The Importance Of A Growth Mindset In Stroke Recovery
Is your mindset a Growth mindset or A Fixed Mindset? Learn how to understand the difference and how you can change your mindset to support recovery
Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvin-oka-9bb608/
Website: https://www.behaviouralmodelling.com/
Highlights:
00:39 Introduction
03:26 What is Mindset?
10:41 Perspective is one of the key components of a mindset
18:33 The right mindset approach
26:01 Neuroplasticity is not just in the head
34:43 Self Awareness
41:00 Nothing is random
45:24 “Follow your bliss”
58:27 Neurobehavioral modeling
Transcription:
Marvin 0:00
With neuroplasticity research that’s available today what other things we do know is that neuroplasticity is not just occurring in the head. So it’s not just about settling the quote-unquote head brain mind that there is also within the heart and the gut as well and, and that’s why it’s a total way of being neuroplasticity is occurring throughout the whole of the person. And this is why it’s possible that we can grow and evolve ourselves as integrated human beings.
Intro 0:31
This is recovery after stroke with Bill Gasiamis helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.
Introduction
Bill 0:39
Bill from recoveryafterstroke.com This is Episode 82. And my guest today is Marvin Oka. And is a world leader and an authority in the field of behavioral modeling and behavioral change technologies, and has built an impressive track record helping people and organizations with strategic systemic and personal change You can find out more about Marvin at behavioralmodeling.com.
Bill 1:05
Now just before we get started, I wanted to share with you that a few weeks ago, I launched recovery after stroke coaching the people who have signed up and are now being coached by me and are being helped to overcome challenges including fatigue, anger, isolation, amongst other things, the 12-month access, they paid only 149 US dollars.
Bill 1:27
So if you are a stroke survivor who wants to know how to heal your brain, overcome fatigue, and reduce anxiety, recovery after stroke coaching might be for you. If you have fallen in the cracks between hospital and home care and desire to gain momentum in your recovery but do not know where to start? This is where I can help.
Bill 1:46
I will coach you and help you gain clarity on where you are currently in your recovery journey. I’ll help you create a picture of where you would like to be in your recovery 12 months from now, and I will coach you to overcome What’s stopping you from getting to your goal. During coaching, I will also teach you the 10 steps to brain health for stroke survivors and guide you through each step with supporting interviews from experts and information that is based on the latest scientific research.
Bill 2:14
If you’re one of the first 10 people to join recovery after show coaching, you will get a one-on-one private coaching thread with access to the course 10 Steps to Brain Health for Stroke Survivors when released member access only monthly group training calls and access to the stroke survivors’ private forum.
Bill 2:35
The first 10 people to join also get more than 70% of the full price of 599 and 12 months of access will only cost you 149 US dollars per year. be one of the first 10 people who apply for recovery after stroke coaching now and get the first seven days free to give it a try.
Bill 2:53
After the seven-day free trial you will pay the annual amount of only 149 US dollars and the price of renewal will never increase for as many years that you stay a member. Once the first 10 coaching packages are solid, the price will never be offered again.
Bill 3:08
So take advantage of the seven-day free trial now by clicking the link below if you’re watching on YouTube, or by going to recoveryafterstroke.com/coaching, if you are listening online, and now it’s on with the show, Marvin Oka. Welcome to the podcast.
Marvin Oka 3:24
Thanks, Bill. It’s such an honor to be here.
What is Mindset?
Bill 3:26
So it’s gonna be a fun interview because you’ve got a real depth of knowledge in many areas. mindset is one of those and if I could ask you the first question, which is, what is a mindset? And how do we come to have a mindset?
Marvin Oka 3:49
Yeah, it’s a great question because it’s one of the most often used words around the place, and most people haven’t thought through, really what’s involved in it. You know, it’s been used interchangeably. with things like attitude, for instance, to have a mindset, really, for a lot of people, they’re saying, you need the right attitude.
Marvin Oka 4:07
But even that alone is not very helpful as a set of words. I don’t know if you can recall Bill, but I know certainly when I was growing up as a young boy, I was often told you need to change your attitude. Yeah, and it’s one of those where it’s like, Okay, great. I don’t even like aside from the word how, like, how do you actually shift attitude, but often I didn’t even understand what people meant.
Marvin Oka 4:33
Like what what do you mean? any more than when someone says you need the right mindset? Okay, wonderful. What does that mean? Now, mindsets, not one thing, it’s not just, you know, just attitude if you break that down, it’s, it’s the result of a range of things from your perception of the context, which we can talk about more in just a moment.
Marvin Oka 4:59
Your identity Your values, have to do with your motivations, it has to do with what you think the outcome of the goals are. And in a particular situation, it has to do with your psychological orientation, which is also built on your personal history and all your preferences and biases. So it’s a long way of saying, it’s not one thing, it’s many things.
Marvin Oka 5:20
Which is why it’s very slippery to try and get a clear, concise definition. You know, since I would assume instead of looking at it from an academic or technical viewpoint, like, what’s the definitive definition of, mindset? I think probably for your listeners, we’re probably talking more about the practical side of things.
Marvin Oka 5:41
So the real question is, is it given what kind of psychological orientation you’re in? is it helping? Is it serving? Is it the appropriate attitude, mindset, or orientation for what you’re trying to achieve? And you can tell if it’s helping you or not, because you’ll experience It’s not helping you if it’s not helping you, you’re going to experience things like frustration or, or anger or stress or anxiety or worry or, you know, depression or whatever it might be.
Marvin Oka 6:11
Which tells you right off the bat that it’s not necessarily the external world. You know, in our particular world of neurobehavioral modeling, we take a look at what we call the blinding flashes of the obvious. You can have two people in the same situation.
Marvin Oka 6:27
One person will be under great stress and in various forms of suffering and another will be more resourceful and find ways to generate choices and options in which to respond properly or effectively to the situation. So clearly, it’s not the situation. It’s one’s mindset, quote-unquote, mindset, or psychological orientation in how to respond to that kind of situation.
Marvin Oka 6:50
Of course, though, when you’re in what we call an unresourceful state. It’s unhelpful. If someone just says well, you need to change your attitude. Shift your mindset. Thanks a lot. But I’m not in that mindset. So your advice is not only not helpful, it’s downright irritating and makes things worse.
Marvin Oka 7:09
So, this is the issue, the issue is probably less about the mindset itself. It’s more about, in my particular view, what we call the meta consciousness, the ability to stay at choice to be able to choose your orientation to a particular situation and the first step is recognizing when the orientation you’re in your psychological orientation that you’re in is not serving, because if it’s serving you fine, move along.
Marvin Oka 7:43
But if it’s not serving you, you’re feeling stress, worry, depression, anxiety, frustration, whatever it might be. these are These are clues saying, you know, other people can be resourceful. It’s not the world that’s out there.
