How can you relate to others at the soul level?

That's what we're gonna explore today in this conversation with Courtney Smith on the Wise Effort Show.

Welcome back to The Wise Effort Show.

This is Dr.

Diana Hill.

You know, we're all about wise effort here and one of the places that we really need to engage in our wisest form of effort.

Is in the arena of relationships, it can be incredibly difficult to relate to one another in a deep way, in a way that is courageous and authentic and really choosing wholeness in our relationships, which is what the topic of Courtney's new book with Elise Lowin is about choosing wholeness over goodness.

Sometimes that's the case, right?

We gotta choose wholeness, not just about.

Being good to each other, but actually what is it to be authentically, so fully present for another human being?

Courtney Smith is an executive coach and group facilitator who works with Fortune 500 companies and high profile individuals to achieve and change and live in greater resonance with their values.

She's a renowned practitioner and teacher of the Enneagram Personality System, which she weaves into her coaching methods as well as her integrative approach to personal development.

Her work has been featured on The Goop and Pulling The Threads Podcast, and she's the co-author with Elise Loin of the Workbook, Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness: A Process for Reclaiming Your Full Self.

I had the opportunity to interview Courtney in person because she lives right here in Santa Barbara, California, and we've been colleagues for a while.

But this was really fun to take a deep dive into relationships with her.

We're gonna talk about my favorite skill of all time when eye and in one eye out.

We're gonna talk about speaking your inarguable truths, shifting out of fear mode, and how to be a soul friend.

You're gonna get a lot of tips, but you're also gonna hear us and watch us modeling exactly what we're talking about in real time.

We're gonna ride that edge of relational uncertainty and relational risk and relational authenticity with each other, which was really fun.

Very few people are willing to go there with me, and I was so glad that she did.

It was rad to have that experience with Courtney.

She's phenomenal.

Okay, enjoy this conversation with Courtney Smith.

Okay.

Here we are.

Courtney Smith.

Good to have you.

Thanks for having me, Diana.

I'm excited to be here.

So you have this radical approach to, these groups that you're running with women, and I had a few women in my life that were in your groups and I, they would tell me over the past, like year or so, all these really incredible changes that were happening for them as they're going through your program.

And the whole time I was like, I want to talk to Courtney.

I wanna see what's about the magic behind what she's doing in there.

And now I learned that you have a book.

That is mapping out a lot of the work that you do.

So I'm super excited about your book.

Thank you.

Very excited, but also just excited to talk with you about some of Courtney's magic, that we can maybe spread to other people that they could create.

Ah, thank you.

I should say that I came to Santa Barbara, right before COVID happened.

And, I had lived in New York City for 20 years.

and part of my journey there, I had been a professional as a lawyer and also as a consultant.

And then I took some time out, when we had small children from the workforce.

And during that kind of.

Journey to the wilderness for me.

I started working with a lot of personal development and transformation tools that UL ultimately helped me figure out that I needed to go back to the workforce.

And then I ret transitioned and came back as a consultant.

And I brought a lot of these tools that had worked for me to the consulting work that I was doing.

And, so I do my part of my work is in a professional context.

But as part of my own unfolding in New York City and part of my own work with those tools, I really began to deepen my understanding of what it meant to be in community and the kind of relationships that I was looking for.

And so when I moved here in Santa Barbara in 2020, I didn't come with this intention of starting groups.

but I was really curious.

Like I, I really have a new definition of what it means to be in relationship.

And, I wanna find the people who that resonates with.

And, organically from there, I started putting together these groups where, I think there's a couple things that I'm doing that are pretty unique and different.

The first thing is that, I really, because it's in the community, I'm both a teacher and a prac practitioner in the group itself.

And so I try to run really clear lines between when I'm teaching a concept and then I try to model and do the work right alongside everyone else in the group.

Some of that is for my own integrity in terms of I'm still working on things and I gotta run this tool and I've got a lot to learn, even as I have some mastery.

But also it was because.

I was working with people that I'm in community with.

And so it's a little bit different than a therapist model.

Oh, very different than a therapy spot.

You cannot share your own personal stuff that you're working through or be friends with anyone that's in your therapy group.

But actually people are craving that.

they want some of your genius qualities right.

In the group.

But they also wanna know that you're human.

They don't want, people don't want hierarchy.

They don't want it.

And it feels offput when there's some like teacher that's, up here because you know behind the scenes at some point,

just like everybody,

they'll find you out.

They'll find you out, and then they lose trust.

So if you put up front, I'm working through this, you don't have to dominate it with your stuff, but it's really equalizing.

And

So that's a value of mine.

And that's one of the things that I think is distinctive about the groups is there are lessons and there are concepts, and we can talk about some of them here.

But it isn't a container of the teacher is also a student.

And, and I have some clear boundaries that I run in order to make that happen, but I am very much practicing alongside people.

What are those clear boundaries?

