How our internal language affects daily choices with Alejandra Siroka and Thais Harris
Nourish Together
Join Thais Harris, BCHN and Transformative Communication Coach Alejandra Siroka for a conversation about “how our internal language affects our daily choices.”
In this episode of Nourish Together’s Gut, Heart & Mind Podcast, Thais interviews Alejandra on the following topics:
– Alejandra’s journey to becoming a transformative communication coach;
– The 3 key components of her approach: 1) an individual awareness practice to understand our internal dialogue, 2) a relational communication approach focused on building healthy relationships, and 3) a social/evolutionary activist practice to consider the impact and legacy of our language use;
– How to apply these components in our day to day and in our relationships;
– How to communicate from our values,
and more.
You can connect with Alejandra at https://www.languagealchemy.com
And access all the resources she has available.
Full Transcript
Introduction to Alejandra Soka 0:00
welcome everyone to the nourish together podcast I am so excited today I have a very very special guest she's very special to me personally because we've been friends for a long time Alejandra Soka is not only a friend but a mentor and a Guiding Light in my life and I'm so happy to have her here today Alejandra is the founder of language Alchemy and host of The Language Alchemy podcast transformative communication teacher and Coach helping Multicultural individuals couples and groups seeking to create and maintain thriving conscious relationships Alejandra thank you so much for being here today thank you so much taise for having me and yes we have been friends we have been learning from one another learning together for over a decade yeah lucky us and now I get to share some of your wisdom uh with our listeners and so um before we go into some of this um the roles of our internal language and our daily choices which is our theme for today I would love for you to just share a little bit about your background and your story and how you came to this transformative communication work sure I have been fascinated by languages and communication since I was a little kid the particular accent that you're all hearing is a combination from having Spanish as my first language growing up in Argentina in the north of Argentina and then living in other countries and when I grew up in Argentina I lived in a I was born and raised in a city in the north of Argentina called salta where there's a lot of Tourism so lots of people would
Early Fascination With Language 2:00
come different people from different parts of the world and I vividly remember walking with my mom somewhere downtown and leaving her hand and running to talk to people who didn't look like me didn't dress like my parents did and what did I find that when I talked to them they spoke a different language and I had no idea why I couldn't communicate with them so then I learned that English was a language that a lot of people knew I started learning English when I was about five and I would show up to people and say to tourists and say my house is big this is an apple because those are the two phrases I knew how to say but from there language became a guiding principle in my life because I saw how language had the power to get us closer together to connect us to unite us to heal relationships and ourselves and also the power that language had to separate to hurt to damage relationships our perception of ourselves and our world I grew up in Argentina at a time where we had a military government and so there were certain things that we were allowed to say certain things we were not allowed to say people in my family had different political opinions there were lots of Rifts and fights in my family because of how they communicated their different views and then within my my family my mother is comes from Italian immigrants my my grandmother there were lots of interrelational issues that was creating a lot lot of separation and a lot of suffering in my family so I was really attuned to wow just a word can create this Chasm between people who grew up together who were siblings who maybe loved each other and with just one word or one phrase all that can disintegrate so I became very interested in studying language and communication from that perspective but I didn't know how to find that taes in in Argentina and where I grew up so the closest I could do for me was to study translation and interpreting and also to study language acquisition and teaching English as a foreign language or or a second language so I got those two master's degrees which helped me a lot to understand language linguistics so social Linguistics psycho Linguistics what happens when we learn a language why do we learn a language and the implications of having two languages you know you are bilingual too yeah and so when you say something in one language versus another language you are naming that reality in a different way and one of my linguistic professors at the University asked us to bring a definition of language and we all brought like these lofty definitions from Big linguists known linguists and then she patiently listened to all of us and then she said have you ever thought that language is a way to look at reality and that you know like just those emojis that you know make your brain explode for me my heart my mind everything within me explode because then my question was what is reality and if language is a way to look at it and to view it wow like and who gets to determine what reality is so from there I started a process of being on um on a path of seeking what reality was we can call it a spiritual path and I had the fortune of having my father who had already gone on that path and he started teaching me meditation and and talking to me about esoteric topics and Alchemy since I was about 10 and I'm not going to share the whole story but I moved to another country then 99 I came to the US and years later I got married now by the time I got married I had been working on in the field of language communication for
