The pandemic opened our eyes not only to how our medical services work but also to the way we approach our most challenging times. Without a meaningful inner connection with ourselves, we usually find ourselves drinking more or getting into many arguments. With so many things happening here and there, how can we get out of this endless traumatic loop? Author, speaker, and facilitator Dane Stevens joins Rodney Flowers in a meaningful discussion about the importance of internal understanding and self-love, cultivating emotional space and healing. He emphasizes how the things happening around us are simply residuals of what’s happening within, and it is our job to take responsibility for our lives through a certain level of self-centeredness.
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How Your Inner Connection Can Guide You Towards Personal Healing With Dane Stevens
I have Dane Stevens with me. He is an author, speaker and facilitator. He’s also the Owner and Director of An Extraordinary Life, which is a company that promotes healing, spiritual awareness and self-empowerment. He’s also the developer of the Neuro Trauma Healing Process, NTHP, and the Soul Re-Cognition Process. These healing modalities are obtaining profoundly positive results for people dealing with unwanted behaviors such as chronic conditions and addictive behaviors. We’re going to get into some of the things that these processes can help us with. You want to get to know Dane and get to know these processes that he has for us.
A lot of us out there are dealing with some things right now. There’s a lot going on in the world and sometimes we turn to things that are not the most positive and beneficial things for us. How do we get out of that? How do we keep ourselves from falling into those things? If we have unwanted behaviors that we want to get rid of, how do we get rid of those things? Sometimes behaviors could be difficult to deal with. We want to figure out some strategies that we can implement in this game of life to help us perform better. Without further ado, let’s welcome Dane Stevens. Welcome to the show, Dane.
Thanks for having me, Rodney. It’s great to be here.
Reclaim Your Power To Create Your Best Life: How to Permanently Heal Unwanted Behaviors, Chronic Conditions, and Addictions
How are you doing with the state of things right now, Dane? How are you?
I’m good. I’ve moved out of the city into a beautiful place by the lake. I feel lucky to have to deal with the pandemic and so on with where I’m at. I’m fortunate. It’s understanding or having an understanding or maybe a perception about how we work that can help to deal with this stuff too.
When COVID started, it was impactful but yet for me, it wasn’t one of those things like, “Life is getting ready to change.” I was like, “This is what’s present,” and it calls me to ask myself a series of questions like, “How am I going to proceed with this?” I thought it was more of a distraction than anything. I was doing my thing and I didn’t want to pay this attention because I felt like I was going to get pulled into it and all of the minutia that was going on around it. It was more of a distraction for me. How about you?
It took me awhile to get a handle on what it was. That’s what we do with the work that we do. It’s not, “How do we get rid of this?” The question that will give you the sustainable answer or healing is, “What is this?” I had to take a step back and go, “What is this?” A lot of people passed and great condolences to people that have gone through stuff, dealing with the pandemic, and also the people that have had to be on the front line and been overwhelmed with people in the hospitals. There are some great things that have come out of this. One is the whole world was brought to a stop. We couldn’t have done that in our wildest dream.
That makes us ponder. I see this as something that happened that has forced people to go inside and ask themselves some questions as to what’s really important. It’s another huge opportunity because it’s brought up so much fear in people and anxiety and what-ifs. I believe that if it’s not inside of us, there’s nothing to come out. All this fear and anxiety is what’s been going on inside of you. We’re experiencing that on a collective level so there’s the opportunity for healing. This is a step in our evolution to connect within and do our work.
Let’s find out what that work is. From the people that I’ve had the pleasure of working with since this has started and others that I talked to in the community, it’s not always easy to have that perception of, “This is an opportunity here. There’s some good that’s going to come out of it.” This is excruciatingly painful for a lot of people. They feel that they can’t help themselves to feel the way they feel about this. I have a lot of empathy for them because not everyone’s going to wake up bright and shiny like me and you figure out, “What I’m going to tackle now? I want to crush everything in front of me.” That’s the side of me and I’m grateful for that but then, there’s the reality that not everyone wakes up that way. Some people have a hard time dealing with this. What are some things we can do to deal with some of the behaviors? It’s the unconscious reactions to what’s happening. For someone who can’t help the way they feel about it or the way they are reacting to it and they want to get over the edge. How can we help them?
That’s where, hopefully in this time together, I can give people a little bit of insight as to how we are working. In that, I’m going to use the word trauma and it is a bit misunderstood. I’m a trauma specialist and you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody that doesn’t have a degree with the term trauma looping within them. What happens when we experienced trauma is our nervous system goes into overwhelm, and can’t handle it, which is why most of our big rock traumas come from our childhood because we were young undeveloped minds. We had something happened that we couldn’t handle. When most people hear trauma, they think of a car crash, somebody’s experiencing war or some big mental, emotional or physical abuse.