Marvin Oka 7:56
It’s some way that I’m relating or interpreting the world. It’s the way I’ve psychologically oriented myself to the world and the narrative I’m creating on it. That I’m in total control of, and if I can shift that, then it’s not a question of which way of orienting myself in the world is going to be more effective, more fulfilling, more meaningful, and more expressive of who I am in this kind of situation.
Marvin Oka 8:21
So it’s kind of a long way of saying it’s not one thing. And rather than try and get caught up in the technical side of things, let’s look at the pragmatics of it.
Bill 8:30
I do like your explanation. It’s very deep already. We’ve gone a few minutes and we are already seriously deep into the topic of mindset. What I like about what you said, amongst many things, is the fact that when I’m coaching somebody in the recovery after stroke phase or process, they’ve usually altered their mindset to be ready and willing to accept support in some way, shape, or form.
Bill 8:58
And that creates an amazing space for new learning to occur. I just had a client a week ago who told me that the thing that she was struggling with was anger, that anger that she found herself in this situation now, where she’s dealing with not being able to walk properly and recovering from a stroke, and it’s interfering with her career, etc.
Bill 9:26
But what’s interesting now that you say what you said is that she wasn’t angry while we were in the coaching phase. She was selected on previously being angry. Now she is in a more resourceful state and allows new ideas to come into her world so that she can approach these difficulties as challenges rather than as things that are getting in the way of her life just challenges that she needs to overcome.
Bill 9:58
So I love the fact that already, as soon as you engage somebody to help you overcome that challenge that you’re having, you’ve shifted your mindset and you might not be aware of it, but you’re going and moving towards a growth mindset or a change mindset or a mindset. That’s about recovery.
Marvin Oka 10:15
Yeah, that’s a great, great example because it highlights how many different aspects there are to the words quote, unquote, and mindset. So you know, it’s just saying if they come in with a mindset already of seeking, helping open to help, etc. And then as you’re also saying that, you know, she became aware that she’s not angry in them in the moment during the coaching session, but she’s she was angry about past experiences or in past experiences.
Perspective is one of the key components of a mindset
Marvin Oka 10:41
So one of the highlights of one of the key components is perspective, right? So it’s a major part of your mindset, from what perspective now even that that one little word or one long word depends on what the word perspective is. It also has so many different things components and variables associated with it.
Marvin Oka 11:02
So here we’ve got a time-based perspective with the lady saying, you know, this is interesting in the now, when the coaching session, I’m fine is when I think about the past experiences where the anger resides. So from a larger timeframe perspective, she can now recognize, okay, so she’s not angry all the time, which means she’s not an angry person.
Marvin Oka 11:23
And that kind of larger, broader perspective, the big picture perspective, so to speak, shifts mindset. And this is the classic example of framing and reframing in the world of behavioral psychology. And so the idea is to reframe means shifting perspective. In another perspective, things take on a different meaning. And so these, seeing all the different elements that make up mindset is critical to kind of say just shift mindset is not going to be helpful for a lot of people.
Marvin Oka 11:23
So let’s get a perspective at the moment you’re fine. Right? So that time orientation makes a different context another one, which is okay, In previous contexts, I could be angry, but in the context of coaching, I’m not an I’m open, which means in the context of future choices, I, you know, I can be a different way than just angry, right?
Marvin Oka 12:14
But if we can start working with more concrete things like, okay, let’s take about take a look at the difference between what was then versus now what that I can work with, right? And then what’s coming up in the future well, that I can work with, I can get coached to then. So if I come in, and I’ve got a mindset where I’m open to the coaching, that means I’ve got now a shift in perspective as to who I am about you.
Marvin Oka 12:39
So if I am a victim, if my perception of who I am as a victim, then my mindset is, you know, woe is me and I can’t do anything about it and everything happens to me. But if I come to you for help, my mindset is okay, I’m someone who can be helped. I would like help. So, therefore, I’ve got built-in motivation. you’re someone who can help me I’m open to hearing and listening and learning from you, well, then that’s a completely different psychological orientation to work with or to work from.
Marvin Oka 13:07
And what people also seem to miss many times as they think it’s all in the head. They think it’s just, if I can just shift my thinking now shifting your way of thinking is certainly a major part of the mindset. But it’s also a way of being. And so if I come to you for help, and it’s not just my thinking I would like help.
Marvin Oka 13:27
But my way of being is I am open to being helped. Well, then now your coaching is going to go far with that person. And so, you know, mindset is not just in the head, mind. It’s all in the whole body, the whole body and mind as it integrates.
Bill 13:45
Yeah, it’s interesting. Sometimes you come across clients who think it’s a great idea to get coaching, but then they won’t take the action that they say that they think they need to take. And it sounds like that’s what you’re describing you’re describing that idea of coaching or support or making a difference or changing my mindset.
Bill 14:07
If I could just do that here, then that’s great. Oh, I got myself to a coaching session or to a session where somebody’s going to support me through a difficult time. And the job’s done. Well, it’s not necessarily done. There are a lot of things that have to, you have to follow through with. And one of the things you mentioned just a little while ago was, you talked about, you know, people turning up as victims, One of the great things about the stroke community is they call themselves stroke survivors.
Bill 14:38
And you never hear the word stroke victim, and that automatically sets them up for a different path toward healing and recovery because they are talking about surviving and overcoming. And that seems to me to suggest growth, and re-learning new things anyway and new ways of being anyway because they’re surviving. So the language seems to play a really important role there as well.
Marvin Oka 15:04
Oh, it makes a critical role or plays a critical role. Because our language is the core of of what’s holding together our narrative, or I’m making of the meaning of the world, and the way that we make meaning of our subjective world that influences our quote, unquote, mindset. If we think it’s a terrible world well, and that’s our narrative, that’s the language mapping we’re creating of our reality, then if our mindset is one word, it’s a terrible world, or it’s a harsh world, etc, well, then we’re always going to be at the receiving end of a lot of problems.
Marvin Oka 15:39
Whereas if we are from survivors, and I know for a fact that you know, listening to a lot of when we spoke in the past, from the people you’ve spoken with, as well as yourself, you’ve gone even beyond survivors, and so you know, you’ve gone from surviving to thriving, right?
Marvin Oka 15:53
And so, you know, you’ve got people that are identifying that with themselves, they’ve got a narrative that shapes their mind. mindset around, not just surviving a stroke, but now they’re better off because they have a different mindset where they value things differently.
Marvin Oka 16:09
They appreciate things differently. They’re more at the moment tomorrow, President, and there, their whole way of being has, for lack of better terms, you know, evolved into greater levels of authenticity, deeper levels of authenticity. And so when you’re coming from that kind of narrative, your whole mindset, your whole way of being begins to shift.
