Energetic Living: Getting into iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics

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. Let’s dive in.

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 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: Hello, Cristina. 

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. 

Alex Cullimore: We are back. And this time, we have no guests. It's just the two of us. We are actually starting a bit of a podcast series. We've got a few episodes lined up here that have to do with a certain part of the what was described in our coaching program as kind of the graduate studies. 

We went through the iPEC coaching program, which was a lot of experience in how to coach. What does that look like? How do you do this? And then there's the – the secondary program is Core Dynamics, which is what we're going to cover a little bit more of. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah, which was I think we both did it independently. It becomes more of an independent study piece. And after doing the whole coaching program, the norm, I guess the basic one, the foundation ones with cohorts, we found that we gravitated towards pairing up or creating a group with our coach cohort to actually learn together. It was interesting how you can really go from, "Oh, we're collaborating and learning as a group," to, like, "Oh, no just go off on your own." 

Alex Cullimore: And it is interesting because the Core Dynamics program particularly feels so applicable. It's so much all the theory you learned and all the things you work on in coaching school to help people uncover. This gets a lot more explicit with what are things that help people understand themselves better, reach their goals, find their own potential, remove their own internal blocks. 

And so, it basically splits out into some understanding of the levels of energy described between catabolic and anabolic energy followed by different influencers on our ability to perform in our energy. And then, finally, 10 disciplines, which are great practices and ways to kind of think of life philosophy so that you can build a more productive and energetic life the way that you might want to experience it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I've done this with, I would say, most of my coaching clients, my individual coaching clients. If not all of them. Where after some of the initial sessions on figuring out what their goals are and unpacking what's going on and what's influencing, what they want to change in their lives, we actually use the Core Dynamics program to get more practical and understand what's influencing our energy. What can we do about it with building awareness around that? 

And then the disciplines, which is really the deeper dive into now that I understand what influences my energy and I can recognize where I'm at, what can I do to raise that? To raise my performance? To influence back almost the external environment and what's coming up externally and internally to want to perform it and get the results at the level that we typically want them? 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it feels like the scaffolding of life. It's all these pieces that we can put together so that we can continue to reinforce things that, when we're inevitably shaken or when we have those curveballs that life throws us, we have a plan to kind of come back to and an understanding of ourselves and how we best perform. 

And they also kind of cover what is an important idea of the idea between a performance and a mastery mindset, where performance is more based on trying to do maybe everything perfectly or do everything one at a time. And mastery is almost more of a growth mindset in how do you continue to improve? What are you going to always learn from any situation whether it goes the way you'd like it to go or not? How are you going to move forward productively and constructively? And all these disciplines and influencers are great ways of understanding how we are already interacting with the world. How we'd like to interact? How we can best set ourselves up for success? And what practices we can return to when we feel like we might be slipping or we want to grow to that next level? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. They really give a nice structure and framework on what to look for in those moments where the results of actions or the situations that we're in are not exactly what we expect them to be. And this is almost like a cheat sheet in a way to look at, "Okay, what's influencing my behavior right now the way I'm showing up and what's happening because of that? And what can I do about it?" which is where the disciplines come in. Like, where do I have control of how I can change the situation? Yeah. Really cool. 

The core dynamics has various applications. I would say the foundation is the same across. And then it kind of splits into specific areas. Leadership is the one that I've used the most and I follow the most. But there's also one that focus is on going through transitions as well as health. Just health. 

Alex Cullimore: Health and well-being. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Health and well-being. And there may be one more and I don't remember what it is. 

Alex Cullimore: I believe it's performance. Just like sports and life performance. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, physical performance. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The leadership ones are the ones that are the most I guess popular, at least for the application that I've seen and the interest that I've seen. Because, usually, transitions is when things are not quite as controllable or don't feel controllable. And in leadership, there's various applications in that. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. It's definitely a good tie-in for some of the core group programs. And we all experience transitions at all times during life. There's always something changing. Always something new. Whether it's on purpose, or something we wanted to happen, or something that just kind of shifted into the ground under us, we're always in some kind of transition. 

Using these is a great way to kind of center ourselves. Make sure we've built what they refer to often as the success formula, which is just different editions that you can think of as you build your own to go back to what really works for me and how do I want to show up? And what is really important to me as a person and how is that going to express itself in my life? Whether that makes sense to other people or not.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. You mentioned it starts with kind of a review of the seven level of energy so that we can understand what's actually happening and how we're showing up to begin with. And then understanding the difference within that, the difference between catabolic and anabolic energy. 

I think we'll start with a quick review on those since we talked about those eons ago at the beginning of the podcast in the first few episodes with Lauren and then a couple more times. But it's been a while. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. The studies they've done on energy levels are really interesting just by themselves. And we can include those in the show notes. The studies there are fascinating. And overall, the more kind of anabolic energy you can get into your life, the more satisfaction you find in your experience. And so, it's kind of important to understand these so we know where we're at, where we might like to be and what other choices might look like. 

With that, let's dive into the kind of seven levels of energy. And it starts on the catabolic. And so, catabolic being energy that is more destructive, difficult to manage. It can feel like stress. It can feel like all the energy that we might experience when we're overwhelmed, or angry, or that tends to be the catabolic range of things. And anabolic is a more building energy. And catabolic is important and it's part of our experience. And we do need the ability to have this kind of more destructive breaking down energy. If you think about things like running from danger, you kind of need immediate energy at your disposable. And it doesn't really matter if you're breaking some stuff down to get there. You need it very quickly. And that's kind of the benefit of catabolic energy in our experience. 

