Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome back to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope. We all get stuck sometimes. We hit moments where we think wait, I thought I healed this, I thought I was past this. Maybe I'm not as evolved as I thought. I healed this, I thought I was past this, maybe I'm not as evolved as I thought I was. And suddenly we're right back in an old pattern, reacting in a way we thought we'd outgrown. It can be really disheartening. So what do we do when that happens? There are many options, but one of the most powerful tools I lean on is having a set of go-to questions, questions that unlock deeper understanding and help me move forward. I'm excited to share them with you today.

Speaker 1: 0:53

I wish spiritual growth was a one and done kind of thing, that we would hit a point where everything just flows, where we face difficulty, see the lesson instantly and just move into grace and acceptance with ease. And while I've been told this does eventually happen, I'm certainly not there yet, at least not all the time. What I have noticed is that certain challenges don't throw me the way that they used to, and that's really the metric. It should be anyway. Not if we struggle, because struggle is inevitable. Challenges are always going to keep coming. So it's not whether or not we struggle, it's how quickly and gracefully we move through the challenge. When it comes, curiosity is one of the best allies we have for that. I've spoken about it before and I'll link that episode.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Someone once said and I wish I knew who to credit growth often begins not with answers but with the courage to ask different questions, and it is so true. We have to be willing to ask the questions, and if we can't answer them, we need someone to go to to help us see deeper. Whether it's a therapist, a mentor, a trusted, insightful friend, your neighborhood bartender, it doesn't matter. We just all really need that one person at least that we can go to, who won't pull punches and who has the ability to help see what maybe we can't, who can tell us what maybe we're missing. But we also need the questions themselves. So I want to give you mine today to help you really feel into how these questions might benefit you.

Speaker 1: 2:37

I want you to think about something you're currently struggling with, so you can put it up against these questions as I go through them and see if they help you find greater understanding. So I want you to think of a current challenge. You're facing something real, not the biggest, scariest thing in your life. Don't pick your Mount Everest, but pick something that's manageable, challenging but not overwhelming, so you can really engage with the questions as we go. If you pick something that's manageable, challenging but not overwhelming, so you can really engage with the questions as we go, if you pick something that's too kind of emotionally burdened or that you've really been struggling with for a long time, it might be more difficult for you to appreciate and to have these questions. Help you so pick something that's not quite so big. Help you so pick something that's not quite so big.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Here are a few examples to spark your thinking. Okay, a boss with unrealistic expectations, feeling unseen or unappreciated in your relationship. Maybe a friendship that's fading and you don't know why. Financial worry, your job insecurity, feeling like you're failing as a parent, in your career, or just kind of generally lost. Feeling like nothing. You're trying is working something along those lines. So take a breath, just take a moment and choose one. Maybe it's something I've offered. Maybe something else comes to mind. Got it All right? Here we go.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Question number one what facet of the heart is needed right now? This is a throwback to episode 59, where I shared about the facets of the heart, which are acceptance, presence, invincibility, authenticity, gratitude, joy, forgiveness and compassion, to name the big ones. In my mind, most emotional and relationship struggles connect to a lack of one of these facets. Worried about the world, you may need acceptance. Angry at a friend? Forgiveness and compassion might be what's necessary. Feeling like the ground keeps shifting beneath you. Call on your invincibility, uncertain about your direction? Time to reconnect with authenticity. This question can point you toward the spiritual quality you need most and help guide your next step. Books to read, podcasts to listen to, conversations to have it can give you a starting place.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Question number two dear heart, what do you need today? This one came from my yoga teacher training at Kripalu, from one of the teachers named Rudy Pierce. He asked it at the end of every class and I've carried it with me ever since. Most of us are sprinting through our days on autopilot, scrambling, chasing, producing. You know, so often it's unconscious. It's just this unconscious need or push to have constant movement. Many of us even have programming that tells us the only way for us to prove our value is to do, do. Do you know that hamster wheel? It doesn't stop unless we make it stop, and sometimes we get confused. We confuse productivity with effectiveness, taking off 10 tasks but never touching the one thing that actually mattered, and it's exhausting. So how do we know what to do? How do we know what is going to be most useful, most life supportive for us? This question does it for me every time.

Speaker 1: 6:25

So pause, close your eyes unless you're driving. Wait. If that's the case, place your attention on your heart and ask dear heart, what do you need today? The answer may surprise you. Maybe it's rest, maybe it's calling a particular friend, going for a walk, doing something that you enjoy, taking some time in silence. Maybe you get clarity on which project actually matters. Your heart knows. So ask it.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Two things I want to mention can deepen the impact of this question. First, there's a practice called heart centering, which we teach in the heart-based meditation course, and it helps you place your awareness in your heart and access its wisdom when you are asking questions particular, but it's really useful for any contemplative practice. Second, you can cultivate the heart's facets as I just described them. But even without these tools, dear heart, what do you need today, on its own can still be incredibly powerful. These next few questions are the ones I turn to when I feel spun out, stuck in a loop, spiraling or just stuck. So the third question is what's the priority? I don't know about you, but sometimes I can get really overwhelmed and distracted. Or if I have a big work project, I can get stuck in the details, like spend hours working on some small aspect when really there are other, like bigger, more important fish to fry.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Example cleaning the house. You ever start cleaning the house and your sole intent is just to get the house clean, but then you get to that one closet and it's like you know somebody possesses you and you decide to start going through the closet because doesn't it really need to get organized? And then, before you know it, the house is only halfway clean, the closet is half organized and you are exhausted. I know I am not the only one who does this. There are a million Instagram reels and posts about it. But you know, the thing is, if we're paying close enough attention, very often you can feel when you start to get sidetracked, when you start going down the rabbit hole of tangents that lead you astray from the one thing you really wanted to accomplish, of tangents that lead you astray from the one thing you really wanted to accomplish. But the closet really does need to get organized and sometimes that pull can be really powerful.

