CwL Ep120 – The BO Analogy

Hey, it’s Lisa Corduff. Welcome to the podcast where you can expect inspiring raw, energising, and transformative conversations with people on the path of personal evolution. I’m here to really live my life. And if you are too, these conversations are just for you. I’m really glad you are here. Enjoy,

Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today. I am talking about something. Actually think it was a psychologist who suggested this to me a few years ago when we were really in the thick of the lockdowns with COVID. And I was just expressing that I was reflecting on a lot of things and how that slow, slow pace of life, but which also kind of felt full because there were kids here all the time and there was a lot to manage, but there was a lot of extra stuff that had just been removed. How I was just starting to notice certain things. I was hearing certain things in my head. I was noticing stuff that didn’t feel okay anymore. It was a bit of a, I mean, it was a funny time for all of us, wasn’t it? And, and I said that the paces really slowed down and I realised the pace at which life had been going.

And I think universally, that is something that has come out of the last few years, that we all had an, our own little inner reset moment. Didn’t we, where we found just through the force of the changes, like even just not being able to travel or, or do stuff like that, we found this new equilibrium, whether it was good for us or not something changed. And he said to me, well, Lisa, think about it when you are running, when you are exercising, when you are moving, like literally moving and the wind is in your face, you can’t smell your B. It’s really only when you stop is when you realise you stink.

What did you just do, you just use body odour as an analogy. He’s like, yeah, I totally did. And I loved it because it’s so, so perfectly gave me this visual to understand what had happened and also to understand my previous in years gone by my need and desire to keep things moving, to keep running. So I didn’t stop and smell what was off, what was not. Okay. I just, I just kept moving. I mean, my head was in the sand, so I couldn’t S smell stuff even if I wanted to. But isn’t that, isn’t that analogy really great? And don’t you think that there’s, that it perfectly describes what these last few years have been like for so many different people and there’s something about this, right? There’s something about the way that we protect. We think we’re protecting ourselves from pain by just ignoring the facing. What is actually really going on? We think that we’re helping ourselves because it’s easier to just keep going, keep our foot on the accelerator, keep showing up in the ways that we are used to, and now let’s just keep going. And then like, suddenly this will all take care of itself because we’ll just be in a different time or be in a different stage of life or we’ll have more money then, or the kids will be, you know, at a certain stage and this will all resolve and that never happens.

The smell doesn’t go away. It’s just that you keep running. So you’re not paying any attention to it. And you’re gonna have a moment where you stop because none of us can operate like that. Can we not continuously, there’s gonna be some point coming up that is like a burnout moment or you get sick or everything starts crumbling around you. And you realise that it was this, it was this thing that you just, you weren’t willing to sit with and be with and deal with. It was, it was easier to just keep going. I’ve got so many examples of that in my life. Everything, the time it ends up coming out anyway, doesn’t it?

I was at a friend’s house on the weekend and she was talking about how she’s in a new, well, she started working for a company during COVID and they only work together two days a week in the office. And the other three days, you know, for however many days they work are working from home and how they’ve all noticed that they think this group of people, this, you know, new startup, everyone’s awesome. And they get along really well, but they’re not really making friends like they haven’t taken it to a, a friendship level where they might meet up for dinner or have some drinks, or, you know, those sorts of things outside of, of work. And she was saying how they’ve all realised that that’s a bit different to how they would normally show up. Most of the time workplaces for these people have become places to build networks and friendships and no one’s doing it. And it led to this discussion about not just the fact that the way we work has changed, which it just undoubtedly has, but also what, we are willing to do with our time, these days, what home now means for people with the fact that we, well, especially here in Melbourne for just months and months and months, I mean, we had curfews it reset our, like our going out ability.

We notice tiredness more than maybe we used to, we’ve just reset expectations for ourselves, how hard we go, what we’re willing to tolerate in terms of time spent with other people, other people who, you know, aren’t our core crew. It’s a, it’s really, it’s really been so much change. Hasn’t it? Because what we had was a moment to sit with the stink. We looked at it, we had to, what, what is working about my life? What is not, what has to go, what won’t I go back to, what will I go back to? What do I want more of? And I haven’t been giving myself and I don’t know a person on the planet who hasn’t had some sort of moment like this, and it can feel really disconcerting. I mean, this year for me has been a really big time of reflection.