Like one thing is I'm pretty, there's confidentiality boundaries for one thing.

That are really strong.

The second thing is, when I model.

I'm very careful about what I choose to model in terms of, I wanna show depth, I wanna show vulnerability, and I want it to feel real.

So I'm off, there's a lot of trust issues that show up when you're talking in group.

And so one of the things that I wanna model is what does it feel like to be scared and to do something anyway?

So I like to pick something that's right on the edge for me where it's an issue that, I'm still in live action with.

And at the same time, you can feel that I'm scaring myself a little bit, in the courage it's taking to come forward.

But at the same time, I have really strict time boundaries on how long I'm gonna do that because, when I act as a participant in the group, I want that just to be like one thread of many.

And so I keep myself very time bound so that the mic gets passed and everyone else does their work at the same time.

but edginess is so important I think, in groups when one of the suggestions that I make for folks is if you feel your heart beating, when there's a little bit of a silence and you feel your heart beating faster and faster, that is the sign to step in.

That there, because then if you step in, you're gonna ride a wave, an edge that is.

Very beneficial for you 'cause you're stretching yourself, but will be beneficial for everyone so they can read it.

There's an energetic, read on the vulnerability of the human that steps up.

And as a leader that's extra vulnerable.

So I love that.

I think another example too is sometimes it's like me leading an exercise with something that's going on in my own life, but some of it is also just modeling.

what does compassion and.

Humanness look like in response to hearing someone else's going through something difficult.

So there was one year, for example, where I realized like I had a lot of issues around crying in front of people.

And was worried what they thought.

Worried I looked messy.

Worried I like, couldn't be as cogent of a communicator if I was crying.

yet I was often moved by what we were working on in group.

And so part of the way I modeled for that whole year with that group was if someone said something that moved me and I felt myself coming to tears.

I let myself come to tears.

And I really went on this rebranding exercise for myself, but ultimately for everyone else, that crying is just a sign that I am fully engaging.

In your, life, in your material.

It's, my heart is open and it actually makes me a better leader.

It makes me a better listener.

It makes me a better communicator.

Yes.

There's different types of crying.

There's not that we've given any thought to this.

There's that, crying, which is open, aware, engaged, crying.

I am letting it flow.

Because crying is a form of communication.

It's a nonverbal communication that I'm connecting.

I'm connecting to either something you're experiencing, I'm experiencing, and then there's another form of crying, which is one of the things that you teach around Victimy cry

Uhhuh,

which is I'm crying to bring all of the attention in on me uhhuh and have you all rescue me from whatever it is I'm feeling in this moment.

And I'm a, huge believer in that first one, actually, the second one can be okay sometimes too.

Sometimes we need to be like a victimy cry, but the other form is, I'm not crying, but I'm just holding it back.

I saw my son the other day.

He was, he was actually crying like he, he needed to cry and the facial contortions that he was making to try and not cry was, were phenomenal.

So we, we withhold our tears, but this is all part of relating.

So what you're doing in the group is about relationships.

And you said at the, very start, you said, I'm learning about what it means to be be in relationship.

So I wanna talk a bit about that.

What are the skills that you teach in group that are supposed to really be used in life.

Group is a metaphor for life or trying a practicing for life.

All right.

So I could talk for hours about this.

I know I'm cereal.

I love it.

So I guess the first thing that I wanna say is one of the reasons I think, the group is really important is because when, like therapy is important, meditation is important.

All of those other places where we make contact with ourself are really, important.

But when we try to make contact with ourselves alone, then when we come back to regular life and we're now in relationship, the trick is how do I make contact with myself and be in relationship at the same time?

What does it mean to do both?

Be in relationship with myself and in relationship with you.

And so for me, the groups are this laboratory where we practice, like what does it mean to be present?

What does it mean to, be able to name and be with my emotional experience, and be with you at the same time?

So that's the first thing that the group is about is, recognizing that we tend to do one or the other.

we tend to either be totally eyes in, as you would say, to two eyes in or two eyes out.

What does it mean to have one eye in, one eye out at the same time and actively practice that?

The one eye in one eye out is for me, the most fundamental tool in relationships that, that I can ever have because I tend to go two eyes out.

And feel what everyone else is feeling and tend to everyone else's stuff and completely get disembodied from what's happening.

And I shut down my own inner world to the point when I can no longer handle that.

And then I just go, z two eyes in.

And now you cannot access me.

Like I am, like all walls, you will not be able to get in.

So getting to that, it's like getting to that place where I have one eye and I'm noticing my own body, my own breath, my own being that's here.

And then, Courtney's here too.

I'm toggling

i'm toggling That's happening right now.

Real time as we're doing this podcast.

One eye in, one eye out.

I feel that.

So that's the fundamental thing.

The second thing is I really do talk about, what Katie Hendricks calls your inarguable truth.

and you alluded to it, inarguable truths are the body sensations I'm experiencing, the emotions I'm experiencing, and then the fact that I'm having a story or thought.

