Coaching Confidential

Episode 6: Authentic Relating with Gabe DeRita

November 23, 2021 Season 1 Episode 6
Episode 6: Authentic Relating with Gabe DeRita
Coaching Confidential
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Coaching Confidential
Episode 6: Authentic Relating with Gabe DeRita
Nov 23, 2021 Season 1 Episode 6

This episode is refreshingly authentic. A slight change of format too! We were curious about what supporting practices other coaches bring to their work with clients, there are so many possibilities. In this episode we explore one, Authentic Relating. 

Over the next 3 episodes we will learn from another ICF credentialed coach; Gabe DeRita - what authentic relating is about, how he came upon it, and you'll be a fly on the wall witnessing your host Lisa D stretching herself into the space of curiosity, vulnerability and courage while practicing an authentic relating 'game' with Gabe. We hope you take away a sense of how Authentic Relating (or coaching) might support your goals in life.

*5 principles of Authentic Relating (short hand of your hosts)

  • Welcome everything.
  • Assume nothing.
  • Reveal your experience.
  • Own your experience.
  • Honor yourSelf and other.

If you have questions or want to talk with us directly book time here.

To hear other episodes go here.

To learn more about Gabe go here.

To learn more about Authentic Relating go here.

If you would like to sample coaching for yourSelf, CONTACT US.

If you'd like to share what listening was like for you, DROP A LINE. We'd love to hear you!

Follow us on Instagram.

Follow us on Facebook.

Follow us on LinkedIn.

#thecoachingconfidentialpodcast #coaching #podcast

Show Notes Transcript

This episode is refreshingly authentic. A slight change of format too! We were curious about what supporting practices other coaches bring to their work with clients, there are so many possibilities. In this episode we explore one, Authentic Relating. 

Over the next 3 episodes we will learn from another ICF credentialed coach; Gabe DeRita - what authentic relating is about, how he came upon it, and you'll be a fly on the wall witnessing your host Lisa D stretching herself into the space of curiosity, vulnerability and courage while practicing an authentic relating 'game' with Gabe. We hope you take away a sense of how Authentic Relating (or coaching) might support your goals in life.

*5 principles of Authentic Relating (short hand of your hosts)

  • Welcome everything.
  • Assume nothing.
  • Reveal your experience.
  • Own your experience.
  • Honor yourSelf and other.

If you have questions or want to talk with us directly book time here.

To hear other episodes go here.

To learn more about Gabe go here.

To learn more about Authentic Relating go here.

If you would like to sample coaching for yourSelf, CONTACT US.

If you'd like to share what listening was like for you, DROP A LINE. We'd love to hear you!

Follow us on Instagram.

Follow us on Facebook.

Follow us on LinkedIn.

#thecoachingconfidentialpodcast #coaching #podcast

Vimla | 00:01

Hello and welcome to Coaching Confidential. We are a podcast that talks about coaching and everything related to coaching. This podcast is hosted by ICF certified professional coaches, Lisa d and Vimla, and in this episode we are doing something different. So, Lisa, what's different in this episode?

Lisa | 00:20

So what's different in this episode is you are going to hear a one-on-one conversation with myself and another ICF credentialed coach named Gabe DeRita. And Gabe and I are gonna talk about a practice that he is really steeped in, in his life called Authentic Relating.

Vimla | 00:40

Awesome. And Lisa, why are we talking about authentic relating? We just said that we're a podcast about coaching

Lisa | 00:49

<laugh>. Yeah, there are a lot of answers to that question. You know, the first one that comes to mind is, I find it really interesting, but back to the why. You know, we talk a lot with our clients in coaching, and I think a lot of us in our lives are having conversations around what we want to create in our lives, what we wanna create in our relationships. And authentic relating is a model that can help humans create and support intentional relationship through skillful communication and skillful connection. I don't know if that's made any sense, but that's why we're doing it.

Vimla | 01:31

Awesome. I love it. What I'm hearing is intentional communication and intentional relationships. That shows up a lot in coaching. So I'm very curious about this model. I think I learned a lot.

