Healing from Isolation in a Digital World

Have you ever felt invisible? Not seen or heard? Isolated?

Ironically, you are not alone. More and more people are experiencing this.

In today’s powerful podcast, Maren shares her own story and together Maren and Stephanie look at this from multiple perspectives including:

• the role that AI has played - and will play - in this phenomenon
• how to heal from from the isolation
• the disease of perfectionism 
• what it means to be a full spectrum human
• the role of business and how agile (or not) it can be

Instead of blaming, shaming or pointing fingers, they look at it from empowering angles and ask great, thought provoking questions. If you’ve ever struggled with invisibility or if perfectionism has taken a toll in your life, today’s podcast will get you thinking differently.

• 04:18 Abdicating our consciousness
• 08:44 Being in it
• 09:55 Having it all figured out - perfection
• 14:24 Being full spectrum
• 16:33 Healing
• 20:07 I don’t want to go there, so I hand over my sovereignty
• 22:11 Being agile in business, a speed boat instead of a cruise ship

LINKS

12:05 - whole/hole episode Ep 174 Unwrapping Presence

13:14 - Ep 39 Matt Damon, Kintsugi & A Set of Dishes

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

Please share your insights and questions in one of our Soulful Leaders groups:

Facebook Group

LinkedIn Group

Get all the latest episodes, news and updates directly to your inbox. Subscribe here. TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com

Watch the podcasts on our YouTube Channel: @Soulful Leaders

Transcript

Stephanie Allen: 0:04

In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?

Maren Oslac: 0:10

Deep inside you know there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.

Stephanie Allen: 0:19

That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and

Maren Oslac: 0:24

Maren Oslac, and this is The Soulful Leader Podcast.

Stephanie Allen: 0:30

Yay!

Maren Oslac: 0:31

Welcome back to The Soulful Leader Podcast. My name is Maren, and I'm here with Stephanie. We're having, I guess, a bit of a somber conversation about not feeling heard or seen, you know when, Well, I was experiencing that this past week. And complete ownership of that, like where I was really feeling like I wasn't feeling seen or heard, and I noticed myself go into a complete control, like I needed to control it, and I wanted to figure it out, and I needed to, like, be heard. And it was so insistent, and I noticed the spiral that it put me into. And so Stephanie and I have been talking about that, and along the lines of... it puts me in a non human state. Say more about that. Because, yeah, like, you know, what is a human state first of all? Well, and maybe I just said that, just to bring some levity to it, because it feels really, it's painful to not, It feels so lonely to not feel seen or heard, and isolated. And I think that that's the the non human like, what makes us human, what makes us different from AI and, you know, I mean, it's such a prescient question right now, because, you know, AI is everywhere, and it's really helpful, and yet, what does make us, what's unique 'human' about us that is essential? And I don't have all of the answers. I have very few of the answers. And one of the things I noticed for myself is that lonely place where we go, where when we don't feel seen or heard or understood, that's where we need each other, because an AI could be programmed to say the right things. It just, is it the right things? Because it's not a heart to heart connection. And that's what...

