I Can See Clearly Now | Episode 132: Check in with Ang
Life starts making sense when you slow down and shift your perspective.
In this episode of the Carrying Connected Conversations podcast, Ang shares a life update on how she feels as though everything is flowing with clarity. After a year and a half of therapy Ang is able to connect the dots between science, mindset, personal growth, and spirituality. She has a better understanding of her nervous system and how it affects her emotional wellness. It’s clear from this episode that healing is not linear and the best thing we can do is have grace for ourselves along the journey.
Listen to the episode now to hear Ang’s experiences of gaining clarity in her life and feeling the positive effects of all the work she’s put into her personal development journey.
You can continue reading about the conversation Syd & Ang had on the podcast through the transcript below.
Syd: Happy New Year everyone! Welcome back to another episode of Carrying Connected Conversations. This is Sydney, so excited to be here, celebrating the New Year with you all. It’s funny to say that because as we are recording this it’s still November 2022. A little blast from the past here as you are celebrating the future. Well, present for you, future for me! Hahaha it's too funny!
I hope you enjoyed your holiday season! We are excited to be back with more episodes in 2023. We are excited to see where it takes us and everything that we get to create, experience and share with all of you. In today’s episode it is a check in episode with Ang. She is going to be sharing some insight to some things she has been moving through in life. I’m excited to get into it.
Before we jump in, let me introduce my co-host. Ang, how are you doing today?
Ang: Hey hey! I am doing, as we chatted before we hit record, alright. I am doing alright. I am actually really looking forward to today’s conversation because of how I am feeling. It’s just on that alright, not on any high emotion or low emotion, just in a state where I am observing everything. I’m really looking forward to sharing the clarity that I’ve received in the past few days specifically. Although it has been compounded over time. How are you doing Syd?
Syd: I agree with you. It’s funny, because like you said, before we pressed record I also said I was doing alright. When we jumped into recording, I do this thing before we do any recording, before I hop onto client calls or membership calls, I even do it before I sit down and write a blog. It’s something to help me to get into my creative energy, so I was doing that right before we pressed record. So once it was time to speak all of a sudden I was excited. I feel like I have more energy right now, then what I had 10 minutes ago. It’s interesting.
I’m doing alright. I’m excited to jump into this conversation. I’m actually really excited by what you just said. You said you are in a state where you are observing everything, and to me that is such a powerful state of being. It’s really what this last year has been for me.
I’m excited to hear where you’ve been gaining clarity and what you’ve been observing and how everything is coming together for you in life right now. Can you give me and the listener a brief overview of what’s happened? What is going on in your life? Check us in!
Ang: Hehehe Check us in, check us out. Hahah! Sorry I had to!
Syd: I love it! Hahah
Ang: Well, it’s funny because this introduction is a bit longer than our normal intros, but it actually works perfect for our conversation in where I’m at least wanting to take it today. It’s this place where I’ve recognized, with the help of my therapist, I’ve been in therapy for a year and a half now, and it’s been 4 years in my personal development journey. It’s a perfect combination of exactly what I am needing right now in my life.
What we talked about is this duality. Since July I’ve been stuck, and stuck in this unsure stage. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, what direction I wanted to take my business. I had just broken up with the guy I had been seeing at the time. I had left my full time corporate job. I’m in this place where I am thinking, “okay, let’s look at the board with a clean slate”. But I was stuck in that phase for a long time before I unstuck myself. Now I am in a place where I can see clearly that I was 100% stuck in the victim mindset. I knew I was stuck in it, but you know when you are in the thick of something and you can’t see what’s wrong until you are out of the thick of it? Ya, that is what happened. I was in this place where I wasn’t allowing myself to experience the good and the bad.
What we talked about in therapy is that I was in this place where I was in this feeling or this feeling. I found that I wasn’t able to live with the perfect duality of the good and the bad. Whereas now, based on her telling me, because I don’t know about you Syd, but I personally have a hard time seeing myself, my progress, whether physically or internally. I have a hard time to pinpoint exactly where I am at, but I can really understand it when somebody else is telling me based on what they see me move through. Does that make sense at all?