Marriage and the Wake-Up Call 7:00
about I don't know like 15 years or something like that so you would think I knew something you know little bit about language and communication but I didn't because when my beloved and I had our first year of marriage we had a very intense fight I don't remember what the context of that fight was and I remember after that by then I had a robust meditation practice and a yoga practice I went to a yoga class when I came out of the yoga class I realized this was in San Francisco Dolores Street for anybody who knows that and know that is familiar to you T yes I was walking with my mat and it dawned on me wow I don't really know how to communicate with my beloved because all I'm doing is replicating the way my parents communicated with one another when they were triggered when they were uncomfortable when they felt angry or sad with each other and that realization transformed my life and put me on a path of how can I find the transformative aspect of language that we usually don't talk about from how can we not repeat pattern right that are not useful to us yes and they're not useful to us because what I found later is that these patterns are not in alignment with our deepest values our most profound longings and the vision that we have for our lives our relationships and the world so starting there right the vision piece which is so big yeah the vision is huge because this relationship I had with my beloved and let's put it in context I was living in Boston now I was living in San Francisco we decided that in fact I I really pushed to like no let's be in San Francisco I really loved California and Northern California specifically and I felt at home there there was something about that place that feels that yes this is I need to be and I didn't know anybody so it was my first year of marriage I didn't know anybody but my beloved whom I had met eight months before we got married we fell in love it was you know movie like romance and then we're like okay let's get married but I was living in Boston he was in San Francisco and then we needed to decide where to live and I was like I let's go to San Francisco So within that he was the main person I was communicating with consistently constantly I didn't have other people around me yet I didn't have a community yet and so my invitation at that after that yoga class was to go within and to look at how I was communicated with him that was what I realized was there was no chance zero% of chance that I was going to be able to fulfill the intentions I expressed to Matthew my beloved in front of our family and Community when we got married that is to say our vision there was no way I was going to fulfill that vision of our marriage if I continued communicating in the way I was communicating and I'm just going to name what that was when I felt uncomfortable when I felt sad when I felt dis appointed when I allowed myself to tap a little bit into anger which was an unfamiliar feeling for me and because my beloved did or said something I would do a couple of things including shutting down giving him the cold shoulder stay Silent not be able to make eye contact I would try to even though I may stay there in the room with him I I was not there I had vacated myself and to put things even more into context my beloved is an attorney he went to school and learned how to argue and win an argument oh if I talk to the person I want to spend the rest of my life with and not just spend the rest of my life with but I want to grow with until my last breath if I talk to him in this way to try to win an argument there's going to be winners and losers he's going to win every time and I don't want to have a marriage in which the parameter for satisfaction is a winner or a loser I want something deeper yeah beautiful and you know arriving at that I'd love that you share the moment too of realizing what your vision was and how there's no way to fulfill it if you're shutting down and if you're not able to communicate with somebody especially with somebody who's been trained to communicate even though I feel like that applies to all couples and and sometimes might be the man that just shuts down and goes out right or or sort of escapes the conversation Al together and it's really hard to come to any kind of agreement or a new vision or become solution minded when one person just completely withdraws so then what has so after having that realization what came next well what came next was a lot of study exploration that um I studied nonviolent communication for about eight years went to all the Retreats the Train the trainer Retreats the leadership Retreats then I continued looking for working with and studying with meditation teachers uh teachers from ancient wisdom traditions where there was some component about the inner dialogue or the power of language or skillful communication and um and so I studied
Language Alchemy and Its Three Levels 14:00