Those are all traumas, but you can also experience trauma in a mild way. An example is if somebody was growing up with a high functioning alcoholic. That young mind doesn’t know anything different than a high functioning alcoholic. You don’t know you’re on the receiving end of abuse. Alcoholism itself is self-abuse. That’s being passed on to the child and that child is having to alter their behavior or it’s stinting their natural outflow energy in some way. You may not even recognize it. That will come out as a trauma. Another one is neglect. It seemed like nothing happened and that’s exactly right. Nothing had happened, but because of that, because you didn’t get recognized or you didn’t get the credit, or what have you, you may be made a decision about yourself or you changed your natural outflow of energy in some way. You didn’t express yourself as much.
That too can become a trauma. All of the trauma is it’s something stuck and looping in your nervous system unprocessed, but because we keep re-experiencing it, it comes out as a negative pattern somewhere in our life and starts as a fear. How trauma occurs is information comes into the right brain. The right brain is formulas. Its color, sound, imagination and experiences the full picture and then passes it to the left brain to be made sense of, understood and filed. If it’s too scary, too bizarre, too outrageous, that left brain rejects it and you can’t look at it and can’t file it. It sends it back to the right brain.
If you have fear within, that is not who you are. It's a part inside of you that needs loving attention. Click To TweetWhat does the right brain do? The right brain does what the right brain does. It sees and feels it. It experiences it in its entirety, and then it sends it to the left brain that made sense of it and file it. If it’s still too much, it gets sent back. That’s the loop that keeps happening in your nervous system. You keep re-experiencing this, rejected and re-experience. The brain’s MO is survival. It doesn’t want this barrage of unwanted and understandable information, so it’ll push it out of the way to the subconscious. Does that mean that it’s gone? No, it’s still very much alive, looping your nervous system, trying to process itself trapped in your body. As you talked about, everybody is not getting up feeling all chipper and happy. If you have a trauma looping in you, you probably feel hopeless.
You got this feeling that you have to get a handle on because you haven’t known how to access it. You haven’t known, even though you experienced maybe a chronic condition, maybe you got an addictive behavior that keeps popping up, maybe you keep withdrawing or you have anger stuff. I can assure you that anytime you have any chronic conditions, even if it keeps happening, unwanted behavior with your health, your wealth, your relationships, your career or whatever. If you keep sabotaging yourself, I can pretty much assure you, you have something stuck looping in your nervous system unprocessed. That’s what I want to educate people about so they understand that it’s not your fault, and that you can now have access to that and bring it to resolution. You do not have to cope with it or deal with it or compensate for it or try to blow through it even. You can bring it to resolution so you can be back and be empowered at choice at this moment.
A lot of people are dealing with so many emotions with being at home, not being able to relate and touch people outside of the home. That’s causing some anxiety, but I don’t know if they’re going back to their childhood and say, “That’s what this is coming from.” Do you have any advice on where to look? People may think, “This is a COVID thing. If COVID wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be feeling the way I’m feeling now. I wouldn’t have to challenge my emotions. I wouldn’t have to do that if it wasn’t for COVID.” What do you say to that person?
If it’s not inside of you, there’s nothing to come out and I speak of that from experience. You don’t have to go back to your childhood. That’s the prime example. Most people are going to have stuff in their childhood that’s triggering them now and they don’t know it. What I would suggest is you need to let this stuff out and know the truth about it. If you have a fear inside of you, that is not who you are. It’s a part inside of you that needs your loving attention. I invite you to go inside to that feeling. Let that feeling speak. When we can let that part out, the biggest, scariest part of fear is the anticipation of the unknown. It still amazes me how much we fear the unknown. When you go into this and you learn how to give this part of yourself what it needs, you give yourself the safety, the respect and the love. Whatever it is, you quit looking out there for it. When you can give it to yourself, then it will simply show up out there.
The first rule of counseling is the issue is never the issue. That’s why I look at what’s going on in the world now and it’s bringing up fear in people. This might sound a little ethereal for some people, but it’s bringing up what’s inside of us collectively. Our job is us and I think you’ll agree that the inside creates the outside. When we have that inward feeling of fear or anger, it’s coming from inside of us. We are creators. We can’t help it. That energy that’s coming out is what’s coming back. Our job is always us. Don’t focus on COVID. Don’t focus on the stuff that’s going on, the conflicts that’s going on. Acknowledge it, but what you really want to acknowledge is what’s going on inside of you because you are powerful, whether you like it or know it or not. You are your source.
What are some steps toward turning that around?
Inner Connection: In order to learn how to love yourself, you have to understand yourself first.
