find out whether this is something you should stop, or something you should find a way around this obstacle for. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. One of my favorite things about honing into conscious choice and getting there is, well, I guess I have two. Not one. Two of my favorite things are one is to actually walk through that hypothetical experience in your head, so creating the movie. I create movies for pretty much everything. Create the movie of choosing something and then seeing, which is the second step is seeing how it feels physically. Is your body reacting in any way to having that image, that movie in your mind of the experience that hasn't happened yet? That in my experience is very telling of something that either feels like a should, or have to, or a need to. Whether it is possible to move it to a choose to, or to move it to a choose not to. 

If I pictured that experience as if it were happening at the moment, the way I expected to be happening, then I can dissect how's my body feeling, what sensations come up. Where do I get blocked? What seems too big, or too small? Where are the gaps and where are the choices? What choice do I actually have that's in my control? 

Alex Cullimore: I like that you also put in there the choose to and choose not to, because choosing not to do something is equally conscious choice, as long as you are conscious of making that. It can be at least as liberating as making a choice to do something, because you're committing yourself to starting it, or to not having to have it ruminate and sit in your mind about, “Maybe I should do that. Maybe I shouldn’t do that. Maybe I should do that. Maybe I shouldn't do that.” If you choose actively and consciously not to do it, you can liberate yourself from that little mental cycle and free up that for the next thing that you do want to do. 

The other parts in this, there is this opportunity cost in our mindsets. If we don't make a choice, we're still costing ourselves mental cycles, which takes away from other choices. That's why conscious choice is so powerful and present in what we can do. If we can be present and we can be conscious, we can have a totally different scope of purview on how we're going to engage with life. It comes very much on the tails of the other two disciplines, because you can really get into that space of acceptance of everything that is, so you can make the best conscious choice, and know what really is in your control and not sort of things that aren't. There are a lot of things that we tell ourselves aren't, but might be if we change some factors in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Should we get coaching? 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. But this time you have to decide whether you're coaching first, or not. I'm not taking this grenade on. 

Cristina Amigoni: This time, I have to make conscious choice? 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I made a conscious choice to put that question. 

Cristina Amigoni: Then I can't complain that I don't like the choice. 

Alex Cullimore: I mean you can. There's no saying you can’t. You can consciously choose to do that. 

Cristina Amigoni: I can cautiously choose and then regret my choice. I will be the client. 

Alex Cullimore: All right. Okay. 

Cristina Amigoni: I'm sure I’m about to regret that. Let's see how fast I regret that choice. 

Alex Cullimore: I'm not going to dig in on that. Not the way we did for acceptance. That one, we really went immediately and I don't even have an immediate question for conscious choice. Hmm. No, okay. Here's a fun one. 

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, here we go. 

Alex Cullimore: I take it back. Thank you for the challenge. 

Cristina Amigoni: Regret is starting to spin in right away. How conscious was my choice? 

Alex Cullimore: Maybe you did want to do this. Maybe subconsciously, you wanted to be in the hot seat. What's maybe an area of your life where you feel like, you might not be applying conscious choice? 

Cristina Amigoni: Is that the end of the question? Okay. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Sorry, I trailed on that one. 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, it's an easy answer. The difficult realization, but it's an easy answer. I would say, family is probably one of the hardest places of conscious choice on a daily basis in every single action. Yeah, that's the end of my answer there. 

Alex Cullimore: Oh, what do you mean when you say family? What kind of choices? 

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, I think there's so much that goes on inside the household that it's on autopilot with kids. There's always a million things to do, especially like any – I say, most women will probably relate to have a family, or even most women just that in the household that we have a constant running list of a 1,750 things. Very specific numbers. The default is really the autopilot on that. Do the laundry, make sure the kids have clothes. Get them to do their laundry if that's a situation. Put away their clothes. Get ready for school and keep up with all the school stuff and look at the calendar and make sure the calendar is all set up. 