The thought or the story itself is not an inarguable truth, but it's true I'm having the story or thought.

And once we start inserting in very concrete ways, how do I share the narrative, the way I'm making meaning of what's happening between the two of us, but to make it inarguable, I start saying, Hey, I noticed that you're wearing shorts.

That's a fact.

The story I make up about that is, ooh, are you cold?

Like, how does she wearing shorts at?

and I go off on this whole thing, I would never wear shorts.

I don't like my knees.

and I'm like.

And, those are all thoughts that are just like running, like in a comic strip.

And if I just share those without the, Hey, my story is, or Hey, the thought I'm having is.

We really now can get off, go off the race, go off to the races in terms of debating the content.

Okay.

Can we stay on the shorts a little bit?

Because what another woman wears, this is phenomenal.

Like what another woman wears, what she's doing with is her hair.

What car she drives.

What her kids look like.

Whatever.

Her house, is such a Petri dish.

Yes.

For story making.

Yes.

That then can either lead to disconnection, right?

Because it's hard to have a conversation with me if you're thinking about your knees.

Or could lead to connection.

Like maybe I don't have something about my knees, but I've got something about something.

Or maybe there's a reason why I just chose these shorts.

They're, I was actually, they're way too short.

But the thing about these shorts they were given to me, by my friend Anne van de Water.

Ann, no, I don't know.

She's phenomenal.

She, She went on a minimalist spree where she got rid of everything and lived on a boat and she gave away all her clothes.

And whenever I wear them, I connect to Anne and I'm like, oh, that's my girlfriend Anne.

I'm like, wearing the shorts for you, Anne.

'cause you've got nothing.

So there, if we can actually name our story.

Then we can connect.

that's But as long as we're in, it's right.

You're reminding me like one of the, one of the chapters in the book is all about envy.

'cause this, the book is organized around the seven deadly sins.

But there's a whole class that I actually teach around envy.

Where in group we start naming the things that we're envious of other people in the group.

Yes.

Which tends to be forbidden territory.

Like I'm envious that you have such beautiful shapely legs.

And then I get to think about okay, what am I really wanting underneath that?

It's not about Diana's legs, even though they're beautiful, but what's that really telling me about myself?

And once I speak it inarguably, then I get to see how it's a mirror for me as opposed to getting into debate about con where you brush off the compliment, right?

Or you tell me your workout routine or you like compliment something about my body or I start feeling jealous and I don't voice it.

Any other, like the dozens of other ways we could take that.

Once I name it in a way that's safe for you to hear it and safe for me to express it, then I get to work with the material and see what's really underneath it,

Right.

Because my instinct or many of our instincts is to rescue.

And the way that we rescue is, either we put ourselves down.

You should see my ass.

Whatever.

Or we try and Oh, but your skin is the most glowing.

Beautiful.

And then, and this is how we, engage at this sort of surface level that prevents true engagement.

and true ownership, right?

Yes.

True ownership.

Envy is such a, it's such a fascinating 'cause.

It is that deadly sin.

Like we shouldn't be, we from early, earlier on, we're taught to not envy or to look away or to feel that having envy is bad.

I haven't think of envy as the highlighting the thing within ourselves that maybe we forgotten or haven't tended to, or that we wanna invest.

Not like in the form of legs, but what's underneath that in terms of values or underneath that in terms of something that you are craving in your life in some way,

Something that there's a want in there that you have not fully metabolized.

You haven't metabolized it.

Come to clarity around whether you've disowned it or whether it's something you feel is out of your own reach, and so you've resigned yourself to not getting it, it's speaking to a deep, a deeper want that you haven't metabolized.

So in a group you would go through and you'd have everyone talk about what they envy in each other.

You would,

So we put that, this was, that we'd been practicing together for over a year.

It's not like we started that way.

But we were really talking about, one of the things, one of the big principles of the group also is this idea of taking responsibility.

And I would argue that one of the, I talked about like the container of one eye in one eye out.

The second thing I spoke about was inarguable truths and various tools where you can communicate what's true for you, but in a way that others can hear it.

So that then you can actually have, growth and dialogue in exchange.

And one of the, goals of that exchange for me is personal growth and learning.

And so I'm very much of the mind, like one of my coaches, her little like moniker at the end of her email is.

our relationships are our greatest assets.

And you can think about that superficially in terms of relationships are transactions where we get things.

But I think the deeper meaning is relationships are our greatest assets to see ourselves and what is ours to do, what is our path and journey to grow along?

And so when I hold that, I'm in relationship with you, not a maybe there's a transaction, there's a contract.

I agreed to come here at 11:50.

You're gonna put this on your podcast.

There is.

There is a transactional component and at the same time, like there's something I'm learning and gaining from being in relationship with you in this now moment.

And so what are the tools I can use to see what's here for me?