mainly with tantric teachers from Indian traditions and what psychology and um in tibetan traditions and then I went back to school to CIS the California Institute of integral studies and I did a program that's called transformative leadership within the school of Consciousness and transformation where I studied the transformative aspect of language and communication and that was my focus and after that language Alchemy was born and many people ask me what language Alchemy is and language Alchemy is unlike other communication approaches where you have an issue and then okay you need to say this phrase or if you say it in this way then maybe you can solve that issue that's how I started working but what I found over the years was that people would come back and say well that technique didn't work because people were learning communication as a technique and many people were learning communication as a soft skill what language Alchemy is is something very different it is it has three main components it has an individual component which is an awareness practice awareness of how we're using language first and foremost in our internal dialogue and that is to say our intrapersonal communication and then the second component is a communication approach that's relational and that has to do with how we're using language and the impact that language is having in our relationships and how we're maintaining developing building relationships with others and being conscious of that that is maybe where more of the techniques if you will come but they are grounded on awareness so it's a complete communication approach that's grounded on awareness and then the third component is a social component which is an evolutionary activist practice in which we consider what is the vision that we want to have for the world and that includes us understanding our biases understanding how we treat other precious human beings and the impact we want to have with our language and communication and the Legacy we want to leave in the world based on leaving a legacy of equality equity and understanding that unless we all collaborate with one another our beautiful planet and our beautiful Human family is not going to make it yes that is the sad but true reality that's kind of facing us right now I feel like this is a very pivotal moment um wow so thank you so much it is such a rich journey and I can see the deep love and respect that you have for the process and for the work that you do and being able to accompany that over the years and knowing of the many people and couples that have been able to really find more peace more connection more love really because now they can really fully open up to one another and so it's really very special to have seen the transformation that you have helped create in the world um thank you so I have some questions I'm wondering as far as the many tools that you share with your clients and as you talked about that first step being the awareness which is actually where I think we should start how can you help somebody develop the awareness of what they internal languages and especially you know knowing that we have so many repetitive thoughts out of the maybe 60,000 thoughts and there's some some variation on the number of thoughts that a person has each day but it's thought that um a big percentage of that up to 80% are repetitive thoughts how does one start becoming aware of what those thoughts are and the in the language that's used in that those thoughts and those thought patterns yeah thank you so this is where awareness practices like meditation or mindfulness that allow us to develop an inner Observer so we're about to say something and we ask ourselves what am I about to say or we go through our day and we stop to consider what am I thinking right now what am I saying to myself these are just very simple practices that we can have throughout the day something else that I like to give my students and clients is to go for a walk and take this device I'm holding a phone in my hand for those of you who may be listening but not watching and pretend that we are talking to someone but take that inner dialogue out loud and say things out loud so that we can hear what we are saying you were talking about how we have about 60,000 s thoughts or 66,000 s thoughts you know some linguists say that and that most of these thoughts are repetitive we need to find what are they repetitive about out because most of the time they are repetitive about either ourselves about telling us who we are or they're repetitive about our relational uh configuration with others telling us who the other is in relationship to us and that has huge implications for the decisions that we make in our lives how we live live how we communicate whether we have healthy relationships whether we have a healthy life whether we're growing or we are stuck in some past version of ourselves and Frozen there so the first thing I would say is try to either say something out loud if you don't have a meditation practice or mindfulness practice say out loud what you're thinking start in the shower say out loud what you're thinking listen to that voice and when you hear those messages then ask yourself what are these messages saying about me because most of the time those messages are not true they're just stories furthermore they are stories that we have heard during our first seven years of life from our parents and Main caregivers our teachers and our society so let me give you an example let's say that you're in a in the shower and you're thinking something like oh I have so much to do today I don't know that I have time but you know I need to get all these things done and I need to get really good at them oh and now I'm thinking about oh if I don't make this dish that I thought I was going to make for my family or if I and then a lot of anxiety starts to come in but you don't even know that you're having that anxiety unless you are able
