Transcription
I'm delighted to welcome you to this lesson. You're going to find this lesson contrarian. I'm going to go rogue in this lesson, and I'm going to make a link or connection that isn't so common between productivity and emotional healing. What we often hear is to be more productive, think about time hacks. What we don't hear is to be more productive, focus on emotional healing.
Now, you might say, "Robin, I'm not quite with you," because this is contrarian. So, we've heard a lot of time management ideas. People talk about apps that will help you be a better time manager, and they will encourage you to be a master delegator, and they will encourage you to have a calendar and a planner and set up your schedule. And those things are very valuable. I'm not going to say they're not. And yet, as John Cabot Zinn, the great Zen teacher, said, "Wherever you go, there you are." The reason why so many productivity techniques don't really have any traction is because real change must come from within.
So, I believe that mindset is not everything, because mindset is our psychology, and of course, our psychology is important. You've got to have the beliefs of productivity and world-class to produce world-class results. But I think that there's also a second human empire worth working on on a consistent basis, and that is your heart set. Our mindset is our psychology. Your heart set is your emotionality. We're human beings. We have an emotional life as well as an intellectual and psychological life. We feel. We are sad, and we have shame, and we feel guilt, and we feel disappointment. We feel jealous. We have resentments. Sometimes we feel anger. And at the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we feel hope. Sometimes we feel joy. Sometimes we feel wonder. Sometimes we feel excitement. Sometimes we feel cheerful. And that's what makes us human. And to not recognize that we have those two human empires, I think, is missing the point.
And then we have the third interior empire after mindset and heartset, which is health set. That is, if mindset is your psychology and your heart set is your emotionality, then your health set is your physicality. That's your your physical life. And to complete the self-mastery equation, we have mindset, heartset, health set, and soul set. And our soul set is our spirituality. Every single human being on the planet has a spiritual life, and that is that deep place of everyday heroism, whether they know it or not. That place of wisdom and strength and love, nobility, bravery, that so many people have been disconnected with.
So, what I want to do in this lesson is suggest to you that without a well-tended to and healthy emotional life, no matter what books you read on productivity, you'll never get amazing things done. And what I'm suggesting to you is, if you really want to multiply your productivity massively, you've got to become the kind of person who can hold that kind of a life. You've got to become the kind of person who, at an emotional level, is free of toxicity.
Here's what I mean. From the moment we are born, we experience different forms of trauma. Could be micro-trauma. Could be, in grade three, your best friend doesn't invite you to his birthday party because he doesn't like you anymore. Micro-trauma. Get to grade 10, you had a crush on someone, and they broke up with you. Some trauma there. As we get older, there could have been a car accident. That's part of life. Could have been an illness. That's part of life. Could have been a divorce. That's part of life. Could have been a financial issue. That's part of life. Could have been a plague or a war. That's part of some people's realities. And so, as we get through life, we have highs, but we also have difficult times. And that's just the human journey, isn't it?
As we pick up this micro-trauma, small trauma, or macro-trauma, it could be abuse, divorce, illness, accident, we develop this emotional field of hurt. I call it a field of hurt. This is repressed emotion that is deep within our subconscious, and we think it's not there because we don't live in a society that values emotional healing. We live in a society that says, "Have a stiff upper lip. Think from your head. If you get knocked down, move on." I call this dysfunctional optimism. How often have you heard someone say, "Oh, you're in a divorce? Oh, you're heartbroken? Oh, you lost your job? Focus on the gratefulness and move on. Work hard. Get busy." I think that is such unhealthy advice.
Even some of the positive thinking books, that's why one of the chapters in the Everyday Healing Manifesto is "The Big Lie of Positive Thinking." I don't think positive thinking works. I should say, I don't think positive thinking works without emotional healing. Because positive thinking alone, if you're suffering from a divorce, or you're frightened because you're in a war, or there's terror, or there's an economic collapse, or you've lost your job, or work is hard, or you're having a personal intimacy relationship problem, you're going to feel pain. And it's normal to feel pain. And if you don't feel pain, or sadness, or anger, or shame, or disappointment, you're probably not very healthy. And yet, if you go, if you rush to positive thinking, you're going to repress all of those natural emotions, and they're going to be stuck within your subconscious, and they will be running your life.
And here's the key: that repressed trauma and all those emotions that you never worked through and never process through will be draining your energy. They will be massively blocking your intimacy with that inner heroism and that inner genius. The only reason you don't have incredible energy, if you don't have incredible energy and you're not coming with genius great ideas, the only reason you might not be a world-class producer is because you have all of this energy and toxicity from all the emotions that have built up as you've journeyed through life.
