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Calm amidst Chaos

How can you access your calm center, when there’s so much noise outside of us?

How can we be more mindful in everyday life?

What are the direct benefits of life coaching and empowering self-love & kindness?

For answers to these Q’s and (so much) more, listen to today’s enlightening interview with Jasmin Terrany who teaches people how to create a calm & nurturing space within which we can always access & return

SHOW NOTES:

JOIN Stress Less & Love More: 14-Day Reflection Challenge

Check out Jasmin Terrany’s Books:

Extraordinary Mommy

Extraordinary You: Master your Feelings, Master your Life

Follow on Instagram @jasmin_terrany 

Interested in sponsoring Time to be Kind with Marly Q.? Click here for PARKnership Opportunities

TRANSCRIPTION:

Marly Q: Hi PARKer. I’m Marly Q and welcome to Episode #7 with Jasmin Terrany.

Our guest today is a PARKer who helps people learn how to be calm amidst chaos.

Jasmin Terrany is the inventor of life therapy, a combination of psychotherapy and coaching, plus mindfulness and meditation. She holds two master’s degrees from Columbia University, she’s written two books and has been featured on numerous media outlets, including CNN, PBS, Parents Magazine, and has even hosted an advice show in addition to her own YouTube channel. Jasmin is an inspiration to me, not only because she’s successful in business, but more so because she’s successful in her personal life as a dedicated wife and mom of two kids who knows how to create a loving and calm home amidst any chaos going on in the world. For the past 13 years through her virtual coaching practice, Jasmin helps high achievers be successful in their personal lives by teaching people how to love better, and that’s precisely why she’s here with us today, to teach us all how to be better at loving ourselves.

[01:18] Alright, Jasmin, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for making the time to be kind with me on our PARKers today.

[01:25] Jasmin: Of course, thank you so much for having me; I’m honored to be here.

[01:29] Marly Q: I know you’re such a busy mommy to your precious children, Zen and Liv, and we’re both at home, quarantined due to this COVID-19. So, I really appreciate you squeezing this in because I wanted to have this conversation with you and share with our listeners, just in service. I think so many people are in need of your help. There’s so much that you can offer as a life therapist, as a psychotherapist, with your coaching, with your mindfulness, with your meditation, with this awesome 14-day challenge that you invited me to be a part of and I’m really been enjoying. So, we can just dive into the conversation. Why don’t you first tell me, if you remember how we’ve connected and stayed connected through all these years? And what inspired you to reach out to me after all this time and invite me to your 14-day challenge? Tell me about it.

[02:24] Jasmin: Ooh, that’s a good question. Well, we met at the Women’s Success Summit, right? And I was a speaker and we were both on the board and then I think we’ve just kind of been in and out for the last, how many years ago is that? It’s got to be at least like, eight years ago.

[02:40] Marly Q: Right. About eight or nine years ago.

[02:41] Jasmin: Yeah. And so, you know, you’re always in– the periphery of my life being another person committed to kindness and love and being the light. And so, I created this 14-day mommy challenge for all of us mommies who are quarantined at home with their children and how to deal with the stress and the anxiety and money and the kids and all these things. But really, it’s how do you return to the calm? You know, how do you find that space within yourself to be okay amidst all the chaos? And so, I just created this challenge and invited the world. So, you’re part of my world. So, that’s how you got into it.

[03:26] Marly Q: It’s meant to be of service. So, sometimes when we hear, you know, 14-day challenge, we’re like, “Ugh, you know, right now, I don’t need something else to do. I don’t, you know, I have enough or.”, right?

[03:37] Jasmin: Right. That’s a really good point. Yeah, no, this is– we take a moment each day to commit to ourselves to pause, you know, whether it’s a minute or 10 minutes or five minutes, or whatever, just, that when we’re going, going, going, going going, we’re constantly reacting. And so, the idea is like, how do you pause? How do you recenter? How do you come from a more divinely connected space so that we’re interacting with particularly our children from the most loving place that we can, you know? When we’re all stressed out and frazzled, and there’s so much noise outside of us, inside of us is, how do you return to that center? So, it’s not supposed to be some like, you know, go go, go go go kind of challenge and you know, hold yourself accountable, it’s not like that at all. It’s really the intention is just, here are some prompts, three questions a day to just sit, to be with yourself, to breathe and to reflect and to recenter yourself.

