Surviving the Side Hustle

E127 - From Self-Doubt to Self-Acceptance: Healing Inner Barriers with Christian De La Huerta

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 127

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What if finding love isn't about the search, but about removing what blocks us from experiencing it? Christian de la Huerta, transformational coach and award-winning author with 30 years of experience, reveals the internal barriers that prevent us from creating authentic connections.

"It's not our job to look for love, but to look within ourselves for the obstacles to love," Christian explains as we explore why so many of us repeat the same relationship patterns with different partners. We dive deep into how our subconscious protective mechanisms lead us to attract unavailable people or sabotage promising connections before they have a chance to flourish.

Christian shares powerful insights about emotional triggers and how they reveal our deepest wounds. That person who consistently shows up late and drives you crazy? Your reaction has nothing to do with them and everything to do with unresolved feelings of being disrespected or undervalued from your past. Understanding these triggers creates pathways to freedom instead of remaining enslaved to our automatic emotional responses.

Drawing from his personal journey through depression and conflict between his sexuality and spiritual calling, Christian brings authenticity and depth to his teachings. His latest book "Conscious Love" outlines ten problem areas where relationships typically get derailed, starting with the fundamental mistake of expecting relationships to make us complete or happy.

This conversation challenges conventional thinking about emotions, love, and power. Christian reframes emotions not as weaknesses but as energies moving through our bodies that only become problematic when suppressed. He distinguishes between the feeling of love and the act of loving, which sometimes requires difficult choices that don't feel immediately pleasurable.

For anyone struggling with relationship patterns, emotional reactivity, or the courage to look within, this episode offers practical wisdom and a compassionate perspective. Connect with Christian at soulfulpower.com to learn about his books, retreats, and transformational programs designed to help you break free from limiting patterns and create relationships that actually have a chance of thriving.

Speaker 1:

What's going on everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Surviving the Side Hustle. I'm excited to dive into our conversation with our guest today because our guest is Christian de la Huerta and he is a transformational coach, award-winning author and TEDx speaker with 30 years of experience guiding individuals and couples towards fulfilling relationships. He helps clients break free from internal barriers to love, fostering authentic connections, through his unique approach that transcends conventional therapy. His latest book, conscious Love, builds on this work, providing practical tools for deeper intimacy, empowers individuals to unlock their potential, creating lasting positive changes in their lives and communities. So, christian, how are you doing today? Welcome to the show. I'm excited to kind of dive in and hear more about your story and things you've got going on. So welcome, my man.

Speaker 2:

Hey, thanks so much for having me on the show, Rob. I've really been looking forward to this and I know it's going to be an interesting conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. I'm excited and just as we before we started recording, I heard that you're out in Colorado, Um, and I feel like that's pretty cool. It's a place that I've always wanted to get out to. So can you kick it off Like how'd you get there, How'd you get into this relationship business? How was it like writing your book?

Speaker 2:

Let's this relationship business? How was it like writing your book? I'm excited to dive in. Well, each one of those is a question that could go in many directions. I guess you could say the short answer to Colorado. I've been doing work here for many years, before the pandemic, mostly in Denver. There was a yoga studio that I used to do. They used to weave me and had me do a retreat for every one of their yoga teacher trainings. So then when those teachers went out and started teaching in the community, they referred people to me. So the work started really taking off here until the pandemic hit, and then I've been kind of nomadic. I spent time in South America. Since the pandemic. I wanted to improve my Spanish, even though it's my first language. I've been here since I was 10. So I have much more vocabulary in English than I do in Spanish. And then love struck and met somebody on a cruise in Croatia of all places on the Adriatic Sea, under a full moon, and ended up spending time here in Colorado and Aspen now.

Speaker 1:

So is that your cheat sheet to finding love? Just go on a cruise full moon and out over in Croatia.