And so, if you, I'm not saying that external techniques are not important. I've offered you a lot of tactics in these 10 days for exponential and peerless productivity. But those don't work unless you clean out your inner life, and especially your heart set. So, by working on your heart set and purifying it, so you steadily, and it doesn't happen in a day, it'll happen in months and quarters and years, and you get better and better and better and healthier and healthier and healthier emotionally, the more you do it, you'll start releasing that field of hurt, which is just energy. And as toxicity leaves you, your vibration and your energy rises and becomes healthier and more positive and more up, which automatically lifts your mindset.
As you work on your field of hurt and leave it by processing through your unfelt toxic emotions, because the world says don't feel. Probably, probably your parents said, "Don't feel. Don't cry." How many times do you see parents say, "Don't cry. You know, be strong." It's human to feel. And as you start to work through the field of hurt and release that toxicity, you'll have more energy automatically. The energy will move through your system, and you'll start thinking more positively, because the only reason we're negative is we have all this negative energy stuck within us. And this has will have a dramatic effect on your productivity. You will become freer. You'll become more energized. You'll become more cheerful. You will naturally connect with your inner artistry.
Let's go to a tool that has really helped my the clients that I mentor significantly upgrade their creativity and especially their productivity, and it's called the AFRA tool for heart set purification. It might seem unfamiliar and complicated the first time, just like if you're learning Italian for the first time. All change is hard at first. It's messy in the middle. It's beautiful at the end. All change is difficult when you first embrace it. But if you practice and stay with it and study it, what was once foreign becomes familiar.
So, this is new to you, the AFRA tool. But as you practice it, as you test it out, as you experiment over the days, weeks, and months and years, you're going to see how incredibly valuable it is. Incredibly valuable, because this will allow you to release that hurt field so you become more heroic, more free, more energized, more loving, and you work with love. You produce work that shows your love. You love your customers, so you would only release masterwork.
The first part of the AFRA tool, A, P, H, R, A, is awareness. So, let's come up with a scenario. Let's say you're at work, and there's a teammate that you really don't get along with. They always make you feel bad, put you down, never give you any credit, or they're just toxic. Rather than blaming the teammate because you get angry or frustrated, do something that is one of the keys to heroism. Don't blame the other person. Ask yourself, "What did they just activate within me?" Because you couldn't feel anger unless you had pre-existing anger within you. You couldn't feel sad unless you had a well of pre-existing hurt within you. Could have come from childhood. Could have come from it came from earlier trauma. If it's hysterical, it's historical. The larger your overreaction, the more you can be sure it came from something in the past, not the difficult teammate, or the person who cut you off in traffic, or the difficult economy, or the loss of a client, or the fight you had from with your significant other.
So, again, let's say there's a teammate. You, they did something. You feel really a strong emotion. Don't blame them, or you're going to miss an opportunity to heal your heart set. First step is A, AFRA. The AFRA tool. A, awareness. What does awareness mean? It means go to your body. Most people are frozen. They don't even feel anymore. So they live in their heads, and they wonder why they sabotage their productivity. Key point: Intellectually, they've read all the books on productivity. Emotionally, they're full of anger, sadness, self-loathing, undeservability. So they're at war. They want to change the world. They want to get up at 5 AM. They want to install the habits and routines and rituals of world-class, and they wonder why it never lasts. They wonder why they sabotage it. It's because their heart set is full of toxicity.
So, the first thing you do, the imp, the teammate angers you or makes you feel sad or frustrated, go into your body and locate the feeling. Often it's in the solar plexus. It might be a sensation. Try to put a label to the feeling, because when you label the feeling, it starts to dissolve. Carl Jung called it our shadow side. I call it our field of hurt. We all have a shadow side of these repressed, suppressed emotions that are draining our energy and stealing our productivity. When you take a shadow and bring it into the light, the shadow dissolves. When you don't blame the teammate and you go, "Oh, oh, I'll put a label on it." That sensation, and this, you get, you get more fluent with your emotions with time. You say, "Hmm, okay." At first, it might just be a sensation. Eventually, you might label it as, eventually, you might label it as sadness or anger. By labeling it, you start the process of releasing it. By feeling. Key point, please write this down: To heal a wound, you must feel the wound. To heal the wound, you must feel the wound. Otherwise, you swallow it. It affects your productivity and energy and optimism and performance and heroism. And actually, it creates inflammation. It creates negative biochemistry that creates inflammation and toxicity in your system. And then people wonder why they have all this anger because they had a divorce, or they had an illness, or they lost a job, and they repressed it. So it became frozen, and they ended up with cancer or some other disease because it was dis-ease that was not worked through. And I'm not saying that some people who end up built with illnesses, I'm not saying it wasn't genetic or other causes. I'm simply saying a lot of illness is because of emotional disease. And I'm not being disrespectful to anyone. I'm just sharing what I believe to be truth.