Lisa | 01:45

Yeah, I hope so. I did. Another piece of information I can reveal is I was really stretched <laugh> in this conversation. I felt at times, like both on one hand, like really curious, and on the other hand, really, um, I don't know, a little uncomfortable, a little like I was being asked to be a little more intimate or a little more vulnerable than I was sure I wanted to be. And in the end, it actually was really worth it. Um, glad I did it. I learned a lot from it. And this conversation with Gabe is a long one. So we've broken it down into three episodes. This is the first of those three. In this very first episode, what you're gonna hear is the introduction to Gabe. Gabe's gonna talk a little bit about his life journey, how he became a coach, coach, and what authentic relating is to him. And we'll introduce the five principles of authentic relating. And, um, in the future episodes we're gonna go into that practice that I mentioned that stretched me a little bit. So I hope you enjoy this format.

Vimla | 03:05

Awesome. So without further ado, let's listen.

Lisa | 03:11

I'd like to welcome Gabe Dita to the Coaching Confidential podcast. Welcome Gabe.

Gabe | 03:18

Thanks for having me, Lisa. Pleasure to be here.

Lisa | 03:21

Yeah, it's great, um, to have you and to break with our usual format. Today we're doing something a little bit different. We've invited our guest, Gabe, uh, to talk a little bit about authentic relating, and I'm gonna let him tell you about what that all is. This particular model helps us be intentional about the way we communicate and connect with others in our lives. There are so many models for ways to be in this world. I mean, you could make a life's work out of exploring them all.

Gabe | 03:55

Oh yeah.

Lisa | 03:56

Every single time I open my email or go onto social media or to LinkedIn or out into the real world, I feel like I'm presented with a new model, a new way.

Gabe | 04:09

Yeah. I, I feel the same. And I feel like as a coach, you know, I'm sort of like a personal development junkie. I feel like it's kind of part of the job description in a way. Um, so I do come across a lot of models as well. And what I find attractive about authentic relating not just as a coach but as a human being, is that it's, it's, it's so relatable to so many parts of our experience and the practices themselves are really simple. And of all the models I've come across, it just feels like kind of one of the more accessible and resonant, you know, whether you're practicing as a coach or whether you just wanna show up as a better partner, you know, or a better coworker, whatever it is, it really cuts across, uh, so many different contexts of human relationship.

Lisa | 04:49

Yeah, beautiful. Beautiful. So partners, coworkers, people, human out there. I just invite you to really tune into the energy of, um, what happens as we always do in our podcast. Tune into the energy of what's here and um, and just try it on.

Gabe | 05:07

Yeah.

Lisa | 05:09

So, um, Gabe, what do you want our listeners to know about you?

Gabe | 05:15

Well, before we go to that, which everybody loves to talk about themselves, so I have no shortage of things to say to that question. I wanna add an invitation to your beautiful frame at the beginning of like, trying this on. I really want folks to look for ways that this stuff is already showing up in their life or ways where it might have served them to have it. So as you go through this practices, just really thinking about a circumstance or a context where you felt that way or that would've been really helpful to have like start to imagine where this is applies to you. And I would love to invite that curiosity cuz I, I think most listeners would be surprised to be like, oh yeah, I can relate <laugh>. Every time I give a workshop, I always invite people to say that. And I have folks coming up at the end and being like, man, if only I had this with my ex-wife or ex-husband, or I wish my coworkers talked to me this way. Like, just wanna invite that curiosity to really put this into the context of your life, um, and see what comes up.

Lisa | 06:10

Yeah. Beautiful. I love that it, it almost sounds in some ways like you're asking people to look for evidence of where it actually already exists.

Gabe | 06:17

Yes. Because this stuff is already there. All this stuff is already part of how we relate or maybe it's part of what we wish or want from our relationships. It's not in a bubble or like some conceptual idea out there. A lot of this is already part of our lived experience and the power of it is it just kind of gives a vocabulary to what's already there.

Lisa | 06:36

Wonderful.