Speaker 2:

The cheat sheet is this. It's paraphrasing the Course in Miracles that says it's not our job to look for love, but to look within ourselves for the obstacles to love. So how are we keeping love at bay? Or how are we sabotaging our relationships before the get-go? By attracting the wrong people, by falling for people who are not a match, who are not available, and of course, we don't get up in the morning and decide to do this. It's a subconscious protective mechanism.

Speaker 2:

So if we want to remove those internal obstacles to love, in my retreats and in my workshops we look into areas, and two areas. One of them is the whole constellation of self-esteem. You know, beliefs about ourselves, because if we're not really valuing and honoring ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to do so? We're just going to attract people who reflect that to us. And then the other and the thing about this that it's all misunderstandings, all those beliefs that there's something wrong with me, I'm not good enough, I'm too much of this, not enough for that. They're all misunderstandings, stuff that we misheard, stuff that somebody said to us in a moment of overwhelm when we were kids and we took it on as truth and it's not true.

Speaker 2:

Then we also look in the area of beliefs about relationships, because if we have stuff going on within, you know that if I get into another relationship, I'm going to be cheated on, I'm going to be left, I'm going to be betrayed. All relationships end up in hurt and conflict. Who in their right mind would want to get into a relationship? So there's a part of us that still wants to be that. You know, that kind of intimate love that we all long for, most of us long for. Then there's the protective things like whoa, whoa, whoa. So we end up doing this come here, come here, but not too close. And that's what's underneath these patterns when we end up falling for, you know, for people who are not a match.

Speaker 1:

Is that what drove you to learning about this? So where did you develop the skills? My question here is did you use all the things that you teach in order to find your love out on that cruise that one day, or was it something that you kind of been piecing together? Where? How did you get into learning everything about relationships and love and connection with other people?

Speaker 2:

well, you know, I've been doing this kind of work, this personal transformational, psycho-spiritual work, for the last 30, almost 35 years and it's a combination of using concepts like understanding the mind and why we do the things we do. What makes us? You know, what drives us, what makes us do this, the stuff that we do? What? Why do we get stuck in these patterns and these? What triggers us? Why, what are we? What do we get stuck in? These patterns of the, of relationships that sometimes feel like the same old boring movie, only with a different co-lead, a different actor, actor?

Speaker 2:

So I've always had a sense of mission. I always knew that I was going to help people get free, and part of it was the skill set came from freeing myself. I know self-doubt, I know self-hatred, even my entire adolescence was one long depression. So I know how to get out of that kind of mindset, that kind of trap. These days, when I look at my life, no matter what happens, no matter the circumstances, whether a relationship works out or it doesn't, whether a project succeeds or it fails in quotes, I never, ever, ever question my sense of self. That is unshakable and it doesn't depend on anybody's validation or it's just there. So I know that, if that can happen in me through the series of combinations of skill set that I've learned and that I pass on, including breath, of come along a similar journey myself.

Speaker 1:

In case you haven't seen some of the other episodes or any of the episodes where I kind of shared my parents got divorced when I was pretty young and I felt like sports became kind of my gateway into personal development and that also kind of launched a lot of success in my life, because the better shape I got into, the more playing time I got, the more friends I had, which then led to more birthday parties and if I wanted to go to the birthday parties I had to make my grades up and I felt like it was this cycle of constantly, constantly, constantly external validation.

Speaker 1:

And then when I got into entrepreneurship and starting my fitness coaching business, it was scaling up as many clients as I could and I wore that like a badge of honor because I wanted everybody to know how busy I was and thinking like, okay, yeah, this, everybody now has this idea of me.