Building Awareness of Inner Dialogue 22:00
to really listen to wait a minute how am I talking to myself and now let's go and look at how you are talking to yourself in just maybe early in the morning if you shower in the morning and you're starting your day that way yes so what you're saying to yourself is I don't have a lot of capacity there is not much I can do life is filled with shoulds life is an obligation things are right or wrong if I do the wrong thing I will be somehow punished or I'll have a bad experience if I try yeah or I I may not be lovable you know others may not love me my f if I don't make that dish my family may not love me and so then they're going to abandon me and they're going to love somebody else more than they love me and wow if this is how we're going to start the day that is going to have a huge impact on the rest of the day the clothes we decide to wear the first activity we decide to do even if the first activity we decide to do is to make that dish that meal for our family it's not going to come from a place of love it's going to come Place o yeah and I I find that especially today with we have our devices and we have these ways of getting dopamine through social media or whatever when all those uncomfortable feelings Bubble Up and it brings up all that stress we might go into the Escape where it's like it's just too uncomfortable and now we're dealing with you know other ways to kind of soothing and I love that you mentioned about the first seven years of life because often I feel like those voices or that language that we're using it's not even our own voice or our own language it is really imported and I find that for me and the work I do with my clients I often ask people what is the first thought that comes to your mind when you look at yourself in the mirror being aware of that right is there a thought of love a loving kind message that's coming out toward yourself or is it always like oh it look like crap or I didn't get on sleep or you know all these sort of critical and judgmental um and even thoughts of rejection towards ourselves so if we can start the day in a place where a we're aware of that but B can start really shifting that conversation and understanding is that really my own would I say that to myself would I say that to somebody I love every day um so yeah thank you thank you for bringing that um did maybe there was more you wanted to say too about this awareness so apologies if I interrupted you no no no that that's beautiful and I think that once we have that awareness like you were saying the second question I like my clients and students to ask themselves is yes we can ask ourselves is this mine but I usually ask them who does this agree with who does this idea that you know giving going back to the shower example that I'm not capable that I'll never have enough time to do all the things I would like to do that I need to be lovable and I need to show my love through my doing and not my being who do those ideas agree with usually it's not us usually it's not our values usually it is beliefs that we have inherited and language we have inherited from others and especially you know I'm so glad you talked about when we look ourselves in the mirror you and I we are we were born and identify with a female body and the all the messages that we have had in society about the value of women equals being beautiful According to some internal standard that's not even ours and what if Beauty didn't matter many times I ask my beloved how many times do you think about how beautiful you are how many times do you think about what you're going to wear what your hair looks like and many times he's looked at me and said huh uh you know like a be in the headlights like what what do you mean what and yeah yeah yes and as you can all hear my my beloved is a uh is male so we are in a heterosexual relationship and so he did not grow up with any of those imposition and impositions and expectations but we have so what if when even before we look at ourselves in the mirror when we wake up in the morning we can sense in to our true being that which is unchanging no matter if we're 50 70 seven however old we are what if we could just tap into the actual Jewel like quality of who we are that Essence and we're able to feel into the Gratitude of another day this is my life I I get to be in this beautiful life then we start the day differently then we go to the mirror and we look at the mirror and we say yes this is my life and that beauty idea is not even there yeah it's so true and the the even the idea of having light beaming out of our eyes you know like that's Beauty right regardless of the face configuration or the body shape and size eyes there's a different kind of connection to Divine Beauty and I love that you said that because one of the first things I might my clients to do is hand in the heart hand in the belly before you get out of bed ah feel your breath the gift of another day of another breath of all all that our bodies do 247 every single cell all the M organisms we are this community we're actually a community we we have this illusion of being this one s thing right that we see as you and me but we're a community and so being able to connect to that deep place of gratitude of essence the jewel like Essence as you mentioned the breath and the opportunity of a new day is so important for having a day where it does feel like opportunity and possibility and enjoyment versus waking up already thinking I've got so much to do which is a very different way to start the day right yes and even