Syd: Ya it definitely does. I would say that I would agree with you, up until this year. I think that it’s something that was huge in my life, not being able to reflect easily on how I’ve grown or what I’ve moved through and learned. Whereas this year I really embodied the slowing down practice a lot more. Now when I find myself feeling astray, I can more quickly gather myself, gather my energy and sit in reflection to take a moment and see where I’ve come from, what I’ve moved through. This has really helped me to overcome my self=doubt and insecurities so I can find the space where I have a stronger sense of self, and my self esteem is a lot higher. Simply by being able to reflect and see my growth.
What you are explaining, 100% it’s totally what my life was. I think it’s really common.
Ang: Ya, I was just going to say that. I feel like it’s one of those normal things to experience because this is not the first time that I’ve even heard of this. I heard it from someone else and I wondered what they meant about not being able to see themself. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Now going through the thick of it all makes so much sense. I’m glad to hear that you too have experienced that at some point in your life. I think it's important to recognize because then at that point we can recognize where our conscious awareness lies within ourselves. Conscious awareness is something I’ve been focusing on for a long time.
I am the body expert over here. I am everything about mind and body. There is a perfect connection in part of our nervous system that connects our brain to our body, specifically our gut. This is why our gut is known as our second brain. For myself, this mind to body connection that I’ve experienced and have tapped into, is now allowing me, as words from my therapist that has put things into perspective for me. I am able to now tap into my somatic nervous system. There are multiple parts of your nervous system so I won’t give a full scientific breakdown here.
It’s the system that allows you to create movement in your physical body which also brings back the sensory of that movement to your brain. It’s from your brain down to your body from your body back up to your brain. For example picking up a pencil and then what the pencil would feel like in your hand.
For myself, it’s the feelings that I experience in my body. I’ve been so focused on my thoughts because, well I’ve been saying this forever, not necessarily lately, but forever on the podcast, my brain was a constant EDM festival. Boom boom boom. Thoughts going here, left, right twirling, diagonal, all the things.
Syd: Not just a hamster wheel.
Ang: Ya, not just a hamster wheel, it’s all over the place.
Syd: A rollercoaster.
Ang: Hahaha! Ya, Ang’s rollercoaster 101, let me tell you.
Syd: The rollercoaster of terror! Hahaha!
Ang: Going up and going down! Hahaha!
Syd: You never know when it’s going to go sideways!
Ang: Oh I am crying! Hahah!
I don’t feel like I am in that EDM festival constantly anymore. I feel like I am able to get into it when I want to be, which is my super high energy. But I am also able to regulate and level myself out with that energy, while also experiencing the other things in my life. I’ve noticed there is a lot of time that I will dismiss a lot of the things I am feeling and I subconsciously try to hide it in my thoughts. Then all of a sudden these thoughts start to come forward and I’m trying to figure out why I feel this when. It’s because unconsciously I try to hide all that crap’ola. Like we’ve talked about before, sweeping shit under the rug, at some point it’s going to come up. For myself, it’s coming up through my thoughts, but the feelings that are coming from my thoughts.
Tapping into where those feelings are literally, physically lying in my body, has been allowing me to 100% diagnose what thought it is. Looking at this from a scientific perspective makes so much sense, and it makes so much sense how your body and mind are connecting. Especially from your gut, if you are feeling a lot of these feelings in your stomach or chest area, it’s connected to your vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve is part of your nervous system which deals with your fight or flight response. It’s been eye opening hearing all of this from my therapist that this is where I am at right now in my life.
Holy crap’ola! As soon as she said that it opened up all the floodgates, in the best of ways. Now all of a sudden the floodgates are open and I can see clearly how crystal clear the water is coming out. Everything is flowing so beautifully. This is the biggest revelation I’ve been going through in my life!