Speaker 1:

And then I kind of get trapped in that, because anytime somebody needed to cancel, I would try to appease them by making myself more available for them and it just I lost myself trying to please everybody else in a way. And then I think, when I restart, when I shifted gears and went down the new journey to kind of figure out what I really want to be doing, which is this high performance coaching. I think I kind of placed different values on myself and what I'm saying is it's a long journey trying to figure out how to love yourself and really put yourself first in all of this and for to short track it, what are some things that people can do to kind of begin those steps or start that journey, if they're kind of like me, where they're kind of trapped, trying to people, please everybody.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a beautiful journey. Thanks so much for sharing that. And you're right, like, what you got to, which is what all of us need to get to, is valuing ourselves and really honoring ourselves and loving ourselves. And it all begins with self-awareness. We can't do anything about what we can't see, so why do we do the things we do? So that's the first step, you know asking the questions, going within. There's no way around going within and facing ourselves and asking the questions of why we do what we do, if we want to be free. And so beginning that process of self-awareness, noticing what doesn't trigger us, what we like, what we don't like, what are our preferences, what are our dreams. So becoming more aware of who we are and what makes us tick, and then extending that filter of awareness a little bit like zooming out a little bit more. So we begin to look at the patterns.

Speaker 2:

Why do we attract certain kind of people? Why do we get stuck in the same old boring argument, even with a different actor or different players? The same boring crap coming up again and again? So why is that? Why, for example, say you and I have a friend, joe, and I have Joe with lunch, joe, lunch with Joe on Mondays. You have lunch with him on Wednesdays. Joe is inevitably late. And there I am on Monday. It's like shit, I knew, I knew that I should have given him the wrong time so that he'd show up on time and get all worked up. And then, whereas you, it's like wow, great, I have an extra 20 minutes. Let me return that phone call. Let me look at my email. Why is it I that I'm getting triggered?

Speaker 2:

And if we start asking those hard questions because it's not really about Joe, it's like, if I start zooming out and asking that question, it's like why does it bother me when somebody shows up late and it's not to excuse the lateness, by the way, that's a whole other conversation but why does it trigger me? I'm not going to control Joe's behavior. I have a choice about whether I have lunch with Joe or not, but I'm not going to control his likeness. And so the only way out of this dynamic is either choosing not to have lunch with Joe anymore or doing the deeper work. It's like why does it bother me? Why do I get triggered?

Speaker 2:

And so if I zoom out, it's like wait a minute, it's not just when Joe is late, it's when anybody shows up late out. It's like, wait a minute. It's not just when Joe is late, it's when anybody shows up late, and if I get even more on I zoom out a little bit more. It's like when anybody cuts me off in conversation, cuts me off in traffic. It's that same kind of feeling that comes up when Joe shows up late.

Speaker 2:

What is that right? What am I feeling? It's like. Am I feeling not respected, not seen, not valued? And those feelings are really way older than my lunches with Joe. And once I'm willing to do that work and use the trigger, the circumstance, to find out what's really going on under the surface, then I have the choice. I can do something about it. Because as long as that stuff is subconscious, I stop having, you know, cut Joe off, then I start having lunch with Mary. Mary's going to start showing up late until I get the lesson. What's really going on? And then I can do some healing and make some real choices about whether to continue the friendship or not.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that and I'm huge on self-awareness and consciously acting and thinking on a lot of different things that's going on in your business. I specifically talk a lot about creating momentum in small businesses and individuals who have side hustles, but I believe self-awareness is paramount for everything and you should be starting with that. And it can be hard right. So when people are going through these things, you think a lot of people shy away from paying attention and doing that deep work because it's so uncomfortable and it is difficult to kind of turn the camera back around onto ourselves and think about that. And if so, like how do people take a baby step for that? Because it can be scary to think about. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

It's like I call it a heroic path. You know it's the stuff of heroes to look within and to ask these hard questions about why. You know, look at our inner demons and what bothers us and why. But it is so infinitely worthwhile because otherwise we just continue projecting all that stuff subconsciously onto all of our relationships, personal or professional, and that stuff is going to continue getting in the way and sabotaging our success. Stuff is going to continue getting in the way and sabotaging our success and getting in the way of everything of our dreams. So I don't see a way around it. Yes, it's hard, yes it's heroic, and to me it's a necessity. And it's just a matter of when do you want to start doing that? Because at some point you're going to have to start doing it or else get stuck in the same old boring patterns of behavior. And it's so worthwhile because the reward for doing this kind of work is freedom, like ultimate freedom.