Gabe | 06:37

But yeah, happy to talk about me. I guess the relevant part of my journey really came from sort of this pivotal moment in my late twenties where I had been, I had been working in Silicon Valley, living in San Francisco in the tech scene for about seven years. And I was in software sales, so I was making a bunch of money. I had this lifestyle that, you know, on paper kind of everybody wanted, you know, working for this cool startup in like, you know, San Francisco and biking to work every day. I had like a beautiful partner and tons of friends. I had off street parking for my car, oh my god. Like in my condo washer dryer in unit, you know, like it was all the things you're supposed to want, but I was just like really disconnected and just like unhappy, um, in a way that I couldn't understand because I felt like, I was like, I have all the things like what the hell's wrong with me?

Gabe | 07:31

You know? And now looking back at it, I call it spiritual inflammation of just this idea that I was having like an allergic reaction to my life and like something that I didn't know was calling me. And I just, I remember the moment, like it was yesterday, I was biking home from work one day in like late December and I was like, the next year I was turning 30 and I was like, I can't, I can't go into my, if I don't do this now, I'm gonna get stuck here forever. If I don't make a change, this is gonna be the rest of my life. And knowing that, like something in me couldn't, couldn't abide with that, couldn't let that be. And so I quit my job, I sold everything. I broke up with a partner of seven years, um, and I moved onto my bicycle and I ended up living on a bike for like seven or eight months and then traveling solo for almost two years.

Gabe | 08:25

And that was kind of my transition into coaching was like rather dramatic <laugh>. I don't necessarily recommend burning your life to the ground for everybody, but it was just, I, I couldn't see myself, you know, getting out unless I like went all the way out. You know, I wasn't just gonna quit and get another job. I wasn't just gonna like look for a new partner. I was like, I need a full reset. I actually traveled with an intention to find out from people kind of what their purpose was because I knew I was seeking mine. Like it wasn't just a journey to visit places, it was a, a journey of personal discovery, which I now know is like, it was like kind of the archetypal hero's journey, which I wasn't even aware of as a thing when I started. But like I've told this story to people like, oh yeah, that's the hero's journey.

Gabe | 09:05

Like, and it kind of was in that way. Um, and I actually traveled and asked people about this Japanese concept called Iki guy, which means like a reason for getting out of bed in the morning and it's a blend of what you are good at, what you can be paid for, what the world needs and what you love. And I asked people I met that really had their act together, what is your chy guy? And I met a life coach in Bali and hearing her description of her work, I was like, oh yeah, that's, that's the thing that's, that's for me. It just like, I knew in that moment that that was what my calling and my passion was and it was the best use of my talents and skills. And so I made a commitment to become a coach and came back to the US at the end of that trip, incorporated my llc, started my practice, got certified.

Gabe | 09:49

I basically jumped in with both feet using up the last of my savings knowing that I couldn't go back to where I was just turning down recruiter emails and just taking that leap because I felt so committed to really living that purpose, choice and knowing that the hardest part was kind of breaking out of the life I was in. And if I had the chance to recreate from scratch, why not do it with intention? Kind of like you were saying in the theme of this thing of like how we connect and with intention. For me it was like how do I reconnect and rebuild my life around this intention too? So that was kind of my journey into this work. Again, I like, I think a bit maybe dramatic in the sense of it was, it was intense, it was difficult. The day I told my partner I was leaving was one of the hardest days of my life, you know, just like this the, the conversations I needed to have, the things I needed to do. But I'm now two years on into the work and it feels like everything is aligned with that choice, you know?

Lisa | 10:55

Wow. That is a beautiful hero's journey story Gabe. And I imagine it took a lot of courage for you to do all of this.

Gabe | 11:05

Yeah, I was kicking and screaming like the whole way, you know what I mean? Part of me was being dragged along, you know, but there was the part of me that heard that calling, like knew that what was going on was bigger than me in a way. A choice to leave and the choice to start over was about more than me. It really felt that way. Like you know, that there was something I didn't quite understand about it, but I knew that it was bigger than my life. And I think part of that is related to the work I do now is really about serving others. And so part of it, I felt that kind of pulling me through some of the resistance and I also just really had a dream since I was maybe 18 years old to travel and I had never seriously done it. And like living on my bike was one of the coolest things I've ever done. So many wild experiences come out of that. And I mean we could spend the rest of the hour just talking about that experience, but when you're on a bicycle, you're never a tourist and you're in a moment of perpetual intimacy with your immediate environment. Whatever is around you is what you have to deal with and it's a really magical experience.