Stephanie Allen: 2:52

...I laugh at that. Because I, you know, when I first got Siri, I remember saying, you know, you kind of ask it questions, just to kind of see what Siri would say, and oh, Siri, I love you. And then Siri would say... well, I don't really know you yet, or different things. And it's like, oh that's really interesting. But yet, Siri in the Apple platform is just cultivating and accumulating all the things that have ever been said. And then, but there's no feeling, there's no... there's no soul. It's just reverberation. And to a point on the surface, it can actually be fun, playful, but when my heart is longing for some real connection, you know, a real friendship, a real lover, I can't get it in AI, not from the depth of my soul. And I guess when I think of human like,...God, I was listening to something the other day and said, anything that you really, really want, it is going to be hard. It's going to take effort. It's going to take sacrifices. And I think we're told in this world that if it ain't easy, it's not meant to be. And so we give up, and then that's where AI can come in, and, oh, it can just do it for me, and I don't have to think about it, and blah, blah, blah. And I've even asked myself, you know, sometimes the pang of loneliness, of longing for a relationship... I mean, I've prayed before. I've said, you know, I wish this would just go away so I could just be happy, because it seems to create so much heartache in me. Then I look at it from another place, and I'm like, without that heartache... you know, some mystics would say it's purifying us. It's polishing the heart. It's, it's taking away all the rough edges, it softens your heart so you have more empathy, you have more compassion, you have more understanding, tolerance, patience. Like these are all really great qualities to have and presence to someone else's... like when I've gone through something really hard and have come through I have a lot more patience and a lot more tolerance and a lot more compassion for somebody else, I don't react with them. I actually give them the space they need without trying to fix them or force them and and it's real, like when someone really, really sees you, like you said in the beginning, really, really hears you. That is love.

Maren Oslac: 5:23

So it's so interesting. It makes me think of something that our teacher, Daniel says, and he says that there has to be both effort and sweetness. If it's all effort, then we get worn down and we get worn out. And if it's all sweetness, we get cavities, essentially, it's empty. Yeah, right. And so when you mention, you know, it's like you pray to just have it taken from you so that you could just be happy. I think that's one of the challenges that we're going through right now as a culture, and a lot of the reasons that we're out of shape and overweight and like we're looking for the quick fix, the answer, the shortcut, and there are things that definitely can just be taken from us. We don't need to go through every little thing, right? That's the too much effort. It just wears us down and wears us out. And where we've gone to, it feels like as a society, is just take it all from me and and AI could potentially do that for us and then...

Stephanie Allen: 6:41

But you know when that, it abdicates, yeah, we're, we're abdicating our consciousness. Like, you know, somebody said to me the other day, oh, I'm gonna go to a psychic or a medium to find out the answers in the for my life. And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I think it's fun and entertaining, and I definitely believe in it. I really, truly believe in that people can foresee the future and they build an inner guidance. Absolutely, I'm not saying that that doesn't exist or that its good, bad or right or wrong. I know for myself, though, if I don't carve out my own, you know, self discovery and my own path... I don't own it.

Maren Oslac: 7:21

Yeah. Then somebody else, you will always have to, so if I don't build the skill within myself to presence my own future, and if somebody else can do it, guess what? You can do it too. And I'm, I'm with you. I not only fully believe in it is. I know it for myself, because I that's one of the skills that I have developed for myself.

Stephanie Allen: 7:47

I'm going to use a simple example. This is a simple, simple example. My mother has control issues. I'm born of her, so I too have control issues, because that's what I've learned. So I will admit that too, and God love her, every time we have a family gathering, or whatever, she does the most beautiful spreads of food and decorates the table and the whole thing, and but there's no space for anyone to help her, because you don't do it right. No, no, no. You have to turn the cup this way, and you have to fold the napkin that way. And then, and then, when the dinner's over, it's all lovely and well, and everyone gets up and leaves. Because if we take the dishes and we put them in the dishwasher, she goes, No, no, no, that dish doesn't go there. And she literally will take it out and put it in where it needs to. I'm like, well, why bother? I mean, this is why I say this, because it's like, if I don't learn myself and, you know, I've been listening to a podcast with Mel Robbins about'let them', you know, just let them. ''

Maren Oslac: 8:43

Yeah.

