When Frustration Speaks & Magic Answers: Best Of Week 1

When Frustration Speaks & Magic Answers: Best Of Week 1

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[00:00:08] hello. Hello, this is Daniellelele Ireland and you are listening to the Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs Countdown. Best of the Year. This is a way that I thought would be really fun to give a. Special re-highlight to some of the guests that I’ve had.

[00:00:24] Join me in interviews since I relaunched the podcast on video in May. There are new viewers here, new listeners here, and I believe that the best lessons bear repeating. I have joked in episodes and also in journal and in life that there seems to be a handful of lessons that I am playing.

[00:00:42] Uh, basically peekaboo with life in the universe where I forget everything that I know about processing my feelings, making space for my feelings, and then I remember, and then I forget, and then I remember, and then I forget. And this episode is going to be the first of a series that’s gonna be continuing through the rest of December.

[00:01:02] Where you’re gonna get little bites. I’ll be taking some chunks from the solo cast that I recorded every other week since we relaunched in May, as well as highlighting some of my favorite parts of interviews we’ve had, re highlighting guests. There’ll be a free gift for listeners as well with these episodes because we all just need a little bit more tenderness, a little bit more peace.

[00:01:24] And joy during the holiday season. Whatever we choose to celebrate wherever we are, and if you’re listening to this episode and it’s not the holidays, don’t worry. You still get the free gift. there’s no end cap on it, at least not yet. So this is gonna be a fun way for us to get little nuggets of insight, little nuggets of validation, connection, community and the learning.

[00:01:43] But also, this is a busy time of year, we need a little bit more help, a little bit more support and a. less on our plates, So that’s the intention here.

[00:01:52] Every week, here’s what you can expect. Top insights from my solo cast, highlights from my most impactful interviews and threads of wisdom that tie it all together.

[00:02:01] Consider this a cozy end of the year reflection with a giant podcast bow.

[00:02:07] Now let’s jump in.

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[00:02:43] Welcome to Best of Week one when frustration speaks and Magic Answers. This week I’m starting with two powerful themes that shaped most of the conversations I’ve had since then for the rest of the year. Frustration and magic. First, you’re gonna hear some clips from a solo cast. What is your frustration telling you?

[00:03:02] Where I explore frustration, not just as a problem, but as information, as a whisper, as a guidance. It’s something that is informing something we really need to pay attention to. Then we shift into some remarkable moments from my interview with coach, speaker, and magician. John Kippen, his story of healing, resilience and literal magic became one of the most unforgettable conversations for me.

[00:03:26] And before we begin, a gentle heads up, this is my first time creating a best of compilation episode of any kind using various clips. So if the transitions feel a little jumpy or if it seems like some thoughts may leap a little bit from one to the other. That’s probably because that is exactly what’s happening.

[00:03:45] These moments, they weren’t originally recorded to be side by side, but I chose the clips because they felt the most meaningful and impactful to me. It felt like, how could I pack in the most punch in this type of episode? But the great thing is. In the show notes, there are links to the full episode.

[00:04:05] So if you listen to this clip or this highlight and you’re hearing a part of an idea and you’re like, oh man, I want more context on that, I got you covered, and you can okay, Think of this a little like flipping through a scrapbook, it’s not exactly a straight line, but a beautiful collection of moments that are worth remembering.

[00:04:20] Let’s get started with the solo cast.

[00:04:25] Speaker: ​Using emotions and interpreting them like information because they are, our emotions are our internal compass, our internal guidance system, and the way we emotionally respond to life is information that is a roadmap guiding us through the next right step. Your frustration is valid. Your frustration is real.

[00:04:49] It is being experienced by you. Therefore, the resolve. The action, the places you go, the conversations you have, or just the new informed way that you have of moving forward, it’s uniquely yours. How can I become more in tune with the experience I’m having so that it doesn’t have to get as uncomfortable as I got before?

[00:05:13] As soon as I get up in arms about what I can and cannot accept from somebody else? It almost seems like within the week, karma knocks me upside the head and I end up making the same big mistake that I was. So indignant about somebody else doing, if that little whisper is persistently coming up that, hey, something smells a little fishy, or something feels a little off, I don’t have to maybe know in the fullest extent of the word what that means, but also don’t ignore it.

[00:05:41] And that is what I did. Scratch the itch. Feel it, but then go back. Don’t ignore it. Don’t bulldoze past it. Revisit it and ask it. What is it? Wanting you to know what happened when things didn’t work out? What did you do when you faced out? What happened when you maybe failed 10 times before you got your first success?