Lisa | 12:14

Yeah, I can imagine. Literally only imagine cuz I've not done that. <laugh> <laugh>, I, I am wondering the same invitation that you threw to the listeners to look back on your life and reflect and see maybe are there places where authentic relating or some flavor of it is present? If you look back on that journey, can you identify authentic relating in the overall story?

Gabe | 12:42

Yeah, actually that's a beautiful question because the first practice of authentic relating is to welcome everything. And when you're on a bicycle, that is your task, that is your number one job aside from pedaling, right? Is to really welcome everything, take what the road offers if it's sunny, if it's raining, if there's a mountain in front of you, if you have a headwind, if you have a tailwind, if you have to sleep in a dugout with a bunch of street dogs or if you're camped on top of a beautiful mountain, right? What can you welcome in your experience because you need all of your energy to get through the experience. You can't waste any of your energy resisting it or fighting it.

Lisa | 13:22

Yeah,

Gabe | 13:22

Yeah. You need your energy to make the right choices to survive in a way. And so that practice of welcoming everything, I think is at the foundation of that cycling experience and it's the first practice in the authentic relating model. And that doesn't mean that you passively accept everything that's happening to you, right? Like you still wanna make choices that honor yourself and protect your best interests, but it's just not spending time with the kicking and screaming, you know, with the complaining, with the shutting something out with the outright rejection of a part of your experience or of somebody else's experience that would maybe keep you from a deeper understanding of it. That's the invitation with that practice.

Lisa | 14:05

Yeah, that's really beautiful. That's really beautiful. And I imagine if you back up even further that was present when you decided to make this shift, you know, going back to that hardest day of your life, there had to have been at least 0.01% of you that was welcoming. What was trying to make itself known to you to have to have that conversation?

Gabe | 14:26

That's interesting. I guess maybe you could say there was an inflection point where like I didn't change my life and I struggled and suffered up to the point where I started to welcome everything, including the part of me that knew I needed to change no matter how terrifying that was. Whereas like maybe there were like a year or two before that when I knew I needed to change, but I wasn't welcoming that truth and it was just keeping me in that state of spiritual inflammation until I was really able to be open to that, oh my god, I need to change my life moment. That was maybe the first moment that I really did welcome everything and that was the inflection point that's cascaded down to this whole series of changes that led to where I am right now.

Lisa | 15:06

Yeah, that's beautiful. Really beautiful. And I love that you just did what you have invited our listeners to do. So they have an example of what that can look like to sort of look back and say, okay, once they have of course the rest of the principles, which we'll get to in just a moment, I do want to make one connection here. Vimla and I have shared with our listeners before, or at least they've heard us be coached by another coach about why we do this podcast. And Vimla and I have sort of two slightly different directions that we come at this from, but they kind of meet in this middle point and I'll bottom line them as a combination of freedom and responsibility. And so I definitely believe that coaching is a perpetual pathway to freedom.

Gabe | 15:55

Yeah.

Lisa | 15:56

And there is responsibility in it. You have to be responsible for your actions in order to gain that freedom.

Gabe | 16:03

Yeah.

Lisa | 16:04

So I guess that's really the why here in this episode, why we wanna be talking about this in this forum. There's that sort of bottom line of authentic relating and coaching offering a pathway to some form of freedom. Yeah. Via the responsibility that you take intentionally embrace it.

Gabe | 16:27

Yeah. I resonate with that. It's kind of counterintuitive that you need discipline to have ease or freedom or that you need to make a certain choice that maybe feels restrictive in a moment in order to open a door to something bigger or wider.

Lisa | 16:43

Yeah. It's funny, I hadn't thought about the word discipline, but without, if I can use your story as an example, without making your yourself or getting yourself to the place where you took responsibility to have a really difficult conversation in your life, you may not have had the hero's journey experience.