First of all, get the book. It’s called The Process in It. On a level with not having the book or anything, start early and start getting this stuff outside of you. I refer back to trauma because everybody has a degree of it and it’s something cycling within us, but with trauma, you want to keep that conversation going because it’s looping. You want to get that coverage and get it outside of you so you can see it. What we do when we work with people is we help them to create separation from that anxiety, from that fear, from that anger, because then you can give it what it needs. Most people think they are it, and it takes them over.
Like an addictive behavior, the synapse is you get triggered by something that is a similar scenario somehow, whether it be sight, sound, color, person. The synapse fires in your brain, and you’re right there. You wake up with a fifth drink in your hand, or you wake up in a fight with your spouse, or you wake up scared of withdrawal. It’s about connecting to that part but creating the separation so you can give that part what it needs. It becomes profound from that place because that’s where you learn that you are your source. When you give yourself what you need from the inside, it will show up outside of you. That’s the start of reclaiming your power.
We talked about taking responsibility. When you talk about abuse, especially childhood abuse, that doesn’t mean that you’re responsible for what happened to you as a child. You didn’t bring that upon you, but when you have a chronic condition, a negative pattern that’s happening in your life, to understand that it keeps happening over and over again and therefore you’re the common denominator, it’s happening inside of you. Taking responsibility on that level isn’t about blame. You didn’t do that, but it’s happening inside of you. That’s the start of reclaiming your power going inside.
I feel that with responsibility comes privilege. When you have that responsibility and you take that responsibility, you have the privilege of experiencing what it means to have that responsibility and take that responsibility and that’s a wonderful thing. That’s life-changing. Could you speak on that for us a little bit?
We’re all on different levels and you’ve got to start where you’re at. I know I have been told I speak languages that everybody doesn’t understand sometimes. When we can take full responsibility for our lives, it can be a bitter pill to swallow or seem that way because that person was rude or was mean to me. That person cheated me. That’s true, but when we can see the patterns in our life and take responsibility in that way, that’s power because we understand, and then something happens to us, we go, “Thank you for pointing out what’s going on inside of me?” This is my belief, but what is happening in the external world and our physical reality is nothing but a feedback system. It’s showing us what we’re thinking, what we’re believing and how we’re treating ourselves.
I love what I do because I help people to learn how to love themselves. In order to learn how to love yourself, first of all, you have to understand yourself. A lot of us operate from here up thing and are out of touch with what’s going on in our subconscious mind. I’m a big fan of Carl Jung. He was a very advanced soul but when we do take responsibility, when we do understand it’s happening inside of us, it gives us the ability when something happens to say thank you, go inside and make that shift. When the inside changes, the outside changes. There’s nothing to do with our careers.
When you give yourself what you need from the inside, it will show up outside, too. Click To TweetThis is a powerful moment in this interview because the way I see things is we’re out in this field. I call it the field of adversity. You’re born and you can’t get through life without experiencing what it feels like to be in this field. There are a lot of horrible things in this field. You can get hit and you can get knocked down. You’re going to face resistance and opposition. People that have been following me or reading this know I said this before. There’s a lot of good on the field, and seemingly you experience that good based on how you play this game and based on who you are in this arena of adversity and opposition. You can have anything you want and it’s dictated on how you play.
One of the things about playing this game will be in that environment and feeling in the pressure of what it feels like to be in that environment is how you respond to it. There are things that happen that simulate against the rules. It’s not always fair play or you didn’t see it coming or it puts you in a place where it’s like, “I’ve already been down that side of the field. I’ve done that, but I got to go back. I got to start over.” There are things that happen in this game and there are setbacks. Sometimes in order to advance forward, you can’t point the blame and not take responsibility. In order to play well, it’s going to get to it. It’s almost like whatever happens, it happens. What dictates the outcome is you every single time. There may be times where the coach or referee or maybe someone says, “That wasn’t right.” You get a benefit. You get a value. You advance 5 to 10 yards. You get promoted or something like that as a result of whatever.
In most cases, how you respond to what’s going on in that field makes the day. I’m beating this dead horse because sometimes it takes a while to get to that point. I’m beating this dead horse because I know in life when I went through what I went through getting hurt, I was blaming. I wanted a doctor to blame. I wanted somebody to take responsibility to fix me because I wanted to be fixed and I want it to be fixed right now. I didn’t deserve what happened to me. A lot of people may be feeling the same way. The quicker we can say, “I don’t even have expectations for the doctor or whomever. I’m going to see what I can produce right in here. This is where I’m going to spend my time. If they can do it, great. I’m still going to the doctor. I’m still taking my medicine. I’m going to show up to where I’m supposed to show up. I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do to make sure whatever I supposed to get out of that happened in order to give myself the best opportunity to advance.” My highest and deepest expectation is coming from right here.