Speaker 2:

And, yeah, we've been conditioned to not feel we run away from the emotions. We've labeled the emotions weakness, particularly guys. You know, little boys don't cry with that. That's been ingrained into our heads. But there's so many faulty assumptions about that. You know, first of all that, the emotions are weakness. Emotions aren't weakness, they're not strength either. They're not good, they're not bad, they're just energies. Depending on how we express those emotions, they have a good or not so good effect. And then the implicit assumption is that in only little boys cry, is that only little girls cry, so that the feminine is weakness. It's like wait a minute. You want to talk strength, courage, resilience? Let's talk about the power of creation that lies inside a female body, and then we can talk about other stuff. Love that.

Speaker 1:

And I love that you had mentioned there that emotions aren't good or bad, or should be avoiding certain ones, because I feel like I communicate with a lot of individuals and the ones who I work with the most tend to be feeling some sort of stuck or kind of like they're trying to get to some form of happiness or trying to get away from some sadness or depression. And for many people, yeah, maybe it is trying to get into a little more balanced of a state. But when people talk to me and they're like, yeah, I just need more happiness, more happiness, and they're seeking for it. But I'm like you know, these emotions there's no to me, there's no good and bad emotions.

Speaker 1:

You should be open to experiencing all of them. And you should be open to experiencing all of them. And it's okay to feel sad, it's okay to feel mad and it's okay to be angry. But I don't think that it's fair to anybody else in the world if you let those emotions take over your day, your week, your month and really control the things that you're trying to do. And I think all of the emotions are really beautiful and should be experienced and it's okay to go through them. But, like I just said, like you gotta, you gotta know when to kind of all right make a change and move forward from there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, beautifully expressed, rob. Yeah, think of a two-year-old. You know, they have a total meltdown. Two minutes later they're playing like if nothing happened. So that's because they have their emotions fully. Then they move on to the next emotion.

Speaker 2:

We get into trouble with the emotions because we stuff them, we swallow them. And what the problem with that? Well, several problems with that. But if we suppress sadness and we keep suppressing it and we keep suppressing sadness, it congeals, it turns into depression. When we suppress anger and we keep suppressing it, it turns into rage. And then we walk around like raging cauldrons and then the next poor, unfortunate soul says something to us the wrong way and boom, we explode and we cause harm to our relationships.

Speaker 2:

And of course, we're not talking about becoming like throwing tantrums like a two-year-old, but we're talking about achieving emotional self-mastery, which means that, like you're saying, it's like we have access to all of our emotions and we learn how to manage, how to own them as our emotions, rather than pointing the finger and blaming. Oh, you make me so mad. It's like wait a minute. Nobody can make us angry unless we allow it, unless we have that little trigger inside that reacts, that gets activated, nobody can make us feel or do anything.

Speaker 2:

That's a very disempowering way to approach life. We have to me like one of the main and most empowering places that we get to in mindset is getting to that place of owning everything, like taking responsibility for everything in our lives. And that doesn't mean that stuff happened to us in the past that I wish hadn't happened, of course. And it doesn't deny that the system is set up unfairly. And it doesn't deny that bad things happen to good people and that humans do bad things to each other. But as long as we're holding mom for doing this, or daddy for not being there, or the system, or the ex-boss or whatever, or the ex who left us for somebody else, as long as we're holding them responsible for our state of being, for our happiness, we just give our power away again.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that kind of makes me think of when somebody's like like women are just so blah, blah, blah, blah, or men are just oh, men are always doing this and I imagine in your world of work, I imagine you come across a lot of individuals who just eat, sleep and breathe the victim mindset. How do you begin to tackle that when someone comes to you and you're just like, oh whoa, all right, we got to kind of shift this a little bit.