And so that idea of wanting or envy, which would normally just be like a tiny little thought that I might throw away and to toss aside, actually then can become the seed of something really profound that I can take away from this short conversation.

And if I have support, I can really work on it and go for it in my, regular life.

The painful parts of relationships have the most.

Opportunity for that growth.

The parts that we don't want to go to.

The parts that we wanna just shove away, put under the carpet, not talk about, and there's something about this container of this group that you are, creating an environment to encourage people to go there to do that.

Learning the container of it is very important.

So you can't just sit down at your dinner table and be like, everyone share about what they envy about their cousins.

And their friends, because the container isn't there.

So that's that.

I just wanna say that before people start trying out these things.

Totally.

And I really want, the envy class

at office meeting.

Envy is a, Ivy is like class 16 or something like that.

So these are cool.

That's class 16.

People, Been together for a long while.

So go back to, let's go to class three.

Before we go to class 16.

what's a class three?

Practice that you might do?

So, classes one, two, and three are all about this inarguable speaking, which I spoke about.

So I need to be able to identify body sensation.

I need to be able to name emotions and I need to make the distinction between fact and story.

So those are classes 1, 2, 3, and I consider those foundational to just what does it mean to be present and then how do I communicate presence with others.

What comes after that is once I have some skills to like even locate where I am in the now moment, I begin to realize that part of the reason that relationships are so activating and triggering and thus like this Petri dish for growth is because, I often get scared.

And classes four through 15 are really about recognizing that human beings are evolutionary designed, evolutionary designed to be scared, to be on the alert for things that could compromise our survival.

And because of that, we tend to scare ourselves all the time.

And when we do that, we really default to, whether you wanna call it lower vibration or you want it like from a neurochemical perspective.

The circuitry that's running in the brain is the lower level functioning.

But the idea is now I'm running the relationship and what's possible between the two of us through a lens of how do I feel safe?

Which means I'm gonna show up and relate to you in a way of this relationship is about me feeling safe over here, and that's all I can focus on.

And when I orient toward relationships in that way, I lose the potential for connection, creativity, growth, curiosity, playfulness, intimacy values.

Okay, I'm gonna make it real right now.

What scares you or scared you about and I'll share mine.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm throwing it to you first.

Okay.

What scared you or scares you about showing up for this podcast interview with me?

This is the second for the listeners to know.

This is the second time we've done this.

And actually the first one I was way more scared.

Oh, okay.

Of this one,

Uhhuh.

But this is the second time we've done it because we lost the audio.

'cause I failed on the mic department, which is a classic Diana move.

But what scared you or scares you about this with me?

Okay, I like to think of fear in three broad buckets.

Either I'm scared about my security.

Which is gonna be like something materially bad is gonna happen to me either physically or emotionally.

I'm gonna be scared because of loss of approval.

So you're gonna think something about me.

The audience is gonna think something about me.

You're gonna judge me.

Who knows what.

I could forget my train of thought, and then maybe I come across as stupid or those are approval fears.

And then the third bucket is control.

My need for control.

And so those fears would be, I'm in your space.

We like, it's your mic, your audio, you lo we lost it the first time.

I'm not in control of that.

What's gonna ha what's gonna happen?

So I, when I, when you asked me that question, I go through and I go, okay, I know I felt a little nervousness like coming over here.

Can I just be with that little twinge and flutter of butterflies in the stomach?

The fact that I went and checked my hair and brushed my teeth again before I showed up.

I thought about my outfit a little bit and I can go, okay, Courtney, was that a security, approval or control?

What was at risk for you?

And for me, this is about approval.

And, wanting you to, like me, wanting you to respect me, wanting your audience to like and respect me.

And of course that gets a little activated, anytime we come forward and, put ourselves, put our, put ourselves out there and any way.

so that, that was, my fear today.

What about you?

I love it.

I, relate to the approval and control one.

The control one, I think, is newer because in our first interview you were such a ridiculous badass.

You knocked it so far out of the park.

And as I said to you, I was so sad I didn't claim that, wasn't able to reclaim the audio 'cause you were so good.

And and the control part of me is like, how do we make that happen again?

Or also a little bit of like how much I think you could, I could just pass it all to you and you just take the whole thing, Courtney, but then am I losing control of my thing?

There's that like neediness to dominate that can happen.

I think when we, when you have two high power people in one spot, I think we're both high power folks.

So that's the control.

And then the approval part.

Is similar to what you were saying of I actually didn't prep much for this one.

I, wanted to just come in and be authentic and so there's a bit of am I gonna say something or do something that just sucks.

I felt like I sucked in my last podcast episode, so I'm like.

I gotta re, I gotta regain their approval because not everyone is a, not everyone is great And so there's a little bit of that with, I was really into approval with you and the last one.

And a lot of that went down after we met and I was like, oh I remember Courtney.

We're just like humans and you're great.

So I'm, I don't have as much of that need for your approval, although I still would like it.

It's always there a little bit.

But I love those boxes.