Stephanie Allen: 8:43

Well, how else are we gonna learn? Like skinning your knees , right? You don't

Maren Oslac: 8:45

You have to do it. realize that, Oh, well, maybe I should tie my shoelaces. If somebody else tells you to tie your shoelace, you like say... screw you. Why do you tell me what to do? I'm not, you're not the boss of me, you know. And we could kind of be rebellious versus going, you know, oh, I tripped over my shoelace. Maybe I should tie them. That might help. Or maybe that's where the invention of velcro came from. I just think we're losing our humanity in that way of like we're trying to be... and, you know, we have a good friend that helps us out and she says, she calls it Spock-ology. It's like we're so afraid to feel, you know, the the pain of emotions which Spock in, you know, Star Trek did not have any emotions. And so sometimes I can be really jealous of that, because I have all kinds of emotions, and I don't know what to do with them. And I'm like, damn if I could just be Spock. But then we're changing our biology to be Spock, and we have no feelings and no connections to each other or understanding or empathy. And you know, we're at a cost. We pay the price of that and in doing so, we pay the price of deep love and connection. Well, I think the flip side of that is, you know, the fear of our own emotions that pushes us away. What we're being pulled towards is some ideal of knowing everything, like I got it. I know it all. I figured it all out, right? And when we look at, you know, I've been on LinkedIn a lot recently, and I see all the posts. And I'm like, wow, everyone's got everything figured out.

Stephanie Allen: 10:24

Got it all together.

Maren Oslac: 10:25

Everyone's got it all together...

Stephanie Allen: 10:26

...all the answers...

Maren Oslac: 10:27

...all the answers. And I'm like... Oh, I don't, I have nothing to offer here, right? Because I ask, I ask more questions. I'm like, well, that's interesting. What about this? Right? But there's no... everyone's like, well, I can fix you here, and I can fix you there, and I can fix this and like, and we're, you know, Stephanie and I were just looking for, for somebody to help us with our website. And we were, we went to this person's website and then to their personal website, and it was like, everything was perfect. It's like, oh, this, this attraction to perfection. No wonder we're so attracted to AI and yet, that there is a loss of humanity. Because it's interesting. I have this, this kind of love hate relationship with the word perfect, because I don't like it, because of what most of society thinks of as perfection, which is without without issue or without holes, and like everything fixed and figured out and, you know, tied up in a perfect bow and and nature actually abhors that, because that's called death, right? When everything is in that it's like...pfft.. it's gone. Why I love the word perfection is because my spiritual teacher had told me that it means whole and something that is whole. And I believe we just did a podcast on this recently. So if you listen to our podcasts regularly, this may sound familiar. When you talk about the word whole, you don't know whether I'm saying H O L E or W H O L E, and one of the things that Stephanie likes to say is, you know, it's like, that's the holes in us, is where both light gets in and the light gets out.

Stephanie Allen: 12:31

Yes thats the Leonard Cohen saying. I also say, you know, when we have holes in us, we're holy.

Maren Oslac: 12:39

Right. So there's the other one is H O L Y, holy, right? So you've got all these layers of wholeness, and that's, when I'm thinking about humanity, I think of the holes, like the holes that are in us, the imperfections. There was a great movie many years ago, that had Robin Williams in it, and he told a story in that movie where he had lost his wife, and he had told (he was a psychiatrist)... Good Will Hunting, exactly. Thank you. I couldn't

Stephanie Allen: 13:14

Good Will Hunting. think the name of it. And he tells the story as the psychologist. And he tells a story about his wife, and he had lost his wife, or at least in the story, he had lost his wife, and his wife used to fart under the bed covers while she was asleep... while she was asleep! And he loved that about her. I think that's key. And we're talking about perfections. It's like we looked... I mean, I'm not saying AI is bad or right or wrong. It's just that part of being human is being imperfect, and that actually is holy. That's beautiful because AI is not meant to fix that, because that's where the light gets in. That's where we evolve, that's where we grow, that's where there's humor, and it's actually what we fall in love with. When people say, Oh, I'm in so in love with someone. So it's not about their perfection. Hell no, it's actually their humanness, meaning it's their little idiosyncrasies that that are just like, oh, this is so funny. Like, I can't believe you do that. Or it's like those little things that you that nobody else knows about you kind of have this secret, secret about each other that's just so cute and delightful.