[00:05:59] What helps me is not just having a north star of what’s possible, but also a path to get there funneling through the process of understanding your frustration and what it could be informing for you. The thing that I like to say to myself in a journal or out loud is some version of this, make it your own.

[00:06:17] Knowing that I can never change other people and that I am the one who is responsible for me, I can, I want, I need, I will, and I use those sentence stems, but in some version of this process, after letting myself name the frustration exactly in the way I feel it, in many cases, if I really sit with that and open and access curiosity.

[00:06:41] There were many times where people were asking me, what do you need? Do you wanna go do blank? Do you wanna go do blank? And I was so caught up in my own narrative at the time that I felt trapped and I felt like I couldn’t say yes. And so who’s responsible for that? Me.

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[00:07:35] That was a look at some of the biggest takeaways from the solo cast. What is your frustration telling you? And now we are going to shift gears into something completely different, a different kind of magic. The kind that happens when somebody turns their deepest challenge into their greatest superpower.

[00:07:51] You’re about to hear highlights from my conversation with coach, speaker, and magician, John Kippen.

[00:07:56] Speaker 2: He has a TED talk that has received over a million views, and the heartbeat of this TED talk is how he triumphs over tragedy with a diagnosis of a tumor, the size of a golf ball that is separating his brainstem and the procedure he needed to save his life, changed his life forever, doing the work of healing.

[00:08:20] Does not come easily to anyone, but as John so beautifully puts in this episode, if John can do it, you can do it. He’s using his story, his vulnerable and raw experiences, and talking about not only what happened to him, but how he moved through the impossible. He actually coins a phrase that I love and I’m going to keep, which is that impossible really means I am possible.

[00:08:46] So the ultimate magic trick, the ultimate illusion. Is what your limiting beliefs are about yourself and how do you use facing those fears and those limiting beliefs to transform your life. And in John’s case, he takes that healing and offers it as a gift to us as listeners to his clients and his coaching practice.

[00:09:11] To the readers of his book, he has authored a book The Forward by None other than the Jamie Lee Curtis from. All of the places. You know her most recently, the bear where she won an Emmy, but everything everywhere, all at once. She and John are buds and she believes in him and believes in his work, and as a champion of that work, it just adds a little extra sparkle and fairy dust to the beautiful work that he’s already doing to say that he’s been vetted by someone who is so sparkly and magnetic, and also deeply entrenched in holding space for the truth and honoring the truth.

[00:09:45] Speaker 3: Looks up at the MRI after talking to a neurosurgeon, and he turns around and says, John, you have left four and a half centimeter brain tumor. It’s killing you. We’re operating you on Friday. You’re gonna go deaf on your left ear, and there’s a possibility for some facial weakness we’re gonna do.

[00:10:03] Everything we can to prevent that.

[00:10:05] Speaker 2: So he knew and in his own brash and abrupt way, essentially prepared you for the outcome and challenges that would come assuming the surgery was a success.

[00:10:18] Speaker 3: Yeah. He is a world renowned acoustic neuroma surgeon. He’s one of the guys you go to, okay. When you kinda tumor, and that’s all he does.

[00:10:26] Wow. He literally left the room and I’m sitting there and didn’t bring anybody in. And yeah, a tip to anyone who’s potentially going in for a serious diagnosis.

[00:10:36] Speaker 2: Yeah,

[00:10:36] Speaker 3: bring a friend or a family member because it goes in one ear and out the other, you’re in shock. You do what you have to do. And I remember getting up and I got rid of all the mirrors in my house.

[00:10:47] I didn’t want a constant reminder based.

[00:10:50] Speaker 2: There’s so much specificity to what is uniquely. Your story, but what I have found when you go into the specificity of what you experienced, I can see myself in so many elements of your story. Like when we get in deeper, it becomes somehow more accessible and universal.

[00:11:17] In that way, you’re not alone, even though it happened to you, and that detail about your removing the mirrors from your home. It. It brings me to something I really wanted to ask you about. You share by saying, and then also by actually demonstrating in your TED Talk that once you began the healing process of really addressing your depression after your operation, that the story, it led you to magic, literally.

[00:11:50] And I also think in a more magical way beyond. Performing an illusion. I know not to call it a trick. I learned that from Arrested Developments, but there’s something you said that I wanted to quote that it’s amazing how accepting kids are of the truth. You open up your TED Talk, which I will link in the show notes so people can see.