Syd: That is so amazing! There is so much that I want to touch on, but before I get into it I want to understand a little more on what you said at the end about the water flowing so clearly and everything is flowing. What do you mean by that? What is the everything that is flowing?
Ang: Well, funny that you ask that because I literally mean everything. I mean everything from a physical standpoint, my environment, my feelings, my perception of the world, even my actions that I am taking. Everything is so crystal clear, thoughts, feelings, actions, perceptions. I don’t know if I have missed anything, but that is what everything is to me that is super crystal clear.
Syd: So you are reiterating the fact that earlier this summer you where in a state of feeling stuck and there was no clarity, no answers and you had no idea what direction to move in. Now, through this understanding that seeing you were in victim mindset, you were struggling to see yourself in your growth, you are getting more clarity on the mind to body connection with the nervous system. Even though you already knew this, you are feeling clearer with the gut being your second brain and now tapping into where you are feelings are in your body. Through all of this, it’s what is allowing what I as a Spiritual Mentor would say, the energy. All of the energy of your perceptions, your actions, your feelings, your thoughts, the energy of your environment is all moving now, flowing. Not with just clarity, but with ease and maybe simplicity. It doesn’t mean that it’s not hard at times, or challenging at times, but because you’ve made this understanding of tapping into how you feel to distinguish where is this feeling coming from, now you are better able to see how you are allowing the energy to flow. Rather than just staying in your mind and that victim space. Is this what you are saying?
Ang: 4000% absolutely! I love that you said energy because out of all the words I could’ve used, energy is the perfect one to describe everything. Everything that I have experienced has all these heightened energetic responses. Especially, even in regards to my manifestations. Not only am I seeing my manifestations come up in real life, it’s happening, I am also able to clearly dream and know that those dreams and those manifestations are going to come true. It’s not even a question of “oh I wonder” or “is it?”. I was stuck in “or, or” that mindset. Now I am seeing that this is happening and this is also happening.
Syd: That is so amazing! It’s also interesting because you are talking from a very scientific standpoint, which is not my jam at all. I know it’s totally your jam. You went to school in the sciences. I say that because I don’t know.
Ang: Ya let’s generalize it. The sciences. Hahah!
Syd: I knew you knew what I was trying to say! Hahah!
Ang: Ahaha oh ya the sciences!
Syd: You have a very science driven mind where you like to understand the how behind things and what connects things. Whereas I see things so much broader, so I can’t get into the specifics. If I try to explain something scientific to somebody else I forget half of the things I learned. I say, “I don’t know, you know, it makes sense”. From what you said about tapping into where the feeling is in your body and how it allows you to see clearly where the thoughts are coming from, you explained it in a very scientific way. You said if you feel heaviness in your chest you know it’s connected to this part of your brain which triggers the fight or flight mode. That is a generalized description of what you said. For myself, in being a spiritual mentor and really focused on energy, not necessarily scientifically, I am thinking, “yes this is exactly it”. We get so stuck in our minds that it blocks us from connecting the dots. Our mind overcomplicates everything and holds us in a victim mindset of when something doesn’t feel good, our mind starts to create a story and reasons and an explanation as to why we don’t feel good. Rather than healing what doesn't feel good, we just keep pointing fingers at the world. We keep pointing fingers at the external environment, and blaming it. Then guiding ourselves to the space of, “when that is different then I can feel better”. Whereas what you are saying, and what I am saying is, when we actually slow down and we allow ourselves to feel into our bodies, we gain a better understanding of what we are feeling. Rather than trying to logically explain what we are feeling, we can actually see quite clearly when we distinguish where in our body we feel it.
When your heart or chest feels heavy you can understand you feel wounded because of “this” and then the clarity comes with whatever you are feeling. I love this so much! I want to ask you a question.
Ang: I know! It’s so funny because I know our listeners can’t see us, but you are mind blown! I love this! Oh my god!