Gabe | 17:04

Yeah.

Lisa | 17:05

You had to stop the inflammation, right. In order to fit yourself on the bike in a way. Yeah. And so that takes a responsibility on your part. I mean maybe there's discipline involved in that, but there's a responsibility that we have as individuals to, to fuel a thing, to give the thing a permission to power itself. Sometimes it just magically happens. But I think this is where we get stuck. And I know that my work with a lot of clients that I've spoken with is like, I want a thing to be alive in my life. I want a certain situation in my life, I wanna create a particular outcome. I have these goals, but the goals rarely happen out of thin air.

Gabe | 17:49

No,

Lisa | 17:49

You can want that. Santa Claus is not gonna bring them. Right. We have to do the things

Gabe | 17:54

Right. That's why Yeah. The mindset's not enough. Right. And the desire's not enough ultimately because what I see in my work is that the inertia is so strong, the conditions of your life have been made by the choices you, you know, done in the past. The desire and the dream and the fire that's driving that change needs to be nurtured so intently and so gently over time to build up enough strength to overcome the inertia of the existing systems and structures around someone's choices. I think it takes a lot of compassion and care and repeated action again, coming back to discipline to really make those shifts.

Lisa | 18:33

Yeah. Yeah. We could have our whole episode on that process, right <laugh>, because it is laden with emotions and we need to feel safe and you know, we need to honor all the things that we need to honor in order to get there. Yep. You needed this year or you could have that conversation and there were a lot of things that were going on in that year, we could talk about that endlessly. However, I am really eager to share with listeners the other four parts of authentic relating we've, you've named already one welcome, everything.

Gabe | 19:06

And we've actually touched on a few of them just in the little conversation we've had. The last one is actually honoring self and other. So knowing what's needed is a big part of it. But I'll actually just list them now so we can have them all out on the table and then we can kind of play with them a little bit more. The first, as we already mentioned is welcome everything. And again, that doesn't mean passive blind acceptance, it just means staying open to what's happening. Not shutting down, not going into fight or flight. Just being open and present with what's going on in an honest and open way. The second is to assume nothing, which I actually think is a bit misleading because there's no way to assume nothing. We're meaning making machines. Our brains work entirely in symbols. Right? Even the language you're using now.

Gabe | 20:02

So the real trick with assume nothing is really just to notice name and be willing to drop our assumptions. So checking out what part of our experience of someone else is actually a story or what part of our own experience of ourselves and our emotions might be generated by a story. You know, like is your anxiety based on perceived or real threat? Those type of questions are about assuming nothing. The third practice is to own our experience. And I like to say anything less than 100% ownership is giving our power away when we're a victim, we're giving our power away.

Gabe | 20:48

And it's so easy to do. There's so many little ways that this creeps into relationship, and especially in relationship, real, true empowered relationship, each party is willing to take 100% ownership. So you might not be 100% responsible, you're not responsible for somebody else's actions or how they feel or what they do, but you're willing to investigate what you can own and take full ownership of your part of any interaction or experience. It's a nod to a lot of the work in coaching around kind of reconnecting with our inner power and recognizing that we are the stage on which all of this unfolds. Our emotions are responses, they're all things that we can own and control with practice. So that's owning experience. And then the fourth is reveal experience. And so revealing our experience, it doesn't mean that you're just speaking the tick or tape of your unconscious, you know, it doesn't mean that you're just walking in and blurting out everything that's on your mind.

Gabe | 21:54

Primarily it relates to being honest with ourselves, revealing what's going on through questioning assumptions, through taking ownership. Then we can say, oh wow, you know, maybe I'm not actually angry with you. Maybe I'm just hungry, <laugh>, right? Something as simple as that. Or Wow, I'm really needing to acknowledge my need for greater safety in this relationship. Revealing that instead of relying on a story and then finding a way to skillfully and gracefully bring that experience to another surface. That connection through using owned language, removing judgments and assumptions, how can we reveal the parts of our experience to another that invite them into connection? How can we reveal our experience in a way that creates a bridge to shared reality and not in a way that uses blame or judgment or victimhood and leading to disconnection. So that's the intent with revealing experience. And then the fifth is honoring self.