[00:12:09] You mentioned that this in a way that your permission in your humor and your honesty, it created levity and lightness for something that would be considered maybe so. Precious and heavy. And what I wanna speak to and open up a question if that’s okay, is I’m curious what your relationship with the truth is because I think humor in its highest expression is allowing us to laugh at something that we see the truth in.

[00:12:41] And yet it’s this razor’s edge between laughing at someone or laughing at something versus inviting us to laugh at the. The human experience that we maybe don’t know how to name or express in another way. But I wanna know personally for you what your relationship is with the truth and the value of embracing it.

[00:13:04] And then in your line of work as a coach, where do you see people struggle with it?

[00:13:08] Speaker 3: Truth is an illusion.

[00:13:10] Speaker 2: Tell me more. That just, that was a zingy response that you popped right out. Please tell me more.

[00:13:16] Speaker 3: Yeah. Truth. Everybody has their own truth. Oh. Their own perspective. Things happen for a reason, and we don’t just always understand the reason for them.

[00:13:26] Speaker 2: I don’t know if it, what the reason was, but I can say a gift from that was that somebody who lived with a very active monkey mind and a lot of head trash and some anxiety, the experience of the early grief, not for very long, but there was a moment in time where my mind was quiet, not numb. But quiet. And it helped me realize, oh, there’s the observer within me.

[00:13:54] And then there are the different conversations that are happening in my head that aren’t me, which are maybe the perceptions that I call truth. Sometimes I wanna bring that same question of truth, which you had an answer I was not expecting, which I love when I never see it coming. So thank you. Where do you see your clients?

[00:14:12] Because you’re a coach, right? You are taking your healing and offering it as medicine to people that are trying to make a connection in their own life. So where do you see people that you work with struggle with the truth?

[00:14:27] Speaker 3: Everybody’s hiding with some, some in their life. They have buried something so deep and it keeps them from moving forward in their lives ’cause it erodes their soul.

[00:14:38] That’s what I learned through my love for performing. So they have no exploitation other than they’re gonna see some magic. Mm-hmm. So I start my ah, saying, hi guys. My name is John and I’m doing magic all my life, but then she’s out too. I had a brain tumor and when they cut up my head, they traumatized my defense, paralyzed face.

[00:14:59] But something happened to me on that table that day, Daniellelele. Mm-hmm. I’m not sure what it was because I was up. All I know is I recovered. I realized I had acquired some new skill and I pause. Yeah. And I wait for everybody to get on the edge of their seat. Like, what happened? John Skills I could acquired, I’m having brain injured.

[00:15:23] Mm-hmm. Looked to my right and I looked to my lap. Look, it’s the big secret. Lean in and I whisper in a loud voice. Guys, I am able to visualize people’s thoughts. Then I do some mental magic mentalism, and what I just did was I turned my biggest challenge into a Super Bowl.

[00:15:47] Speaker 2: Yes, you did. And I wanna pause you because when you said that in your talk, have you read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, big Magic?

[00:15:53] Speaker 3: Yes.

[00:15:54] Speaker 2: When she talks about trickster energy, I was like, John Kippen is a freaking trickster. Oh, that is trickster energy that you can shift. Before someone’s very eyes. It’s like you are performing magic and you are performing magic. You shifted before them and you invited your audience to see beyond their own limiting beliefs.

[00:16:20] Their own did truth.

[00:16:21] Speaker 3: They were distracted. They wanted to know why it was paralyzed, but the good, did he have a stroke? Did he have belts, palsy? What was it? So I found them being distracted when I was performing, so I got that away in the first two minutes. Mm-hmm. I explained why my face is paralyzed. Yeah.

[00:16:37] And now I predict as the experience is now I’m able to do super human thing. And now they’re like, okay. So as I perform, I focus on spectator magic. Happenss in your mind as a

[00:16:54] Speaker 2: Oh, I love that magic happens in your mind,

[00:16:58] Speaker 3: having a creative mind. I wanted to understand. What that is, what that, what was going on.

[00:17:05] Speaker 2: You also not only through performing magic, inviting the curiosity you could see in other people’s faces into your opening act essentially, or your sleight of hand. I’m gonna show you this over here so that you can not see what’s coming here. Vulnerability in its purest form is. Magic because it’s the one thing sharing the story you feel like you couldn’t share.