Syd: Yes! It’s so good because this is the power. This is when you step into your power, when you distinguish that you are not your mind so you don’t have to constantly be thinking all the thoughts that are going through your mind. The EDM mindset. You are allowing yourself to step back, to create stillness.
It’s funny because I had a call with a client of mine the other day. She had said she had been reading an Eckhart Tolle book and she finally understood through meditation that she is stillness. She is not the thoughts, she is not her mind, not her body, she is the stillness in it all that is aware of her thoughts. She is aware of her body. This is kind of what we are both saying. When you slow down and allow yourself to listen to your body, listen to the feelings, things start to make more sense. But we get so stuck in our mind.
Ang: Absolutely. Before you ask me something I want to touch on what you said earlier. It’s this hyper focus on the things that aren’t going well in our lives. You said we are stuck in our minds and we are trying to logically figure things out, then we get all of these feelings. I want to preface this that it's all done at an unconscious level. We are not aware that we are doing that, but by figuring out attentively where those feelings are coming from, then it’s easier to figure out that correlation from the thought. It is done unconsciously, but at the same token, we can create a level of consciousness for it to then be brought up to our light. Awareness is where it all stems from, but I love how you explained this experience with your client. The sound of it is actually stillness. We need that.
Syd: Yes! I am so glad that you brought that in because I think there are a lot of people that are listening that might be thinking they don’t experience it. You may think it might not be true for you. But Ang, you are exactly right, it’s happening unconsciously. This is why we can live so much of our lives without even realizing it’s happening.
This is what I would say is when we have our spiritual awakening, when we realize consciously, “wait there are things going on within me that I am not aware of, and I don’t want these patterns, habits and behaviors to continue to control my experience. I want to bring consciousness into the unconscious so I can have conscious choice. I can consciously choose if this pattern is leading me in a supportive direction.” The only way we can become conscious of not only the unconscious but also the subconscious, is by bringing awareness into those spaces. By slowing down and saying, “hey I feel off, why do I feel off?” Not why, how can I explain the outside situation, but where within me do I feel off, what is happening inside of my body. That is how we start to gather facts and information on ourselves.
In this experience you are having, and what you are moving through, what would you say are your main takeaways of what you want to crary moving forward? How do you want to remember to stay on this path?
Ang: I love that you asked me this question because I wanted to share something that made me realize this. It’s an example of what has happened. In the middle of our speaking and figuring out that I was living in a way that I could only feel this feeling or this feeling. I am now in a place where I can experience the good and the bad. This is not to say that I never knew this before, it is knowledge to me and I do know this. But, guess what? I am a human and I forget. I completely forgot that I can experience shitty times, while also experiencing exciting and fulfilling and purposeful times. This is exactly what had happened in my call with my therapist. I shared all the things I needed to share, said all the things I needed to say. At the end of the call, she said “before you go I need to let you know Ang, our therapy is actually overdo. I’ve been fighting to keep you up to this point, but unfortunately it is coming to an end.” It kind of threw me in a loop because I had all these great things that happened, whereas the old victim mindset would’ve recognized this moment as being bad. I wouldn’t be able to feel fulfilled or purposeful anymore with where I am going or what I am doing, I have to now feel upset. Upset because I know longer have support. No, no, no. As we have discussed this whole episode so far, it’s okay to experience all the good and also to receive bad in that. It’s not that it’s bad like I am no longer supported, but it’s able for me to understand it’s all okay. It’s okay that I am no longer receiving the support because I know I am in the place where I am ready to take purposeful action on my own. We haven’t even gotten into what that looks like physically in the world, but we will get into that in the New Year. It’s definitely allowed me to be able to carry this information very peacefully.
To further this example, literally within three hours after that phone call, I made all these realizations, I am taking in the good, I am taking in the bad. What happens? My mother messages me, and … she messaged me to say that one of her very good and close friends has just passed. For me to be living in this world, with such heightened awareness, to realize all the good things that are happening and there is also bad that comes with it all, I felt like I was in the best place to be the best daughter for my mom. To be there for her physically as she is going through the pain that she is going through. This is why at the start of the episode I said I am alright. I am experiencing so much good and I am also experiencing so much bad and so much sadness, so much grief. Healing is never linear. My god is this ever true.