[04:26] Marly Q: Well, you mentioned something really beautiful. I love that your whole practice, basically, you specialize in helping people love better, love themselves better, love others better, pour love into their families and their kids, but also the community and the world at large, right? So, one of the questions that I’d love to get your insight on is, why do you believe that now is the time to be kind to ourselves, others and the world?

[04:50] Jasmin: Well, you know, a lot of people think of the word love as like some like sticky thing like, “Oh, I love it. I want it. I need it.”, you know? And to me the word love is really an unconditional acceptance, which is like an open hand, you know, instead of like holding on to something with like tight fist, it’s like an open hand, letting things come in and things come out. And to me the idea of loving yourself is being able to accept your fullness, your wholeness, that we have all these amazing parts of ourselves, and we’ve also got these pains, darkness, challenges, kind of like the yin and yang of our planet, right? It’s not always a sunny day, there’s also stormy weather, and the same goes for inside of us. And so, our practice is learning how to create that space to allow that duality to exist within us, and to let our wholeness be enough and to see that as our perfection; the same way that our planet is perfect because if it was always a sunny day, it wouldn’t function, is also understanding that our pain and our fears and our challenges and our anxiety and all these things inside of us are also part of our perfection. Our job is to learn how to handle it and take care of it, and part of that is becoming a loving parent to that pain. And when you talk about kindness, it’s really being kind to your pain, being kind to your fears, being kind to your darkness, and creating a different relationship with it, rather than letting it take over you and being in charge, or pushing it away and saying, “I hate you, and I’m not listening to you.”, but it’s really being kind to all of you. And to me, that love, and acceptance is what we all need for ourselves because when we can do it for ourselves, is then when we can do it for each other. But the way that we love our kids and the way that we love our spouse is largely dependent on the way that we love ourselves or don’t love ourselves, and that’s where the spiral or the ripple effect continues. So, I really believe, particularly with moms, that if we can be doing this kind of work, then it has an impact globally because we’re affecting our children.

[06:54] Marly Q: Absolutely. And I love the way that you put that, you know, how we can practice becoming loving parents to our fears, how we can practice, I mean, creating a relationship with them. I know in one of your books, the one that you gave me while I was pregnant, before I gave birth to Jude, was Extraordinary Mommy, it’s this is loving guide to mastering life’s most important job, and one of the secrets that you share in the book was basically this, right? How to, in essence, become aware of what, you know, the fears and the doubts and anxiety that we might be experiencing, and I don’t want to make it so specific in this conversation as just in parenthood or in motherhood, but just in our current world, what we are all currently experiencing globally, it applies, right? So, it’s not just in parenthood, but in your– in this current situation, and in life, right?

[07:47] Jasmin: Well, and I think that’s the biggest realization that I keep having over and over, right? Is that, we have no control, you know, and I really believe that life gives us exactly what we need to wake up, and that we become very controlling, and we think that we have control, and we think we have control over the thoughts, we think we have control over our feelings, we think that we have control over our circumstances, we think we have control over money, we think we have control over everything, right? And on some level, we have, but it’s really been an illusion. And now, all of a sudden, we’re being faced with the fact that we really legitimately don’t have control, we have no idea what’s going to happen, and now, we have to deal with ourselves, right? We have to deal with the fear of not having control, we need to deal with all the anxiety that comes from not having this illusion of control anymore. And I think that this is just a huge reminder of how to live our lives in general. You know, I think the reason for the book was because my Extraordinary Mommy died suddenly in a car accident, right? So, one day she was here and one day she wasn’t, and I was really faced with the fact that this life is– we have no control over it, anything can happen in any moment. And I think that when we have– that we have such a fear of mortality, that it like, makes us crazy when we think that, “Oh my god, we’re going to die.”, right? But if we can live with that awareness that yes, we are going to die and we don’t know when and we don’t know how but if we can live with it, with that awareness close enough to our consciousness that it helps us live more fully, it helps us enjoy our moments more, it helps us be more grateful because we see that we have no control and therefore we get to cherish and be alive and breathe and base our success on our ability to be present and live more than whatever it is that we’re focusing on for some future time.