Then, there's so many logistical pieces to keep on top of all the time, that it also becomes difficult. Or at least for me, it's a lot more difficult to then know when to slow down to apply conscious choice into my responses when things don’t go as planned, or when there's an area of frustration, or when the kids need more than just a drill sergeant. Not that I am one, but need more than just the autopilot, do this, this and this and this and this and this and this and let's get you out the door. 

When there's a moment of needing to be heard when maybe there's a moment of being hurt, or being confused, being anxious and more emotional and more emotionally impactful moment, sometimes I find myself continuing the autopilot of the things to do and where we need to be and what's next and not actually pausing to listen to empathize, to meet them where they are and just wanting it to be over. Because there is still the 1,755 items on the list that haven't been addressed. 

Alex Cullimore: At least you got two of them off the list before. 

Cristina Amigoni: I know. I missed it. I forgot if I said 56 or 57. 

Alex Cullimore: 1,757. That's the number of choices going ahead at all times. 

Cristina Amigoni: Okay. 

Alex Cullimore: 1,757 things going on. 

Cristina Amigoni: I probably could come up with the 1,757 things in my head at one time. 

Alex Cullimore: We could do that on the podcast right now, or – 

Cristina Amigoni: A conscious choice to continue coaching. 

Alex Cullimore: Or we could do that. When you think about that, you mentioned one of the motives that might be driving that, where you just stay in that autopilot is that you know there's this laundry list of other things that have to – you have to get to. One list is probably a bad – I’m trying to phrase in this one, since laundry is probably on the list often. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Laundry is on thelist. 

Alex Cullimore: This laundry list, which includes laundry of things. You know there’s that pressure. You know that you’re going to have to reconfigure the entire plan if it gets delayed on this. Would you say that well, what other motives, if any, come up that might be pushing that, or feel like you want to stay on that autopilot? 

Cristina Amigoni: I would say, that wanting to be past the list of the moment, so that I can go back to what I want to do and how I want to spend my time, that's probably the biggest obstacle to pausing and approaching things with conscious choice is when we look at time and we realize it's finite in some ways, and we have a plan in our head on how that time was going to be spent and a curveball comes in that we don't necessarily want to acknowledge at the moment, because it's going to disrupt what we thought was going to happen and how we thought we were going to spend the rest of the day, the rest of the weekend. 

Alex Cullimore: That absolutely makes sense to have it worry be like this, this is going to cut into all kinds of plans and that if you only have X amount of time to find the things that you want to do and enjoy to do, which we all only have finite amounts of time to do that, then that absolutely could cut into that, and so, you're now facing down the barrel of consequences for that are far reaching beyond the immediate scenario that might be coming up. It makes sense that would feel like it's just colliding with it. It's like a train is backing up. There's just goes into all the other parts of your day. 

Given that you know that there's other things you might want to get to you, first of all, let's talk about awareness. What comes up for you? How do you notice? How can you notice when you're being tempted to stay on the autopilot, or when that resistance is coming up? 

Cristina Amigoni: I notice it pretty quickly. I mean, I would like to believe that in the last few years, it doesn't happen as often. There has to be a lot going on for me to stay on the autopilot and then get off the track remarkably badly, until I realize where we are. I think physically, probably one of the first sensations and physically, I would say, my body tenses up and I start – probably, I don't breathe as deeply. Breath speeds up. I start getting really attached to what I thought I wanted things to be and how I thought I wanted the time to be spent. That cycle, saying it out loud, it seems like it takes a long time. But I have noticed how it's shorter and shorter lately in the last few years, especially, where it's really fractions of seconds. 

Sometimes it's not. Sometimes I go completely off the rail and I have to come back. Most of the times, it's fractions of seconds of just going through the whole cycle of what am I attached to? What am I afraid of losing? What am I grieving, if I do this? Then being able to be in a place of making the conscious choice of what's more important? What is priority here? Going for a walk right now, is that the priority, or is being here for my kid a priority? How quickly can I go into realizing that the walk was a wish and it was something I wanted to do? It's okay if I do it later, if I do it another day, this is the most important priority. 

I would say, values. It goes back to values a lot of times. Going back to which value is what and which value is the most important at the moment? Which value am I going to go against if I don't listen to the deeper choices I have, and if I don't listen to what's actually going on and I just react. 

