Tag: inventory

The Your Empty Nest Coach Podcast, Episode 181

30-Day Challenge to Empty Nest Success: Your Protector - Who's the boss?

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[level-up music]

Your Protector: Who’s the boss the boss, anyway? is our topic for today (Day 13) in the 30-Day Challenge to Empty Nest Success. 

[level-up music]

If this is your first time listening,  know we are diving into the challenge content. If you like what you hear, jump back to the episode titled “Getting Started with the 30-Day Challenge to Empty Nest Success” and then work your way through from the beginning - or visit EmptyNestSuccess.com to sign up for daily or weekly email delivery of this challenge that will lead you to companion videos, additional journal prompts, resources and more!

Here we go: 

00:42

Amazing human and beautiful soul, we are continuing to build our analogy with those building block concepts. What if the part of you that some call ego, you begin to think of as your protector? 

Let me first share where this analogy came from …. I was working through reading “The Power of Now.” I talk about that in our episode about presence, and in that book Eckhart Tolle mentions the ego quite a bit. No matter how many times I read it, the word wasn’t resonating with me, personally, as positively as I believe he was intending it. I always associated the word “ego” with negativity, even though I know in different contexts it has different meanings. Being a person focused on finding ways to love all the parts of myself, this wasn’t going to work for me. This put me on a journey to discover a way to think of the ego so that I loved it and cared for it as it is part of me. 

I tried different concepts and, finally, one resonated with me: the idea that this ego part of me was, actually, trying to do their best: it was overwhelmed, it’s untrained, and it’s working incredibly hard with barely any resources. I don’t know about you but I’ve been in job roles where I’ve felt that way and the way I show up is entirely different from the times when I feel confident in my role; I feel well trained;  I feel my boss has my back; and if I have a question, it’s okay because then, we can work it out together. 

I began to play with this concept, adjust it and eventually landed on the name of a Protector - a security guard of sorts but one that I simply need to train. I’ve been told by some clients and podcast listeners that the analogy works well for them too! So, here we are, years later and it still fits.

Now back to the analogy we’re building: although your Protector will be different from mine - let’s add yours to your mind’s house, yard and fence.  Imagine adding on a security space just outside of your fence. This may be as intimate or as large as you like - be it a person standing there with locks on the gate and you need their intervention or a full blown security building with tv monitors, and a really nice chair for your Protector. 

I’ll share a little bit about mine: I imagine mine in a hut just to the side of the fence. Now, they are trained enough that most of the time, they get to chill out. They’ve earned this chill out session: they get to drink  their coffee and watch all the monitors where they easily know which thing can pass on by my fence without me giving it a second thought. 

We’ve gone through some significant training to get to this point, too. 

If you’re starting to question where we are, pop back an episode or two and re-listen to the building of this analogy, or check the extra resources I have in the show notes!

If do you find this Protector concept resonates with you, spend some time getting to know your Protector, begin to consider what your incredible part of you would look like. 

Remember the idea here is that they take their job of protecting you super seriously. And absolutely everything that comes near the fence, currently, puts them on high alert. EVERYTHING. It's not their fault. They haven't been trained  - ever. They have been doing this job for decades and you haven’t paid any attention to them. They are under the false assumption, also, that they are the boss. 

They have no reason to think otherwise. All they know is if they don’t do their job well, bad things happen to you, and their job is to protect you. 

But, what if.. (you know how I like that) what if you become the boss of your own life - the Conscious Effective Olympian) by taking the time to get to know and train your Protector to handle thought deliveries to your specifications. Specifications, that honestly, you don’t know yet because you still need to declutter your house - that’s all good!

Your job right now is to appreciate and love your Protector part of you for doing the best they could, up until now. 

This challenge is a perfect example of a training resource that you can use to train your protector.  And this challenge is one huge introductory training program.

05:26

[level-up music]

Your journal prompt for today is …. How do you imagine your Protector and where they reside as they do their job?

[exit music - upbeat]

Thanks for listening today! For the opportunity to get to know you might have a Protector and don’t you dare forget that you are amazing! 

Chat next time!

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