Greg Voisen
Welcome back inside personal growth, this is Greg voice and those of inside personal growth. And joining us today is Sarah Peyton. Peyton. I want to make sure I get that right. And the book we're going to be talking about is affirmations. For turbulent times, I was just saying to Sarah, what a good feeling book this is, it's embossed. And it's a perfect book for Christmas, the perfect book for any time of the year, but particularly right about now, where people are beautiful, reflecting and thinking about their world and what they want to do. So it's affirmations for turbulent times, I'll put a link to Sara's website, we'll also put a link to Amazon for the book. And Sarah has been on with us before. And she has a series of books, but I'm gonna let them know a little bit about you, Sarah. She's in neuroscience educator, constellation facilitator, certified nonviolent communication trainer and author who invites audiences into a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain and teaches how to use resonance, to change inhale. She's been doing this for a long time. And she has your resident self book, and also the resident self workbook, which we will put a link in this podcast to the interview we did a few months ago with Sarah for those those books as well. So again, link to this book, but this is the one we're going to be talking about today. So Sarah, you know, in that interview a couple of months ago, we talked about your resident self book and your resident self workbook that really kind of goes along with it. You know, you don't have to buy both, but it goes along with it. And it was fascinating, kind of your approach. Now you've come up with this new book, which explores 100 themes of affirmations grounded in neuroscience. To set the stage if you would, I think for our listeners, because this isn't just another book with affirmations. I want them to know that. Although there are affirmations, this isn't just another book. So can you give the listeners context about affirmations for a turbulent time?

Sarah Peyton
Yes. So the affirmations for turbulent times is a book that Norton's my Norton editor commissioned from me, she was talking with her family at night at dinner time about how hard it was to live in this world and about how all of her books were about trauma. And her daughter said to her, I think it was her daughter said to her, Mom, why don't you publish something that makes people feel good? Deborah called me up and said, Sarah, what do you think? Do you think you could do resonant affirmations book for us that will give people both, you know, a real sense of being able to ground themselves in the truth of what's happening, and to be able to move into some really good feelings, especially, especially, you know, during these turbulent times, and I was like, Yes, I can do that. That sounds like a marvelous mission.

Greg Voisen
Well, how long ago was that, that you guys started that journey?

Sarah Peyton
Oh, gosh, it wasn't. So very long ago. It was maybe one year ago. And then I had that I think I wrote it in six weeks, I wrote twice as much as what ended up being put in the book. But no, no, we want it to be little, we want it to be a workbook, and not a little gift book. And so they had me go through and take out everything. But the very most, most beautiful, resonant, inviting affirmations that would help people feel better. Oh, what a

Greg Voisen
great story. That's a great story. Now, you know you presented in the book. And then what I want to get to is with wanderings and affirmations and state that the audience can think of it as a hug, and a hard bound. I like that. If you would tell the listeners Why do you believe that this book is an important reference to them in the world that we're living in today. You know, it's turbulent times is is is very appropriate terminology. Yet on the flip side of the coin, this book allows you to really look at what you consider turbulent times to be, because it has to be reframed. From a neuroscience standpoint. Otherwise, you're going to get caught in turbulent times. Yeah.

Sarah Peyton
The very nicest thing that happens for human brains, is when somebody understands them. As soon as another human really understands a human has been living through turbulent times, then the person has been understood, their body relaxes, and their brain relaxes, and we can see out on MRIs. And it's so interesting, because people don't realize, like, even I have been doing this work for 15 years, I'm always like, it's not really going to work is it? If I, if I just let myself understand the other person and reflect my understanding, they're not going to come down, that's too simple. But over and over again, for 15 years, when we let ourselves really what I use the word resonant to resonate with another person, and to let them know that we're resonating with them and to say, here's what's happening for me, is it like that for you? Here's the metaphor that's coming to me, or here's what's happening with my body sensations. The other person goes, Oh, wow, I feel better. And that's what this book is meant to do. Because a traditional affirmation just plunges you right into the affirmation part, without any acknowledgement that you know, if you're claiming abundance for yourself, and you grew up, scavenging, you know, wooden crates in order to use them for and those wooden crates for bookshelves, and those wooden spools from cable runs to use for coffee tables. that when you were young. I

Greg Voisen
I don't know if you did know I remember all

Sarah Peyton
grew up like that, you know, the idea of like an abundance can sometimes seem a little, a little elusive. And if you say I live in abundance, you might think, yeah, I live in an abundance of, of coffee table spools, and by gum, they've changed those to cardboard now and they aren't even wood anymore. And there's nothing but scarcity in this world. It's like we've got a little guy on our shoulder. That that contradicts our affirmations. Yeah, and you know, in the brain it's actually the anterior cingulate, the anterior cingulate loves it when things match up. When true words and truth match. The anterior cingulate is all in. So what we what we do with this book is the one side has the affirmations. I mean, yeah, just like to traditional affirmations. But before we get to the affirmations, there are wonderings. Right? You need acknowledgement that you grew up without enough food for dinner. Do you need acknowledgement that sometimes you get really scared?