Alex Cullimore: That's great awareness. Assume based on just how you've talked about it in the past and what you've talked about that, a lot of the mindfulness and meditation work you've done may help with shortening that. You're very aware of the thoughts. If you were to put on a scale of one to 10, when you're entering into these zones and you feel like, there's now suddenly a choice being put in front of you, where you're going to have to change the plan, or make a conscious choice to allow the plan to change. 

You’re talking about how you get to, at that point, prioritize things. You were trying to decide which one is the most important priority now. In general, generally speaking for these situations, how clear do you feel on your priorities going into a moment like that, one being not clear at all, 10 being, it feels fairly clear? 

Cristina Amigoni: It really depends on the moment. It depends on how much time I spend on the first two disciplines, awareness and acceptance. If I actually stop and not shortcut it and go through the awareness of how am I feeling? What am I feeling? What's happening here? What are my choices? Then the acceptance to not really judge my need, or my desire to not want to have this conversation right now, because I really wanted to go for a walk. 

Just accept. Accept that what I'm feeling is perfectly okay. Accept the situation. Accept my values. The more I pause to actually go through those cycles, the more I'm able to make the conscious choice and be at peace with it and understand what the priorities are at the moment, which is also very much part of the acceptance. Accepting that each situation is going to be different. There isn't a playbook. There isn't something that says, every time it's sunny outside and my kid wants blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I am planning to go for a walk, this is the response. 

It really depends on, I would say, the more I think about it, it really comes down to energy. If I let all the noise of the 900 washing machine words in my head go and I go deep into what my intuition is telling me and what feels right, I will know the answer. I don't have to know why it feels right. I don't have to justify it. I don't have to come up with a soapbox presentation and data points. I just have to feel it in my heart and the pit on my stomach and I'll know what needs to be done. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a great insight and that makes sense that it would go back to what is really core necessary right then, which is going to inherently be different per situation and for whatever energy you're feeling at the time. What are ways that might help you get into that space where you're hearing that intuition? 

Cristina Amigoni: Good question. Definitely pausing, not trying to shortcut. I’d say that short-cutting into a reaction, it's never conscious a choice. At least not for me. I mean, there's no getting to conscious choice if we're just reacting all over the place. I mean, it goes back to the quote that you mentioned at the beginning. If we let the subconscious just take the wheel, well, the subconscious is going to drive us whatever the hell it wants. Then good luck getting out of the car, or taking the wheel back. 

There has to be a lot of not letting that happen as much and getting used to how that feels like. Again, not perfect. It's going to happen and it's going to happen often and it's going to happen daily, but the more we're conscious when it happens, the more we can actually realize what happened. Why did we let that go? Why did we hand over not just the wheel, but the car keys and our driver's license and not really make that step to stop it? And not judge ourselves. Not judge myself when that happens. It's going to happen, and that's completely acceptable. Maybe we can look for patterns and the pattern could be, I didn't sleep well last night, or the pattern could be something else that I'm worried about. That could also be a big influencer. 

It's like, if my mind is somewhere else and I'm concerned about something else, or something else triggered me, or bothered me, then I am not present. If I'm not present, then I just want to shortcut through reactions and just get over it and be on the other side. 

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. There's a lot of great insights in that. You talked about that you might be able to season patterns in that over time. How would you help yourself find patterns going forward? 

Cristina Amigoni: One of the best exercises I've done in a long time, I strongly recommend it. It was in a period, a few years ago, where I did a lot of internal work, a lot of inner work. There was definitely a lot of reactions and desire for conscious choice, but not understanding what was influencing, not being able to do that. A lot of internal disturbance, a lot of grief, because of various situations. I remember hearing, I wish I could remember his name, but I remember hearing an author of the guy that wrote The Third Door. He mentioned how he would recommend it and did this exercise where for 30 days, he would write every day three things that gave him energy and three things that drained energy from him that day. I started doing that. 