Two years after what I had moved through and my whole life changed, this has been the best wake up call I could’ve ever received at the most perfect opportune time. It goes to show that literally everything happens for a reason. The reason why this is so emotional for me, well for obvious reasons any passing of anyone is very emotional. This episode is actually launched today, January 2nd, on my mother’s birthday. One thing that she was very upset about, because Christmas time is already hard for her, then her birthday comes right after that. Her best friend has passed, every single year since they’ve moved away, 40 maybe 45 years plus, they’ve always been in contact. Every single birthday, anniversary, holiday she has always received a beautiful, heartfelt letter in the mail from her friend. Today is going to be the first time that she won’t have received that. I’m here, feeling all the feels, with and for my mom. I’m also here to show, no matter what crap comes up in your life, there is still a way to take hold of that crap and decide what the hell you are going to do with it. We can choose to live in that victim mindset, we can choose to live in a place of complete inaction and unsureness and uncertainty and misdirection. Or we can choose to make something of that pain. We can choose to create a beautiful life even though there is all this crap that comes with it. That is where this beautiful duality now lies for me in my life.
Syd: Mmmmm. I’m so sorry to hear about your mom’s best friend. Definitely holding space for you and for her. Off the air you and I will chat a little bit more about that.
I want to say that the way you’ve explained this is absolutely beautiful. The way I like to see the good and the bad, is actually the good and the heavy. So, it’s not bad as in a negative connotation, it’s simply heavy. It’s challenging. It’s difficult. I think that really changes our perspective on it and it allows us to carry a little more grace through it. When we see it as bad there can be a lot of resistance around not wanting to experience it. Or if we are in it then we can succumb to it and it completely takes over our entire being. When we are able to acknowledge, this is heavy, and we can slow down, exactly as you’ve explained already in today’s episode, you can tap into your feeling. You can hold space for yourself. You can flow. You can support yourself in that feeling, rather than saying this is bad and completely getting stuck in your mind as to why this bad, how this is bad, how it’s going to hold you in a bad place forever. Instead you can feel. You can feel into your body, which allows that release to take place. It doesn’t mean the heavy goes away instantly, it means that you find more grace and you are able to honour yourself through the experience.
Ang: Absolutely. I love that you’ve used that word, heavy, because that is what it is. You are right. It’s not the good and bad, I say bad because it’s the opposite of good. It’s exactly it, it's the heaviness that comes with life.
Syd: Exactly. I would love to keep talking about this because I know that there is so much goodness in what you’ve shared, but like you already said, we are in a New Year and there are going to be plenty of opportunities to continue these types of conversations. Plus we will be able to see where this breakthrough leads you. I really hope that the listeners were able to gain something from this. If you are similar to Ang, where you have a scientific mind, when I share the spirituality behind things it might not fully connect with you or resonate as much. But with today’s conversation and how Ang shared more of the science behind it, it allows you to understand things and have your own breakthroughs. If that connects with you. If the idea of the duality of life, having the good and the heavy, connects with you. If slowing down and feeling into your body connects with you, then please leave us a 5 star rating! Let us know that this episode today resonated with you and you really gained something from it. You can even leave a review if you like, whatever you choose to leave for us we are so grateful for you being here and listening.
As a teaser, next week we are coming in with my check in. I will be sharing a bit about reframing my beliefs and what that looks like. Today we touched on unconsciousness and consciousness and it kind of ties into reframing our beliefs. I am excited to share some of my recent experiences.
Thank you again Ang for sharing everything today! I am looking forward to seeing what 2023 has in store for all of us.
Thank you everyone for being here. We are sending you so much love and light. We will be chatting at you next week. Bye everyone!
Ang: Bye!