And anabolic energy is more building and creating. And that can be more fun to experience at times, but it's just as important to have both. And we do need both of these. Understanding them and the fact they will be inevitably part of our lives gives us a leg up in choosing how we want to live. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: With that, let's go start at level one in the catabolic range. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I actually thought of a great analogy of catabolic and anabolic energy. 

Alex Cullimore: Dive in. What is it? 

Cristina Amigoni: It's Hulk. If you think of Hulk, when he's Hulk, it's catabolic energy. He's destructive. He's reactive. It's all about smashing. Clearing the path. Which as we know, Hulk is very much needed to save people, to save the world. And yet, he gets out of hand when it's just that. 

And then you've got Bruce Banner, who's the anabolic energy. He's the scientist. He sits down. He analyzes. He thinks through things. He works with others. He definitely uses more of the responding, and understanding and cognitive of pieces instead of the reaction physical smashing. 

And if Bruce and Hulk find the best combination at the end of whatever phase four of Avengers or phase five. I lost track but. In End Game, Avengers End Game, when it's smart Hulk. He can actually – instead of not having control over when Hulk shows up and then struggling to keep Banner going and suppressing Hulk, he finds a way to realize like, "Oh, wait. Hulk is needed. And I can actually function that way if I know when to use the Hulk power." 

Alex Cullimore: And that ties into so much of what we're going to talk about. That's a great analogy. And the smart Hulk, it's obviously the level 7 idea, which I'm jumping ahead a little bit to level seven. Level seven is somewhat the ability to choose what your reaction needs to be in a time and making that conscious choice. And if you can choose to both be Hulk and in control, that's a very powerful place to be. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's start with level one.

Alex Cullimore: All right. You've got a great analogy for this one too. This is the cave energy. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: Level one is – to describe it I guess in one word, it's kind of the victim energy. It's where we feel like things are out of our control and we want to kind of pull ourselves back and we don't feel like we can affect our environment and our space. And so, we want to just protect ourselves. And we pull ourselves into what Christina usually calls the cave where we can put posters on the wall, and set up a nice glass of wine and watch Netflix. And it's where we want to be. It can feel very comfortable. And it can also feel very lonely or isolating because we tend to shut away from the world that we feel like is out of our control and not helping us.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. At the core of level one, the thoughts and the feelings are everybody wins and I lose all the time. Hence, the cave. I'm going to close myself in the cave and I'm going to shut the world out because, well, there's no success for me out there. I'm constantly going to be losing. 

Alex Cullimore: I always lose. There's no winning here. There's no hope in trying to change things. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: Great place to stop, and preserve and regain some energy when things are overwhelming. And when we need to pull back and we can't interact with people. And if we live there long enough, it can be very difficult to see that there are other options and pull our head back up and find the connections we need to lift ourselves. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yep. Yeah. Anand for the sake of transparency and vulnerability, level one is my default when things are not going well. My cave is ready. I've got the keys in my pocket. The wine is ready. It has aged, decanted. And I go straight into that. 

Alex Cullimore: When we think about energy levels, there's a great assessment out there called the ELI that will give you both your regular response on just like a normal day when things are going well where you tend to resonate in these levels and then your stress response. 

And Cristina is alluding to the fact that her stress response is level one. Mine is that as well. It's predominantly level one with some level two in there, which we'll talk about in just a second. But it makes sense for a lot of people to have kind of those level one and two, which are the catabolic energy levels when they're under stress. Because that's how we tend to experience stress. And if we can get ourselves out of those, all the more power we have. But that's a challenge for any human to continue to face with every new thing that will throw our energy sideways. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that I – we're big fans of common language, whether it's working genius or the energy leadership index and the levels of energy. But one of the best parts about having a group of people that understands the energy levels has either gone through the training or has been coached through those levels and understands them is that it's a good way to send a signal, an SOS. Is to – when we realize we are going into level one when I am opening the door of the cave, and sitting down, and getting ready for Netflix and glass of wine. It's to actually send a bad signal to the tribe and say like, "Hey, I'm in level one." And usually the tribe – everybody responds and they're like, "Okay. What do you need?" Because they all know, it's like you can stay in there but let us know when you want to get out and we'll help you get out. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I usually find myself doing that as I'm dead-bolting the third deadbolt in the cave and trying to cement the wall shut. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Usually, you just go in there. You get comfy. And I'm like, "Oh, this is nice." And they're like, "Wait. I can't see the outside. Maybe I need to send a bat signal." 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. There's constantly that stress. And Netflix is such a perfect metaphor for it because it is something that feels very comforting and also is usually a delay on processing or working through anything that is still in the back of our minds churning and causing stress. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Level two is our first moving level. There's actually movement in level two. At the core, level two is the I win only if everybody else loses. So, now there is action, which is the good thing. If we want to get out of level one, most times we have to go through level two, we could jump. But level two gets us moving, level two gets us to at least open the door, and turn into Hulk and really get into smashing, which is also not sustainable. 