Maren Oslac: 14:24

And I'm going to bring up some more word play. You know, you mentioned humor, which starts off with an HU. And isn't it ironic that human starts off with an HU, and in the mystics traditions, the HU is God Hu. It means whole, whole, you know, like wholeness it means full spectrum. And consciousness, so we have all of this. And, you know, I, part of my challenge with AI is not the actual, that it's here to help us, it's our idealizing it, thinking that that's who we should be, or we should allow it to do everything, or, you know, like some sort of like, why are we wanting to do that when our strengths, are our own humanity, the HU, the fullness, the the consciousness within us; the holies right the holes in us, the holiness, like all of those things that we were just talking about. And for some reason we don't seem to be going in that direction. We're going in the other direction of let's chase this, this Spockolgy, instead of like, well, that's what it does well, great. Let's use that as a tool and really dive into and build the skill around being human. So because if we give up the skills that we have that AI could do, and we haven't built our human skills, we're gonna be very empty.

Stephanie Allen: 16:08

Like, we're gonna be obsolete, actually, yeah, obsolete and deleted. Like, what's the use of having a human being? I mean, how many times? I mean, I can tell you a lot. I date a lot of people who I swear are not human. I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, you're just a shell of a person.

Maren Oslac: 16:25

...Or worked for some, right? How many right people work for somebody that's like, or have somebody working for you, you're like, Oh my God, they're just not human.

Stephanie Allen: 16:33

I say that because in healing, in order to heal, we need to drop into our humanness, which means we have to feel it, which means it's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be messy, it's going to be ugly, it's going to be hard. But when you allow that space for it to come up to see it, hear it, you actually then transform it. And when you do that, and so I see this a lot, when people come in and they're like, I don't want to feel, don't make me feel like people say that... Oh, I gotta go see Stephanie. She's gonna make me cry. I don't make anyone cry, by the way. It's like I just, you know, they felt safe enough to actually allow an emotion to come up and and I will, I say that with the most love and respect, it takes great courage to do something like that. Yeah, and I know myself 20 - 30, years ago, when I started on this path, had somebody come into my office and started crying or started getting angry, I would not know what to do. I'd freak out, and I'd probably be there crying with them or something. I don't know. I wouldn't be able to hold it together and and I didn't want to be not human, like I didn't want to not feel and I didn't want to just shut it down and close it off, but so I had to grow. I had to actually go in and face my own humanness of where I felt like I didn't see myself or I didn't hear myself. The inner narrative in myself was really mean. I was violating myself. And so instead, till I started to learn how and what it meant to rescue myself. I cannot create space for love and acceptance, for someone else to be uncomfortable. And I don't think anybody really ever wants to have conflict. I hear it all the time. You know, it's like, I don't do conflict and but I think of Louise Hayes. She had a had a comment years ago, and she's kind of the new age, healing from a mental and emotional underpinnings. And she used to say, you know, when she went through her own cancer, like the doctors just kept wanting to cut things out. And she said, eventually there'll be no nothing left of me. It'll like, I won't be anything left of me. And you look at and I think advancements in science for healing is amazing, the artificial hips and oh my gosh, the things that we're doing is just phenomenal. And what if we brought in our consciousness at the same time that not only do we accelerate the love and the joy and the meaning and the confidence and the humanness, we also then become that remedy for others who are seeking it, a way, too, that may not have the life force to get a hip replacement or... and I just use that as a way. But we do that with relationships. We do that with with, you know, staff, you know, we say, Oh, they're obsolete. Out they go delete them. Instead of, like, going, wait a minute, who are they as a person, not just what they do? Because I think we, we come back to that again. It's like, well, what do you do and what skills do you bring? And instead of like, who are you? I'm more concerned with who are you as a human being? Like, going back to this, this website, person that we've been kind of looking into and, and if any of you are out there are really good with websites, and really want to, like, help us out... I'm gonna put that out there, yeah. So you know, when we were looking at this individual, and you said it too, I said something just felt off, Maren and, and you're like, Yeah, you're like, he's got all the answers. It's almost like, you know, talk to the hand. I'm not going there. I'm done next.