if we have hardships you know I imagine that many viewers and listeners here are saying oh well that's so lovely when things are going your way and how about when there's disease how about when you need to take care of someone how about when there's poverty how about when there's war and people are being killed how about when we tap in into the real suffering of our world well we get up in the morning and that's when we say I am so grateful I'm here because I can be of support I can be an agent of healing I can be an agent of peace I can contribute to my family right now I can I have the capacity to take care of my sick partner or parent or child or yes I don't have the financial resources I need right now and I have other inner resources that can help me find the financial resources or can Orient me in a way in which I can find what I need in multiple ways and then again we put ourselves in the place of the possibility and the opportunity but
Values, Impact, and Moving Beyond Right and Wrong 31:00
especially in the place of capacity that we are here and as adults we are able we are capable of speaking to ourselves in a way that we can face whatever life has in store for us because and that's coming back to that capacity and possibility letting every cell in our body know that we trust our capacity to heal or capacity to support someone else or our capacity to find a solution for our financial problems everything in our body follows suit when we engage more with the thought of I can't say with your shower example right all you I think everybody listening can already feel the stress when we're going I don't have time for anything and I'm not going to get through this day and it's going to be really stressful our bodies believe our thoughts and there's a Cascade of events that happens because we start releasing cortisol I mean there's a true physiological response that's happening to every thought and it's affecting our vus nerve it's affecting our immune system it's affecting our cardiovascular system we start producing less of the really amazing neurotransmitters that help us feel good like serotonin Gaba and dopamine our digestion changes so it's like there are so many areas and systems in the body that get affected by our engagement with the thoughts and so we have a real true choice we may not have Choice over our circumstances but we have that choice of how we start the day how we maintain sanity within our own internal language so that we can navigate the world in a little bit brighter space yeah yes and that Joy starts with awareness and developing awareness so just going back a little bit the first step is to become aware of the dialogue that we have internally what part of that dialogue is about ourselves what it says about ourselves what part of our dialogue is about others and what it says about others in relationship to us I gave you some examples of talk speaking out loud taking yourself for a walk using your phone if that's useful the the second thing we talked about was to understand that this is not yours this is something you have inherited the language you speak is a language you have inherited someone and a lot of people taught you what to say when you feel angry sad elated enthusiastic overwhelmed stressed neutral these are things that you didn't come to the world with you come to the world with the ability to express yourself and communicate but the language we use has been taught and passed down to us so we need to ask ourselves who do these things these these words these thoughts these beliefs agree with and then the third thing we need to do is to understand the impact so you were talking t is about the internal impact in our internal community and then we need to look at what is the impact that this inner dialogue is having in the closest relationships with our most intimate others then we can look at what is the impact that this internal dialogue is having not only in our closest relationships but also in our larger communities and in our belief belief systems about the world and the kind of world we want to leave and potentially inhabit right now with others so this is when we can see just like with langage Alchemy I was saying it's individual then it's relational and then it's social with the evolutionary activism when we learn to communicate authentically that is to say when we learn to communicate as the Beautiful mature adults that we are in alignment with our values and our vision then we learn to look at the impact and see is this the impact I want and if it's not it's time to work on your communication and is this the Legacy I want to leave in the world is this the world I want to inhabit and if the answer is no then it's time to work on our communication and look at our biases and the values that we have and the values that we want to perpetuate in not just in the future but also in the present especially if we're parents the way that our internal language is then impacting how we then are becoming our children first communication and language teachers and the beliefs we're imposing on them and the language we're imposing on them and that's going to be perpetuated so these are all the three levels we need to look at and how we can start from the internal dialogue does that make sense to you thank you so much for summarizing it so beautifully and kind of returning to it because I think that's really clear and I hope people listening watching um really capture that and I'll I'll put it on the notes too so that we have those three steps that's so powerful um how I mean if already given so many examples of this but I wonder if we could talk a little bit more