Alex Cullimore: Not sustainable. As Brené Brown puts it, anger is a very important emotion but a bad long-term friend. If you keep it around for a long time, it can be very destructive. But it is incredibly important to have, to note and to use. Because when we do feel in that like victim mindset of I can't change the world and then we start to see, "Wait. Now there's something that I don't like about this." That can spark us into some anger. And as long as we can constructively use that, that energy helps us move. And so, that is definitely kind of the angry Hulk energy. It is the conflict-based energy. That's where we tend to see more fighting. And to your point, I win if everybody else loses. It's a lot about making sure that we are right and others are wrong. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Exactly. So, get a little bit out there but still in the cave. Just opening the windows and getting ready to fight. Putting the boxing gloves off. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Almost like the level one is that flight or freeze response. Whereas that level three is more like the fight response. Get ready for the conflict. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Which brings us to level three, which is the first anabolic level. That has a lot of influence from the catabolic energy because it is close to that. It is my least favorite level. I do not function well in level three. I think I function worse in level three than in one and two. I know what to do in one and two and I recognize them and I know how to move out of them. Three is just paralyzing for me. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Three is like a very rationalizing energy. It's the, "Well, it is. I'll just find a way to make do. I'll just –" yeah, it's not – you're still taking some action, that's why it becomes anabolic. You are maybe moving forward or else you're not feeling as destructed. You're not holding still like you might be in the cave. But you aren't – necessarily, you're more settling. You're not willing to put up or put too much energy into things. You're just going to make sure that you will be okay. You'll get through it. 

And they say even in coaching school, level three is one of the hardest to coach to because it's very alluring. We can trap ourselves in this all the time of like, "Oh, it'll be fine. I'll just put up with this for now." And that can be something we say for 5 years while we are in a job we didn't like at the start of five years. This is the kind of thing that can get us held in place thinking that like, "Well, this is good enough. It is what it is. I can't really change it. So, I'll just put up with it." 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. This is where the really core thought is. We can both win here. We can find a way to both win. But let's make sure that I win. And it's less important that you win. And even if I win, I'm sacrificing a lot. We're both sacrificing. There's a lot of compromise and sacrifice in level three. It's really the I'm fine. It's okay. As in most situation, in most partnerships, especially at home in social situations, it's like the minute you start hearing people saying like, "Fine." That's straight level three. It's like I'm not going to fight. But I'm not even going to give up all the control. There's a lot of passive aggressiveness in level three. That's probably why I don't – it's definitely my least favorite. Because nothing is out in the open. And so, there's no having the difficult conversation. There's no resolving anything. There's just sacrificing and passively aggressive pretending that you can move forward, but you really can't. 

Unfortunately, a lot of organizations resonate at level three. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And it's important to note that while we absolutely have our feelings on these, they are all necessary at different times. We do need to occasionally experience some level three when there are things we can't change. And we don't want to just sink into the cave and wait for it to be over. But we still have to take some action. 

The really crucial and difficult part in three is getting yourself out of that when you when you can. Because it's usually much sooner than we think. It's usually in a different way than we think. And if we're not challenging that, it's very easy just to stay in that place and not challenge it enough to leave. And so, you feel both like you're not doing what you want to be doing and you're not as upset about it or not as frustrated perhaps that it might move you into like a level two where you would then move out of it and actually have the energy to move forward. 

Actually, in coaching and in organizations, occasionally, it's useful to push people a little bit into that level two space so they have that reaction and they can start to see what the cost of staying in that level three is. To motivate them to kind of continue to move past it. And again, this is why even at the catabolic levels, it's helpful and it's very necessary to have all these even when it can feel very unpleasant to experience. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yep. Definitely. Which takes us to level four. 

Alex Cullimore: Level four energy is more about the compassion. It's about the making sure you win. If we put this in kind of the I win you win, or I lose you lose situations, level one is I always lose. Level two is I'm going to win and you're going to lose. Level three is I'm going to win. And if you win too, I guess that's great. And level four is I'm going to make sure you win. And it's a very kind of compassionate, externally-facing energy. We tend to care a lot. We're very supportive in this. This is where we're feeling very much like. We want to enable people. We want people to feel better. We want to feel safe, secure, et cetera. Lots of people who work in industries like nursing, coaching, caretaking, a lot of the giving industries, there's a lot of level four in that. 

In that definition, it also includes taking care of yourself. But this is one that can be difficult to access in level four. And if you spend enough time in level four, sometimes you can end up feeling frustrated and fall into levels one and two feeling like, "Oh, man. When's it my turn? When's somebody going to care about what I need?" 

It's very supportive. People love to be around people with level-four energy. They get a lot out of it. And the person giving that out, if they're not also giving that to themselves, can find themselves worn out pretty quick. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Definitely. That is my primary. Well, it used to be. I would be interested actually to see if that's changed. Because the assessment, the energy leadership index assessment, it is a point in time. It's not a personality assessment. It's not, "This is it. You're now labeled for the rest of your life." It's very much of a point in time depending on influencers and disciplines, which we're going to talk about in our core dynamics series here. 

And also, just working through things. Understanding the levels. Taking a little bit more control and consciousness and increasing your consciousness. It's how we show up. And so, level four used to be my primary the last couple times I've taken the assessment. But the last time I think was two or three years ago. It's been a while. And it was decreasing towards higher levels of anabolic energy. I would be interested to see where it is now. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. It's a great assessment for that reason. I took it right before. And just by coincidence, I happened to take it right before I did the iPEC program. And then, again at the end when we all learned how to do the kind of give that assessment. 