Greg Voisen
I think questioning that, Sara, in other words, in anything, the way you change, or alter or transform, is by asking a very important question of yourself, your subconscious that's programmed that that continues to do that. And, you know, we said this in the last interview, I remember Byron Katie saying, Is it true? Is it really true, you know, and I think we live in a world of making stuff up, and then we believe what we made up, and then that's literally what we create for ourselves. But in your book, you're, you're telling them? No, that doesn't have to be the case. Here's the way to question that. And then here's an affirmation that would reframe how you are languaging that, right? You were talking about the schools and the coffee table, whatever. So you, you have this living with chaos and uncertainty. And you speak about having to worry about things that were personal and subject to kind of the whole world, right. The consequences of the pandemic affected you were just talking about a workshop you went to and yeah, and yeah, there were consequences. Yeah. The pandemic affected every part of the world and everyone's peaceful life. Whether our life was peaceful or not before isn't so important, but this added to that confusion. Yeah, conflict. So what recommendation recommendations Do you have for people to really rejuvenate? You know, we're, we're kind of coming out of this. I know we're talking about on the Kromme. Now and all these other things. But again, if you look at it, not that this isn't that the pandemic isn't real, and that the virus isn't real. But what's real is the fear. And I think the important thing to address is, if you're going to reprogram anything you should reprogram how you think about this, and the fear that you associate with it. Because it stops you from having a life. Yeah, if you go down that path.

Sarah Peyton
Yeah, and you know, you're saying about the pandemic is true everywhere, right? I mean, if what we want to do is like, live from a place of grace and abundance, really tap into the essential birthright of those two qualities within us. What stops us is fear, what stops us is also alarmed aloneness, the experience of not being accompanied in this life, which is why this book and all my books just really try to accompany people right where they are. So that when they get to that point of claiming for themselves, like certainty, you know, you said that there's one section called, living with chaos and uncertainty. Our birthright is a certain, like, real grounding in who we are, and in our love, and in our capacity to be with and contribute to the people that we love and to the world. So when we get grounded in that love, there's a certainty in it. That's very different from the uncertainty that we live with, on a day to day basis with, with pandemic, with a global climate crisis, with, with worries about, about the economic situation in the world, and an inequality and systemic, systemic racism. Like there's so many, just really beautiful things to work on right now for all of us. And, and how do we kind of find our center, our sense of humor, and our heart, just to be able to keep moving and enjoy ourselves a little bit?

Greg Voisen
No, this book does a good job at that, you know, that's the most important thing. And that's why I say for my readers, if you want to get a copy of this book, pre Christmas, put it on, for somebody as a gift, it would be a good thing to do. And we'll have links so that you can do that. And also to her website, you know, you bring up some important points. And it's always the case that, you know, you're a neuroscience expert, and you're looking at how this brain operates. And in theme, you call it theme for and titled Work and contribution, you state that you bring focus into your body and your heart to support yourself and the efforts to keep all the balls that you were just talking about, you have a lot of them you listed juggling in the air. And there's many of them, we juggle family and work and home and in school, and whatever it might be in the pandemic, and you name it, share with our listeners, if you would some of the tips to keep that focus into the their body and mind.