You talk about how you respond and you can call those choices. When you are centered in yourself, when you are fearless, you make good and better decisions. When we are disconnected, when we are in a place of fear, anger or resentment, our decisions are probably skewed somewhat. It’s a double-edged sword. It might take some time to get there. If we could give anybody any advice, it’s to keep walking and believing in yourself knowing that you’re creating from the inside out.
We talked about unwanted behaviors and chronic conditions or addictive behaviors. Sometimes we revert to those things, especially if we can’t find an answer or we’re in pain and no one can take the pain away. You can’t even take the pain away. It’s not physical pain, a lot of times, it’s emotional pain. The things that we don’t want to deal with. We go to these unwanted behaviors or we go to these addictions. Why do we do that? Give us some technicalities on what’s happening here.
Inner Connection: For you to move forward, you have to be honest with yourself.
It’s about understanding what’s happening and how you work. When you have something that keeps happening, what’s the common denominator? You are. It’s happening inside of you. With the neuro trauma healing process, first of all, we don’t do anything. I used to coach and counsel, I don’t do that anymore because I know that you have the answers inside of you, so why would I? To take yourself to a place, you’re going to find your way how you’re going to find your way because we’re all at different places in our life. The first step of taking responsibility from “I want to,” you can go to, “I choose to.” You can then go into, “I have,” or “I am,” but it might take time to get there. It might take time to connect to that part and to understand that it’s not you. To create enough separation to know that it’s not you.
In order for us to continue to move forward, we got to start where we’re at and be honest with where we’re at and honest with what’s going on inside of us. It can be a bitter pill to swallow to take responsibility for what’s happening with us, but when we do, we’re gaining parts of ourselves back. When you have this continuing behavior, it is something looping in your nervous system and it’s continually taking your energy. You might wake up in a fight, screaming at your wife, or you might wake up with your third drink or whatever and you feel powerless. If you have something looping in your nervous system, you get triggered. The synapses fire in your brain and your back.
I refer to the childhood traumas because they’re so obvious, but I know that we’ve all seen an adult, maybe even a prominent adult who gets their buttons pushed. All of a sudden, they act like they’re six years old and maybe that’s exactly right because that’s exactly what happens. In a time of trauma, time stops. That event keeps cycling in your nervous system at that time. We talk about unwanted behaviors and how frustrating you keep experiencing behavior that keeps coming up over and over again that you know isn’t serving you or maybe even childish. In that, they create shame, frustration and anger at yourself because people haven’t known how they have been working or how they work. To try and overcome that, if it isn’t changed inside of you, you’re going to have to keep battling that. It’s like swimming upstream, because as soon as you stop battling, it will keep going back to the normal belief that you have inside of you.
Our subconscious mind is our most powerful creative faculty. They would be thousands of times more powerful than conscious mind. If your conscious and your subconscious are not in alignment, it’s like a fight with yourself. When your subconscious and your conscious mind are in alignment or in agreement, what you desire will manifest in your life because there’s nothing in your way. It’s about understanding how you work, first of all, and then learning how to go inside and connect, and give yourself what you need to feed yourself and your soul.
One of the questions that I asked frequently when people are reaching for something like there’s a goal or an objective, what I am trying to overcome? I ask them the same questions. In order to overcome from your perspective, who do you need to be? In order for you to achieve that, what kind of person achieves that? What is that avatar? Is that you? Are you willing to adapt to that person? Are you willing to be that? If that person is strong and courageous, and that’s one of the attributes or characteristics of this person, you have to be strong and courageous. Who are you going to be? What I love about it is you can change. I loved that process because people would change for certain reasons, Pain or pleasure are some good influencers. People will change because they want a certain level of pleasure or they’re experiencing a certain level of pain.
Pain seems to be the bigger motivator now, doesn’t it?
Everything that happens in the external world is nothing but a feedback system showing us what we're thinking and believing. Click To TweetIt does. When they’re hurting, they say, “I need to be this person. I’m willing to take those steps.” We’re going to see a lot of change in people as a result of what’s going on right now. That’s a simple fact because they know the old version of them isn’t going to work. This work is necessary. We have to heal some of that stuff in order to put on a new version of ourselves. I was doing a talk. We were talking about authenticity. Authenticity to me is one of the things that you can use for mental toughness to deal with mega change and it’s not what you think. A lot of people think authenticity is being my real self. I’m authentic. This is who I am. I’m going to be that because that’s who I am. I challenged the audience to consider authenticity as not being their real selves, but being real with themselves.