I actually did that. I journaled that for, I think it was over 90 days, because I remember it was way past the 30 days. What I started noticing and journaling was the patterns of what is it that drains me every day and what is it that energizes me every day. Then, once they were on paper, and obviously, and I wasn't going back to read every single day, but when you get into the habit of doing something like that, and you start writing the same thing over and over and over and over, by day 21, you're realizing like, “I wrote this 20 times already. Why is this thing that's draining me coming up over and over and over?” 

That's probably one of the most impactful exercises of conscious choice that I've had, because then I had a choice. It was there. It was black on white, what was draining me and what was energizing me. My choice was, do I want to do something about this? Or do I want to keep living on somebody else driving the wheel and complaining about this stuff? 

Alex Cullimore: Would it feel helpful to do another exercise like that now? How clear does the choice feel for you? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, probably. It's been a while. I remember, I started doing that, I don't exactly when I heard the podcast. It was February 20th, 2020. It was right before the pandemic. We were driving back from Aspen from a weekend ski and seeing some friends. I started right away. It's been three years, I guess, since I have journaled that. I think it would be very beneficial. I do journal. I still journal what I'm grateful for every day. I get the three things and I usually write things that energize me and what I'm grateful for. I do the positive side of things, or the energizing part of it. 

I haven't actually journaled on what drains my energy since then, really. I would be curious to find out what it is. I also feel like my energy is not drained all that much. I'm able to pause, or to end things that drain my energy, or to speak to a coach, or a coach friend. As soon as I start noticing that something is draining my energy, I have to get it off my chest and just release it, get the empathy and say goodbye to it. It would be interesting to see what else comes up. 

Alex Cullimore: Once again, you've showed a great by understanding of your own practices that have brought you to this. It sounds like, you've done a lot of work in conscious choice space, as well as just understanding what already brings you and you already have the strategies to get yourself into those spaces when you start to realize what's draining your energy, reaching out to talk to friends, reaching out and having those conversations. 

Another thing we had talked about offline was, hey, when I know something is heavy enough, I know I'm just going to have to address this, because I've been hit by the tsunami of not doing this too many times. It's another great thing to lean back on. What are the experiences of not making this conscious choice if you're hesitating to make a conscious choice? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, that's a very good point. It has become very powerful to not let things be when they don't feel right. On the other side of it, not everybody's ready to address things when I'm ready, which is pretty much right away. I have very little patience, because I don't want to sit in that. I don't want to sit in the energy drainage. I don't want to sit in the weirdness. It's a big thing that we always say. Talk about it before it gets weird. I don't want to sit in the weirdness, without talking first. If it's going to get weird, let's get weird. Let's make sure that that conversation actually happens, because the more we sit in it, the bigger it becomes. 

I've also learned fairly recently that not everybody works at my own speed. Being patient and allowing some time to go and then keep checking in on, are things still feeling weird? Is the energy still weird? What I have also learned is through reflection and through a lot of journaling drains my energy and making those conscious choices to look at the demons in those hard moments is if it feels weird, that's all I need. I don't need data. I don't need evidence. I don't need specifics. I don't need somebody else to agree that it does. It just does. Then it either goes away by itself, because it works itself out, or it gets addressed. 

I've also learned that even if the weirdness goes away, it's still good for me to address that there was something there. Because you've been on the receiving end, and there's weirdness, I will send a text message when I feel like the weirdness is mostly gone. I'll be like, “Hey, everything good? Energy was a little off. Anything I need to know here, so I don't get blindsided?” 

Alex Cullimore: I would hope to say, there's been nothing blindsided. But there's certainly plenty of times where I've had other energetic influences. 

Cristina Amigoni: No, I don't usually get blindsided. That's it. It's good or bad. It's hard for me to let go, even if it's past. I want to acknowledge whether what I picked up was correct or not, so that I can then be more conscious with, am I picking something up or not? Checking in, just in case checking in does help really some, whatever may not be have been said. 

Alex Cullimore: Also, I can say on the receiving side, that definitely helps just feel even more secure in the relationship and just knowing that hey, there's just genuine connection. It is a good exercise in that reaching out, just to reiterate that your general desire to have a strong and actual connections is received well, at least on my end. 