Maren Oslac: 20:07

It's like, it's so, give over our sovereignty to it. It's like, I don't have the ability or, or just like, I maybe I don't, even if I do have the ability, I don't want to do it anymore, so I hand it over. That's abdicate.

Stephanie Allen: 20:20

Yeah. And it's almost like, you know, the old ostrich that puts its head in the sand, I don't want to go there. No, no. You know, see no evil, hear no evil, speak, no evil. What happens is we just keep isolating ourselves.

Maren Oslac: 20:35

So almost like willful ignorance, yeah,

Stephanie Allen: 20:40

instead of asking another question, like, there's so much disharmony right now everywhere in our countries, and with each other, with ourselves, like there's just seems to be so much agitation, and it's exhausting, and it can feel hopeless, and I think what we've been so entrenched or ingrained, conditioned with is that we have to have all the answers. We have to be perfect, like you said. And AI is really great, because you can put into chat GPT, and it'll literally bring you all the answers that have ever happened in the past. But what's asking for us and our humanness is that we need to step out of the current paradigm. We can't solve the problems that are happening right now. None of us can by looking to the past. We can learn from the past, absolutely, but we are needing to actually create something that hasn't yet happened yet, and so we haven't got any foundation or reference. And that's what makes us human, is that we... if we can actually... so I do this within healing, is that when we can actually learn how to be our own inner rescuer, to self soothe, to feel those emotions, to allow them, to come up and observe them, not absorb them... like meaning observing what's happening. Be the observer, not stick your head in the sand like the the ostrich, but go, okay, this is really interesting, and to learn to ask questions instead of always trying to come up with answers.

Maren Oslac: 22:11

So I think that, you know, oftentimes we look at this, we're like, well, that's great on a personal level, and I'm just going to bring it into business, because we are the soulful leader, and it is critical. It's not just important, it's critical in business, especially in small business, because small business is the future. Small businesses are popping up everywhere, and we have the the power and the empowerment because we're more agile. Big business takes a long time to steer that ship right. Look at a cruise show. Oh, yeah, you're looking at a cruise vessel versus a speed boat. So in small businesses, we can make big changes quickly, and that needs to happen right now. We can't solve the problems that we have from the same mind that created them. Yeah, and that's the past. And like you said, all that AI can do that is exactly go to the past.

Stephanie Allen: 23:24

...the answer. Where the consciousness is to be of new mind. That we need consciousness to get there, the HUmanness,

Maren Oslac: 23:32

Yes and that is where small business people can maneuver their ships more quickly to make changes, to be the leading edge, to be the change. You know, it's like, what? What's the quote is like...Be the change you want to see in the world. That is so essential that we become the change that we want to see in the world, not just us, our businesses.

Stephanie Allen: 24:00

little Gandhi here. Oh, Gandhi, okay...(laughter

Maren Oslac: 24:05

laughter)...for those of you that don't watch us on YouTube, you might want to...

Stephanie Allen: 24:13

I have a client who gave me a little finger puppet. Yes, because I'm always saying, you know, we do. We need it. We need to do it from the inside out. Yes, and, you know, I'm listening like, as you're saying about business, and they're like, but it's the money, it's the power. That's what, you know, it's a big cruise ship that can make the big difference. Bullshit, bullshit. It's the internal that can make the big thing. And people say, Well, what do you mean internal? I said it's your inner world, meaning how you think, what you believe, that's what steers the ship. It's your emotions or lack thereof that actually causes the pain and suffering. Yeah, and when you can free them up, that's actually your life force. And I know this may sound Ca-Ca poo-pooness again, but it isn't. And it's like, you know, so many times I say, why do we make money? The dollars and cents the most important thing, it's like, you know, it's... when all of that is gone, as Roger Hamilton would say, he's like, you know,'wealth is, is what you have when all of your money is gone.' That's going to rely on your integrity, that's going to rely on your ability to be trusted, and your relationships, your foundations. There's so much more that is going on in there. And you say, that's the internal that doesn't just happen with AI. You cannot build relationships and build trust and integrity. You can, you know, make it sensational and do all stuff, but who are you when you're not in AI, yeah, that's the humanness. Who are you in everyday moment? And if you don't think that the internal doesn't affect the, I use this example all the time with my clients. I'm like, You know what I'm gonna say? I'm like, you know internally what you're thinking and what you're feeling affects your physical health. And if you don't believe me, you just watch a man who's having a daydream, a fantasy, and he gets an erection. Nothing happened outside of him, nothing. But what went on internally was what created, the external effect. I say the physical is a side effect of what's going on internally. And you know, we don't look... like we ask what somebody does. That's the physical. Instead of asking who they are, that's the internal. And AI is just all external. And it's great. You can use it to support you. It's like a knife, a knife could be an amazing instrument to, you know, whittle away a read, to make it into a flute, or to cut up food and feed yourself or or it could be a weapon. It's the intention of the who is using it. What is the integrity of the person using that support?