Okay, so step number one of the AFRA tool, and you do this every time you encounter a situation that activates you. You get cut off in traffic. Don't blame the motorist. Notice the feeling. Become aware of it. Notice the sensation. Try to label it. Is it sadness, shame, guilt, sorrow, resentment? Whatever. The more you start doing it, you'll start processing through it, because what to heal a wound, you need to feel the wound. Once you feel the wound, it starts to leave your system. It's so profound. I've lived this for the past 21 years, especially that allowed me to create the AFRA tool that is transforming the lives of my mentoring clients and helping them to be productive. And very few people talk about this as a means for exponential productivity, but I think this is really the key to avoiding the self-sabotage that blocks your productivity.
Once you build awareness of what's going on when you've been activated in your body, AFRA, feel. Stay with the sensation. Feel with it. Don't run from it. Could be scary. Could be uncomfortable. Breathe into it. Feel it. Okay, yeah. Look at the color. Often it's red. Maybe it's orange. Look at the texture. It could be rugged. You might get images. Oh, this is an image of, could be your mother when you were a kid, or your grandfather, or maybe it was a friend, or something. Could bring up a memory. Stay with it. Honor it. Feel it. It's going to lighten. Might take five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Sometimes I've been processing through emotion, and I just feel it stuck within me for three weeks, and then it clears, and I'm a different person. I'm not saying I'm completely different, but I'm lighter, and I'm more loving, more connected with my wisdom, more connected with my creativity and productivity and true power. This is really how you move through the layers over the golden butter. The AFRA tool.
So, feel the sensation. Step number three. It's hard to explain it in words, but step number three, the R in AFRA of the AFRA tool, is you make an intention. Because intentions are powerful. And you just set an intention to release the lower grade emotion. And you just, one of the great lessons of transformation is you learn to let go. And you just set the intention, "Let go of the anger. Let go of the feeling that the motorist beautifully came up. I mean, that motorist who cut you off, that teammate who made you angry, that spouse who who activated you and made you feel unworthy, that difficult time in the past. Those people were your spiritual friends. They have activated old subconscious wounding that has limited your heroism." Step number three, intend to let it go.
And the final element of the AFRA tool, A, is ascend. Just by going through this process, it might be on a daily basis, you will be lighter. The toxic or lower grade energy that formed that repressed field of hurt that is limiting. Here's the key: it's it's blocking you. It's it's the layers over the gold. It's blocking you from knowing who you truly are and letting the world see it. Those layers of micro-trauma and macro-trauma that have created repressed feelings in a society that says, "Don't feel. Don't cry. Emotions are bad. Be a warrior." Real warriors feel, so they can be alive. Too many people live within this narrow band of feeling. They're not sad. They're not angry. They don't resent. They don't feel shame. They don't feel guilt. But they don't feel the inspiration required to create a Sistine Chapel ceiling. They don't know wonder. They don't know what bliss feels like. They don't know what love feels like. So they hurt the planet, or they hurt other human beings, or they're greedy and steal.
The AFRA tool is so incredibly profound. It is worth, by living it and practicing it, it is worth your investment in the in this entire program. So, step number four is you ascend. You've felt that you've become aware of the feeling that you've used the external situation that activated you to number one, feel the feeling. It was an old feeling. Number two, you stayed with it. AFRA. You felt it. You felt the sensation. You labeled it. You looked at the color. You didn't run away from it by playing with your phone or talking to someone or getting into overwork. Step number three, you intended to let it go. You set that intention. It starts to release. Might take an hour. Might take five minutes, but you stayed with it. And finally, step number four, you ascend. You're lighter. Your your energetic vibration is higher because the fear that was in you has released you because you process through it, which increases your productivity. It increases your creativity. You become more intimate with who you truly are. You feel stronger. Your ego has been turned down, and your heroism has been turned up. That's the AFRA tool.
Yes, it's a contrarian tool, and what I've shared with you is an unorthodox philosophy for exponential productivity. I'm so passionate about it. I've lived this in my own life. Use emotional and heart set healing to multiply your performance. It is, I think, it's the real key to being a world-class producer.