Parting question, then you know that you've got – your desire would be to address these things as soon as possible. You know that sometimes that other people may not be in that space. What can you tell yourself, or use to give yourself the space to allow others if you feel like you can't productively immediately address something? 

Cristina Amigoni: I would say, empathy helps a lot. Allowing for grace, allowing for empathy. Making the conscious choice to not take everything personally. I'm not a big fan of that sentence, because, well, we do take everything personally, that we are humans with emotions. 

Alex Cullimore: The only way we can take it. 

Cristina Amigoni: It’s the only way we can take it. There's nothing bad about taking things personally. However, the definition of taking things personally in the sense of making ourselves the, I guess, the fault to blame, or making it all about us, and sometimes it is, but not all the time. But does it help to step back, and allow for the empathy and the grace of realizing that I don't know the full story. I can't know the full story. While I have a strong desire to understand the full story, it’s not my story, and so so I don't get to dictate the timing of it. 

I do get to live my values of showing empathy, of showing grace, of communicating that I am here when it's time to share the story, if it gets there. I also, my intuition of knowing that if the story never gets shared, but the weirdness doesn't go away, it still needs to be addressed. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Those are great observations and understanding of giving that space to yourself and to others. It sounds like, when you're talking about the not taking it personally, it's all about you know that there could be other stories and not immediately believing the story that may most involve you, or most cause the stress that that is feels like driven by you, or your blame, or fault, or whatever might be coming up in your story. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I don't have to be the victim. I don't know that I am. Sometimes we are. Sometimes it is about us. Sometimes it fully is. Also, in those times when it really does feel like we are, believe it without the evidence, without the validation. As you mentioned, the more I've avoided that in the past by saying like, “Well, I don't know the whole story, so it doesn't necessarily have to be about me.” Well, usually was, and I got hit pretty hard by that tsunami. There's a balance. It's a constant balance. Not everything is about me. Yet, when it feels deeply that it is, then believe it and then figure out when and how can that be resolved, or come out in the open, so that it can be addressed and not just let it lurk in the dark and create all sorts of chicken and showers for the gremlins to have after midnight. 

Alex Cullimore: It’s such a visual image. Well, we are at a crossroads. Would you like to take off the hot seat, or would you want to go a little deeper? It's your choice. 

Cristina Amigoni: Nice choice of words. 

Alex Cullimore: It's your conscious choice. Truly, either is valuable here.  

Cristina Amigoni: Let's get off my hot seat and – 

Alex Cullimore: All right. Toss it my way then. But I do acknowledge just, again, and I say this every time, but you truly do. You come across this way, you've got great awareness of your own habits, energies and the things that can help you change those, keep your influencers where you'd like them to be and address the ones that can address. The whole point of all these influencers is sharing stories like this, so I appreciate you sharing those and I appreciate you just being open about how you process those stuff. I don't want that to go unsaid. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you. I appreciate it. No, it's not perfect all the time. Far from it. There's a lot of like, “I shouldn't have said that. Or I should have spoken up.” 

Alex Cullimore: I'm about to enter the hot seat. I'm going to have 50 shouldn't have said that, right after this conversation. I'm sure. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Just forget that we're recording. 

Alex Cullimore: Ignore the studio audience. 

Cristina Amigoni: Let me see how to start this. Oh, this is a good one. Do you tend to lead with logic intuition, or emotion more? 

Alex Cullimore: I guess, I would go back to how I would define lead – 

Cristina Amigoni: It’s a different podcast to talk about what leadership is in a different conversation. 

Alex Cullimore: That's another one coming up. When I'm actually making a choice, I think for a long time, I spent a long time in logic. I would spend a lot of time ignoring both intuition and emotion. I try and work into that. Actually, just this weekend, I was talking to somebody who was trying to decide between two different apartments of where they're going to move to. They were like, “Well, my heart tells me this one, but my head tells me this one.” Just it fell out of me that I was like, “Well, don't just do what your heart says. Your head is there to go figure out how to make that work. Just use your head for that instead.” I like that as an answer. I'm finding myself more and more in recent months, especially leading into that intuition and leading from that intuitive space, there's times when it's a big enough decision that I'll – I think, even when I go pull in the emotional and logical components of whatever I'm feeling, I try and put a heavier weight on whatever the gut is telling me, that there's something that I'm intuitively leaning towards. 