Speaker 1: 9:01

So this is the question I use when I find myself getting tugged in a million directions what's the priority, what is actually the most important thing? That helps me every time I'm cleaning the house and start to feel that desire to reorganize the drawer that's a mess, I consciously tell myself that's not what we're doing right now. Right now is about cleaning. If you have energy after you're done, you can come back to this reorganization project. It's tough, especially when it's not really the house that's messy. But my mind Cleaning is definitely a coping mechanism for me. I know I'm not alone and the messier my head is, the easier it is for me to get sucked into these side projects. But that's not useful and on some level I know it. And this question is what helps me redirect to what actually matters? I know I'm just talking about cleaning, but this applies in so many situations.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Sometimes the impulse to detour comes from anxiety, avoidance, mental overload. This question can help you come back to center. So ask yourself what's the priority, what actually matters right now? Here's a bonus question Am I avoiding something by focusing on this? Instead, that one stings, but it often gets to the heart of the issue. Okay, question four Is this useful? Is this thought pattern useful? Is this reaction useful? Is how I'm handling this useful? Sure, yelling at the guy who just cut you off might feel satisfying, but does it actually change anything? Or just raise your stress level? You know they can't hear you screaming in your car, right, ignoring a friend who's hurt you. Does that help, or just deepen the wound and create more distance? This question doesn't really give us a starting point as to how to move things, but it can sometimes cut through the noise and show us just how much energy we're wasting on things that are actually beyond our control. There's another good question Is this in my control? Because if it's not, it might be time to put it down.

Speaker 1: 11:14

Question number five what am I believing or what story am I telling myself? Is this a fact or a belief? We often treat our assumptions as truth, but beliefs, especially ones born from past wounds, can distort our perception of the present. Ones born from past wounds can distort our perception of the present. Think about how many dreams go unrealized simply because someone believes they're unworthy or incapable of achieving them. How often do we get angry because we assume we know what someone else is thinking without ever fact-checking our story? So often this happens because we are reacting from an old wound rather than responding to the present moment. Learning to recognize the difference between reacting from the past and responding to what's actually happening now is one of the most important skills you can develop.

Speaker 1: 12:10

Byron Katie's book Loving what Is dives deep into this. I'll link it in the show notes along with the episode about beliefs. When we ask, what am I believing, we create a moment of pause, a space where we can potentially shift from reaction to response, and that space can be everything. And that space can be everything. Question six what can I learn here? Every challenge carries a lesson. If we don't learn it now, we'll get another shot, probably in a louder, messier form. I talked about this in the curiosity episode, which I'll also link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 12:50

This question brings you back to empowerment. It says what is this situation asking of me? There's a quote that goes something along the lines of we don't always get what we want. We get the lesson, we get the experience and if we're lucky, we get both. Life is about learning. Life is about learning, it's about growing. So every time we have a challenge, if we can look at it and see it with curious eyes, looking to try to understand what we can get out of it, how we can grow, how we can use it to become a better version of ourself, well, that's true empowerment that gives you full control over how you experience your life.

Speaker 1: 13:38

So those are the big six, but just for good measure, I'm going to give you a few bonus questions that often come up for me along the way, kind of as part of the inquiry within any of these six foundational questions, what's the silver lining? What positive purpose might there be to my experiencing this? What am I really feeling right now? This one's important because so often we get caught up in the initial emotion, which might be something like anger, and the real kind of juicy part, the informative part, is being able to peel back that anger and realize, oh, what I'm actually feeling is fear or grief or overstimulation. Another one is how I'm handling this, aligned with the kind of person I want to be.

Speaker 1: 14:37

I can't wait to talk to you about James Clear's book the Atomic Habits. It was a bestseller for a reason it is fabulous. And he talks about this, about how one of the most important kind of mind set reframes we can do is thinking about ourselves and our actions in terms of okay, is this action aligned with the type of person I want to be? And then asking the follow-up question of what small step can I take today that aligns with what matters to me? As we wrap up today, just a reminder to be gentle with yourself.

Speaker 1: 15:15

These questions are not always easy. In fact, if one of them frustrates you, that might be a clue that it holds real value for you. And also remember, sometimes we can't see clearly on our own. If you ask a question and you just cannot see it, you just can't figure out what the answer might be, well, ask someone to be there with you to contemplate it together a mentor, a therapist, a trusted friend. Sometimes we just need someone to lovingly hold up the mirror. I know I say this often. I just think it's so important and so many of us have this belief instilled somewhere in us that we are supposed to do this on our own. So I'm just trying to dispel that myth and encourage you to reach for help in any capacity.

Speaker 1: 16:08

So I'm really curious what did come up for you. Is there a question you use that I didn't include? Let me know. Click the message me button If you're listening on Spotify, or email me at rootsoftherise at gmailcom. And if this episode helped you, please share it or leave a review. It means a lot to me to know that you're listening and that you're finding it useful.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Quick note before I go I am taking a break next week. This is episode 68 and I have not taken a single week off, so it's time. My son just graduated kindergarten, cue all the feels, summer is starting and mama needs a break. I will be back with new content on June 9th. Until then, remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal and seek the support you need to thrive.