Maren Oslac: 27:06

So I love this. So it is. It's about the skills that we're building. And to take it back to the beginning, when we talked about feeling not seen and not heard, and I think that a lot of people are feeling that right now, and AI doesn't give us that. We don't... It's like, does Siri really see us or hear us? Well, she does only to sell us something, right? And so it exacerbates the problem. So the question, you know you're talking about asking better questions, it's like, for us as leaders, for us, for ourself as self leaders, is, what is that human aspect for me? For all of us, it will... it may feel a little bit different. Where can I connect in and to myself and to those around me, to our true humanity, so that we're building the skill of being human? and then can use that skill with AI and with other people and with, you know? Llike, now it's like you said, it's the knife. How are we using the knife? That's the skill with it. When I watch amazing chefs, and they like, how do you do that fast? Because they build up the skill. But that's, you know, you use that... you laugh, but that's exactly what's happening to us, is there's a chopper

Stephanie Allen: 28:36

we're losing skill,

Maren Oslac: 28:38

and we're losing fingers, and we end up at the hospital because those quote, unquote fingers happen to be like, I'm not seen, I'm not heard, I don't and I don't have the skills right now, nobody's helped me to see myself, to hear myself.

Stephanie Allen: 28:53

And to build that that skill is going to take time. It's going to take effort. It's going to mean making mistakes, not being perfect. Yeah, I feel like another part of that being human is caring. I mean, I cannot tell you how many times I think, hey, I think that person just cares about me because they want to sell me something. They don't really care about where I am right now and what I'm going through. They're just seeing me as $ sign to say, great, you know, they're a hot mess. I can, I can make some good money off this. I got the answers for them, yeah. And I can tell you, I remember being there too, because that's what we're trained to be. And I can tell you, AI doesn't care if you, if you don't show up tomorrow, it won't say, hey, Maren, how you doing? I haven't, I haven't seen your lights on, your car hasn't moved out of your driveway for a while. You doing okay? It's not going to care. Doesn't care. I want humans in my life who notice that I may not be myself.

Maren Oslac: 29:54

And I want to build that skill in myself. You know, I started this with my own admittance to the fact that, you know, it's like, I, that's how I was feeling and, and I was, I was pushing back on people because I was not feeling seen or heard. And, and I want to build that humanity in my own self and build that skill even further. And instead of seeking answers, seek the questions that will continue to up level, the consciousness that we said of that HU, you know. So I think that that's, if you guys are interested in being on that journey with us. Make sure you join our Facebook group or our LinkedIn group, or just contact us because we would love to chat with you. We're all about getting to know you and being in a community, because it is important. It's not just important, it's critical. Right now, we need to be human and be building our own humanity and our groups of humanity, absolutely. Thanks for joining us. We will see you all in a couple weeks on The Soulful Leader Podcast,

Stephanie Allen: 31:21

And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen

Maren Oslac: 31:26

and Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website, at www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com

Stephanie Allen: 31:37

Until next time...