And how interesting that, how rarely it is the first true fear.

I feel pretty safe in this building.

We're not worried about someone coming in or

Although I do find on the security issue oftentimes and we don't wanna feel certain emotion.

And so I actually put that as a security risk.

Oh.

if you're gonna a traumatic one,

if hurt me, if you're gonna hurt me

Oh, be rejected or,

Yes, exactly.

Or, you're, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna ask you for something and then you say, no, I have to feel disappointed.

And can I bear the experience of being disappointed?

And we can feel this so acutely with our kids, right?

they come home from school and they've had a bad day.

Someone was mean to them, or, they.

The kid was not very nice and the mama bear energy kind of comes up I'm gonna call the parent, or I'm gonna call the teacher.

I'm gonna quit my kid to make sure this doesn't happen again.

And that's a security risk,

okay.

Of I don't think my child, this shouldn't have happened.

My kid can't tolerate this, or it's not okay that they felt left out or hurt or excluded.

And then I react to try to make sure that never happens again.

So I just wanna expand that security definition because, actually I think a lot of what we're trying to do as we go through the day is not feel certain emotional states.

We're, Tara Brach calls it, the Tara Brach calls it the false refuges.

We have all these false refuges.

We're trying to find a refuge from feeling that fear.

And that's the safety.

The seeking safety.

Yes,

Which is different.

There's a really classic, compassion focused therapy line where they talk about there's a difference between being the man on the porch with his dog versus the man on the porch with his gun.

One is seeking safety.

The other feels

Secure.

Secure.

And so we go to all these false refuges of controlling our kids, or Micromanaging our hair.

Controlling the podcast.

Whatever.

And I just loved the example that you brought around control because if both of us came in here with this is my agenda.

I wanna make sure that I hit these five tools and I wanna talk about the book and that, and I could come in here like that.

Yes.

And you could come in here these are the things I wanna make sure get, I get accomplished and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be in control.

I'm gonna be like, this is my podcast.

And then you would feel us trying to hold onto control.

And that would be the tenor of this conversation and it would have, it would flow really differently.

And we would miss, we might feel in control, temporarily.

Ironically, the thing that we're like scared of experiencing, we actually then like dial up to make sure we're experiencing it, in that way of being.

But in any case, we would lose the magic of co-creator of improvising and my thoughts pinging a thought over there for you.

And you coming to some new understanding about the work you do because of something I said or vice versa.

The warmth, the relaxed kind of, who knows what's gonna happen.

And so that's an example of when we're oriented around fear and defaulting to fear.

That's what we miss out on.

And so the group is about practicing, identifying how often we are orienting from fear, and then once we see that about ourselves, then there are a whole host of tools we can use basically to internally secure our own safety, either in approval control or security, so that then we have access to these other ways of being.

Let's do one tool to secure our own safety, and then let's access some of the other ways of being.

One way that I like to secure my own safety is, fear is actually, I think of fear as the emotion that naturally arises in the face of the unknown.

And fear left unchecked, orients on safety.

What could go wrong?

What do I have to do?

All of the like extra attention and vigilance that turns on the cortisol that turns on when we are scared.

It defaults to paying attention to making sure nothing bad might happen.

A shift move to actually secure our own safety is actually, what if I see the unknown also contains all possibility, all opportunity for growth.

And actually I can't grow unless I'm willing to be in the presence of the unfamiliar.

And so now I feel safe because my value is about growth and possibility and curiosity.

That's what I'm really interested in, rather than defaulting to some sort of need for like for safety, actually, my safety is my ability to grow,

right.

My safety is my ability to learn and I can take fear and the attention that comes online with fear and now redirect it to what am I learning.

They,

it's directing it to an open field.

an open field.

An open field of awareness, an open field of allowing, whatever's gonna pop up, pops up.

I'm a gardener and it's always, the volun.

We call 'em volunteers.

The volunteers, the volunteer tomato.

I have volunteer sweet peas in my garden right now that just decided to pop their little heads up in the pepper bed.

They're gonna be the strongest, they're the ones I'm actually watering 'cause they chose to be here, right?

And if you're so hypervigilant on the fear and weeding every single thing possible out in that bed, you're gonna miss out on the Sweet Peas that are the great strong volunteers.

'cause they just self germinated.

And the self germination is fabulous.

That's the creative flow that you're, that we can experience with each other.

And for me the idea is then, Even if something quote unquote bad happens, if I really trust in my ability to learn and grow, I may not like that the bad thing has happened.

In fact, I might really, hate it.

But there is a deeper part of me that has like a deeper sense of safety, which is it doesn't matter if something bad has happened because I'm in charge of whether I relate to it from a perspective of learning and growth.

And that's my safety is my how I choose to respond to it rather than this external definition of safety of things need to go my way or nothing painful needs to happen in order for me to feel safe.

I now am sourcing safety from something that is in my control, which is the orientation I bring to those external events.