Speaker 2:

That is the single hardest thing that I've come across, that we all struggle with that mindset of poor me. Woe is me. If only this hadn't happened or that happened or this person was in that way, or if the system was different. And again it's like whenever we're holding something outside of us, external to us, responsible for our state of being, we just gave our power away, and often to the perpetrator. And yeah, I know it's almost impossible to break free from that, but it's doable. And it begins by framing it this way. I think so, no matter what happened in the past and no matter what happens going forward, we always get to choose how we show up in response. So we can't control what happened. We're certainly not going to control what happens in the future, because life is going to continue throwing curve balls our way. But once we get, once we really know that no matter what happens, we get to choose how we show up in response. That pops us out of victim mode, that right there, that shift in mindset pops us out of that victim mentality.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I heard a quote some time ago and I can't remember where I heard it or who said it, or even actually what it is accurately, so bear with me. Or even actually what it is accurately, so bear with me. But somebody had said something that really stuck with me, something along the lines of how we have successfully survived 100% of the challenges that we've encountered, so like, keep going, like life's going to continue to throw them at you, but you've already beat every challenge before you, so just be prepared for the next one. And that, I feel like, is always kind of like motivated me and I thought that was kind of cool. I don't know exactly what the quote is, but there's something along those lines.

Speaker 2:

No, no, it's right on. I say something similar that you know, for the thousand times that we have fallen, we've gotten up and dusted ourselves off and kept going. A thousand and one, otherwise we wouldn't be here. So of course we can continue. One, otherwise we wouldn't be here. So of course we can continue dusting ourselves off and getting up and navigating life, the ups and the downs, all of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and I feel like a lot of people, I feel like there's not enough chatter or talk about like cause. We talk about the ups and downs in lives, and I talk about the ups and downs in entrepreneurship and how you want to be stable and you want to be as close to the middle as you can, but still appreciating the different peaks and valleys, and I feel like a lot of people don't talk enough about the peaks because I guess everybody's just constantly trying to go higher, higher and more and more and more. But I think there's something to be said, if you even have anything to comment on, like being conscious of all the success and all the highs and all the excitements, and to and kind of showing a little bit of like having some humble pie and like making sure that you keep it in check, to instead of like flaunting almost, and like making sure you keep things dialed in and staying humble.

Speaker 2:

Yeah for sure. To me, that is the quality that I, that I most admire in spiritual teachers and bosses and other humans is humility, and no matter how successful, how brilliant, how, whatever we are, fill in the blank to have that balance of humility and gratitude for the gifts that we were given to me that makes all the difference, and arrogance, as far as I'm concerned, is really overcompensating for not feeling good enough, Like we have to go out of our way and brag and sing our own praises and pat ourselves on the back. It's because deep down inside we don't feel good enough about ourselves, Whereas, in the opposite, when we know who we are, when we're comfortable with ourselves, when we've gotten to that place of self-acceptance and self-love, then there's nothing to prove. We just be who we are yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love it. I would love to go back to the earlier versions of yourself, when you were kind of going through some of this. You said that your teachings and the things that your experiences came from working through issues within yourself. Do you mind sharing a little bit about some of the darker sides or the darker periods that you went through in your journey to spirituality, or just mindset training, and a little bit about something along the way where it was tough for you, where you were like man, this is some dark days or so.

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah, sure. Like I said, my adolescence was one long depression, even with suicidal fantasies, and I was raised in a really Catholic environment and I thought that I was going to be a priest. And yet I knew that I was gay. And so there I was, part of me wanting to serve the sacred as I understood it then, in a religion that told me that I was gonna burn in hell for eternity, that I was an abomination in the eyes of God, and so that was incredibly difficult, and you know I'm looking back on it now. It's like I would never wanna go through that phase again.

Speaker 2:

But it made me who I am right, it deepened me, it forced me to face those difficult questions about who we are, what we're doing here, what is our relationship to the sacred If you believe in something like that, and what does that mean To me?