about then how is that impact in our relationships once we understand how our patterns communicating internally are either helping causing peace or or you know allowing for peace or causing stress and we've maybe applied some of those ways of really identifying oh and is this aligned with my values and my vision no then we kind of can shift and to how would I align that so that then we can communicate more clearly and maybe at the end of that I really want to come back to children because that's certainly a big interest of mine being a mother and and often asking myself you know how am I influencing or imposing um my own stuff into my child who I want to be a free thinker a critical thinker somebody who can inhabit his own um Essence right and knowing that yes as the ego forms I'm going to mess up many times because that's parents there's no perfect parenting and so there will be an imprint in his ego for sure but how can I also help him then start questioning these things right so yeah so back to that first first question of like once we identified how can we start shifting that into how we communicate well the first thing we need to do so this awareness practice is based on listening if you know you've all been paying attention it's all about listening to ourselves then we need to shift into okay if we realize that what we hear in our internal dialogue is somebody else's it was an imposition it was conditioning it agrees with somebody else and not us then we need to connect to what truly matter to us what matters so is for some of us it's going to be love for others it may be safety connection it may be compassion collaboration and of course it will also depend on the context because communication there's no formula in communication communication depends on the context that's how it's authentic when it's spontaneous and context aware so we need to look at what are the values that are important to us and then look at how we are communicating and behaving because every behavior is communication how we're communicating and behaving that it moves us away from our values and here is where we have a crucial choice that crucial choice is is when we look at things that we're doing that are away from our values we can look at it from a perspective of right and wrong oh I'm doing the wrong thing now again I am terrible I am you know I'm such a loser when am I gonna learn um I'm not a good person and oh my gosh then we're back to who does what are we saying to ourselves how is that impacting us you know we going back to the beginning awareness of that or that way of looking at the world looking at ourselves looking at our behaviors looking at our La our language is a world that most of us is a kind of language and a paradigm that most of us have inherited the right wrong Paradigm that leads us to war it leads us to war in our hearts it leads us to war with one another it leads us to war with our Nations and that's what we're seeing in
Communication, Children, and Self-Love 41:00
the world we're living in it is a language of War when we are caught up in the right wrong thing Paradigm we are going to have a war where someone's going to get hurt someone's going to be wounded or killed and we use language like I'm killing it I'm crushing it ah I cringe yeah when I hear that language because we're still using all this language that it's about to feel good means I need to conquer and dominate and kill it and crush it and Destroy what if in that crucial point when we realize that we have moved away from our values we say to ourselves oh I'm moving away from these values how can I come back to what matters to me that is a much more simple and humble way of coming back to what matters to us and by the way that kind of language is transformative is there's no there's no ickiness inside there's nothing we need to fight we're not at War we're just noticing oh go ahead yeah we're not wasting our energy getting stuck into that whole other realm of again stress causing thought patterns right that just takes away literally robs our energy so beautiful the way you put it because now if we can just see oh this is what I'm doing how can I get back now we're solution minded and we can use our beautiful valuable breaths to go into that direction versus getting stuck into the right or wrong good or bad so this is when language becomes really alchemical and for anybody listening whenever we hear someone saying oh we need to work with our mindset what they're really saying is we need to work with our language we need to transform our language but it's not just about imposing I don't give my clients and students affirmations I am this I am that because that would be again another imposition and what I teach people is to communicate authentically and to find those affirmations if they're useful for them from within from their own wisdom nature which is much more powerful than anything I could tell them or say yeah so when when we do that and we say oh let me let me come back to what matters to me now our language our communication is completely different we are doing that in a resourceful way we're res sourcing ourselves back and coming back to our capacity the same thing with children when children you know you wanted to talk about children when children are doing things that do not agree with us that are not in alignment with our values well first of all we need to ask ourselves okay what are our values uh what are they doing that I'm uncomfortable with where is this discomfort is this discomfort something I inherited is it okay for or something that I'm uncomfortable with and and then if we need to guide them back we guide