[09:37] Marly Q: Absolutely, it goes back to how we started this conversation about acceptance; it is an inevitable part of life, is life and death, right? So, the more that we can be kind with that and accept it, the less scary it becomes. So, I just, I love how you raise that, I love how you just give insight not just in the book but you’ve been through, you know, your your personal practice when you’re helping people one on one, just kind of face this and even name the fears, right? And just from a place of love and kindness and acceptance, like you would with a child and help them understand that this is what you’re just feeling right now, it’s not who you are, it doesn’t define, you know, you or the rest of your life. It’s just what we’re currently going through and what we have to face, and that allows us to bring the attention inward, rather than pointing outward to you know, “This is your fault.”, or pointing like blame or you know, like, “The government needs to fix this somehow.”. No, it’s like, “Wait.”, that does give you some sense of like ownership or quote unquote, control over yourself.

[10:32] Jasmin: Exactly. And that’s really the only thing we can do when we have no control over circumstances is, start to look within, “How is this my gift? How am I supposed to be learning right now? What is it? If I were to assume that life is happening for me, instead of to me, then what is it that I’m supposed to be learning?”.

[10:52] Marly Q: That’s a great perspective. You know, one of the questions that I received from a friend when I posted on social media that I was going to get started with this podcast and I was asking for questions from my community was, how can we be more mindful in everyday life? And I think that’s always a great question, and you know, that you could provide a lot of insight on and maybe some specific tips, you know, but how can we be more mindful today, right now with what’s going through, which is also applicable to how we can be more mindful in everyday life?

[11:22] Jasmin: You know, have you heard this, Hoʻoponopono thing? This Hawaiian practice that there’s four questions, not questions statements, and I’ve used this in my practice historically but someone just like rebrought it up to me as like, from a different perspective that actually has been in interesting but this, I’ve always seen it as these four statements that you either say to yourself, you say to somebody else, you say to the universe that, to me feel softening, that they soften us and open us. And so, when you say these statements, it feels kind of like an awakening or an opening to receive and so, the four statements are these. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, and I love you”, right? So, even I’m saying right now and it’s just amazing how the feeling changes so much when you just say those statements, you can be saying it to yourself, you can say it to your inner child, you can say it to your whoever. I’ve recently started saying it to the divine, like, “I’m sorry that I’ve been ignoring you. Please forgive me. Thank you, I love you”, you know, like that, that there’s something that feels very profound about just repeating those four statements.

And so, that, I think is very poignant right now in this time to really just keep softening yourself and to repeat those statements to yourself. And also just start to just pay attention to how frequently you’re getting stuck in your head and whenever you do is coming up with some strategy to shift outward and into the present moment because I think so much of the chaos that’s happening is in our minds. I mean, granted, there’s a lot of chaos happening in reality, but a lot of us aren’t experiencing chaos in our reality. We’re actually just hanging out at home. You know, and so, what if we were to, every time we feel we’re in the chaos to just come back to the stillness of our home, of the moment, of– I love connecting with the sun, going outside, just feel the sun on my face, feel the wind on my face. Do whatever it takes to get your physical sensations connected to this present moment, touch something, listen to something, bring your attention to this present moment intentionally whenever it is that you catch yourself being caught up in your sensations or in your anxieties or your thoughts.

And then the last thing is always just ask yourself, “Where’s my breath right now?”, like, if that’s the only thing I tell my clients, if you only learn one thing from me, it’s just that, where is my breath right now? Because when we’re feeling calm, our breath is deep, and it goes all the way down. But when we’re not, and we’re stressing, we’re in our head and we’re in our thoughts and anxieties and feelings, all these things, it gets shorter in our chest. So, simply bringing your breath all the way down is the best drug there is.