I'll try and suss out maybe why that is, or what that gut feeling might be. But I try and give that heavier weight generally, because it's become easier to just lead with that and it's rarely driven me off course, or at least to the point where I couldn't quickly make a course correction and be in a better place that I might want to be at. 

Cristina Amigoni: Excellent awareness, especially when experiencing with somebody else and how they bring a choice and how without even thinking, you share to go with the heart and the head will figure out how to make it happen, and how you've adopted that a lot more. When you are faced with logic and intuition and what your heart is telling you, versus what your mind is telling you, even without the verses, what your heart and mind are telling you in general. How do you distinguish which one is which? 

Alex Cullimore: To borrow the phrases that you're using, I notice it's intuition when it's just – it's a feeling, not a reaction is, I think, emotionally, it feels more a reaction oftentimes. I’ll feel some anger, or excitement, or whatever of the 90 words that Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart divided that one into. Whatever one of those comes up, that's the reaction and that's good data. I’m getting better at listening to that and finding that and knowing that that's coming out. Intuition is where there's not – it's both a fully formed thought about what the action could be to take and it is a feeling at the same time, if that makes sense. Because there's no data that backs it up. There's no immediate, I want to do this because that would be an important thing in my five-year plan. But I don't have a five-year plan. But there's none of that. There's no rationalizing. 

Cristina Amigoni: I am curious right now, what your five-year plan for your heart is. 

Alex Cullimore: I would like it to still be beating. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's a good plan. 

Alex Cullimore: I would like it to be beating healthily. 

Cristina Amigoni: There you go. 

Alex Cullimore: As a stretch goal, I would like it to be beating at a good resting heart rate. That'd be nice. All of those. Just kept up for five years would be great. I'd be feeling like, literally in good shape at that point. 

Cristina Amigoni: Okay, sorry. I’ll put my coach hat and go on. Let’s go back to your five-year plan. 

Alex Cullimore: You let me doddle on laundry list, so I think we're okay. 

Cristina Amigoni: It makes sense to have that it's a feeling. It's not a logic. It doesn't fit into a five-year plan. You just know. It's not about justifying how you know, or what you know, and why you know, you just know. 

Alex Cullimore: Actually, to share on that one, one exercise that I found from a coach friend and I practiced a little bit actually before I'd heard it explicitly from her, but a great way to get in touch with your intuition is when you go to a restaurant, or if you're trying to choose, for me, I was doing it when I was choosing between restaurants. I was like, “Wait. Do we want to go here, or here?” I’d just be like, “What's the initial, just a poll?” Just listen for that poll. I got better at just feeling that. Because it's like, yeah, I did end up a car driver most of the time. But, hey, that's where your intuition leads. 

Cristina Amigoni: I think that's where your stomach is actually driving. Not your heart or your head. 

Alex Cullimore: It's a gut feeling. Sometimes that gut is really gastrointestinal gut. The other one that she suggested is when you're looking at the menu, just what are you just saying you want. Just, what does your body like? Continue to go back for eyes. Continue to go back to – before you jump in there with everything like, “Well, that's heavier than I should eat.” All the should and the have tos that we talk about. Before all of that logic comes in, before the emotion of like, I'm not feeling – I wouldn't feel good about that, where does your intuition lead your eyes on the page is a good practice of getting in touch with that. I just wanted to share that one. I liked that one a lot. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I like that. That's a good way. The head is very powerful and we know that the head really tries to convince that what it's saying is with the gut and the heart is saying. How do you find yourself distinguishing when the head is helping you, versus getting in the way of conscious choice? 