That orientation sounds to me like flexibility.

Be it, sounds to me like the, safety is no matter, it's the improv.

Whatever comes at me, I can respond to what comes at me in a transformative way.

I don't have to like it.

If someone is throwing something at me That is painful or hard or life, is throwing something at me.

There's a, there's, a danger in that.

Like it's always your responsibility to have post-traumatic growth like that.

There's always like a little bit of that kind of danger, but what you're really arguing here is that your safety re resides in your ability to respond to responsiveness and your openness.

Which is the complete opposite of what we've evolved to do, which is to close down, get narrow, shut it all out.

Isolate from ourselves.

And that makes us actually quite less, at it makes this risk

Vulnerable, more vulnerable.

My son, who's learning how to drive my little 15-year-old, he's learning how to drive.

He went out with his driving instructor and he came back and he told me, he said, mom, the most important thing when you're driving is that you stay loose.

So cute.

And he was giving me instruction because he said, if, I let you get in, the car with me.

'cause the driver instructor got in the car with him first.

If I let you get in the car with me, you have to stay loose.

You can't tell me.

Break, break, 'cause that will make me tighten up and it's gonna make me get into an accident.

So he was coaching me on the, how important it is to stay loose, especially in these high stakes settings.

I've got a 16-year-old daughter who won't let me drive in the car with her right now for that very reason.

So I'm really stay loose, resonating with my own failure to stay loose, like in the face of her, doing her thing.

But I do wanna, like what I mean that, I do wanna be clear and I think you're cautioning listeners also in a way that we both get, like this idea of a growth or learning orientation is not about a spiritual bypass or not about this like platitude of, everything has a reason.

Don't tell me this is an opportunity for growth.

Exactly.

When I'm going through the worst thing in my life, don't tell that to me.

Exactly.

So it really is I don't, I wanna be clear that think having that perspective is built upon this previous foundation of actually making contact with what's really happening for you.

Which is about uncomfortable body sensations, fear, wounding, disappointment, rage, deep grief.

Whatever the, what is actually, what am I experiencing and can I be with that fully?

And after I've had a chance to not resist it, now what do I want to do to learn and grow from it?

So it's like a both and of, being with and the flexibility of knowing I can also, I'm not, beholden to what I am what is happening.

I can keep my bed open for the possibility.

That something's gonna pop up here.

I do not know, I don't have choice around what that is, but there will be growth.

There will be some form of growth.

So that's the safety, finding safety, That was the, I said one thing.

Of course we extrapolate.

But that's how we find safe.

We see the possibility.

We open to the possibility and the fear.

As opposed to seeking safety by closing down.

And then, once that's there, the creative process, what are some tools and skills that you do in these groups or you've worked on with yourself to support the creative process of growth?

So one of 'em we've already touched upon, which is really trusting that knowing your wants and articulating your wants is one of the ingredients that is vital in the co-creator process.

And so I like to think of it as there's this river of reality that's like flowing and sometimes we go passive and limp and we just let the river take us.

And then sometimes we like put up a big dam and we insist on it going a certain way.

And what we're looking for is the middle way of I'd like to make an offering through my wanting of where I wanna dance with reality also.

And I'd like my want to be a thread in that.

And like of all the infinite potentialities that could happen in this now moment, I'm open to all of them, but I wanna name the one that feels most resonant and alive to me.

And I, part of why we do that in group is if I really believe that my wants are important, and not only just the actual want, but the respect for my wanting.

Like what happens when I think of myself, who is a creator who has wants, who has, sovereignty to articulate them?

What if I also relate to you the same way?

And you're not an object here to get me what I want, but actually what are your wants also, and can we trust that we can find a way to get all of those wants met?

Okay, let's do it.

Courtney, you're like, just throwing me the perfect pitch here.

So what are some of your wants right now in, in your life as a creator?

I'm really excited to have more people hear my work.

That's really, lighting me up, like planting seeds with as many people as possible.

And then, seeing what resonates and, who responds.

That's, a want of mine right now.

What's one of yours?

I have a want for more ease and flow of the energy, the tremendous amount of life force energy that I have inside of me for it to flow with with less obstruction, with less busyness and micromanaging and forcefulness, and this goes here and that goes there for it just to be a true offering that is sent out and that is helpful to the people that I offer it to and is also regenerative back to me.

Just clean, clear flow with less effort.

Beautiful.

And as part of this conversation is there anything I could do to help you feel more flowy and useful?

I'm actually really feeling it right now.

Huh.

Great.

And I feel the flow with you.

I feel that there's not a lot of effort in our, we're just co-creating.

And I'm also feeling you using your voice and sharing your gifts.

Like I'm, receiving the gift of that want that you just described.

Is there anything I can do to support your want of

No, I, just being here has been, is, exactly what I wanted.

And I appreciate you having me.

And I, I guess that's the other thing that I'm really, wanting is I love collaboration, and the magic that comes from co-creatorship.