And in that time, I'd moved about 10% out of the catabolic range and up into the other ones. I'd move from a primary four to a primary five. And we'll talk about some of that in a different podcast when we talk about the actual assessment. But it is interesting to know, and you can reflect when you hear these definitions from us, on where you might feel like you resonate most of the time. 

And maybe separate that into times when I'm stressed, people tend to go to one or two. But maybe you resonated at three when you're stressed. And in times of – in regular times, where do you feel like you might resonate and commonly reside when you hear these descriptions? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I think I actually find myself – if I were to guess. And I guess, I have to take the assessment. But if I were to guess, especially lately, I tend to go to four in times of stress way more than one. I pass through one but then go straight to four. And in times of non-stress, in times of catabolic energy and higher consciousness, I would hope that my primary would have shifted more to five or six. But that's my guess. I'll have to take the assessment to find out.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah. We should do that again. We should do that again before the next episode. We'll just take those and see where we're at now. I think I was moving towards five. And nowadays, when I get the chance to like really step back and appreciate what I've got, I can get into some of that level six space. I'd be curious to see how much of that has at least increased, if not become more primary.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Level five. One of the things that starts becoming a little more obvious as we go up the levels is the difference between the even levels and the odd number levels. 

The even-numbered levels tend to be more from the heart. More emotionally-driven. And the odd numbers tend to be more logically-driven from the head. And so, if we think of even one and two, one is the heart wanting to close in because of the feeling of being hurt and needing to protect itself. And a lot of that – actually, I just reversed that. But that level one is more of the – 

Alex Cullimore: I'm telling you, there's nothing you can change. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Exactly. The head telling you there's nothing you can change. Yeah. Clearly, did not think that through. But the head telling you there's nothing you can change. Even though the heart may not believe it but the head is convincing you that that's the situation. 

The level two, which is the emotional reaction. Hence, the Hulk. It's like I'm going to go out and smash. Does it make sense? It doesn't matter. I have to smash. And then three, again, is you're back into logic space of figuring out like, "How do I compromise? What can I sacrifice? It's fine." And the "it's fine", usually, it's very much of a head decision. Not a heart decision. The heart never feels it's fine, but the head will try to convince it that it is. 

And then four, the compassion, the caring, very much heart. Which is why you see the teachers, the nurses, the coaches, the service-oriented people being primarily level four because it is a heart thing. It makes the heart feel good. It's the hard-filled type of level. 

And then five, now we're back into rational. And in five, the core thought is we can all win. Let's figure out how we can all win. Which, again, it's the logic mind trying to figure out that how can we make sure that I win and you win too? Or we don't play. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. This is one that it definitely falls into that logic range because you're looking for the win-win. You're looking for the opportunities. This is where you really see opportunities when there's problems. You're not necessarily focusing on the problem so much. Which is why there's a lot more peace and acceptance that comes in level five. Whereas a level three might be like, "Well, it is what it is." Level five is like, "Yeah. It is what it is. Here's what we're going to do with that. Here's what we're going to do next." 

There's resignation in three, where there's acceptance in five and moving forward. Okay, this is what. We've got what are we going to do with this? And it's not just finding the silver lining. It's finding what is actually like a win. What's going to be growth out of this regardless of if it feels like it's going in the wrong direction right now? We're really seeing opportunity. And this is where we find so much logical opportunity. 

The one that's very – often, a lot of leaders and a lot of organizations want to move towards five. And it's very understandable. As you get into six and seven, they start to feel maybe somewhat more abstract. But five is a very understandable place to say, "Hey, there's opportunity and I want to go seek it." 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. Level five is very much of the collaboration. Let's come together and figure this out. More than the compromise of level three, which is, "Well, you sacrifice this and I sacrifice that. And we can meet in the middle." In collaboration, it's really about, "Well, we both have strength. Let's put them together and figure this out." 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That's a great delineation to understand collaboration and compromise. In compromise, both parties might feel like they're giving something up. In collaboration, we're both building something better than we could have built alone. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. It's a great one for organizations. That's really where innovation can happen when things move forward, when there's really true consideration of all the angles and all the people involved. And it is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts is really level five. 

Alex Cullimore: And that's where we get into. We dive even more into that. And in kind of a more heart zone when we go up to level six. When we think about level six, it is about the connection between us and everything else. And we start to feel particularly connected to other people. We feel like everything really is winning. It's not just I'm going to find a win for me. I'm going to find a win for you. It's like we're all going to win. And winning is just how this is going to work. You feel that joy. You see some wisdom. 

Where in level five, you might find all these opportunities. In level six, you can start to see the connection towards what this is building on a larger scale. What this really means kind of to us on an almost intangible level and in levels where we can't logically say – exactly point out this is why this is a win. But we know that it is. We know that it's building. And it is a sense of joy, of connection. And you can create a lot of wisdom in this space. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. It's very much of those moments where you have the epiphanies and you see the connections between everything and you just know it's going to work. Because there is no other side. There's no other side. There's no it's working or it doesn't work. It's going to work. That's where the faith comes in, in just trusting that things can move forward because you can see them. You have no idea how. That's the five. That's going to come in and figuring out the how. But you just see it. You see the end of the path. 