Your real self, that version of you that you’ve been carrying with you that has been developed and shaped from childhood to adulthood, that may not be the type of person or the version of you that’s necessary in order for you to overcome and be successful, or the version of you that’s necessary for you to achieve what you want to achieve. You have to be authentic with yourself, meaning you have to see the imperfections and the shortcomings. It doesn’t mean things are wrong. Does this serve you or not? We are evolving. Look at your computer. Your computer gets upgrades. I have a computer that I use to support the government then gets upgrades every night. It’s a different version every day. We have to up-level each version of ourselves because that version may be good for now, but that may not be good for you tomorrow.
With what happened to me, I was doing well in my life in all areas, except for my relationships. I went to see if I had dealt with an issue. I had a therapist/healer try to force trauma out of me and it messed me up. I had a successful coaching training business and living off the ocean where I wanted to and travel. I’m making good money and good employees. I lost everything. Over three years, I was homeless, but I wanted to search and figure out what the hell happening and how to get my life back. It took me five years. Finally, I uncovered it. The result is this process. I teach the processes and there are two of them.
One is the Neuro Trauma Healing Process and the other one is SRC, Soul Re-cognition. The reason I speak about this right now is because when I had that trauma being forced out of me, I was a mess. I was in fight or flight for years. I wasn’t looking to achieve anything. I just wanted relief and to feel good. A lot of people might identify with that at this time. I don’t want to be in this jittery, unstable and fearful place anymore. What happened when I did get the healing when I uncovered this process is I gave that inner part of me what it needed, and the fear subsided. I unfroze it and brought it into this present moment where it’s not happening anymore, so it wasn’t looping in my nervous system. I didn’t have that anymore.
What happens when we do that, that looping takes up space in us. When we do that healing, it creates space. Space equals peace. That peace, that space is automatically filled with our nature and who we are. Who we are at our core is powerful, peaceful, creative, abundant, healthy and beautiful. That’s our nature. It’s about letting that out, letting who we are come forth. We’ve complicated life in doing this, in trying to act a certain way or be a certain way, which is great. Unless it’s aligned, it’s not being authentic. That being authentic is letting yourself out. Who you are is magnificent.
Do you think there’s confusion in the world about that? As I’m listening, I can imagine someone saying, “I’m trying to let that side of me out. I’m trying to be this core person, but yet all this other stuff is showing up.” How do I get to that core? Part of being who you truly are is letting go.
Also, asking. Maybe it’s being answered. We ask for something. Let’s say I want love in my life, and what comes up? What comes up is all the things that aren’t accepting, deserving or aligned with love, with the truth about you. It seems like it’s going exactly the wrong way, “This is not working.” It is. When something is up, it’s up for healing. That can be a tough pill to swallow if things don’t go right. We think the world is against us or is not working. Maybe life works well in accordance with us and is always showing us.
Those thoughts are coming up for people. They say they want to love, but then they can think of all the reasons why maybe they’re not deserving that love or why somebody wouldn’t love and the fact that they tried loving and it didn’t work out right many times. You’re surely taking steps. You’re saying, “That’s what I want. I want love, but then I’m battling these thoughts. I’m battling my past. I’m battling my experience. Is this going to happen again, trying to have love, but I keep getting hurt? I keep feeling this pain, but yet, at my core, I’m loved?” How do they deal with that?
This is a good conversation because we come from it at different angles, which is great because I’m all about the inner work. When you do that inner work, the outer just changes. The outer is secondary. If we can’t give ourselves the love that we want, that we need within us, we can’t get it up there. It won’t show up. If we don’t respect ourselves in here, if we don’t show ourselves respect, don’t expect respect out there. You can’t get it. This shows you how powerful you are. The work that we do, we don’t do anything. We guide you through the process, but it shows you how you’re working, why you’re getting what you’re getting in your life and why you’re not getting what you say you want, and you get to understand.
The key to this work is inner compassionate connection. It’s not trying to force that part to be something or try to fix them. This is the part of letting yourself out. Sometimes it’s not pretty. Sometimes the parts of us that come up, we may not like. That’s a part of learning how to accept and love ourselves. When we accept and love ourselves from this place that sounds very ethereal, it grows up. It comes into the present time. We get to be truly who we are. This is where we get into the spiritual conversation. Do you meditate, Rodney?
I do every day.
Inner Connection: When your subconscious and conscious mind align, what you desire will easily manifest in your life.
When you still that mind, what happens? The spirit rises and this is not a religious statement. Who you really are, comes forth. If this works at a destination that we do, it would be this present moment, because this present moment is the only place that your power always ever is. The ultimate in this is quite literally going to a place of stillness and letting yourself out. There’s that phrase, “I’ve had thousands of problems,” and most of them never happened. It’s when we understand that our thinking is a tool for us. It is not our mode of living. For most people, it’s the reference point. The reference of thinking, you’re going to experience things anxiety and trauma because you’re thinking the mind’s job is to create separation. Without our thinking mind, we could not exist in this time-space reality. We’ve already proven scientifically that this is an energetic world. We are energetic, spiritual beings. That’s science.