Bill 16:31
I certainly noticed that with myself. there are times when I do things, or I think it’s a great idea, but I’m using words that don’t support the other stage of the process, which is, I’m going to do this part. I’ll go there. And then I’ll talk about how hard it is to do the action steps or the homework or how I don’t have time or all those things and then I’ll get to the point of having a great idea taking action from one point and then kind of interfering with that achievement or that goal or that outcome by using different words to stop me from taking those necessary steps.
Bill 17:11
And it’s encouraging and it’s in reflecting, and it’s in conversation with other people that allows me to have that checked. And I don’t say that in a negative way or, pupil-teacher kind of way. But I say that more in a, I speak to people and I surround myself with people who have permission to say to me, Hey, Bill, did you realize what you just said?
Bill 17:35
And how maybe that will interfere with what it is that you’re trying to achieve with your outcome. And then that allows me to reflect on what I said, and perhaps notice myself doing that at times when it’s a critical moment in my action-taking to get to that step. Noticing myself is a skill that I never had. before, it was a new skill that came out, and noticed my words, I noticed my actions and my interactions.
Bill 18:06
It makes a big difference in how I’ve been able to get through the stroke recovery journey from nearly eight years ago when it started to this point where the learning never stops, and the noticing myself never stops, because there is a way that sometimes you can revert to an old mindset that doesn’t serve you.
The right mindset approach
Marvin Oka 18:33
Yeah, you brought up again, a super important point. And something you know, we spoke about right at the beginning, in our conversation, which is this idea of, to approach mindset well, you want to approach it, in terms of choice in terms of metacognition, or you know, your meta consciousness, whereas you’re saying, you’re able to observe yourself, you’re able to make different choices you can choose between your mind so you can become aware of one when it’s not working, or what our particular mindset when it’s not working for you.
Marvin Oka 19:04
And then choose a more appropriate one or more effective or what we call in our language, an ecological one, that works better for you as a whole system as a whole person. And this idea, of metacognition, is critical when approaching the development of one’s mindset. Otherwise, as you’ve rightfully pointed out, you don’t want to get stuck. You don’t want to swap one mindset for another and then just get stuck in this other one.
Marvin Oka 19:30
Otherwise, someone kind of go shift your mindset and they’ve shifted it, but now there’s, they’re just stubborn, (inaudible) mindset that they just won’t let go of, and it’s like, well, you know, hang on you as a person, you’re continually evolving, you’re continually growing. So, you know, you want to be continually shifting and evolving your mindset as well.
Marvin Oka 19:50
It also comes back to our particular field, we look at things in terms of processes, so the mindset is not a thing that you have It’s not like having a proper mindset you do it, it’s a set of internal processes that you do. And if we break that apart, and we put it back into its process forms, we put that those set of words back into the process forms.
Marvin Oka 20:17
We have, we have mind and we have minding. So when you’re minding something, what are you doing when you’re paying attention, aren’t you You’re, you’re noticing you’re paying attention you’re observing, you’re minding something, you’re taking care of it. And so you’re taking care of cool when this pretty location Take care of yourself. So we can also look at the word set, and we can look at the word of setting.
Marvin Oka 20:39
So you know, how are you setting your way of minding things, but I like to maybe broaden the word a little bit and say, settling. So how are you settling your mind into something, right? And if we now look at the latest findings in neuroscience that do not separate mind and body that is that Cartesian split of mind and body as two separate things no longer exist in the world of neuroscience, they recognize that part and parcel of the same system, they’re different aspects of the same system.
Marvin Oka 21:10
So more likely that neuroscientists will use the one word of the body-mind. And as one word just says one word showed two facets on the same system, how the body put it, you know, if you’re not, you know, if your body is not functioning well it affects your mental emotional processes. However, your mental and emotional processes can affect how your body functions.
Marvin Oka 21:34
They’re not two different things interacting with each other, they’re part of the same thing. And so if we look at the body-mind, and how are you settling into your body-mind? How’s your body and mind settling into itself? In other words, it’s another way of saying, it’s how are you doing your way of being in the world? How are you settling into a way of being and this is why it’s not just thoughts, right?
Marvin Oka 21:55
Mindset isn’t just ways of pure thinking. It has to integrate Thinking emotions, body actions, motivations, and values in your internal spirit as well your levels of deep authenticity have to come to express themselves through this quote-unquote, mindset. And so when we as a neurobehavioral modeler when we unpack it, and we start to look at how someone’s settling in the way they’re doing their body-mind, or their body minding the hunger, they’re minding themselves, then you start to see things completely differently as to what it means to shift mindset.
Marvin Oka 22:30
What it means, you know, in our most practical sense, to be able to shift from an unreasonable mindset to a more resourceful one isn’t just shifting your thinking. It’s about evolving your way of being. It’s about self-evolution. It’s about real growth, about it’s about emerging, deeper levels of authenticity and more congruent expressions of who you are. And so when we want to get into shifting transforming mindset we are talking about human development or evolution of human consciousness of a person. And so this is where the real work comes in. I know that’s a lot of the focus of the kind of work that you do.
Bill 23:13
Yeah, it’s it’s a much lovelier place to work in. Let me tell you, it’s fascinating. And when you take that approach to support somebody to recover from something, and you’re using the idea that it’s about evolving that person, and it’s not about helping them fix a problem today, it’s about helping evolve them to the point where they are fixing their problems without even knowing it from a space of this sort of greater wisdom, then that is the place we want to I want to be playing in.
Intro 23:49
If you’ve had a stroke, and during recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be. You’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind Like, how long will it take to recover? Will I recover? What things should I avoid? In case I make matters worse, doctors will explain things. But, because you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask.
Intro 23:51
If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery. If you find yourself in that situation, stop worrying, and head to recoveryafterstroke.com, where you can download a guide that will help you. It’s called seven questions to ask your doctor about your stroke. These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke. They’ll not only help you better understand your condition. They’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. head to the website now, recoveryafterstroke.com and download the guide It’s free.
Bill 24:51
When we spoke about mind settling, that’s a beautiful way I’ve never heard mind settling being used before as a way to describe the mindset that I was familiar with up until right now. And I had a problem with the word mindset. And it was because somebody who’s not expanded in their way of thinking, and I’m certainly not that expanded yet, but I’m getting there is I looked at the word mindset, and I, I saw the word mind and set and when I hear set, I think of concrete, it set, change it.