Speaker 2:

I mean parenthetically, I don't believe in abominations, but if I were to believe in an abomination, it's the externalization of God, like how much further could we have placed heaven and anything that is sacred away from us?

Speaker 2:

And when we do that, when we externalize the sacred, when we exclude ourselves from that because, by the way, if God is omnipresent, it's everywhere, then that means that it's in us too and that we are part of that and so. But we've been so conditioned to externalize it and so because of that, we treat the planet the way that we do. You know like we have this transactional relationship with the planet, I'm just going to take and take. It's like wham bam. Thank you, ma'am, I'm going to take what I want and see you later, without even regard to our own survival on the planet. And then we have that kind of. You know, we have made the physical less than the quote unquote spiritual. So we have animalized the human body, we have demonized sexuality. So no wonder we have sexual issues, no wonder we have relationship problems, and it all stems from how we see ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it's something that also that I I heard recently some sort of along those lines is hell, like we're not really experiencing the universe, we're are the universe experiencing itself, kind of, and it was saying like we're connected with everybody in every way and yeah. So that was something that kind of jogged my memory when you were saying that there. I would love to kind of dive into shifting it over to the writing and where that began, because I believe that your most recent book is Conscious Love, correct, and there was a book before that, correct, called the Awakening of the Soul of Power. So what was it like pulling those together and could you share a little bit about those books?

Speaker 2:

Well, the first book actually was 20 years ago. It's called Coming Out Spiritually and that's what got me into writing. And there was actually a publisher who approached me and asked me to write you know if I was interested in writing that book? And I had a simultaneous yes, of course. And yikes, who am I to write a book? What do I have to say for 300 pages? And so, in terms of what I've learned about writing, I mean I missed that first deadline, because every time I thought I had to write a book I would just get overwhelmed and I would just blank. And so then I got an extension from the publisher, so we'll give you another nine months. And so now I really got to finish this book.

Speaker 2:

And then my breakthrough in thinking was okay, I've written a bunch of term papers. I know how to write a term paper. I'm just going to like break it down into small, manageable pieces and I'm going to look at a chapter as a term paper. And that's what got me through. Sort of the saying how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I'm not suggesting that, if anybody is thinking of writing a book, that you think of a chapter as a term paper. It's like my chapters are much shorter these days. But just break it down, start. Break it down into manageable pieces, like start with the outline and then flush out the outline All right, I've got the headings.

Speaker 2:

Then what I want to say? Write a paragraph about each of those headings and just start writing and forget about the end result. Just start writing for yourself, even if it never gets published. It's like, get it out of your head. What do you want to say? And we all have stuff to say and we all have incredible experiences to draw from and wisdom that we have, you know, hard-earned wisdom that we've learned along the way that we can share and impart with others. So just start, just write. Some people say develop a practice. You know where you write your morning pages from seven to eight in the morning. It's like I never developed that kind of self-discipline. I think it's a great idea, but for me, unfortunately, I have worked well under deadlines and so for the other two books which I wrote, my I published myself, you know, I created my own deadlines.

Speaker 1:

And so what are the books? What are they about? What separates the book from the previous book, and then the first book too?

Speaker 2:

So this book is Conscious Love the one that just came out and the subtitle is Transforming a Relationship to Relationships. So how do we approach our relationships consciously so that they actually have a chance? Because so part of what I do in that book is outline 10 areas, 10 problem areas where we sabotage or get stuck in our relationships. And the first one is approaching relationships consciously. And what that means to me is, if we're approaching the relationship hoping that it's going to make us happy, that it's going to complete us, that it's going to validate our worth, forget it. There isn't anybody out there who's going to make us happy and it's not their job to. And how unfair to put that responsibility on a person or on the relationship. So those are not going to end up well. So then, hold the conversation with what it means to approach it consciously and different levels of that. Also get into one of the chapters about, you know, settling, because again going back to the question of self-worth, if I'm not valuing myself, how can I value anybody? How can I expect anybody else to value me? So the importance of doing that kind of healing work and becoming more aware of ourselves and our patterns and our triggers and all that stuff we were talking about before Understanding what love is really important. Right, because we confuse the feeling of love, the emotion of love, with the act of loving. Think about, for example, disciplining a child no, you can't have more ice cream because you're going to get sick, or you're not going to sleep, or whatever. Or pulling a child that's running into a busy street. That doesn't feel good, but it's an act of love. We're doing it for their good, so it's a loving act. So we need to separate that feeling of being in love with the actual act of loving. Yeah, so that's what this book is about.