them back through connection not through chastising shaming criticizing which is again using a language of war with our children so we come back through connection and then what we do is a lot of listening and sometimes talking oh and then the notion of having a family Vision which I think is so important even with children who are young is still possible to create something where you have a clear sense of how you want to be in the world what are the things you want to contribute to right contribute to Healing nature for example right or um ways to contribute to the community or just ways to experience more joy that kids can get that too and so then in those moments it can become easier to say well let's come back to how do we come back to Joy right now or how do we come back to um being in peace with our community say if it's about a fight or something like that um and I wonder if I can ask you Alejandra in that moment when you realized with your beloved that you were communicating in a way that wasn't in alignment with your values how then did you shift to to come back to how you wanted to then communicate and and be in alignment with your values with your spouse I learned to be completely honest and humble with the way I was communicating I need to I learned to see how painful that was for me to communicate in that way how painful how much pain it was causing to my beloved so the impact that my communication had and see that clearly without again punishing myself but saying no I I want to see out of the love that I have for myself and for this man and the vision I have for that we both have for our marriage and um and then I learned how to communicate differently by studying different communication approaches and coupled with meditation and wisdom Traditions to connect deeply to what is true me so when we are children taes what happens is that our brains are not developed our sense of self is not developed and so the language that we hear from our parents when they tell us you are too shy you are too loud you're too much why are you so angry all the time why are you so sad all the time whatever it is that they're telling us we take that at face value and then we believe that those things that we keep hearing from our parents and caregivers are us and so we need to look at is that really us no it isn't what is really us of course there's a there's an interconnectedness where we all have essential and intrinsic goodness and lovability and capacity and intelligence and then there are flavors of of us that are more about not only our personality but also well some of us have Tendencies to different things that make up who we are so we need to find that and then we need to learn how to communicate that that that requires shifting our communication but first we need to get honest and humble with how we are communicating we cannot shift if you go to any communication Workshop where what you're going to learn is techniques and skills without looking at the impact of what you're doing right now without getting really honest and transparent and humble with yourself and vulnerable with yourself and seeing how you are communicating now then that's not going to shift right then we're going to relate to others at a superficial level because that's just going to be another imposition but when we become adults in our communication we understand that so many of these things that in the past when we were children came from the outside they need to come from within and they do right so that lovability doesn't depend on others doesn't depend on us making that meal that safety that sense of connection that sense of capacity doesn't depend on whether we did three things in our to do list or 10 yes can everybody take a deep breath and take that in right now because um yeah it's so important and I think some of us operate in that way without even thinking about it right like it's not that we're making the conscious decision well I have to do all these things and sacrifice for my family in order to be loved we may not be doing that from a rational kind of recognition standpoint but we might be operating under that assumption because of these old patterns old language ways that we've been talking to ourselves and again following somebody else's version of reality and what's an agreement with them versus what we can really feel into and and have a a sense of value right now about our lives about ourselves and um you know this the notion of growing deepening self-love is such a guiding principle of the work that I do because in holistic nutrition you know people can have the perfect diet for their body type or you know exercise a lot and do all these things but if those internal dialogues or internal language isn't addressed there's always something something missing and it's harder to make choices that come from a caring loving place um they those choices sometimes the eating or the exercising can come from a sense of punishment and a sense of you know if I don't do this then I'm not worthy and so that shifting that I feel like it's such an important piece to connect with that selflove and so what would you say in your understanding what a language of self love might look like or sound like and again obviously everybody's going to have their own and like you said you know even with the affirmations like it has to come from your student or your client but are there some more General um phrases or thought or feelings that you associate with that deepening of self love and your internal language yes so to me it comes in the form of questions and not statements because questions linguistically open and energetically open us up to possibilities where statements claim something and make something solid that may be changing and make something unchanging that is temporary so questions that we can ask ourselves be out of love is what matters to me in this moment what do I need right now what are the capacities that need to show up within me right now to be in this conversation to make this change in my life what is the vision that I want to have at the end of the day of who I have been and when we ask ourselves those