We may take all things and magnify them. Everything is circulating and moving. It doesn’t matter if it’s the pavement outside or the mountains or our human flesh and bone, everything is circulating and is in a state of flux. Therefore, if you took that finger and you magnified it 10,000 times, you couldn’t tell where you stopped and where you began. We are energetic beings. When you understand that, and you understand that the thinking mind is what creates separation, contrast or here on this plane, this time-space reality, to experience contrast. Without darkness, we couldn’t know light. Without pain, we couldn’t know pleasure. Without up, we don’t know down. That thinking mind is what allows us to experience individuality and contrast. Even though what’s the cause of all of our problems, it’s not bad and it’s not wrong. It’s how we’re able to exist and play this game that we’re playing. It can seem quite complex, and understanding the game you’re playing is valuable.
I love that because we have the opportunity to master that side of it. It’s not so much. You go and you look at your performance. You look at what’s happening out there. How am I doing in this field? If you talk to any athlete, it’s the work that they do off the field that makes them good on the field. That’s why I’m glad that I brought you on because this is homework for us. This is like self-study. This is what you do when you’re not playing a game. It’s a testament of the work. When you get on the field and you play, and those feelings come up and you’re assessing that, that’s the testament of, “Maybe I didn’t do my homework. Maybe I need to do more homework. Maybe I need to take it to another level.” It’s a testament to off-the-field work versus in-the-field work.
Out there you’re experiencing it, you’re experiencing your work, your creation. That’s where the tweaking goes inside, the experience. How do you know when you’ve dealt with something? When it comes up again and you don’t react. It always amazes me with clients because we start setting boundaries without anxiety or animosity. We just stop. They’re amazing. We’re amazing. It’s awesome. A lot of times with family, nobody pushes your buttons like family does. If you’re in a family setting and all of a sudden something happens, it’s like, “Should I normally be crying now? Wouldn’t I be yelling or upset now? Wouldn’t I be withdrawing or leave now?” It’s not there. There’s nothing to be triggered anymore. You’re present, therefore you’re in your power at choice. When the inside changes, the outside changes as if by magic. As long as you keep going out there, you’re abandoning potentially in there.
I appreciate COVID, not for the destruction, the grief and the loss that it’s caused, but when moments like this come up, it’s a moment for you to reassess and to reset. We all have experienced this hit and it was a devastating blow, but without the blow, you wouldn’t go back and say, “Let me go look at that film again. Let me go look at the playbook again. Maybe we can create some new plays. Maybe we don’t need to do it the way we’ve been doing it.” The pressure causes you to evolve. The pressure causes you to elevate.
I loved that about the universe because it’s like the seed of a tree. You have to put it in the ground and suddenly you are like, “Who wants to go in the ground?” When you talk about Chinese bamboo, it has to stay in there and incubate for 5 to 6 years before it ever comes out of the ground. That’s a long time of doing inner work in that energy process and the DNA and therefore it could come out. I feel like that’s where we are right now. We’re in this uncomfortable spot, but if we do the work and we allow the energy to take place, to run its course, and we be conscious of that energy and what’s available for us in this.
I think this is a huge opportunity. We are evolving. This is a huge step and opportunity for us. You look at the stuff going on in the world, it is atrocious. How can people think and act that way? When something is up, it’s up for healing. The old saying in the healing field is if you can’t feel it, you can’t heal it. We’re all feeling it, seeing it. It’s up for healing. Here’s the opportunity. It’s about recognizing that and not buying into the fear and anger but doing our personal work. When we do our inner work, we affect our kids, our family and our community. That’s what ripples out. We’ve had this opportunity, especially the time to be with our families, which some people haven’t had any chance. Unfortunately, the divorce rate is quite high right now because of all of this, but it also brings out the truth about us and the reality about us. It’s a better way to do it now where we’re all involved and ready to take a step.
There are not many times that I would pursue a quantum leap because I believe in the process. You want to take every step that’s necessary. It’s like preparing for a test. You don’t want to cheat. You want to be completely and wholly prepared. Meaning you studied everything. You looked at all of it. You didn’t take any shortcuts. Sometimes we want shortcuts in life. In this particular case, because this was such a big blow, there’s so much opportunity here to experience what would feel like a quantum leap in evolution.