Gabe | 22:56

Another. And this one is can be pretty simple. It can simply be asking what's needed here? What do I need to honor myself? What can I do to honor you? What's needed? And I find that honoring self is enforcing and knowing our boundaries and honoring other is bringing curiosity to their experience. And curiosity is a great antidote to assumptions as well. You could say something as simple as like, Hey, I notice you are looking away from me a lot when I'm talking to you and I have an assumption that you're bored with what I'm saying. Is that true? Right. So that would be like questioning an assumption, whereas you'd be like, oh my God, Lisa's just looking away from me this whole time. She's so bored with me. Oh my God, she's just smarter than me. Oh she just doesn't like me. You can spin off really quickly into these little narratives, but honoring self, another is just bringing curiosity to that and honoring our boundaries in that.

Lisa | 24:01

Yeah, that's beautiful Gabe, that's really beautiful. And as I'm hearing welcoming everything, assuming nothing, owning our experience, revealing our experience and honoring self and other, and how you're explaining that my brain is tuned into the words that are like coaching. And I don't wanna go there just yet because I have a question or two for you about this, if that's okay.

Gabe | 24:29

Yeah, for sure.

Lisa | 24:30

Okay, cool. But I do wanna say that it feels like openness, willingness, ownership, some vulnerability getting out of autopilot.

Gabe | 24:42

Absolutely.

Lisa | 24:43

Being curious are all fundamentals of this. And so because you've shared the story of this being on a bike, I'm wondering if you can make real for the listeners how some of these principles lived in that journey.

Gabe | 24:58

Yeah, I mean the welcoming, everything was definitely front and center. Yep. Assuming nothing was key as well, because there was a lot of careful planning that needed to happen. Not assuming that I would be able to find water at my destination, not assuming that the weather would cooperate with my plans, not assuming that place would be a safe and quiet spot to sleep. Also, not assuming that anybody wanted to hurt me, not assuming that something bad was gonna happen, waiting to see before I let my anxiety control my decisions or before I let my judgment of the way someone or something looked, dictate how I acted with them.

Lisa | 25:41

Yeah. Holding judgment.

Gabe | 25:43

Right. Withholding judgment. And it's interesting, there's kind of a paradox in this that part of assuming nothing can also be assuming no ill intent. So holding positive regard. And I think the reason that paradox is there is because we have a negativity bias hardwired into our brains from our evolution, it was more biologically advantageous to recognize threat and to recognize reward or a positive outcome. Yeah. So I think there's a little bit of a paradox in that one, that part of assuming nothing for me was trying to hold positive regard.

Lisa | 26:16

Sure.

Gabe | 26:17

Owning my experience I think was a big part of it too because I had to basically live with the choices I made. If I made a bad decision and had to live with the consequences of riding an extra 10 miles uphill or getting into a town two hours after dark, I had to own that and be like, okay, this is a choice I made and matter of the outcome I have to be willing to go with it. Which tied directly back into welcoming. Right. Ownership and welcoming I think are kind of a cycle that feed one another. There's a cyclical nature to those two pieces.

Lisa | 26:48

Yeah, sure. And also the whole journey. I mean, yeah, you spent some time telling us how abundant your life was before you decided to do this. And I'm not saying that it didn't remain abundant, but you had to take ownership for leaving the abundance in the flavor that you had

Gabe | 27:07

It. Yeah. I think I shifted from like material to spiritual abundance and I had to own the experience of watching my friends who stayed in sales career continue to grow and make tons of money and build their career arc. And if it especially hit when I came back to the US and I went straight back to San Francisco and got in a car with my friends and drove to Lake Tahoe for this party weekend, welcome back Gabe kind of thing. And I was like, oh my God, this is so uncomfortable. These people are spending all this money. I'm like watching every penny. It was like this sense of have I made the wrong choice? What have I done? But I was like, no, like I'm gonna own the fact that I know the deeper why behind this and I really wanna own this choice. And even though it feels uncomfortable right now, that's not bigger than how I feel about the broader direction of my life.