[14:29] Marly Q: I have a shirt on right now that says, “Breathe”.

[14:30] Jasmin: I know, I love it.

[14:32] Marly Q: It’s like, if it’s one thing that I feel that I can control when I can’t control anything is just coming back in the awareness of my breath, and I can control how deep I breathe and how I feel it and I love how you mentioned connecting with the stillness of your home, right? And if you think of our home as not our physical home, of four walls, but our home, our inner home, our heart, our being, your breath is your anchor to that stillness in your home. For me, I mean, I grew up with asthma, for me, I am so connected to my breath. I’m so grateful, even when it’s shallow and anxious I, if I can connect with it, I’m aware of it. I’m like, “Oh, look at that you’re breathing that way that’s causing you stress and anxiety, let’s breathe deeper.”, and all of a sudden, I feel like I have a sense of control over something, even if the world around me feels so chaotic. So, I love that you mentioned that, it’s a great practice to being more mindful in everyday life.

And then you said, connecting with your senses, right? Using your senses of touch and smell and sights and sounds, to connect with this present moment. Because once we come inward and connect with those senses, then everything else just kind of fades away. Like, you begin to detach from whatever the chaos and the madness is outside of your home. So, those were really wonderful tips and the Hawaiian practice that you just shared, I’ll make sure I find it and you know, spell it correctly. So, because I don’t really know how to pronounce it either. It’s called Hoʻoponopono, I think, Hoʻoponopono, and the four steps there were, I’m sorry, or the four statements. I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you, you can direct those inward, you can direct those outward. It is a beautiful practice. So, thank you for sharing that.

[16:18] What are the benefits, the direct benefits, of counseling and empowering self-love and kindness practices in your life?

[16:27] Jasmin: Hmm. Good one. So, it’s interesting, in my practice, I integrate these four different modalities, right? I call it life therapy because it connects traditional psychotherapy and coaching with mindfulness and meditation. And to me what it is, is that our life is like a tree, right? And our tree has fruit. And so, sometimes our fruit is not growing or sometimes we have lemons and we want oranges and for whatever reason we often look at the branches or at the fruit themselves and try to change them as if that is going to work, right? But in order for there to be a change in the tree, you need to go to the roots, right? Or plant another tree. So, the idea is, is that what goes on inside of us directly affects everything in our lives, all of our circumstances, are not an accident, they’re directly correlated with what’s going on inside of us. And so, if we can deal with our roots, then it affects our fruits, right? And so, the idea of committing to that kind of practice is really doing the inner work. So, I like to think of our inner space, like a bedroom, right? And so, what happens is, if we have a messy room, we need to have a practice to figure out how to clean it out, right? So, that to me, is the psychotherapy, that’s doing a deeper dive. Where did these feelings come from? What happened in my past? What happened in these circumstances? What are these reoccurring things? What’s all these piles of dirty laundry stacked up in my room? How do I clear this out and clean out my inner space? Right?

And then a coaching practice is about how do I keep it clear, right? Because when our inner space is clear, then we can flow, then divine energy can flow through us, right? But until it’s clear, we’re all cluttered inside of us, and we’re just responding and reacting to all the clutter that’s inside of us. So, then the coaching practice and it’s coming up with, I like to call like, your inner workout, right? Is how do you set up your day in your life to be able to put things away? You know, my mom used to always say, “It’s easier to put your clothes in the dirty laundry now than to deal with a pile of it later.”, you know? Just those little moments and like this challenge that we’re doing, is those little moments every day to clean out that inner space so that It is an open vessel for that light and that love and that divine source to come through us. And then the mindfulness of meditation is learning how to be okay with the emptiness, right? I think that we have a big problem where we think, “Oh my god, I’m bored or something’s wrong, I need to something.”, and then like, all sudden, it just keeps getting filled in with other stuff. And so, the idea is, how do we let that space be clear and let that space be open and stop filling it up with other junk and be okay with the openness?

[19:31] Marly Q: What a wonderful opportunity to practice that now.

[19:33] Jasmin: Yeah.

[19:34] Marly Q; Right. We’re being given that gift, should we choose to see it that way.