Sarah Peyton
The thing that most supports focus is a kind of a combination of being sweet to ourselves, and, and grounding, you know, what we're doing in the deeper needs that we have. So whatever it is we want ourselves to focus on. If I'm looking at research for a book, for example, I'm not just looking at research, I'm looking at research with an eye to how will this research help all the people who are in the world who are really bewildered by their own experience of being alive? How does this research help us understand the human condition? And so that kind of multi level understanding of why we're focusing on something if we're focusing on our work to be like a work that we do for a corporation? What's the corporation's mission, what part of the corporation's mission works for us as a as a contribution to humanity? Or well, how much do I need to just be very grounded the based in our love for our family and the way that whatever work we're doing in the world provides for us provides oxygen and breathing space and room and home for a sense of home for our people. So the more we ground ourselves in the larger values and longings and needs that we have, the easier it is to deal with the sort of buffeting winds of the inside of our brain that make focus difficult. Stress makes focus difficult.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and you know, it's easier said than done. Because there's an attachment to things working out a certain way we want life to be better. And but when we focus all that energy on the attachment of it being better, because the reality is from my promo experiences, you don't control it. So you have to learn to let it go. Otherwise, that increases the stress level, and reduces the happiness and joy level, and the compassionate level and the ability to do all the other things because it's not going your way. There's a little thing called anger that comes into play. And that anger is not self compassion, as you well know. It's anger against yourself, you lash out against others, you lash out at yourself. You know, in in your part of the book with family and home theme, you speak about relationships, loved ones parenting responsibilities. You were just talking about that in the last statement? What advice can you give the listeners, when things go crazy, and a lot of constant, things need to be addressed all at the same time. In other words, where, you know, we're dealing with a difficult child may have drug issues, we've got a spouse, which is abusive, we've got whatever the things that are happening, and then so that those stories don't become embedded in the brain, so we relive them over and over and over again.

Sarah Peyton
Yeah, well, so many of us are living in multi generational households where each generation has its own difficulties. We might be having difficulties with our spouse might have be having difficulties with our children, we might be having difficulties with our parents. So the most important thing is somehow finding a sense that we make sense that every moment our responses make sense. Like when we wake up at three o'clock in the morning, and my worry about our kid that we got, oh, of course, I would be worried. And we feel into the way that we love them so much. Or if we have a partner who becomes abusive under addiction issues, for example, or just carries anger issues. And we get to say to ourselves, of course, I'm scared. We don't need to be cruel to ourselves, about our decisions, we want as much as possible, to be really warmly accompany almost like we're an angel that's with ourselves all the time. Sometimes people don't like the word angel, an accompanying essence, that's with us all the time is just going Yes, sir. That was a rough moment. Of course, you're angry. Of course, you're sad. Of course, you feel disgust. Of course, you want this world to be different. Just like a an embrace that we carry with us all the time. But she's very it's a very big request of ourselves to do this. But we needed quite intensely. That's it, we just lost your voice, Greg.

Greg Voisen
Warren to make sure that I make sure that she edits that. You know, what I was going to comment on is finding that peace and comfort from within. And being able to have certain little things trigger that is so very important to remember last time, we talked about the need to just go out and take a walk in nature, or a hike or ride your bicycle or do something physical that makes you feel good. So you come back in, there's a lot of things you can do, or giving of yourself, volunteering your time, for a senior center or for a food bank, or whatever it might be. Those are the kinds of things that bring lots of Peace to you, and blessings to you. And more in debt isn't measured from a monetary standpoint. It's intrinsic reward that you get that's so important because it feeds the soul,

Sarah Peyton
you know, its own brings its own abundance. Yes, it does.

Greg Voisen
And living the creative life, you state that you acknowledge your anxiety in and care so that your body has a sense that you know yourself, and that you're receiving your own messages, right? How does someone benefit from acknowledging anxiety and care? And how do we apply them to our lives? So in other words, you know, hey, I was talking with a girl yesterday at lunch. And she says, I suffer from depression and anxiety. I didn't know that, but she was willing to share that with me. And I shared what I knew about it, because I used to have high anxiety myself, anxiety attacks, and she really got a lot of relief. And I recommend it a couple of books as well. But I think it's important just the element that someone trusts you enough to share an experience that they're having, right? And this anxiety thing is more than real for people. Oh, it's, it's a, and anxiety then leads into depression.