Bill 25:39
I want to think of mind I put those two words together and it’s like, even the word automatically from just you know, straight out of the gate in suggests, kind of if, you’re that way inclined, that it’s hard to set and we can’t change it. But we know that’s not true now, because of things like neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity is not just in the head
Marvin Oka 26:03
That’s right. And then and again, that the, as you’re well aware of built with, with neuroplasticity research that’s available today what other things we do know is that the neural plasticity is not just occurring in the head. So it’s not just about settling the quote-unquote head mind, there is also within the heart and the gut as well. And, and that’s why it’s a total way of neuroplasticity occurring throughout the whole of the person.
Marvin Oka 26:29
And so this is why it’s possible, where we can grow and evolve ourselves as, integrated human beings. Do you know why the mindset isn’t just a shift of thinking it’s also an emergence of deeper core authentic values, an expression of your core when I simply call the essence of who you are at the deepest level. And, and this idea of, you know, with coaching, where we’re looking at the evolution of consciousness of someone.
Marvin Oka 26:57
The challenge I think, for a lot of people, is that When they’re in a particular or doing a particular mindset, where, they’re there, that mindset is creating a lot of suffering and pain for them, you know, a lot of mental emotional angst and suffering, to entertain the idea there’s another way of doing oneself another way of being that we’re this form of suffering doesn’t exist with more choices are available.
Marvin Oka 27:27
That all sounds impossible, unreachable to someone who is suffering. And that’s why is it as you’re saying, This is why, you know, people like yourself when they’re coaching people. It’s taking them to that place where this new level of authentic ways of being can emerge, right, there’s this new self-evolution is emergent.
Marvin Oka 27:49
They can’t see it from where they are yet but with guided processes with with help with supported by the right levels of entrainment space, that’s created they can have a way to access new ways of settling a body mind a way of doing themselves, where they emerge new choices that they could not see before. And this is the form of generative coaching that I know you do.
Marvin Oka 28:19
And it’s the kind of coaching that I do. And, and this is where, for lack of a better term is what I call the real work. That’s where the real work happens. And that’s why it kind of similar to yourself, why, you know, when people throw around the word mindset, I take a look at the level of depth at which they’re using the word that depth kind of narrative and whether they’re doing things at a surface level like just change your thinking it’s like yeah, thanks, dad.
Marvin Oka 28:44
As you know, what am I supposed to do when you tell me to change my attitude Thanks a lot. As opposed to someone who understands what it means to shift the way that I think value feel connect with myself and emerge a new way for the more deeply authentic, more fulfilling, and more expressed. And when that happens. Now the words mindset have meaning.
Bill 29:13
Yeah, they sure do. One thing I’ve become aware of, as I’ve gone through my evolution, in the 45 years I’ve been on this planet is that my mindset may not have been mine. It may have come from somewhere else. I may have been partly influenced by my schooling by my parents, by my boss by all these other people who may have somehow infiltrated my mindset and laid down another mindset, or partly some of their mindset.
Bill 29:48
And now I’m walking forward in life and I’m experiencing these things and I’m wondering, you know, why I feel certain ways or why this is not working for me because potentially what I’ve not been able to develop is an awareness of what my mindset should be. Hmm. Now we become aware of how we’ve been, for lack of a better word ingrained in a way that is not authentically us. That is somebody else’s way of being. And how do we shift?
Marvin Oka 30:28
That’s a superb question because it’s been at the heart of almost all wisdom practices for millennia. There are so many different ways to try and go about it but have, but I’ll talk about one right now only because it’s fresh in my mind. After all, I’ve just been recently reminded of it as I’ve been working on a particular project looking at various forms of meta philosophies and meta and working with a colleague around looking at meta-ethics and working with another colleague around the development of one’s general philosophies of the world in your a little bit, a slightly different nuance to mindset.
Marvin Oka 31:07
But it’s your background framework that you’re reaching for, to make sense of the world and to make decisions and to make your decisions and actions, what’s guiding the wisdom of your decisions and actions. And one of the ways to explain this, John Paul Sartre had one way of explaining this. And in his philosophy of that genre of existentialism.
Marvin Oka 31:33
And one of his phrases, one of his famous phrases is that we are condemned to freedom. And that is one of the things he said because as humans, we are always free, but there’s a part of us that recognizes this and it has this ongoing anguish and angst knowing that we’re free. It’s scary. And he says because part of it is in our consciousness.
Marvin Oka 32:01
You know, in our language, as you know, Bill as neurobehavioral modelers, we talked about how we represent the world to ourselves, we take pictures of the world, we say things to ourselves. People say things to us, and we take on their narrative, As you’re saying, It’s not even in our mindset. They give us pictures, we watch the news, and they put pictures in our heads.
Marvin Oka 32:21
And we go through all these different representations of the world that weren’t self-generated, they were given to us. And that’s the way it is. That’s the way the world works. And John Paul Sartre was saying, you know, we have these in consciousness, we have these images that go on in our head. And he said you, but you, you always have to remember that there is a, that we have what he called the objects of our consciousness.
Marvin Oka 32:47
In other words, the content of our focus. And he said, but there’s always the observer, which is us, noticing these things that are that are going on in our head. Well, you know, we Hear the voices in our head, right? If you hear what somebody your parents told you, for instance, when you were growing up or what you should and shouldn’t do?
Marvin Oka 33:11
Can you recognize that there’s a you that can hear this internal voice in your head? If you have these pictures of memories running in your mind, can you recognize that it’s you who observes these pictures? So you’re not those pictures, and you’re not those voices. There’s an observer, that’s you.
Marvin Oka 33:30
And Sartre points out, he said, there’s always a gap. There’s always a gap between you the observer, and what you are observing, there’s a distance between you and that. And he said in that gap is freedom, because you don’t have to choose to think that way. Right, you can interpret those things differently in that gap.
Marvin Oka 33:57
And we always have that gap. There’s always you the observer. All the other things all things that you’re observing are the pictures the sounds of what people are saying, the images that are going on out there in the world. And we are we always have this and that’s why I said we are condemned to freedom we always have this freedom.
Marvin Oka 34:15
And with this freedom comes this amazing responsibility and it’s in a lot of people will run from that a lot of people run that they kind of said they want to play the victim. Right they want to have not been a choice because now they feel like it’s they don’t have to be responsible for what happens so with this freedom with this recognition that you can be responsible you can choose you can create your life you can be more you can authentically create your interpretations of how things are that’s more fulfilling to you.
Self Awareness
Marvin Oka 34:43
So that’s a big ask. But this is one of those things where Look, how do you do it? Well, one of the first things The first step to the question is exactly what we started this conversation on self-awareness. You have to become aware of your thoughts. Your internal voice, the internal voices running in your head, which may not even be yours.
Marvin Oka 35:05
The pictures running in your head, all the things that the external world tries to do well, but it’s not for the intentionally try to do this, but it happens, the news, etc It all comes, you know, we’re all we all grew up people telling us things and is what Gurdjieff said, he said, We need a guardian at the gate of our impressions.