Alex Cullimore: Level six can sometimes be described as a lot of flow. It is where you really just feel that flow and you are really moving in intuition a lot of the time. You feel that intuition. Level five, you're solving problems actively and you're finding the logical reasons for these. And it's very, very helpful. And then in level six, you start to just see like – you start to notice where you want to be moving before you can logically define it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Which gets us to seven. Seven is almost the most difficult one to explain because it's very high-anabolic to the point where some of the explanations are there's no winning or losing. There just is. There's just existence. 

And also, it's not one where we resonate and experience very often. We just have those really high moment of feeling connected to everything around us and realizing that there is no separation really. We're in that almost like Einstein energy. If we're all energy in level seven, we are the energy. We're not just part of it or we're not a component of it. We are the energy. 

Alex Cullimore: It's like when Simon Sinek talks about passion. It's not an outcome. It is a feeling. This is where we are absolutely in passion. We have no judgment left. There's a lot of studies on the idea that judgment is basically the antithesis of satisfaction in life. And if we think about all seven of these levels in terms of levels of judgment, you can see how much heavier it is in levels one and two. 

In level one, you're judging yourself and you don't feel like you can do anything and there's no hope. In level two, you're judging other people and finding them lacking. You're finding other situations lacking. In level three, you tend to judge your situation without feeling like you can do much about it. 

In level four, you're still judging other people. You might have a much more compassionate angle. But it can come across sometimes as like almost having pity on people or maybe they can't do it themselves. And that judgment is still there even if it is still much more productive and you don't feel upset or trying to cast negative judgments on people. You're still casting a judgment. 

And in level five, you tend to be judging opportunities and figuring out what's going on there. Level six, you're just judging overall situations. And level seven, you don't even have judgment left. I mean, at this point this is why it becomes ethereal and very hard to relate to. And we tend to access this for seconds at a time. It's hard to just be there. It's like a guru-level of transcendence. Somebody's meditating and suddenly floating off the floor level of seeming acceptance of the universe and feeling there's a lot of passion and lack of judgment. And a ton of creation can come out of level seven because you can actively choose at what energy levels you want to be at and how you want to express those. Full mindfulness. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Mindfulness helps with the resonating and accessing it a lot more meditation. I mean, people that meditate on a daily basis or make meditation a practice could definitely resonate that more. Because during meditation, it's probably an easier space to be in for level seven. And level seven is what's needed for the mastery of core dynamics. 

Alex Cullimore: Mm-hmm. And it becomes an interesting game of mindfulness when you know these and you can kind of label where you might be feeling. Because it also gives you a chance to think about what you might do if you were feeling something else. 

A common coaching question once you can kind of establish that shared language of the levels is, like, "Okay. It sounds like you're feeling a lot like level three about this certain situation. What might a level five response look like?" And it forces us to think about, "Well, if I was going to go into that non-judgment, if I was going to look for those opportunities, what would I see?" 

And it can be a great just mental shift and it can put us into those other levels of energy. And that's why all of these assessments and any level of energy is always for just a moment in time. That can be derailed by all of the influencers, which brings us to our next section.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. There are six influencers. And each of them are either external or internal. Some of them are more internal than external. Some are a little bit of both. It's a very interesting awareness piece to understand what the influencers are. Because once we get a grasp on them, what I found going through the influencers and also coaching others on the influencers, is you can quickly establish what's happened in the situation. What caused either how you showed up? And if you have enough awareness and enough of the disciplines, you can then almost prevent the reaction because you anticipate. You recognize the influencers and then you anticipate what your reaction may be if you go on autopilot and you stop it. 

It's also a great way to recognize what was going on and apologize for any reactions that were not intended and hurts that might have been caused by that. The six ones are spiritual, emotional, mental – 

Alex Cullimore: Physical, social and environmental. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you. I lost the third one. The fourth one. I was like, "I know the other three. I can't remember the order." But, yes. Physical, social, environmental.

Alex Cullimore: We'll talk about a little bit each of these. But I love what you said about the influencers being a way of understanding. And you understand what happened in the most post-mortem sense. It also can help you set expectations if you understand what influencers are at bay.

If you imagine like you're prepping for giving a big speech. And then the night before you come down with food poisoning and you're still feeling very weak and dehydrated or something as you're stumbling onto that stage. It would be a little bit unfair to yourself to expect like this is going to be my best blowout performance when there's going to be a necessary influence of the fact that you're dehydrated and lost your electrolytes and feeling a little wobbly still. Understanding influencers like those can be helpful. And so, this helps categorize those so we can both set ourselves up for success and know what's going to be possible given what we're walking into. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. At the core, which we keep using that word, but it is core dynamics after all. At the core of understanding the influencers is really wanting to understand what situations in the six influencers' realms allow us to perform around best? 

And once we know that, that's when we can either shift the situation if it's in our control or modify how we show up and what our expectations are because of the influencers that we can't control. And so, as we walk through these, some of the more obvious ones will become clear, like environmental. 

Alex Cullimore: In our series in this, we're going to dive into all these and do a little coaching for each other around this and talk about how these can be used. We'll get much more in depth with those. But you can start to think even now about how these show up in your life and how you might want to choose these differently. 