Alex Cullimore: The interesting thing that I'm coming to when you ask that question is that it's – when I say I lead with intuition, that is you have to consciously choose the intuition, I guess, is the real thing. If I was only going on subconscious impulse in the intuition, then it would be an unconscious choice. When I think about like that, when the head’s getting in the way, it's when it's fighting with that intuition. When I can feel myself rationalizing something that doesn't fit that intuition, when I've got some leaning that I really want to take the left path, and then my brain is telling you like, “Well, the right path looks well-lit. The right path looks like –” There’s all kinds of footprints over there. 

Whatever reason it is and I still feel that gut feeling of like, “But I want to go left.” As long as I've parse that out and it's not just an immediate impulse, just to go back to the food thing, the impulse that might not be worth following is like, yeah, I'd love a large tier of a seat right now. Yeah, I probably shouldn't have all that all the time. I could be feeling that and then get really in touch with the intuition of whether that's just an impulse, or whether that's literally the path that should be taken. Obviously, think you're addressing more serious choices that might be made. 

I tell the difference when my head continues to try to rationalize something that doesn't feel right at the core, it fights some feeling, but I'm throwing facts at it as if that's going to change it. When I can feel those two things trying to build some case for something that I fundamentally don't believe, that’s when the head is getting in the way. 

Cristina Amigoni: That makes perfect sense. For sure. When you think about, when the head gets in the way, or when you're able to listen to your heart and also reflecting back on getting better at listening to the intuition and following the heart and those, what are some of the benefits you have noticed in your life? 

Alex Cullimore: It's been a huge game changer for relationships, because I don't hold myself back from speaking up, which either – I'm holding back from speaking up on something that's important, so it needs to be addressed, and so it'll create just a larger issue down the road. Or, I'm not giving the other person a chance to know me and then I feel like, I'm holding up a mask all the time and then that just gets exhausting, than just to wait on the relationship in general. It's a different problem that's building up. 

When I'm leaning into that intuition where I'm just okay speaking up, instead of trying to think through whether this is the right thing to say right now. Inevitably, the moment will have passed long gone before I would have a chance to say anything anyway, there was so much cost to that, and I was present at work and meetings and relationships and just all aspects of life that hesitation was creating this time gap, where I was missing opportunities. It could be large opportunities, or very small just relationship opportunities to get to know somebody better, or just get a deeper whatever, understanding and connection with that person. 

Enough of those add up over time. It becomes a heavy weight to carry around, so there was a cost to not being better at listening to you. I have this impulse to speak up now. In a couple meetings this morning, I just jumped in. 

Cristina Amigoni: You did. But I was cheering, because you were saying what I was thinking. I was like, “Yes, keep going. Keep going.” Which is a great example, because I was on the other end not following my intuition and not making a choice that wasn't a conscious choice. I was very much in reaction mode. It really ate up at me. It helped that you were taking and saying what I wasn't, because then I could release the judgment of my own lack of conscious choice. 

Alex Cullimore: In the situation we were in, it was entirely understandable to have the conflicts you're having that might not have made it easy to jump into conscious choice at that time for me. I was leaning on a value that had sprung up so strongly over the last week, wanting to provide some support and feeling like we could do something that. I was ignoring a lot of other impulses that absolutely would drive conscious choice under different circumstances. There was just enough weight. 

That’s it. This is a good example then for this, like listening to that intuition, because I'm glad to have said that then, because it was – that felt necessary. That felt like I was glad that that was the thing to say. 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, and it's excellent awareness how you connected it to your own values. Your values were speaking very loudly to you. That gave you that courage and that vulnerability to say what needed to be said. Very much what needed to be said. 

Alex Cullimore: That’s, I think, honestly the best part about leaning into your intuition is because your intuition is almost always speaking from your values, so when you do listen to it, you're making this disconnected choice to you and men. It feels good and it's not – you don't feel insecure about the choice you're making. You don't feel worried about it, because it is an expression of you and what you value, what you at your core value and that's not something that is always easy to come by. There's a thousand ways that we grow up and society tells us not to listen to those things and work tells us not to listen to those things. 