It can’t, it was never gonna be the same on the other side, but none of us had a roadmap for our way out of this. We’re all still making it up on the fly. Some people still really, really stuck in this. Just what are I doing right now? And I know for sure, cuz I experienced it. And a lot of the people around me experienced it. We tried to just head into this year, let’s get back to life. And yet we couldn’t. And if we do just go back into that old pattern of go, go, go, do, do, do we can’t stop, you know, fill up our lives with all the things. Then we are missing this kind of golden opportunity. Aren’t we to just stop and not only be with what’s working, what we love, what’s amazing about our lives, but also just really what isn’t and it’s confronting when you start to see that stuff.

I can remember the first time that someone like a professional used the word alcoholic about Nick, I was like, as if not him, not this, not my life. And still now it’s not a word I really love <laugh>. But the denial was unhelpful too. And I just, it just stopped the sitting in and going, okay, this is actually really what we’re dealing with here. Right? What does this mean? And it didn’t mean it went away. It just meant just didn’t smell it for a while. And that’s okay because we all have our processing time. It’s not about having to see our lives through a particular lens before we can or before we want to. But I really loved the analogy of, if you just keep going <laugh> and keep yourself busy, you’re never going to be able to smell it and then be able to deal with it. And I wonder if you’ve got something like that in your life.

Is there an element of your life that you are running from or keeping your, so yourself so busy that you just can’t be with it in the change room? One of the core principles is presence. Just getting back into the practise of being right here right now, like really actually being here in the present moment. So much of our time is spent future casting stuff that we can never control or thinking about other people. Once again, you know, no control ruminating on the past. We’re just not here very often in ourselves, hearing ourselves, being with ourselves. It’s like a practise in this fast paced world, a practise to get back into presence. And I mean, there are meditation apps. There’s so many different ways you can start to practise this. It’s not always just about meditation. Sometimes it’s just about stopping a little bit, just slowing down the pace.

So you can actually notice everything that exists for you right here. Right now I find that’s where I feel most powerful. It’s where our choices lie. Right? It’s here and now it’s, we can’t have choices to flex back in the past. We can’t make a different choice about something in the future that hasn’t even happened yet. It’s always here and yet I think so many of us struggle to be right here. See what actually really is. I mean, there’s so many gifts right here, so many ha we miss them cuz we just go cause there might be something a little bit stinky that we maybe just don’t want to smell, but it’s there anyway. So eventually it’s going to have to be dealt with, I wanted to share this with you because I can up the pace I can. Oh, I mean I am particularly good at sweeping things under the carpet.

Oh just deal with that later. Well, I’ll let that one go. Really. Sometimes it is absolutely the best course of action, especially if the thing that I’ve been getting all riled up about actually has nothing to do with things. But other times it’s really important to stop and be with it. It actually really has caused fundamental changes in my life to allow room for that and space for that. And it doesn’t mean a complete shift in how you do life. Just that it’s like flexing a muscle. And that’s why I made it one of the core principles inside the change room because our power lies here right here and now we actually can deal with stuff. And when we do, I mean, it’s always like, why didn’t I do this sooner? Why did I not do this sooner?

And as always, there are always reasons. And it’s also so totally okay for things to take the timeline that they’re going to take. But I didn’t realise that by continuing to go and being in that pattern of activity and over functioning and filling up all my time with all the bits and all the people and all the stuff, it didn’t actually allow any room for me to be in my life in the present moment to sit with what felt uncomfortable and not okay to sit with the ridiculous gifts and beauty and magic. So hence me sharing the body odour analogy with you today on the podcast. I hope you find it helpful. And I would love to hear from you if there are things that you’ve been kind of just kinda trying to ignore or outrun, let me know. I always really do love hearing from you. Take care and I’ll see you next week.

Hey, if you missed out on joining the change room recently, never fear. We have created a waitlist and you can jump on that right away and be the first to hear about it the next time that we open the doors. If you join the waitlist, I will keep you well stocked with ways in which you can make sure that you are creating some small tweaks to your life while you are waiting for this experience to open up again, it’s possible to feel different, better, different in your life. Join the wait list for the change room and I’ll be in touch. Hey, if you are enjoying the conversation, then it would mean the world. To me. If you head over to iTunes and give us a rating and review, it really makes a difference. And it’s my intention to get as many of us involved in real conversations that really changed the game as possible. Thanks so much for your help and I’ll see you in the next episode.