Let's start with the most abstract one and, yet, the most powerful one I think once you start to understand it, spiritual influencer. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And spiritual influencer, it does not equal religious. We're not talking about any religion affiliations, or belief, or faith. The spiritual one refers to our own internal connection to what matters to us. Think of our own mission, our own core values, our vision. What drives us to perform the best? What's really in our heart? 

And one of my favorite questions is what's your legacy like? If people were to describe what you have left or where you are living in the world during your life, what is that? What's the impact that you're making into the world and to the people around you? It's really at the core of what motivates you to be you. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a great way of describing it. That's much more succinct than the rambling path would probably have taken. I mean, that is exactly it. It is you and it is about being you. We still have to describe ourselves by like our job. But this is about you. This is who you as an individual outside of your title, outside of your current role, outside of anything that you care about as a one-off activity or a specific angle of your life. It is who you are at the whole, at the core. Purpose. The mission. The values. Everything that drives you. Not drives you because society says this is a good thing to care about or not. But what specifically drives you. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And you can ramble when we actually have a whole episode on that, which would be the next one. 

Alex Cullimore: This one is – this is a great one to just know more about yourself. And what you can feel when spiritual influencer is out of alignment, maybe you're in a situation like a job or something that's challenging your values, or it's not helping you achieve a mission that's really important to you, or your vision for what your life is going to be like. Those can be detractors. When you find yourself in places where it isn't more in alignment, it can be a huge boost to your energy. This can influence your energy in a positive way. It can move towards more anabolic. And all the influencers can move in both directions. 

Just as examples of the spiritual one, if you lose that alignment, you can feel like you're losing energy in that struggle to get back to that. And if you have alignments, that can give you energy to deliver on whatever you're currently performing. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. The next one is mental. That's definitely more cerebral as the word says. It is mental. This is where you're looking at concentration, focus, alertness. What are those things? What influences your focus? What influences when you are able to concentrate and when you're not? How can you be more in tune with when you're alert, your mind is alert, and when it's less alert? And so, that's the diving deeper into more of the practical and the tactical. How does my mind perform at the best and what detracts from that performance? 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. This is where it helps to know ourselves, our mental easy biases. Things like availability bias, recency bias. All the little cognitive biases we have play into this kind of mental area. There's things that we just commonly move towards. And the more we know about situations in which we can give our attention and focus versus not, the better off we are. 

It can be things understanding what kind of time you might need to accomplish a certain type of task. Or how is your focus going to be changed? Or if you have something that's pulling on your focus? This is why it's important to know these because there's always going to be parts of our life that are distracting us from, say, work or whatever else. 

And so, knowing that that is a pull on our focus allows us to change and decide more consciously, "Are we going to let this influence right now? And what can we do about it?" 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. And all of these influencers are not separate from each other. They do all influence each other. They don't just influence us. They also influence each other. We'll look at some of those ties as well. But it's important to know that these are not – you just don't separate them. They're not in silos. They're actually one big part of chaos that we need to unravel. 

Alex Cullimore: Imagine being hangry. Hangry is like a physical-ish sensation, but it affects our mental ability. These are all influencing.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And then we have emotional. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Emotional influencer. This is things like responding instead of reacting. Understanding our own emotions. How are we going to express them? How much control do we have over them? And not in trying to tamp them down, but in knowing how well they influence us. And whether we need to express that right now and what might be a constructive way to express things when we're feeling upset or when we're feeling joy. What is an overreaction? What is more in tune? And what our emotional state will inherently influence our ability to perform? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yep. Yeah. Definitely. And then we have physical. Physical is a little more tangible. Again, just like the mental one. The physical is things like sleep. Nutrition. Working out. Spending time outside. Anything that's physical. What's going on with our physical body at the moment that it's influencing our ability to perform at our best? 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Have we had enough sleep, we'll probably have performed better? Have we not had any sleep, we might be a little bit more on edge?

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: Social influencer is the next one, the fifth one. Social influencers are things like our relationships. The people that we find ourselves around. How influential is that? We all kind of think relate to feeling in a room where we either feel alone or we don't feel like we fit in. That can be very detracting to us being able to be ourselves and feel comfortable. Or we're in situations where we're around a couple of very close friends that we can trust and we can let all those guards down and we can all just build off of each other. And it can be a very positive interaction. That's the kind of idea behind a social influencer. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Also, very important. Definitely more external and also controllable. And once we realize what social situations we perform best and we can show up at our best, then we can try to minimize. Maybe not avoid, but minimize the ones that we don't show up best or create the better ones. 

If we interact better in smaller groups, then those should be some of the more situations that we create for ourselves rather than walking into a room of hundreds of people and having to network with a 0:20 place of – that's judging just your name and title. Clearly, I know my social influencers. 

Alex Cullimore: I think it's a perfect example. Neither of us love the networking at a conference, but we do love – we've occasionally put a live podcast up. At which point, we just get to talk to people and have a different conversation. Those are great ways of using our socially influencers. Or they say that loneliness is not a reflection of how many relationships we have. It's the quality of relationships we have. And when we understand what works for us, we can build those quality ones.