But man, the few times that I've been getting much better in the last couple months just doing that, it's incredible how much better the decisions feel and how much easier it is to commit to them and how much with consequences come up, you're like, okay. But I'll work with those consequences. That's fine. It’s not about that delivers a perfect result every time. It's just that like, I'm glad I made that choice and here's the next things to do. Okay, so that might have created a consequence I wasn't expecting and I'd rather be facing that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Definitely, yeah. That's excellent. Going to go through the whole cycles of the intuition doesn't mean that there's no consequences. That's not what it is. It just means that the consequences are also much easier to deal with when they come around, because it was based on values. It was based on a deep, deep choice that you made, instead of a reaction made, because of external, or internal drivers. 

Alex Cullimore: That's where you can go rely on your head and heart to get you out of those ones. Like, great, there’s consequences. Okay, start thinking about those. There's another conscious choice you made. Your intuition probably already has a new hit for you, then you use your heart and your head to go dig yourself out of that and make that choice. 

Cristina Amigoni: Definitely. When you think about what helped you in the last few years and the last few months to really harness that understanding the intuition and understanding the values and choosing, subconsciously choosing to act and to respond according to it, what space helps you get there? 

Alex Cullimore: The screaming intuitive answer coming out of me on that one is acceptance and self-compassion. Compassion in general, actually, it's understood itself. It's entering that compassionate space where you have that curiosity for yourself and others and the acceptance portion has been game-changing for me when I think about addressing my own personal struggles against perfectionism and wanting to do everything right, and once I got into acceptance of like, that you can be imperfect and that you can still speak up and that you can still – it's not all or nothing. You do everything well, or you can accept every lick of blame that comes the other way and understanding that there is just – there's nuance in that and accepting myself for not doing all the things perfectly and being okay with that. 

That's why I say compassion as well, because that was – being able to accept that and be like, “Yeah, this is who I am. This is where I – there's things I might want to change. There’s things I might want to address. I can do that. I know I've made other changes before.” Getting into that acceptance space was the biggest shifter to get into. That's what I go back to nowadays. I tend to find that I'm fighting some level of acceptance when I'm not living in that intuition, or when I'm not in that space and I can notice more easily, I'm not accepting something still high friction. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. That's fascinating, especially the connections, the acceptance piece as the foundation of getting to conscious choice. Where conscious choice fights back and where the friction is born from. Crossroad, conscious choice for you. We could dig deeper on acceptance itself and what situations may be lacking acceptance, or we can let our listeners go. 

Alex Cullimore: I think on this one, we can let the listeners go, since we did acceptance last week, especially. 

Cristina Amigoni: We did. Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: It is a good reminder that, and definitely for me, while I do agree with you that the conscious choice is one of my favorite ones and one that's been most powerful for me in my life in the last couple months has been acceptance for sure. It ties in so strongly with conscious choice. It's so much easier to be making these conscious choices when you live in greater acceptance. Just really punch that button, which I think we hit a lot last time, but just to punch that one again, it has made a tremendous difference in how I approach things. 

Cristina Amigoni: Very well said. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for digging into the head and the heart and what's happening there and how to follow one or the other. Or which function each has almost. It’s like, follow the heart, but use the head to figure things out. 

Alex Cullimore: It's a valuable monicker. I'm going to start using more. Says, “Oh, I think about it more.” I'm like, “What is the head here for if not that?” It's not there to help us address the things we deeply actually are looking for. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the laundry room of washing machines that is my head. 

Cristina Amigoni: The laundry room of laundry lists. Yeah, definitely. 

Alex Cullimore: 1,757 washing machines. 

Cristina Amigoni: There probably are about 1,757 washing machines going on in our heads. 

Alex Cullimore: Makes it fun. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, it does. 

Alex Cullimore: Makes it loud. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks for listening. Trust the process is next. I'm looking forward to that one. 

Alex Cullimore: All right, talk to you soon. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks for listening. 

[OUTRO] 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo Podcast. 

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Laura, and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood. 

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com, or on our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. WeAreSiamo is spelled W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O. 

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always uncover the human. 

[END]