[19:38] Jasmin: Yeah. I mean, I do think that life happens for us, right? So, that this is a shift, this opportunity, this awakening is to look within, to love more, to smile more, to connect more, to treat our kids as if this is our last moment, to eat this meal as if it’s our last meal, you know, to really come back to whether matters most in life; we’ve really fallen off.

[20:04] Marly Q: Yeah, I think we’ve really just disconnected or detached from that home base, if you will, and from the basics and this is all, you know, if you want to see the light in the darkness that’s, you know, currently going on, it’s that. We have given the gift of the opportunity of cleaning house in essence, right? It is spring cleaning time, if you will, but coming inward, and I think that, you know, seeking counseling or life therapy is a way of getting outside help to look inward, right? Because sometimes when we’re in our own head, in our own life, in our own mess, so to speak, it’s really difficult to see the label of the jar that you’re in, you need somebody outside of the jar to read to you, you know, the label and say, “Hey, you know, you’re standing, you’re not in quicksand right now. You’re not drowning. You’re not going to die. You’re actually in a jar of honey. It’s sweet. And it’s delicious.”. And you’re like, “Oh, okay, I’m not dying.”, right? So, I think that’s a very clear benefit of counseling or coaching from others is, having that outward perspective.

So, then, I think the benefits of empowering self-love and kindness, I mean, based our entire conversation are endless benefits of empowering self-love and kindness, not only does it directly impact you positively in your mind, in your emotions and your spirit, but there’s that endless ripple effect of how it empowers your family, your kids, your friends, your co-workers, the people that you, you know, interact with every day in the street, at the grocery store, and the whole world in this ripple effect, right? I would see that.

[21:39] Jasmin: Totally. And I think, you know, part of what I think is so valuable in this idea of being kind is understanding that being kind isn’t an avoidance of darkness. It’s not an avoidance of pain, it’s not suggesting that those things don’t exist and that they’re not happening. I think that’s really fundamental in this kind of work, is that we’re just learning how to treat them differently, and to not be stuck in it as if it’s the only path but I like to see it as like the glass can be both half full and half empty, and we’re not just focusing on it being half full, we’re focusing on being the glass, we’re focusing on being the space that allows both to exist and that we’re lovingly accepting both.

[22:31] Marly Q: Only from that perspective can we make, you know, enlightened or empowered choices, right? When we’re not a victim to one.

[22:37] Jasmin: For sure. And it is not easy, it takes lot of work, it’s a big commitment, but I haven’t been able to find another way that works any better.

[22:46] Marly Q: No, that’s why I love that you mentioned that because you know, sometimes all this talk about kindness and I mean, I’ve been called “a Polly Anna, you’re just so bright and cheerful, you must wake up and shoot, you know, fart rainbows and butterflies.”, and it’s like, “No, absolutely not”! You could ask my husband if you want some proof or my family, those closest to us. It is a practice, it is a daily, if not moment to moment practice, of being aware and relating to yourself, all of you, the light, the darkness, all of it, the yin, the yang, sun, the moon, all of it with more kindness and the time to be kind to ourselves, one another, and this world that we all share, it is our world, and if it’s one thing that we’re all currently going through right now, I think is the very clear realization that we’re all connected and we’re all in this together, which means we all got to get out of this together and rise up stronger, and I think the answer to that is through kindness, creating more time to be kind.

[22:48] Thank you so much for making that time again today with me Jasmin and with our PARKers listening. I know you’ve got your babies in the background, my baby too in the background, we’re going to get back to them. But I just– I’m just really so grateful, and I hope that you can come back for another episode. I think you have so much more to offer.

[24:09] Jasmin: Yeah, of course. To be continued, I love being connected with you. You are a wonderful, bright light in this world, and we all need more of that so, thank you so much for having this and doing this, and sharing.

[24:20] Marly Q: Big hugs– big hugs to you, we’ll talk soon.

[24:24] Outro:

So, there you have it PARKER. Practicing self-love and kindness allows us to create a calm and nurturing space within us, which we can always access and return home to, it just takes some awareness and practice.

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