Speaker 2:

The one on power has to do with our relationship to power, because we also have an ambivalent relationship to power. Part of us wants it, part of us is afraid of it, and no wonder We've been conditioned to believe that power is a bad thing. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And what good person wants to be corrupted? And then also, how many abuses of power have we witnessed in our lifetime, whether in our personal lives or on the global scale? So we don't want to be that way either.

Speaker 2:

So what happens tragically is that we end up giving our power away, our inherent power, innate power that nobody can give to us, nobody can take away. We are the only ones who give it away, and, for me, the saddest part about this is the reasons for which we give it away. Like, how many times have we said yes when inside it was really a no, inside it really wasn't okay, but we settle for an illusion of acceptance, a semblance of working relationship, a semblance of peace. We settle for crumbs of pseudo love, and it's not a good strategy, and so the book is about how do we step into power, personal power, in a way that's different, in a way that works for us, that is a match for us and a kind of power that doesn't require that we step on anybody, put our knee to their neck in order for us to feel powerful. How do we do it in a different way?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean my brain was going in a bunch of different directions there and I want to pull back a little bit, because you were talking about how love is often misunderstood and I was thinking about this relatively recently and I was thinking to myself and I was like, wow, you know, even just the word love is so multifaceted, because it is like a noun, it is a verb, it is like all these different things, and so it can mean a lot, and I think people get confused and yeah, people do get confused all the time. Can you explain a little bit more on why you think that is? Because it is. It can be confusing just to think about these emotions, feelings, verbs, all these different things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, all the emotions are confusing because we have been conditioned not to feel and so most of us then to be afraid of the emotions, like we've labeled the emotions weakness. And again, the emotions are just energies coursing through our body and we only get in trouble with them when we suppress them, which we started to talk about. We suppress them and it turns into negative things and we react and then regret because we've been suppressing, suppressing, suppressing. And then the next poor, unfortunate soul says something to us the wrong way and boom, we explode. Or those emotional energies have to move one way or the other. If we don't express them, they start turning into disease, cancer, heart attacks, ulcers. So really important that we learn our emotions, and again responsibly, not like a two-year-old, and then that we retain choice over the matter rather than just reacting immediately. Somebody said something that hurt us or that we interpreted as painful, because again somebody says the same thing to you and it doesn't bother you, but why does it trigger me so much, right? So it's really important that we do that work, because otherwise we become enslaved to 8 billion humans who either they show up later or say something to us the wrong way and then they've got us. They've got us in an emotional reaction. We're out of control. So, again, it's about self-knowledge. It's about accepting the emotions as just energies and developing mastery over them, and I have a chapter on the emotions in the book because we need some help in this area. Most of us maybe have two emotions that we can identify in ourselves, and I know this, by the way, from personal experience.

Speaker 2:

When, when I started doing this work 30 years ago, you would have asked me what's going on? What are you feeling? I didn't know. I had no idea what I was feeling, and especially for guys, it's like even my dad was a psychiatrist and a good one, from what I hear, people that used to work with him but with his own emotions. I think he was clueless, and so what I did back then is I developed a grid which had time, like on the hour on one side, and then I had a set of emotions like 20 emotions on the other side of the grid. My timer would go off, or so, set a timer on your phone and I have a grid, by the way, on this last book that people can download, so it goes off at the hour. Then I would ask myself. Am I feeling this? Uh-uh, am I feeling that? Uh-uh, am I feeling that? Hmm, maybe. And that's how I began to expand my EQ, my emotional intelligence.