Marvin Oka 35:27
So all the impressions that we take on all the pictures that we store in our head, all the things we say to ourselves all all the recordings that we store in our head, we need a guardian at the gate of these impressions just saying, do I choose this? Do I agree, do I not agree, or whatever it might be? Because if you don’t have this level of meta-consciousness or self-awareness, then you just take it on and you just get conditioned you get programmed by society.
Marvin Oka 35:52
And so a lot of these choices is becoming aware of the programming. It’s not a bad thing. It just happens. So, the antidote is consciousness is a choice to stay aware of your choice and then constantly do exactly what you’re doing, which is to come back and ask yourself, do I believe this? Do I choose this? And if not, what do I want to choose? And it’s, it’s what people want to do next to choose is don’t look external.
Marvin Oka 36:22
They’ll say, Okay, what should I choose? There’s not should all there is is what is authentic to you. At this moment? What do you choose for this? And, you know, there’s this old game that’s played. I don’t know if some people are familiar with the game. Are you familiar with the old Chocolate and vanilla Ice cream game?
Bill 36:45
No, tell me.
Marvin Oka 36:47
It’s a beautiful game. And it’s one where someone comes, you know, as an exercise, if I were to come up to you, Bill and I’d say all right, so I’ve got in one hand, chocolate Ice cream in the other hand, vanilla ice cream. All right, choose which one?
Bill 37:05
Vanilla.
Marvin Oka 37:07
Vanilla. Okay, so why did you choose vanilla?
Bill 37:09
It’s my favorite.
Marvin Oka 37:10
It’s your favorite. no wrong answer. Chocolate or vanilla choose?
Bill 37:19
Chocolate.
Marvin Oka 37:20
Why did you choose chocolate?
Bill 37:22
Because it’s my favorite.
Marvin Oka 37:25
No wrong answer. This game will go on for minutes, to hours, where people are just struggling with this thing. Now one of the points of this exercise is the time you have because that means you haven’t chosen Oh, it means your reasons made you choose your reasons decided for you.
Marvin Oka 37:55
Right? Oh because this this this and because because of those reasons. Therefore, I’m making this choice, which means you’re not in control. You didn’t do it. Your reasons did it, your criteria made you do that. Because of it or because it’s, you know, it’s better for the planet or so. So none of this is your choice.
Marvin Oka 38:15
Right? Now, when you’re coming at it from a bit esoteric, because I know people will argue with this and it’s like, well, first just understand what the point is, right? It’s not meant to be a practical exercise. If I go to an ice cream shop or gelato shop, I choose something because it is my favorite. But the point of the exercise is, yeah, that if you’re coming from pure choice, then you would hear narratives coming out of someone like what? Choose one alright chocolate, Why did you choose it?
Marvin Oka 38:50
Because I chose it because because I chose it. No other reason other than I chose it. Right? There’s there’s no reason That’s just what I did. It’s like Okay, all right. So, you know what while it might not be the most, you know, in in the most Street, you know, the most conventionally practical exercise although it is immensely practical in terms of the development of one’s consciousness. So, in terms of, you know, what is it you choose?
Marvin Oka 39:19
Looking at 10 a day at the moment, truly self-authoring to be authentic and self-authoring, truly self-creative that moment takes tremendous levels of awareness and consciousness. Now, I’m not saying that one should be doing that all the time, although that you know, that would be like a lovely, lovely Nirvana-type state.
Marvin Oka 39:45
But, it is, it is an important concept. It is an important, you know, light on top of the hill a flag to be good to be aware of to recognize Okay, it Your question is, how do I choose? Well, look at the deepest level, How you choose is to stay connected to yourself and stay connected to what is authentic to you in that moment. Now, that’s a big ask. That’s that’s far easier said than done. Right?
Marvin Oka 40:20
But that’s why it requires strong degrees of extreme degrees of constant self-awareness. Well, then the core question now becomes how do you develop self-awareness while you develop it by being more self-aware on an ongoing basis? It’s not an end state. It’s an it’s an ongoing thing. There’s always another level of self-awareness we can get to so you know, the thing is, it comes back to mindfulness practice in the most simple terms. You know, if getting into everything comes back to what we started the conversation with, to be to work practically with mindset. To do it practically means developing self-awareness.
Nothing is random
Bill 41:00
Yeah, what I’m getting personally from this is that nothing’s random. My place in the world today is all because of all of my because, yes, nothing is random. I haven’t gotten here because of the randomness of a podcast emerging out of the world. And I’m interviewing people because randomly, they just emerged from another on my podcast.
Bill 41:30
They are all choices I made when I contacted you because I wanted to speak with you about mindset, and so on with every other guest and my whole experience with stroke, I have realized perhaps it happened in a random part of my brain because it was a birthday effect that just occurred. However, a lot of the things that I did, created the perfect storm for that bleed to occur.
Bill 42:02
And when I become aware of that, then I can take steps to create the opposite of a perfect storm for a bleed to occur. I’m creating the perfect storm for wellness to occur. And that is not random. That’s because of all of my because and I get there and I’m at this point and I’ve totally and in every way influenced my life up until the day before the stroke and then every day after that.
Bill 42:35
So hopefully what people listening and watching get from this as well is that there is no randomness they have they are in control of every part of the process after today if they choose to be and if they choose to be aware of how they’re currently living in their life in their world, and How they doing themselves able to shift and do themselves in a way which will serve them better.
Bill 43:06
This means that I can start with any client, any prospective coaching client, no matter how terrible their experience is or how great their experiences are, and still support them and create a space for them to enhance their world. Way beyond what they’re experiencing now.
Marvin Oka 43:28
Yeah, absolutely. So they you know, what you’re saying there reminds me of several things have several thoughts running through my head, and while you’re talking, that one is you know, as one of the concepts that the Buddha talked about was the notion that the things are always things are the way they are. their level of impermanence is or is because everything is just because of what he called interdict.
Marvin Oka 43:54
Well, that translated into dependent arising, which maps straight across to what we now know today we’re on systems thinking around how things there are so many variables all coming together and things and the present moment. emergence is many variables that are there. And they don’t happen by accident, you have a role to play in this.
Marvin Oka 44:14
So if we go to another language, like chaos theory, they have a principle called sensitivity to initial conditions or sometimes just simply called initial sensitivity. And it gets translated into some people have heard the metaphor or analogy more of a metaphor around a butterfly flapping its wings and Texas creating a hurricane over in China.
Marvin Oka 44:24
And because in a highly volatile system, where there are a lot of interdependent arising conditions like weather, weather conditions, something subtle like a butterfly flapping its wings can create subtle air disturbances that permeate and have repercussions throughout the entire system that end up as a hurricane over somewhere else in the world around the China.