Cristina Amigoni: Mm-hm. And our last one is environmental, which is also external. And we can also do something about it. Anything from 107 degrees in Chicago with 100% humidity. Well, that's a good environmental influencer to know that I am not going to be at my best mood or performance. What can I do to at least get close to my best and know that I'm never going to be there? So, less judgment for myself as well because it's just not going to happen. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Understanding your own setting is really important. Just knowing what environment we can change and cannot. And when we all had to go to work from home at COVID, we had a chance to set up our home environment in the way we wanted to. And embarrassingly, three years later, I'm still in the process of that. But that's fine. 

Cristina Amigoni: Just in time to go back into the office. We don't have an office. So, you still need to get your office together. We can probably come up with an office with no windows and just a cave if you want. I'm sure we can find a closet somewhere. 

Alex Cullimore: That sounds great. Thanks. That's definitely the kind of environment that's definitely going to have a positive influence [inaudible 0:40:45]. 

Cristina Amigoni: You're now out of the need to set it up yourself. It's set up for you. I actually did – I remember one of my first consulting projects eons ago. It was the best situation that the clients give me as an external consultant. I literally had to work in the closet. It was the broom closet with a chair and a tiny little table that you can't really call a desk, but something to put my laptop on, in the basement of a hospital. That was interesting. 

Let's just say that I found opportunities to leave the closet as often as I could and go to even something just like getting water or go to the restroom upstairs so I could see the daylight. That's where I can control that I'm in the closet. But I can't control how much time I have spent in the closet. 

Alex Cullimore: That reminds me of one time I got put into a phone room in a a consulting gig. And it was just – I mean, it's by default empty. There's just like a clock on the wall, a windowless tiny, tiny room with a very small table. And there's no better way to feel like you're in solitary confinement in business casual clothing than doing that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yep. Yeah. Those are influencers. 

Alex Cullimore: So that brings us to – those are influencers so we can understand what might be pulling our energies up or down and affecting our ability to perform at levels we'd like to perform at. And that gives us a leg up on choosing what we would like to do about that. So, we might enhance our own energy in any of those six dimensions. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: That brings us to the disciplines. And we'll go through just a brief overview of the 10 disciplines. And these can be thought of kind of as practices. And the first four really build on each other and then become the foundation for the rest. Let's talk a little bit about – let's start with the first discipline, awareness. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Which, again, this is all intertwined. It's a big Pandora's box of stuff. So it is important – 

Alex Cullimore: It’s a bit ball of yarn. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It is important to like know your influencers and figuring out what's happening internally and externally. And one of the first steps is awareness, which is the first discipline. It's like being aware that I am not performing at my best. That is the first step really. And then understanding what is influencing not being able to perform in my best? Well, is it 107 degrees and 100 humidity in Chicago? Is it the closet in the basement? What is it? Is it both? What is it that's influencing the awareness that I'm not performing on my best? That's the first one. Awareness. 

Alex Cullimore: And all of it we've discussed so far is a great exercise and awareness. Labeling yourself at a different level of energy. Figuring out where you might be. Choosing what that might look like if you were in a different place. And of course, all the influencers. Should I get out of the broom closet? Am I running the wrong people right now to be able to have a more comfortable dinner? Whatever it is? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yup. Number two is acceptance. Once you're aware of where you're at, accepting that it's okay. It's okay to be offended in whatever just happened. It's okay to feel hurt. It's okay to feel frustrated. It's okay to feel joy when it's that kind of situation. And so, the acceptance of understanding where I'm at and accepting that it's perfectly fine to feel that way. To be in that situation. To be reacting or wanting to react. That's the second one. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. This is like radical acceptance. The acceptance to the point of like this is what it is and that gives you a leg up on choosing what you want to do next. It's not saying you have to stay there. And you can you can make a different choice. But having that acceptance releases the judgment of everything that might have led to getting there. Judgment of the past. Judgment of the present. Judgment of what the future might look like because of this. Letting go of those things and accepting what is so we can make a more informed choice of what we want to do next, which brings us right to our third discipline, conscious choice. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Once we were aware of where we're at, we accept that we should not be somewhere else and we don't judge ourselves. Then we can choose. Now we're like, "Okay. Do I want to be here? Well, not really. So, let me choose how I want to respond. How I want to perform. And what will get me there." 

Alex Cullimore: I have accepted that I'm in a closet. I'm aware that this is not an ideal situation for me. My conscious choice is going and making sure I eat lunch in the cafeteria. Whatever it is. 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Yes. Great example. 

Alex Cullimore: This is a very powerful thing to practice because it is about us deciding we have answers and ability within us and exercising that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. All right. Let's move to – 

Alex Cullimore: Which brings us right to number four actually. 

Cristina Amigoni: Trust the process. Which is trust the process. Unplug the microphone. Replug it. Don't worry about the fact that we are recording. I hope recording. Yes. I pressed recording. Recording an episode. And trust the process that we can get back on track. And we're back on track. 

Alex Cullimore: This really goes to the mastery mindset of even – like, we all know that change takes time. It's bumpy. Trusting that even though we haven't gotten to maybe the results we were originally aiming at yet, it doesn't mean we're not on the right path. And so, trusting that we are putting ourselves on a good conscious choice and we've made that for a good reason. And trusting that long enough to have patience to wait for some outcomes to unfold and to continue to work with what we know works. And trusting that that will bring us where we want to go in the long run and help us know when we need to change our plan. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. These four disciplines are the foundation of being able to be authentic. Now that we are where we are. We've accepted that where we are, it's fine. We are making a conscious choice of how we want to show up and where we want to go. And we're trusting that we'll get there even though we may not have the whole journey laid out. Now we can show up as our best selves, which is our authentic self. 