You know that you've finally overcome traumatic thoughts if it comes up again and you don't react anymore. Click To TweetYour words are wise. We don’t want the quantum leaps we think we do. Ask me, I’ll tell you, because when I had that trauma forced out of me, it messed me up. The second book is coming out, Unleash Your Genius, that goes into the empowerment aspect. It talks about this. The first line is, “And now the truth,” because I asked for that unwittingly and unknowingly what I was asking for, but I asked for that quantum leap. When I did ask, what came back to me in my writing was, “Are you sure?” Of course, I’m sure. It took me ten years to recalibrate.
Everything has a process to it. If you’re asking for a quantum leap, you’re asking for a quantum leap process. It’s like saying, “I want to be the best,” but if you want to be the best, there’s a lot that’s required in order to be the best.
It’s wanting to jump and that can be like castles in the sand because you don’t have the foundation. You got to keep building the foundation. With what’s going on with the COVID is we’ve been slowed down. We’ve been stopped because people were spinning out of control and not having that foundation. To build that foundation from a place of self-love and internal connection, that’s where you have a place of certainty, that foundation of trust and love. From there, you have a solid foundation. When you take the quantum leap, it takes a long time to get back into balance. Ask me, I’ll tell you.
I was in a wheelchair for eighteen years. I started walking on two crutches. I’ve been walking with two crutches now for several years. However, during the last several years, my focus was, one day I’m going to put at least one of these canes down. I’ve been working to put one of them now. That’s the focus that we’ve had is putting one cane down. Now, when I’ll go for my walk, I could go for my walk and I’m fast. I can go up the hill and come back. The timing was normal. It was conducive to the average human being walking up and down this particular hill. However, when I try to take this hill with one cane, it is different now. I went down the hill with two crutches because I was by myself. When I walk with one cane, I like to have assistance. My assistance came. I’m on my way back up the hill. I’m at the bottom of the hill walking towards home. It’s dark outside and it started raining.
I have a decision to make, because now the conditions aren’t conducive for me to walk with one cane, but that is my ultimate goal. What am I going to do here? It doesn’t have anything to do with the rain or the fact that it’s dark. It has everything to do with what my next move is going to be. I had to go inward and I had to get over the fear and the uncertainty of falling down. Am I going to make it? Is it going to be a torrential downpour? All that’s going on in my mind. Everything was screaming, “It was probably not the best thing to do. Hang it out. We’ll try it again when the right conditions are available,” but I did it. It took me a lot longer to do this with one cane.
When I got to the top of that hill, I wasn’t the same person. The reason why I wasn’t the same person because walking with one cane for me was no longer a goal. I had a ride. I did it. It was more so I need to cultivate the skill of walking one cane now. That’s all I need to do. I don’t need to try to obtain. I just prove to myself that I’d be able to walk up the hill in the dark, in the rain with one cane, with little miss or falls. I didn’t fall, but I lost my balance a couple of times, but my support system was there to catch me, but it changed me. For me, walking on a cane is a quantum leap. It’s a major step forward. I’m bringing this up to say, sometimes what’s seemingly a setback, is what’s necessary in order for you to take a bigger step forward or quantum leap forward.
There’s a lot inside you’ve got to deal with because it might not be the right condition seemingly. It might not feel comfortable. It could be scary. There could be a lot of uncertainty available right there and that’s what it is. You got to get over all of that in order to get to this place of certainty. I’m certain I’m going to do this. There’s no doubt about it because in the dark, in the rain, up the hill, I did it. It took that scenario to flip a switch in my brain that this is no longer a goal. The goal has been reached. It’s more of cultivating now. It’s repetition from this point on. That’s where we are with COVID. We are already over COVID. We’re just figuring out how to expand the level of success that we have over COVID right now. That switch has to go off in our minds to put our place in that state of reality. The reality for you could be whatever it is, but it’s all based on what’s going on.
We are creative beings. We can’t help it, but we’re pointing that in whichever direction we want to go. The world says yes. What we practice, we get better at. People out there ask yourselves, “What are you practicing? In which direction are you continuing to go in?” We’re going to have challenges and setbacks. Step back and change your perception. What’s possible? If it’s a pattern, go inside.
It’s funny because we talked about how you perform on the field versus the work you do off the field. Now, we’re talking about practice. You’ve got to practice this so that you can perform.
I used to box. Training there is immense. You did football, you know about that too. When you do the training, once you’re in the ring, that’s it. You’re not thinking about all you learned, you’re just doing what you do. You might have some conscious awareness of you dropping your glove or what have you, but when you’re in the field, you’re in the game. You’re in the mix. We need to separate and take that ‘me time,’ ‘us time,’ and get Selfish. Take time to write and connect within. Take time for prayer or reading or whatever it is that works for you that allow your mentality to be a part of that. Take time to exercise your body and breathe and move. These are all keys and it’s making you important. As you do that out in the field, you’ll experience better results. You can’t help it. In that, the result is always feeling good, feeling better, what’s next?