Lisa | 27:55

Yeah. Can I pause you here for a quick second? Sure. You're presenting these five principles. I'm just curious, and we may not go into this at all, but how do you own your experience? Like are there five more steps under that that's like, here's how you hold your experience.

Gabe | 28:11

Yeah, I mean there's, there's a lot of techniques to it and one of them is really common from nonviolent communication is just eye statements, a format that's really helpful in owning experience, especially when speaking about the impact somebody else has on us. Instead of saying something like, you're making me anxious, you could say, oh, when you don't respond to my messages, I feel anxious. So you're, you're naming the impact, which is a big part of revealing experience is mostly speaking in like impact because that's still owned language. Yeah. Using I statements, you also couldn't say like, oh I feel like you are just an asshole. Right? Like that's using an I statement, but that's not owned language. And anything that's kind of like, I feel like when you use that in a sentence and it doesn't end in an emotion or a sensation, it's probably a judgment. Especially if it's, I feel like you blank is rarely owned experience. Sure. Because you're making it about that other person as opposed to saying, I feel sad, angry, happy, tense, sweaty, uncomfortable when you blank. Right? You're so that's owning the experience and revealing to the other the impact that their behavior has. So that's a pretty simple way to think about ownership of experience in relationship to another.

Lisa | 29:36

Yeah. The word that my brain keeps spitting out in response to what you're saying is responsibility, taking responsibility. And listeners cannot see what I'm doing right now because Gabe and I are on Zoom and we can see each other. But it's sort of like when you point your finger out at other and people say, oh, you need to turn that thing around back in your direction. It's, it's like that.

Gabe | 30:00

Yeah. So we're gonna jump in with some of the practices.

Vimla | 30:04

Lisa, what a great conversation. And I'm so inspired by Gabe. I loved how he talked about his journey, the courage that he needed to actually change everything in his life. That's just amazing inspiring.

Lisa | 30:22

Yeah. Hearing one's personal journey is always really, I really like that part of getting to know folks, understanding amazing things that others have done and understanding the why of others. I find that all very fascinating.

Vimla | 30:38

Yeah, it is fascinating. In the conversation, I also heard references to Iki guy and nonviolent communication. Maybe we bring those topics in one of our future episodes.

Lisa | 30:53

Yeah. Maybe. And for listeners, I really wanna acknowledge that there are endless practices for becoming more of who you want to be. Our intention is not to overload you with those things, but yeah, nbc, which stands for nonviolent communication and Icky Guy, our practices that maybe will introduce to you in a future episode.

Vimla | 31:23

So as we reflect on this conversation, what's standing out to you,

Lisa | 31:28

Certainly the personal journey matters and honoring what's really true takes a lot of courage. So that really stuck out to me. The other thing is in the five elements of authentic relating, they're so simple, they can be harder to practice and they're really fun to practice. And you're gonna hear a little bit of that in our next episode. Gabe's gonna lead me through an authentic relating game. Some of the ways you can practice authentic relating, they call them games and they can be fun. I will say that for me, playing this game was fun and it was also really, um, I don't know, it was a real stretch for me. It was, it was a little intimate for me and not just because I knew other people would be listening, but because being this way with another person, depending upon the relationship that you have with the person or the relationship you have with yourself can be a little bit of a stretch. So you will hear me stretch myself, you will hear me practice vulnerability and show up. I'm gonna go ahead and say courageously to the conversation. And that's gonna be in our next episode.

Vimla | 32:49

Awesome. I'm ready to listen to the

Lisa | 32:52

Practices. Yes. We left you on a bit of a cliff hanger there. You know, you heard the conversation trail off and we promise it's gonna pick back up in the next episode. So as always, if you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, we'd love to have you and there'll be links in the show notes about how to hook yourself up with that opportunity as well as links to Gabe's website and his work as well as the works of authentic relating. And you can always reach us at www dot your vital self slash coaching confidential.

Vimla | 33:35

Awesome.