Alex Cullimore: That is the fifth discipline, authenticity. Who are you? How can you be yourself? How can you truly just be you and lead from that point of your individual self? 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Which takes us to number six, fearlessness. When we have all those five in play and we know that being me and trusting the process will get me to where I need to go, then I can jump and know that the wings will appear. Either that. Or I'll bounce off the ground. Either that. Or I'll crash and smash on the ground and somebody will come help me. In any case, the fear of being paralyzed and not making the leap is gone.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Fearlessness lets us take reasonable chances. It lets us move and then realize that there really is nothing to fear. And even if it does feel like we crash and burn right out the gate. Taking that long view and that mastery approach of like this is just a step. And we even if we crashed and burned, what else are we going to pick up from this? What are we going to understand from this? And there's nothing really to be feared. And getting up and trying again. And I'm glad it at the first time. And understanding those natural cycles that go up and down and still making our choice to move forward. 

Cristina Amigoni: Mm-hmm. Yep. Getting used to that leaping and fearlessness, then gets us to confidence. Now we have the confidence to keep going and doing it again, and again and again. 

Alex Cullimore: And that is our seventh discipline, confidence. Getting into and knowing yourself and feeling confident that whatever – and this means confidence without outcome. It's not confidence that this is going to be exactly how I want it to be or confidence that because I've already won once, I can win again. It's confidence in ourselves knowing that we are enough to take on the challenges that will happen regardless, and the things we can't see coming and the things we will be disappointed by in the short term. The confidence that we are the right person to continue going. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. It's confidence in the process and in ourselves going through the process and letting go of the outcome. 

Alex Cullimore: That brings us to a little bit more external. A little bit more in combination with other people and other environment. This is our eighth discipline, connection. This is when we start to feel flow. We're connected to ourselves. We're connected to the people around us. We're connected to the environment where we're really trained to understand where we are. What this feels like? And the interdependence of our pasts, our presents, our futures? Where are we going to go from here? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yep. Yep. And number nine is presence in the moment. When we have the connection. We're in the fearlessness. We are authentic. That's when we can let go of thinking of what's next and trying to control it. And we can truly be in the moment. It's that mindfulness. It's like how can I be present? And how is this moment? It's very Eckhart Tolle. This moment is the only thing that exists. And so, how can I be fully present in this moment? Because nothing else exists. The past and the future do not exist. 

Alex Cullimore: That means accepting all of the current influencers. Accepting all the current connections and choosing what we're going to do about any of these. And how we would like this to go forward? And knowing that we can really only make that choice right now in the present moment. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yep. 

Alex Cullimore: And that brings us to our final discipline. Being 100% energetically engaged. When we talked about the levels of energy and getting to that seventh level where you are living with the full conscious choice and lack of judgment and being able to feel committed and having that overall, very difficult to achieve, but incredibly powerful sense of detached involvements. Where you aren't attached to the outcomes, but you're still involved in trying to make things better and make things more energetic for yourself. And having that intention and playing full-out. Playing all the way as big as we want to be. Because we, in the darkest nights, hope we can be and sometimes we're afraid to admit we might be able to achieve. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. And we actually talk about this not as specifically, not as explicitly. But in one of our first episodes, three years ago, with Lori, we talked about playing big. This is the playing big discipline. Is how do we play big and give our full self? Because we have the confidence, the authenticity, the fearlessness, the awareness, the acceptance. And we understand the social influencers all around us. 

Alex Cullimore: Note how many of these have to do with being independent of the outcome. We play big not because we're going to do exactly what we set out to do. But because with that intention, we can do more than we ever thought was possible. And we have to be able to have that confidence outside of outcomes. How to trust the process when we haven't seen the outcome yet? Have connection to that future even if it doesn't exist. And we can really only live in the present. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Now that you have your content of tables – table of contents, table contents. Not content and tables. Yeah. Apparently, when I'm a discipline 10, I can't speak. I am fully non here. I have reached a whole other galaxy. 

What we're going to do in the next few episodes, and we're going to split this up in one or two per episode depending on how much we meander and just go into tangents, which is very likely. But we are going to coach each other on the influencers and then the disciplines. Not fully coach as we would do with our clients, which can take hours and hours and weeks of painful journey, especially if you have to listen to it on your end. But just a couple of questions on each one to kind of unpack what's going on. What awareness do we need to bring to ourselves? And how do we want to move forward so that we can reach our peak performance or at least be aware of how we can do it? 

Alex Cullimore: The best part about coaching is you learn so much about yourself and the other person while you're doing it. And this is something that hopefully we can share as well with everybody else. That when you hear us reflecting on our influencers, you'll see pieces that you relate to or things that you like, "Oh, I feel like I'm different on that. But that tells me here's what important to me." And these are all great points of self-reflection. We'll dive through these so you can also have some understanding of these disciplines, use them in your life and hopefully find some of those greater potentials that we all are hoping for.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Have fun. 

Alex Cullimore: Enjoy. 

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 Lara; 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 at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. We Are Siamo 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]