Finding Alejandra and Closing Resources 53:00
questions that are open questions they're not yes no questions am I good or bad am I this or that but when we ask ourselves those questions you know like even like you go to a restaurant and you look at the menu and you can say oh well you know everybody's having I'm I'm um a pescatarian I don't need meats and I could look at the restaurant the menu and say Well everybody's having Burgers I should not be left out and um what are others going to think of me you know that would have been my old way of thinking or I can look at the menu and say h what do my body need right now what would be nourishing to me in this moment that would allow me to enjoy the company of these friends or these situation and then stay true yeah enjoy company and stay true to my values which you know in your case like I don't need to me eat me to belong right yes or again the open question yes and you know for those of you who are listening because let again let's look at the context because I grew up in Argentina and in Argentina meat is a big component of not only food but also belonging not um not eating meat was for me a journey of authenticity where I had to depart from what I have learned from my family and my culture that was the quote unquote good thing and how you belong and do something else and still belong and still be authentic and still be lovable and loved and safe beautiful ah thank you so much this has been so so rich I feel like let me need to have a a second because there's so much we can still uh talk about in this topic I just am deeply grateful for you sharing your wisdom and your journey and um please tell us a little bit how people can find you I know there's a really um very informative quiz on your website right now um around self-sabotaging communication habits and I think self-sabotaging is one of those things where I think it's so important it's another piece of awareness that if we know what are the things we're doing to sabotage our deepest desires then we can start changing right we can start removing obstacles for ourselves and so um we tell us a little bit about your website and things that you might have coming up yes of course you can all find me at language alchemy.com you know it's beautiful when we want to make deep changes and transformation to be in community of others just like when people come to your cleanses TI and to your groups and they this is when we feel oh I'm not alone it's not just me and then you are surrounded with a community of people who are also on that same path that is not only so powerful but we know from all these Sciences of transformation and change that being in groups is what truly supp supports us in our transformation it's the greatest Catalyst and um so going going back to that yes my website is language alchemy.com and you can find me on Instagram at language Alchemy Facebook same thing and I have a quiz to help you bring awareness to your communication and specifically to that self-sabotaging communication habit that is not allowing you right right now to have the kind of life and healthy relationships that you long for and that you deserve the word deserve the emology means to be of service so you are going to find that in that quiz what is that communication pattern that is not of service to you and to those around you to find that quiz you simply go to language alchemy.com quiz and then you find it and once you take the quiz you are going to get a mini video training from me which has three parts it's a three video training where you're going to be working it's not just about being aware of that but what do you do once you're aware with that sneaky habit right that self-sabotaging habit so then you're going to get a mini training as to how to start working with that with that habit and then I I invite you to sign up to my mailing list because in my mailing list which you can also find at language alchemy.com when you sign up to my mailing list every week every Wednesday you are going to get not only personal stories in which I share how I am working with communication or how I'm working with clients with communication but you're also going to find steps for example last week I shared seven steps of how we work with our internal dialogue when things are not going our way and um and I also have a podcast which is called the language Alchemy podcast which is now in its third year and it's uh been listened to in 48 countries which I'm so excited about so yeah so you can you can do all those things I do group coaching I have one coming up in the fall at the end of August that you can check out if you go to language alchemy.com so all those opportunities I would say for now start with a quiz and then maybe listen to some podcasts join the newsletter fantastic thank you again so much for being here thank you so much thank you and thank you also for the beautiful work you do I've seen you grow and shift perspectives and in a way that you're going deep deeper and deeper so I'm really appreciative of what you do ta and I love you so much oh love you bye bye
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