Sarah Peyton
And anxiety can have two flavors. Anxiety can have a main flavor of alarmed aloneness, where we're like, Where are the people? Where's my person, where's my beloved Where's, where's my family where, and that can happen. With death that can happen with job changes that can happen with moves across the country that can happen with migration internationally, that can happen with divorce and separation, it can happen with kids going away to school, it can happen from when we were tiny, when we had such a love for our mothers, we come out of the womb, in love with our mothers. And if, and we who have been inside of them know better than anybody else, what the beauty of their souls are. And when our mothers are, are wounded and blocked by trauma, they don't get to be that full self. I believe that there are so many of us walking around with a pervasive loneliness, specifically for the beautiful hearts of the people whose bodies we came out of it can be true with fathers to know who knows, Father better than his children. And who longs for father's well being more than his children. So when we start to name those kinds of very deep loneliness is you can start to help with anxiety. And on the other hand, the other flavor of anxiety is fear. When we get to name those deep fears, like my family has never been financially stable in six generations. I just, you know, or it's been sort of stable, but there's been no gain in six generations. Of course, I would feel afraid about finances. Of course, I would want there to be stability and security and well being.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, very important point. You know, one of our opportunities in life is to find focus and do it through contemplation, meditation, whatever it might be, but the world is filled with distractions. And you wrote about it in the book. You talk about the social media distractions, obviously, on the Capitol today, people are being grilled. You know, Facebook, which is now Mata, you know, Instagram, they have the guy up there just a few days ago, about how it's distorting the perception for young children. Right, yeah, and

Sarah Peyton
how addictive it is, including the young children and not very helpful, not very life serving, is it

Greg Voisen
right. So if you were to speak to the listeners about the effects of social media and dealing with social media distractions, what what would advice would you give them I mean, I know the book has plenty of opportunities for people to look at overview, ask hard questions, and then read an affirmation. So where were where do you stand on that? What would you like to let the listeners know?

Sarah Peyton
I would love it if our listeners were very kind to themselves in whatever way that they use social media. Because I actually have my cell phone in the other room, because your cell phone takes depending on which research you look at 10 to 25% of your brain energy. It's like you're outsourcing. Like if these reading glasses were my cell phone would have outsourced 10 to 15% of my intelligence and my creative capacity and my thinking ability to my cell phone. It's an it's an auxiliary brain, it's very helpful. But it diminishes us interpersonally. So the more we can spend more time we can spend with our cell phones in another room, when we're trying to focus speaking of focus, coming back to our focus question, the more we get to kind of be existing exists do explore in real time with our full brains. So that's one thing to notice is that it's an auxiliary brain. The other thing to notice is that it's kind of an auxiliary morphine pump. Each time that we refresh the screen, it's a there's a dopamine rush. So that's the addiction chemical. And each time somebody puts a love or a light on our Facebook post, or Instagram post or tweet, we get a little jolt of endogenous opioids. So our devices, a little kind of medicalizing unit that we carry around with ourselves to keep ourselves regulated. I think it's interesting, first of all, to start just by knowing that, and noticing our patterns, like, part of what happens when we have an external focus, like a device, is that we can manage our default mode network, which is the anxious voice of the brain, we bring our attention of Facebook, we can turn off the default mode network, and then we just get to be here and, and with our device, and we don't have to worry about that anxiety. So what are we managing? That's such a good start of a question.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, well, I would say that in life, as you mentioned, in the first part, there's a lot of balls that we're juggling in the air, we're managing so much, and everybody who has a family or owns a business or writes a book, or is on social media, like we're doing here, right now. You're managing all these elements. And many of these elements did not exist not that long ago. So we've added to the pile of things that we have to manage, and things we have to do. If you were to leave the listeners with three very sound, resonant pieces of advice about affirmations for turbulent times, and how they might use this book, in their life to change some things that they would like to change. What would you tell them? What advice would you give them? Yeah,

Sarah Peyton
first of all, just take it, get the book and open it randomly. And let those two pages speak to you. And then as you kind of get used to doing random openings, start to think about how do you how do you want to think about these things yourself? Have I named everything that's true for you that the little guy on your shoulders saying, is there more that needs to be named. So that's the second part to start to make it your own. And the third is to just to have it, but to allow yourself to use this as a model for making your own affirmations as you go in deeper into your life so that whatever you run up against, you get to name what's to, and claim your essence in relationship to whatever's happening.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's an additional tool in the toolbox that you can set with. And you can do it with out digital screen.

Sarah Peyton
Digital Kindle that,

Greg Voisen
read it on your Kindle, you can that's true. And we're not downing digital because our life is very much digital, both Sarah and myself. But there's times when you just want to sit on the sofa or in your easy chair and take a book to read. And this is one of those warm books that you also may want to take in a habit right here. You may want to take a yellow highlighter with this yellow ball. And you may want to actually highlight some things in the book and actually put some notes in there for yourself. Which would be a good thing to do as well. Well, Sarah, it's a pleasure having you on inside personal growth again. Happy holidays to you blessitt holiday season and a great new year for you as you started off here with so many great opportunities to help people find their resident life.

Sarah Peyton
Oh, thank you Greg!