[00:17:29] Letting somebody see the one part of you that you would never let anybody see ’cause you were so utterly convinced you would be outed or you would be cast out by exposing that vulnerability is the birthplace of true connection. Yeah. Which is the ultimate magic trick. It’s, it’s like what they say in nightmares.

[00:17:49] If you stop and face the thing that’s chasing you. It can’t chase you anymore in the dream. And so you spent a decade, did I remember that correctly? You wanted to be a main stage performer at the Magic Castle. It took you about 10 years and you did it.

[00:18:02] Speaker 3: I did, yeah.

[00:18:04] Speaker 2: 10 years.

[00:18:05] Speaker 3: Yeah,

[00:18:06] Speaker 2: 10

[00:18:06] Speaker 3: years. It was my creative coping.

[00:18:10] I had hit rock bottom. Was I suicidal? No, not really, but I was unhappy. Yeah. I was my girlfriend who left me and. Fortunately, I had a job that I could focus on, but I needed something more. And through sharing something so personal and tying magic into it and making it a positive instead of a negative, people are attracted.

[00:18:36] John can so cannot not my true mess. Different is your superpower. No, my facial paralysis does not have to go find me. I don’t let it. Daniellelele. I live my life. That it’s better to ask forgiveness, send permission, and that’s me in the butt numerous times.

[00:18:57] Speaker 2: I can also say the opposite, can bite you in the butt.

[00:19:00] I think I waited probably too long, many times for permission that wasn’t really coming because no one can ultimately grant it. Like if there’s a path you wanna carve, like the job that you built, all of the different things that you’ve done, there’s no resume posted on LinkedIn. No one’s telling me like, that’s an empowerment coach slash magician slash keynote speaker slash documentation like that.

[00:19:25] You have to get curious and still and listen to that little voice inside and follow that curiosity to a path that may not make sense for anyone for a really long time. And I didn’t do that. And it that can bite you in the butt too, ’cause regret’s, hard to hold. Anybody who makes something look easy. That we do take for granted, and I think that like I appreciate so much in the telling of your story.

[00:19:54] You share not just the struggles, but the time you had a vision of yourself on the main stage performing at the Magic Castle. Like the most elusive place where magic is. And you didn’t just wanna get in, you didn’t just wanna get an audition, you didn’t wanna just like get to per perform an illusion like main stage.

[00:20:18] You didn’t just have a goal, you have the goal and you did it, but you also say that it took you 10 years. And there’s usually themes that run with anxiety about not enough and the crunchiness of time. There’s never enough time. I’m not enough and there’s not enough time and.

[00:20:35] Speaker 3: Being worthy.

[00:20:36] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes. One of my main motivations when I started this podcast originally several years ago, was I was starting to increasingly feel trapped in this sort of world of a before and after story.

[00:20:50] And it was no longer feeling inspirational. It was just another measuring stick for how, not enough ’cause it’s, it’s great to see where somebody was and where they are, but when I’m knee deep in my own struggle. When I’m the caterpillar goo and the chrysalis, and I’m not the shiny butterfly, but I’m also not the caterpillar anymore, what do I do when my life is literally a shitty pile of goo?

[00:21:12] This is something that most clients don’t come right out and ask me, like in sessions one, two, and three. But it inevitably comes, well, I’ve been doing this for so many months. How much longer is it going to take? How long is it gonna take? And I just always, I appreciate when people can acknowledge. The time and consistency that goes into healing

[00:21:37] Speaker 3: is in the journey.

[00:21:38] Speaker 2: Mm.

[00:21:39] Speaker 3: Not in the destination. And that’s a thing that really focused on my client. I have clients come to me ’cause they’re holding themselves back in their life. It come this full of helping others. That realization, they understand they are truly powerful and have a chance. To shake their test. That’s why I talk about limiting beliefs.

[00:22:02] Always grow up with our parents or whoever raised us. Those are our belief systems and so that’s what forms who you are. You stop dreaming. That’s what midlife crisis it’s all about. Yeah, we got educated, we got a job, we built a career. We have a family.

[00:22:22] Speaker 2: It, it’s, I think the version of that I hear in. My sessions is essentially, I did everything right.

[00:22:31] Shouldn’t I be feeling better than I am? But I followed all the rules. I’m winning. Why does it not feel like I’m winning? And finding our way back to that, the unlearning and the unraveling, that is a, it’s a process.