And for me, putting things out there and then not getting the feedback loop, is a, I can do it, but it's not my preference.

I really do to feel the dynamic energy, whether it's with someone in a podcast or in a classroom setting.

I really, so I appreciate getting to talk, not just the podcast, but I get to talk to you who I have, so much respect for

The collaborative process.

There's the fear that blocks the collaboration.

Because I think, at least for me, I love collaboration and I'm scared of collaboration.

'cause of those two fears, approval and control, approval and control can real, can be real barriers to collaboration.

I know.

And then we could have some fun, if we were to do this again or do some other thing, like when we could really name those parts of ourselves that wanna control or start thinking about approval and like we could really out ourselves and that would be part of our agreement in terms of how we collaborate, is we have a commitment to, owning when we feel scared and, playing with it.

Not making it a problem but playing with it so that then it, doesn't stick to what we're trying to have, what we wanna have happen, what we, what could happen.

That's true.

Relating, right?

that's like the deeper relating when we can just own it and put it on the table and say it's here again.

Oh, here it is again.

I, I have a good friend that we just, we did this little ceremony with, it was a Kalyana Mitta Do you, heard the Kalyana Mitta?

No.

No, because I was like, we're friends, but we're more than friends.

We're spiritual friends.

And the, Kalyana Mitta is this, it's metta, it's a teaching from the Buddha that, that monks.

When they become brothers, they become spiritual friends to each other.

Oh, amazing.

And it has these seven qualities to it.

Oh.

And the qualities are, we endure what's hard to endure.

We give what's hard to give.

We tell our secrets.

We keep each other's secrets.

When one of us is down and out, we don't look down on the other person.

And, I forgot the other two, but I did pretty good with five of seven.

five of seven.

So the other two are the ones I'm probably not great at doing.

But, that sort of concept of that's what, that's the kind of relating I wanna be in with people.

I wanna be in the edginess and not the the fake false relating, which is what most of us are trained up to do when we stay in.

the sort of the light talk.

Not that every talk has to be deep talk, but I like it if it is.

And that's one of the things that's the, opportunity, but then also the danger of relationship period is, because relationships, there's the opportunity for such intimacy and the opportunity to care and love for one another.

I really talk about this as are our soul, are we are our egos friends or our souls friends?

And when there's a soul contract, I'm actually here in service of your soul and I have to risk maybe you not liking me or you going away or making you angry.

I might even have to risk our ego friendship for the sake of being in service of your soul?

Geez.

We've had friends like that, haven't we?

Soul friends?

I remember my first one was in, high school.

She was my college roommate in high school, Liz.

I was so anorexic.

And she told on me.

She told on me.

She said, "Diana is, like she's faking it.

She's drinking water when she, 'cause I was getting weighed, she's drinking water.

And I remember I hated her.

I was like, I hate you Liz.

Our friendship is over, blah, blah, blah.

And she just looked at me and I could see the little terror in her eyes, but she was my soul friend, that was there to speak the truth and probably was part, of the whole saving of my life was to be that soul friend.

So sometimes we need to be a soul friend.

And call each other out on stuff or not allow something to continue That's happening.

Or discontinue re rescuing.

People from their stuff, we're just like, I'm being an ego friend by rescue you from your bad feeling all the time.

And you're calling me up and I'm just like the rescue machine.

That's not, soul friend.

And I, so I'm, that's a beautiful story.

I'm like, I wanna.

Liz,

where I wanna send like a, want you

to connect.

I'm gonna call Liz.

I wanna, I wanna have a moment of appreciation for, that very courageous act so long ago.

But that's exactly what I'm talking about.

and what happens with relationships is we get attached and we don't wanna risk approval loss.

And we don't wanna, there's often security that gets put at risk when we end relationships.

And so those fears can keep us attached and in relating patterns that are more about fear rather than about these bigger possibilities.

And so that's always like the knife edge with relationship is am I, have I become so close to you that now I've lost candor, I've lost taking responsibility, I've lost, saying uncomfortable things.

I've lost my own truth.

All the things that can happen in relationship with people we care so deeply about because we are attached.

But then there's such upside to being in those relationships because, we don't have soul contracts with the dry cleaner.

It, there are certain, 'cause there's real commitments in terms of practice, and ways of relating to one another that support that kind of agreement.

And so I have a handful of people where we explicitly, like I have a really good friend and she is working on her wanting and, I don't strong arm her into going to things the way you might with like other friends.

"Could you please come with me to this?

Oh, this would mean so much to me." I sometimes I really want her to go to something, but I have this deeper commitment.

Like no, I know she's working on like owning her own authentic wants.

And if that means she doesn't come to this party with me, that's on me.

Because as a soul friend, you're honoring their soul.

I know her path.

I know her journey.

I know, where your soul is at right now.

I'm not gonna push on it too hard.

I know that you doing the work that you need to do and I see that.