Speaker 1:

Fascinating stuff. I feel like I'm going constantly going down rabbit holes with Chachi PT and like learning more about my emotions and different kinds of energies and like, okay, well, what is it? Even physiologically, it's like what is electrical impulses and all this other stuff. So I love all this stuff. It really gets me excited and thinking about it. So I'm excited to kind of check out the books and things you've got going on, and you got the book relatively recently came out. So what are you working on now that you're excited about? Is it just getting the book out to more people, or have you got new projects that you're already kicking off? Or where are you at and what are you excited about?

Speaker 2:

Well, the book just came out, literally last month. So, yeah, I'm in that phase of getting the word out there, letting people know that the book is out there. Otherwise, it's just going to sit in Amazon. Before you used to say that it sits in a closet, but now it's just sitting in the cloud somewhere and I'm on a mission. Like I said, I have always had this sense of mission, so that's what drives me. That's getting this message out that I know is going to make a difference in people's lives and in their relationships, and that the relationships will actually have a chance of working. So I'm excited about that. The next book it's like it's starting to try to come in, which is the third one in the series power, relationships and then purpose, purpose and leadership come from a conscious perspective. But I'm like putting it away. I'm like not, not yet, not yet. I don't want to start writing again. I need a break from writing and you know I travel all the time doing retreats and workshops in different places.

Speaker 3:

Do you have any retreats coming up relatively soon? I do.

Speaker 2:

I have one focused on relationships. It's the last weekend of September in Northern California, in Western Moraine County.

Speaker 1:

Nice, and is that for anybody to kind of sign up? How do they?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, anybody, and you don't have to be in relationship. You have single people, have couples coming and, yeah, the best way to get information about it is my website, which is soulfulpowercom S-O-U-L-F-U-L-P-O-W-E-Rcom, and from there they can email me or get information about the events, et cetera. Nice.

Speaker 1:

And then grab a copy of your book there as well, or is it easier to get off of Amazon? Conscious Love, by the way, again guys is the name of the most recent book.

Speaker 2:

The book is on my website, but I think it takes people to Amazon anyway. So, yeah, they can get it from Amazon, or, if they want to support the local bookstore, which I like, to do that, or they can order them from their local bookstore.

Speaker 1:

So there you go, guys Checking it out at soulfulpowercom. Right, that's the website, yes, and then also Conscious Love for the book title. You can search it up on Amazon and awesome, the website is the best place to get in contact with you Are you taking on new clients?

Speaker 2:

if someone's interested in reaching out for one-on-one kind of advice and help, yeah sure I do one-on-one clients. I do the group work. I just did a group for the first time here in Aspen last night and that's really my favorite kind of work. I also have a year-long coaching program. That's virtual so you can be anywhere in the world, but my real love is doing the live events. You just feel into the group and into people's energies much more easily that way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, virtual is great. I do most of my work is virtual as well, with my clients, but nothing beats that in-person energy, the excitement from stage or even small retreats, and the intimacy aspect of it is really awesome. So I totally feel you with that one. So, christian, I appreciate you hopping on today and sharing a bit about your experiences and your insights from the work that you've been working on and cultivating and creating for the past 30 years or so. So I really appreciate it and it was cool to connect with you and I really enjoy your vibe, your energy, and I'm excited to kind of dive into your book. I'm going to grab a copy myself off of Amazon and I'm really grateful for you coming on today.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, man. Thank you so much for those kind words and thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me on the show and thank you for having the show, because I know that, in your willingness to do so, many people are being touched and impacted, so I do believe that we're all in this together. So thank you for doing that.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate that. Thank you, and guys. That's all we've got today. Hopefully you've taken as much value out of this as I have, and make sure you go, follow him and check him out on his website, grab a copy of the book and don't forget to let me know what you thought about this episode too. Appreciate you, guys all, and until next time. Peace, peace, peace peace.