I think about football, it was enjoying being out there and whatever was coming up. It was devastating but it was like, “That’s what they did. Here’s what we’re going to do.” You’re enjoying being on the field.
You’re in the process. That being said, we all got to do and find what we love to do, what we love to be in the process regardless of the outcome.
Dane, how can people connect with you?
The website is DaneStevensOnline.com. In there, you get the book and any events that we have. You can see them there on the events page. The book you can get at Amazon, that’s Reclaim Your Power to Create Your Best Life. The other website is AnExtraordinaryLife.ca. You can get ahold of us through either one of those sites. Give us a call. All of our information is there. If you have any questions, we love to help you out. If anybody has any desire in getting trained in this, we need more facilitators trained in this so that people can get the help that they want. We’re going to help however we can.
As you were giving your contact information, I was thinking about this little modality, repetition leads to confidence and confidence leads to trust.
It seems ethereal to connect with life inside of you, especially if you maybe didn’t grow up with a belief in that way. A lot of times, people have spiritual beliefs. They believe in the life inside of them and what have you. If you haven’t connected with that part, it can seem out there, but in the first session we have with people, that’s what we want. We want them to make the connection to know that it’s real because you have a life inside of you. As you continue to connect with this part, that’s how you build trust. In unfreezing trauma, the key is building trust and letting that part feel safe enough to unfreeze. When that unfreezes, it comes back into the present time. Where you’re at is in this present moment where it’s not happening anymore and you have your power, you have a choice. The repetition builds the trust, and comes to a point of knowing. That knowing is the next step, and then your repetition to the point of knowing. That’s our evolution. We are continually becoming more of who we are.
I love that because the knowing is because of who I am.
It’s natural.
It’s not arrogance. To me, that’s championship level right there. When you get to that place that your knowing is based on who you are, you are walking in your power.
That feeling is creative. That knowing creates. It’s magic.
Whatever shows up, you can create a situation that’s conducive to what it is that you want out of life, your vision, based on your connection with the universe.
Keep making yourself right and coming from that place of authenticity, connection and love.
Dane, thank you for coming to the show.
It’s nice to meet you. I enjoyed our conversation. Let’s do it again.
We’d like to ask all of our guests this one question, a game-changer mentality question. How can people bounce back from adversity, dominate their challenges and continuously lead at the game of life?
I’ll use the word responsibility and that can take perception, and it might take some work depending on where you’re at. Understand that whatever is happening, what if it was happening for you? Go inside. If it’s something that doesn’t feel good, especially if it’s a pattern, take responsibility. Know that you are powerful, and go inside and learn how to feed yourself. Learn how to give yourself what you need and watch it show up courageously outside.
Thank you, Dane, for coming to the show.
It’s my pleasure. I loved it.
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There you have it, folks, another successful episode. Take responsibility for wherever you are or for whatever is showing up. There are many good gems in this episode. Think about that. What’s coming up is coming up for healing. Isn’t that an idea? Sit with that. Be with that. Recognize what’s coming up and then find out how you can heal it. Check Dane out, go to his website, get the book, and then discover it. Maybe these processes are something to help you get your practice done. Sometimes we need tools to help us perform well on the field. There’s nothing wrong with having the tools necessary. There is nothing wrong with that at all because remember, it’s all about practice.
If you’re not performing well, maybe you need to practice. Remember that repetition leads to confidence. Confidence leads to trust. Trust leads to knowing that when you step out there on that field, you are a powerful being. You’re creative and you’re going to create situations that are conducive for you. This is a beautiful episode, go back and read this again. See if this is a tool that will benefit you in your practice to be a game-changer. Until next time, stay in the game, stay strong. We love you.
Important Links:
- An Extraordinary Life
- DaneStevensOnline.com
- Reclaim Your Power to Create Your Best Life
- http://RodneyFlowers.com/get-up-book/
- http://RodneyFlowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
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- Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did… Here’s How! https://rodneyflowers.com/get-up-book/
- Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers https://rodneyflowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
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About Dane Stevens
Dane Stevens is an author, speaker and facilitator. He is the owner and director of An Extraordinary Life a company that promote healing, spiritual awareness and Selfempowerment. He is the developer of the Neuro Trauma Healing Process (NTHP) and the Soul Re-Cognition Process (SRC). These new healing modalities are obtaining profoundly positive results for people dealing with unwanted behaviors, chronic conditions and addictive behaviors. Danes goal is to show people how to create a connection with their inner life, leading to healing from their past and fulfilling their true potential and happiness.
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