Marvin Oka 44:59
Right. Now keep in mind that you are like that butterfly choices you make everything you do creates all these other interdependent variables around you from people responding to you to new opportunities, opening up certain ones closing down, Every choice you make has repercussions all around you and they keep emerging how your life is going to unfold.
“Follow your bliss”
Marvin Oka 45:24
So how do you make sure that you’re not just a ship on a stormy sea being battered about by the winds, right? Do you know that you’re not just being blown away as butterflies somewhere? Well, this is where we go to another language, which is where the great mythologist when he was alive, Joseph Campbell, the founder of the Hero’s Journey, had one of his great pieces of advice was to follow your bliss.
Marvin Oka 45:48
Right at the end of the day, it’s like so what is it if you are deeply connected to yourself? What is it that makes you come alive? start following this thing that deep inside yourself is saying This is fulfilling this Is this is more of an authentic expression of who I am, whatever it might be in that moment. And when you like a butterfly flap your wings following your bliss, the end of dependence arising around you, your life will start emerging in a much more blissful direction, that way and so you are at choice.
Marvin Oka 46:20
And the thing is, as you know, as John Paul Sartre was saying, we’re all condemned to freedom we all have this but deep inside there is this from what I can see from other wisdom traditions, there’s like this essence there’s another language we can talk about is free energy. There’s, there’s a there’s something there you know, if someone comes to your bill in a coaching situation, right, and they’re having to suffer in life, right, as you pointed out, they didn’t come to you for no reason at all. It wasn’t random, right?
Marvin Oka 46:53
There’s a there’s a free energy and boundaries a bound energy in them where they’re trying to express the truth. They want to live a more expressive, authentic life, and they’re struggling. And they don’t know what to do, but they’re free energy makes them come to you. And they’re bound energy is stuck, right? And so no matter where they are, no matter where they’re bound energy is bound.
Marvin Oka 47:15
No matter how much suffering there is, there is that free energy that if you tap into, that’s where the butterflies trying to flap. And if you can coach them there, they will flap following their bliss. Now their life will start to create new forms of emergence and new forms of independence rising with their life can start to move in a more authentic expressible blissful direction. And, but what they need is they do need a coach and that’s what we all do.
Marvin Oka 47:41
All humans, you know, we all need the next level of coach that we’re into. So you’re right. You know if people can turn their life around, no matter how bad it is, you can turn your life around with help. And as long as you stay mindful, as long as you’re willing. You can do a way of being a mind-settler where you’re open to being coached you’re you’re open to learning and knowing it open to being coached doesn’t mean you know you’re less than that. What it means is you’re open to learning and growing, you know, you’re open to consciously choosing that path.
Bill 48:13
There. What I find fascinating is that humans like myself, before I understood what coaching was, I thought I could do it all on my own and sort it all out and learn everything and you know, take it all on board. And it ended up with me doing 16 hours a day, almost seven days a week for many, many, many years. Until I realized, until I had the bleed and I realized that I could no longer do that it was gonna kill me, amongst other things, you know, it was taking me away from my family and my kids and I had a lot of regrets.
Bill 48:45
And they’re not deep regrets that I’m going to take to my grave or anything like that, that are going to make my life you know, miserable. But I have regrets about the fact that I was so thick and I didn’t understand how coaching would help Then as I became a coach and started to coach people and learn what the power of coaching was, I realized that the best tennis players in the world who have been number one, or in the top five, for decades, have a coach all the time.
Bill 49:16
They never went without a coach. And these guys are using a coach to make to be the best tennis players I imagine what’s driving them is partly to be the best tennis player ever, but also to be extremely wealthy and make a staggering amount of money. And then we, we do the whole I don’t need a coach. I’m doing well in my struggle. Amazingly fantastic and not being able to afford anything and not being able to overcome.
Bill 49:50
So if I could just impart that part of my wisdom because that is something that I’ve become wise to recently I can impart that to anybody. And I don’t mind if I’m not your coach. But if you are struggling with any part of your life or you want to achieve something and you haven’t been able to yet, get a coach and get another coach and then find another coach and keep getting people to support you to help you to overcome whatever it is that’s blocking you from those things that you want to get to.
Bill 50:25
, That was one of the things that freed me discovering that I didn’t have to do all these things by myself because I was playing the victim. I was doing the whole, nobody’s going to do this better than me. I was doing the whole you know, I can’t rely on people, I can’t do this. I can’t do that. And if I don’t do it, nobody’s gonna do it.
Bill 50:48
And I was playing the victim game and if I took that into my stroke recovery journey, I’d be relying on doctors to help me feel better emotionally which is not their job. I’d be relying on all sorts of people to be doing things for me, that they are not trained and skilled to do, it’s not their job to do that for me. So what was great was there was I was able to let that go immediately and take responsibility for my recovery.
Bill 51:18
And then as I did that, and as I sought out, new learning new help new books, new ideas, then I was able to develop this other way of existing in the world and people didn’t recognize me, not because my face had changed because of the way that I would talk or turn up or present myself to them. And then that opened up more doors, it opened doors to do public speaking and I’ve been doors, you know, to be featured on TV commercials, it opened doors to be featured on news articles.
Bill 51:55
Which are all about making a difference and showing people that things are getting better those types of news articles that I want to be involved in. Not the ones that talk about all the terrible things that happened on the planet. So I feel like if people can understand the importance of mindset and how they can develop their mindset and continue evolving it that will say a massive shift in their life and I don’t feel like it takes a lot of energy to get great results from a shift of mindset.
Marvin Oka 52:32
Yeah, a shift in mindset can change everything. It’s I remember several many decades back now. Maybe a good four decades back. I heard this lovely speaker lady say something once that I went, Wow, how amazing is that? And she was from California. And she said that one day, you know, she was doing her morning run. And she was running near the Golden Gate Bridge.
Marvin Oka 53:07
And so this is the (inaudible) 40 years ago. And she said, there’s this, there’s this park near the Golden Gate Bridge, where if you look in one direction, you’ll see you’ll see San Francisco, and you’ll see it and it looks beautiful. You’ll see the bay and you know, you just, you know, be beautiful. And then she said, and then you turn about, I don’t know about 40 degrees or so.
Marvin Oka 53:34
And then you’re looking at Oakland, Back then was very industrial and a bit lower key on the socio-economic status compared to San Francisco. And, and she said, That’s amazing. You’re standing in the same spot. And you could be looking at Oakland and that could be your life. You could be looking at it I could have gone Man, my whole life is going to be Oakland she said, But standing in the same spot. If you just shifted 40 degrees, you’d see San Francisco and all its bays and how beautiful it is.
Marvin Oka 54:14
She said, for the same place, just a slight turn of 40 degrees. And it would be a whole different view. Right? And I thought about that. And I said, Look, you know, aside from the fact that I’m assuming, I don’t know, 40 years later, hopefully Oakland’s a lot better. I haven’t I haven’t been for 40 years. But I did think what a great analogy, right?
Marvin Oka 54:37
This shift of mindset up sometimes a 40-degree turn, no more, maybe not even, you know, sometimes just a five-degree shift in thinking. And it’s a different world. It’s a different life. It’s a whole different orientation that they can start to occur. And you’re right, this huge change. Now one of the things you highlighted bill when you’re when you’re just talking there is one one of the key things is, you know, you highlight around these top superior, you know, sports performance, etc.
Marvin Oka 55:06
And you said, you know, you know, maybe it was to be the best in the world or whatever it might be. And I think it does, in some ways, start there, which, which is, you know, you’ve got people that may come to coaching because they have a problem. And their whole, quote, unquote, mindset is, how do I fix my problem or get rid of it? I’ve got this problem, I want it to go away. And I want to go back to the to the way I was,
Marvin Oka 55:35
without recognizing that, but the way that they were was what caused the problem in the first place, is what you were saying You made all these choices, all these things which led up to the perfect storm, right? You don’t want to go back there. You want to evolve, you want to grow. And that’s what you’re saying around you know, these top athletes. They’re looking to be a champion in the world or they’re looking to become the best that they can be.
Marvin Oka 55:58
They have motivation They have something that is in our language, what was called teleological, which is they have an end goal in mind have an end purpose. Right? And as you’re pointing out, you know, suddenly you will not suddenly but you know, through choices you’ve made, you’re not have all these new options, new choices, you’re being invited to new places, new opportunities appearing everywhere, you’re turning.
Marvin Oka 56:19
And for a lot of people, it’s it’s, they settle. their mindset is one where they settle for a life that is conditioned, they think this is how life is going to be and that’s what it is, and if they have problems in life, I need a coach to get them back to this standard of life that I think is the standard. What they don’t realize is, if you set your goals to be, you know, to be the champion of your life, you know, to to to to win the championship of your life, which is going to be more of how could life be a good life, life could have far more opportunities, far more fulfilling ways of living life.
Marvin Oka 56:59
One more way of expressing who you are in the world. What if life was that? rather than get back to the life that was conditioned beforehand? How do you make your choices there? And I think when people are mindful enough to kind of say, look, you know, this life of suffering this life of continual challenges this life of continual stress and anxiety is not me.
Marvin Oka 57:22
This is not who I am this is not all I want my life to be I want my life to be more authentic, more fully expressive more motivated more bliss, and set my goals then now actively seeking a coach because I recognize I can’t get there on my own. I need someone to point out things that I don’t see about myself, You know that I need people to help me point out my blind spots and my ways of thinking my ways of be I need people who can accelerate development because I don’t have forever on this planet. And that’s when they actively go and seek a coach. And that’s when you get the people that will show up ready to learn with them. For real growth and real development, I think it starts there. Yeah.
Bill 58:04
Yeah. One of the things that comes to mind when you mentioned going back to being the person you were before the stroke. I think is Einstein that said, You can’t solve the problem that you’ve created with the same thinking that created the problem.
Marvin Oka 58:25
That’s right.
Neuro behavioral modeling
Bill 58:27
You know, going back to where you were before, is just going to be a couple of days or months before stroke. And don’t want to be leading up to those days or months before the stroke because we know what happens. We’ve been there before.
Marvin Oka 58:43
That’s right.
Bill 58:45
Your work is neurobehavioral modeling, amongst other things, and recently I’ve sat in and then the course to understand and learn how to be a neurobehavioral modeler I mentioned that before Cause you just said something about how we can accelerate our way to change and to evolve. And it comes to my mind that one of the things that we can do is model other people.
Bill 59:16
And we’ll talk about it in that simplest form because neurobehavioral modeling is another conversation, a very lengthy one, which is amazing and perhaps for another day, but for right now, if I modeled some of the behaviors of another person who I think is already further ahead of me, what are some of the things that I need to look out for because I don’t want to model them and be like them in the way that they have recovered from a stroke. After all, they are slightly different from me and I have a couple of little things that I don’t agree with perhaps, but modeling could be something that I could do to accelerate my evolution or my healing or whatever.
Marvin Oka 1:00:03
Yeah, great. Yeah. What a brilliant question. So a couple of things. First I need to clarify when we use for our listeners when we use the terms, use term behavioral, especially when we talk about neurobehavioral, we’re not just talking about gross external physical movements. So we’re not just the can’t the gross steps or chunks of what people have done physically thinking processes to us are neural behavioral, for instance, emotions for us our neural behavioral.
Marvin Oka 1:00:35
Right your body has to be doing a set of processes to produce a way certain classes of emotion or ways of thinking, ways of being ways valuing, etc. So, for us, all of the human functioning is neural behavioral, even you know, even emerging levels of consciousness we have to look at, you know, how does the central nervous system have to function for new levels of consciousness to arrive? And emerge.
Marvin Oka 1:01:01
So that’s the angle that we’re taking from. So it’s not just gross external behavior. So coming back now to your question, what are some of the things to, you know, look for or notice, Some of the things have to do, first and foremost with motivations, we need to look at what motivates them or how do they motivate themselves.
Marvin Oka 1:01:23
And in remembering that motivation has direction so it has what we call a move toward or move away from, so the things they might want to gain or things they want to avoid. You want both. So we need to attend to what motivated someone to want to do something even beyond that, we want to look at their core identity.
Marvin Oka 1:01:45
So it’s what’s important to someone that motivates them, their values, and things of that nature will come into play with motivations. It’s only important because they take it personally. What’s their core identity, and who are they? How do they what the narrative around their self-called concept in a particular situation?
Marvin Oka 1:02:01
So as we spoke about before, if they have an identity of being a survivor, compared to being a victim, well, that’s a completely different identity, right? And different values will arise if you’re a survivor and a thriver. Compared to someone who’s a who’s victim, and you’re just trying to cope. Right? A completely different set of new strategies will come into play. Also, the perception of context, I think is critical.
Marvin Oka 1:02:30
How do they perceive what it’s all about? Like what is what is what is this all about? So, someone who is, for instance, I can imagine if someone were in victim mode, right? The context would be the lower end of surviving of coping, it’s not even trying to get through but you know, basically, how do you just be on the receiving end as a victim right?
Marvin Oka 1:02:56
Now you cope accordingly. And if that’s your context, your country Text is just coped woman. Good luck. I hope you are coping well. But if some are not coping, yeah, as if the context was that was the goal, the goal was to cope. Whereas, you know, I know what some of the case studies that you did better on modeling on with some of the people that you looked at, you know when the context shifts when the context is no longer about them.
Marvin Oka 1:03:26
But the context is now about others, or service to others, or contribution to the world or the context is, is about being there for loved ones, If that’s the context and who they are their identity changes, right? And then their values change their values are not just you know, how do I get more For me their values are about contribution, it’s about service, it’s about all those types of things. And that’s where their psychology now comes alive. And that’s where their mindset starts to shift and their and their ways of being start to shift.
Marvin Oka 1:03:58
So you know, if I would Look at just if I had to pinpoint down some core things, I’d want to know, you know, if you’re someone that I want to role model, how are you perceiving what the context is? What is the game for you? Right? And how is it different than the way I’m establishing what I think it’s all about? How do you define who you are in this and what’s important to you what values are important to you, in all of this, right?
Marvin Oka 1:04:25
And because that’s where the big mindset shifts come in the rest as to how you do it, how you think about it, that’s all how to write. And that’s equally important. But it comes after the big mindset shift. Because if you’re not connected to a bigger context, a more evolutionary identity, a more authentic set of values and beliefs. If you’re not connected to that first, you’re not even going to do all the How to you’re going to talk to the person you’re gonna go, that’s interesting. And then you’re just going to go back and do your same identity from the same context with the same values and then wonder why nothing’s changing. The real change is going to come from the context identity and values and beliefs levels.
Bill 1:05:04
Yeah, I wasn’t aware of that. But just in you saying that now it takes me back to my shift. And my shift occurred when it became about, I need to be here for my children, you can’t, you know, when I need to get better, so I can be there for my wife, for my family at large. And then when I started sharing stories, and people would share their feedback and say stuff like I needed to hear that or Thank you for that or I can relate to that I’m not alone, then it became about them as well.
Bill 1:05:39
And Then I held myself to this greatest standard, get better presentations better at presenting get better putting podcasts together, understand all these things that I needed to do to make the experience of sharing with other people, more able be received more profoundly so that it makes a bigger difference. So I’m putting the same effort into my podcast episodes, They take an hour, and we transcribe them.
Bill 1:06:10
But now we’ve added people can download a PDF, so that if they do not like to just listen, they can read the PDF and they can underline, like I love to do on Blank pieces of paper to make things stand out. Or to put it in my, desk or my folder somewhere where I can pull it down and just flick through it at any time.
Bill 1:06:33
And then, from there, I have also made it possible for people to download on YouTube. So if they prefer to watch and see us interacting, they can do that there. And when I think about how I made all those decisions, it all started from the very first moment when I thought, well, I might not be here tomorrow. What will my children think of me? If I croak it and I’m not around.
Bill 1:06:57
They might say Dad was a good dad, but he wasn’t angry all the time. And that led to all these other decisions about how am I going to positively impact the lives of all of the people who come across me. So that when I do kick the bucket, they say, well, that Bill was a good guy. He used to give us videos, and he used to give us an audio. PDFs.
Bill 1:07:29
So, I love that you share that because it’s brought me back to my why. And the why then made it possible for me to overcome all the problems in that how do I get a podcast out? What is a podcast? How do I get people to listen to it? How do I do more than one episode a year? You know, it was all those things that started to get answered.
Bill 1:07:52
But they just all, all that over how-tos they just fell on the other after the other because my why was so massive and it made it simple and it made it. It made it easy for me to continue doing that work without having to wake up in the morning going, Oh crap, I have to put another podcast episode out because all those people are waiting to listen to it.
Marvin Oka 1:08:22
Yeah, exactly. I mean that’s beautiful what you’re saying so that you know the context goes bigger than yourself which then contextualizes who you are and all of this in a way that’s meaningful and that’s the most critical component you know, as as you’ve just so beautifully pointed out in all the How to becomes a natural expression of your of who you are and your desire to serve your desire to contribute, as opposed to just having another bunch of things on your to-do list.
Marvin Oka 1:08:48
So you can look at all your online marketing things and go Gosh, I gotta go purchase a YouTube channel and I got to create a podcast geez, but if it’s a natural expression of who you are Your desire to serve you, it’s part of, you know, the alignment between your context, your identity, your values, your beliefs, all starts aligning internally within you and it’s a congruent expression, then you following your bliss.
Marvin Oka 1:09:11
And of course, yeah, as you say things just fall into place, the interdependent arising, will now be wonderful because you’re, you’re a butterfly, you’re flapping your wings, you know that everything is now shifting around you and it’s emerging your life forward from this point in a meaningful way, comes back to exactly what Viktor Frankl was saying, you know, in Man’s Search for Meaning, it which is as long as the key to his survival in the as a in the Nazi prison concentration camps is key to survival, as you pointed out, was having identification with a larger purpose.
Marvin Oka 1:09:47
You know, something larger than oneself that brought meaning to things. And this is the whole point is to make sure that it’s that what you’re doing is meaningful. This is is what Campbell saying. follow your bliss. This is what you’re doing now is meaningful, it has a purpose. It has a natural authentic expression of who you are congruent way of being and expressing yourself into the world. And that that is closer.
Marvin Oka 1:10:14
What I would think it is meant by, by looking at from a neurobehavioral modeling standpoint, mindset, right? It’s not just the thoughts running through your head. It’s the way you’re settling into your body and mind as to who you are, and how you’re expressing yourself in the world. And that’s a fundamental mindset at that point.
Bill 1:10:34
That’s a beautiful way to end the podcast. Marvin, thank you so much for being on the Recovery after Stroke podcast.
Marvin Oka 1:10:40
Thanks, Bill. Thank you, It’s an honor. And you know, I’m such a big fan of your work. And I just love what you do, what you’re doing is making a huge difference out there. So thank you. Thanks for inviting me and thank you for doing what you do.
Bill 1:10:51
Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for listening. As mentioned during the interview, you can now download a PDF of the full transcript of the attack. Which you can print and make highlights on or take notes on. Just go to recoveryafterstroke.com. Scroll to the most recent episode, when you click on that episode, it will take you to the episode page.
Bill 1:11:14
When you scroll down just a little bit on the episode page, you’ll come across an orange download button, Click the orange button and enter your email address and the transcript will be sent directly to your inbox. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, and think that others might appreciate it, it would mean a lot to me if you share it on your favorite social media platform, as this will make it possible for other stroke survivors to find recovery after a stroke.
Bill 1:11:44
And it could make a massive difference in their life or the life of one of their loved ones. Also, I would appreciate it if you left a five-star review on iTunes and gave us a Like on YouTube, The more social media positive responses we get for the podcast, the greater the chance that other stroke survivors are likely to find the community. Thanks again for listening.
Intro 1:12:06
Discover how to support your recovery after the strike. Go to recoveryafterstroke.com