[00:22:47] Speaker 3: I’ll talk to a friend, how you doing? And so many people were swallowing automatically living the dream.

[00:22:54] But is it your dream? You’re living? Whose dream are you living? ’cause you’re wasting your life by living someone else’s dream. And that’s why you get to that point in life where it’s not enough. ’cause it’s not your dream. You just finished the last 30 years building.

[00:23:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, the joy really is in the process.

[00:23:16] And there’s no way to enjoy the process of fulfilling the wishes of somebody else because you, what you’re constantly chasing is when I get there, then the relief will come, and then you’re there and you’re like, well, where’s my pot of gold?

[00:23:30] Speaker 3: Yeah. I said, 20 years learning how not to hide my face. And what happened in March in 2020, the pandemic hit.

[00:23:38] Now covering her face with a mask became not only politically correct. Government mandated and I’m like sitting there thinking to myself, what do I do? So I found a company who prints things on masks and I sent them a picture of my face, a picture of the lower part of my jaw,

[00:24:00] Speaker 2: trickster energy. John Kippen trickster.

[00:24:03] That’s the new hyphen to your list of all of your accomplishments. I would walk around and

[00:24:08] Speaker 3: strangers would look at it and not understand.

[00:24:11] Speaker 2: Right, right. Are people who knew me.

[00:24:14] Speaker 3: Do a double.

[00:24:15] Speaker 2: I will not hide.

[00:24:17] Speaker 3: Choose us to hide even through a global pandemic.

[00:24:21] Speaker 2: Yeah,

[00:24:21] Speaker 3: I’m gonna live my life, my own ton.

[00:24:26] Speaker 2: Yeah. I worked too hard, too long to get free and I will not hide for you.

[00:24:32] Speaker 3: I did love myself and until I, not up here, not in my head, but in my heart, accepted my smile. I couldn’t move forward. I couldn’t heal. And once I accepted my new smile, I found joy. I found that I could love myself. And my message on the TED Talk was treat people different with respect to compassion.

[00:24:55] That’s what Ted Talks are all about. You want one key message, and that was my message. You never know. You might be in their shoes in an instant.

[00:25:05] Speaker 2: I wanna add to that. Another way to speak to the value of doing some self investigation, whether that’s through journaling, through therapy, or seeking out a coach from someone like yourself is because that expression of treat other people the way you would wanna be treated.

[00:25:22] What I know is that we don’t treat ourselves all that well. A lot of us, many of us don’t treat ourselves well, which is why accessing the compassion. Of treating others kindly is sometimes harder for us to find jumping to criticism or judgment because there’s something we are rejecting in us. So I think a way to do the thing you’re saying that beautiful, treat others with kindness and compassion.

[00:25:51] The best way to do that is to look within, and I invite anybody listening to go to the show notes. Visit John’s website. Seek out a coaching call. Grab a copy of his book. There are resources that can help you be kinder to yourself, to lowering the walls, to lifting the veil, to seeing yourself in a new way, to performing the ultimate illusion, which is to love yourself more fully, exactly as you are, so that we can be kinder to each other.

[00:26:24] ’cause we need that. We need a lot more kindness.

[00:26:29] Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs, the Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs, countdown. Best of series. These highlights were just snippets of a much fuller, robust conversation and you can catch them. Anytime. Also subscribe on YouTube.

[00:26:46] You can watch the full episodes there or listen and subscribe wherever you catch your podcast. Apple Podcast, Spotify. We have homes and lots of amazing places, so we welcome all podcast listeners or viewers, wherever you catch your episodes. You can learn more about John Kippen, his TED Talk and all of his amazing work that are linked in the show notes as well.

[00:27:05] Thank you for being here. and remember, sometimes the best lessons bear repeating, and if you need to hear a lesson a hundred times, that’s okay. You’re gonna be a hundred times further in the process, in the journey of making big feelings, feel less scary, holding them.

[00:27:19] Feel possible than you were before. You’re not alone. I am a. This lesson bears repeating type of person. We’re in this together, and your free gift as promised. It’ll also be linked in the show notes, but if you’re still listening, it’s Daniellelele ireland.com/free. That’s it. Daniellelele ireland.com/free.

[00:27:40] It’s a meditation series, a bundle of three meditations just for you to help you ease into this season, to hopefully allow you to welcome a little bit more sparkle, a little bit more light because you deserve it. Thanks for being here, and I can’t wait to see you next time. I hope you continue to have an incredible day.

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