Thank you for telling me no.

That probably took a lot of courage.

Totally.

I want to support that in you.

It's so good to have soul friends.

So the group is really about what are the commitments and tools that you have to have in relationship, in order to really have, not just be able to say that aspirationally, but be able to practice that knowing you're gonna fall down.

Make mistakes all the time.

but what are the tools that really allow you to do that?

Okay.

So I wanna highlight just the ones we talked about.

You're an attorney so you can, like I know your brain is tracking all of them.

I track all of it too.

So funny.

So I wanna highlight the ones that we talked about and then I want to also just talk about your book because not everyone can come to your group in Santa Barbara, although everyone wants to.

but then I also wanna talk about this workbook and and what's in there that people are gonna get.

'cause they're gonna get pieces of this to be able to do some of this work in group or in by themselves.

Okay, so we talked,

We started out, with one eye in one eye out, and some tools for knowing oneself while being in relationship.

Yes.

We talked about inarguable speaking and those two are related.

inarguable speaking, which is about knowing body sensation, knowing emotions, and being able to distinguish between fact and story.

We talked about, seeing fear when it's at play.

And the distinction I'll make is when I'm scared, life's happening to me.

When I am in creator or like looking, going after values, connection, intimacy, et cetera, life's happening for me.

And so the being able to discern like my location, where am I?

And then shift moves to approach life from a place of safety.

And there we talked about like a learning growth mindset.

We talked about wanting.

We talked about, naming like some, a playful, like catching ourselves in the act with one another and being playful about it.

And we also talked about, co-creatorship and the idea that it's not just my wanting, but it's trust that we can collaborate together, and really seeing, I use the word allyship, even though I know that's gotten, that's a loaded word at this point.

But this idea of soul contracts,

soul friends.

Spiritual friends Kalyana Mitta that's a guy.

Whatever you wanna call it.

I wanna go look at that up.

Might go Kalyana Mitta it.

I'm going to.

And this is your real genius, Courtney.

You're, you have the capacity to have the attorney mind that can organize all this material.

This is complex, deep material and make it the way you just made it.

Like we talked about this, we talked about this, we talked about this.

But then you have the capacity to do it, to demo it to very few people could do this with me.

What we just did to go there and do it while you're talking about it.

So we were moving in and out of doing it and talking about it.

And that's the probably the magic of your roots that you're doing that.

Oh, thank you.

Toggling,

thanks.

True genius energy in this space.

I'm super excited for you.

Thank you.

Super fun.

You

thanks.

And, then this gets manifested into this workbook, so tell us a little bit about that.

Okay.

Because everyone wants to go get your workbook now.

Okay.

the workbook is called Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness.

And it is a companion guide.

my coauthor and friend, Elise Lowen wrote a book called On Our Best Behavior that came out several years ago, and it was using the construct of the seven deadly sins, but through a secular perspective to really identify and explore, the various stories women have internalized about what it means to be in quotes, a good woman.

What are our stories about femininity?

And, specifically in the domains around gluttony and body image, lust and sexuality.

Pride and ambition, sloth and rest, envy and wanting, greed or money and anger.

And the book was a bestseller and really I think a lot of the audience responded with, you're naming something I didn't realize I had an intern, I had internalized, I thought I was through this.

But it's actually quite pernicious.

Now what do I do about that?

And so the workbook is a lot of the tools that we just spoke about, but they are applied specifically to the context of the stories you've inherited in any of those domains.

With the opportunity to release and let go of one of those stories and then reclaim.

A new way of thinking about your relationship to anger, pride, wanting, money, sexuality, or body image, but through a more self-authored this is actually my truth, rather than one that I received culturally.

Beautiful.

I am still waiting for this book to arrive at my doorstep.

I wanna see it.

I want,

okay.

I will be the first to talk about it as soon as it arrives.

Oh, thank you.

And I'm gonna work my way through it.

Okay.

I'm super excited about the workbook, which is called.

Choosing wholeness over goodness.

Choosing wholeness over goodness.

Go order it.

And if you're in Santa Barbara and you're a lucky few, you might get access to Courtney Smith's group.

But I imagine this is just gonna grow because that is your want for it to be a seed that feeds many.

And, we're gonna continue to see where that goes for you because it's gonna be wild and wonderful and all of its forms.

Thank you, Courtney.

Aw, thank you.

Thank you, honor and delight to spend the hour with you.

I love being here too.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Wise Effort podcast.

Wise effort is about you taking your energy and putting it in the places that matter most to you.

And when you do so you'll get to savor the good of your life along the way.

If you would like to become a member of the Wise Effort podcast, go to wise effort.com.

And if you liked this episode and it would be helpful to somebody, please leave a review over at Podchaser.

I would like to thank my team, my partner, in all things, including the producer of this podcast, Craig.

Ashley Hiatt, the podcast manager.

And thank you to Ben Gould at Bell and Branch for our music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only.

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatments.