#2: How to Stop Getting Triggered
Music by: SAICS | Music produced by: Keith Milutinovic
Tools & Resources From This Episode
With this journaling exercise, you will begin to tap into the core emotions such as sadness, anger, and love that unconsciously drive your actions, and ultimately your life. You will learn about the powerful impact that these basic emotions have within your life, which will guide you into more awareness and more control.
- Get the "Shadow Work" journaling exercise (Free Download) - Ask the fear and the anger questions and write down answers as they come.
Welcome to Allowed. All of us have good days and bad days. One thing that often makes me curious is why is it that sometimes I act in ways that I wish I didn't. I surprise myself. I might get triggered by someone that I love and lash out or go into shame and guilt. In this episode today, we will better understand why that happens, why we get triggered, why we get reactive, and how to begin a process of healing those raw spots and reclaiming a sense of wholeness.
You can't talk about triggering without understanding a concept called shadow. Shadow refers to the parts of ourselves that we no longer love, own, or take responsibility for.
Carl Jung said, "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Do you find yourself dating the same type of person over and over? Do you find yourself in the same job time and again, even though you were at a different company, it's a different year. Maybe you're even living in a different city.
Basically in these situations, we keep recreating the same patterns that are holding us back. Why does that happen? It's all related. You spot it, you got it. Sneak peek to the end is that you are allowed to love all parts of yourself and getting triggered is one of the ways we can uncover what's there to love.
Holidays are a great time to get triggered and we can learn from getting triggered. Our guest today is Luke Entrup, executive coach and partner in Evolution with me, and he is a certified Shadow Work coach and trainer. We are so excited to have him here. He is a really good friend of mine and I've collaborated with him a ton. We share a lot in common in our backgrounds from growing up acting, to design thinking, to the depth of work that we love to do together. And he's really one of the top experts in shadow. Anytime a book is written about shadow, almost always he gets contacted to be a reviewer on that book.
Using a proprietary blend of insight, zen wisdom, and “jet fuel,” Luke’s clients learn how to develop their personal brand of leadership and influence. Drawing on his nearly decade experience as a healthcare executive he has worked with companies at various phases of growth including many early stage startups and larger high-growth companies such as Dropbox, Slack, and Pure Storage.
As a social entrepreneur he has co-founded several organizations committed to leadership development and global sustainability, including Vida Autentica and Beyond The Machine. He is a regular public speaker on the topic of building a culture of innovation and how to evolve business through human-centered design. He holds degrees from Tulane University and Naropa University. Luke has been practicing and teaching meditation for the past two decades and he is a certified facilitator with Shadow Work Seminars®. So he's really one of the best and it's a big honor to have him spending time here today. Now let's begin.
Final Note: Get the free download of the "Shadow Work Journaling Exercise" mentioned in the episode at the top of the page. This will help get you started on the path of sustainable change and lasting impact.
Tune in and learn all about…
- [04:59] A trigger is when we get really reactive and all of us can understand this, we have an outsized reaction to something. Someone pushes our buttons and we are immediately bothered. We might even surprise ourselves by lashing out, or going quickly into a shame or guilt or blame cycle, and feeling a little bit out of control.
- [10:24] I'm so excited to have Luke Entrup, executive coach and partner in Evolution here on the show with me. He's a great friend, a really wise person, and an incredible human being. Let's dive in and see what we can learn from Luke about shadow today.
- [18:22] Shadow comes from a Swiss psychiatrist's term; Carl Jung coined the term. And it's really just the parts of ourselves that we repress, deny, hide - the parts of ourselves we push away that we don't want to feel, or experience, or express.
- [29:42] Trauma has a very pervasive way of shaping beliefs about oneself. We all have shadows. We all were formed in a certain way. That's just the nature of being human - that we're going to inevitably bump up against hurts, and pains, and disappointments, and betrayals.
- [48:25] Shadow Work Journaling Exercise: There's a great exercise that Luke has used many times. He did this himself for years and shares this exercise with his clients often. One of the gateways into our shadows is through our core emotions. There's a model we use to identify and claim the five core emotions. (Get access to the free downloadable exercise in the Tools and Resources section at the top of the page)
- [57:55] Luke shares information about special events and offerings for those listeners who are really interested and are very committed to going deep on personal growth.
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LINKS & MORE:
- Conscious Leadership Group. Conscious Leadership Group has some great resources that translate well with shadow. One of the exercises is called a persona party, where you dress up as one of your personas.
- Take the Enneagram test. As you go through the questions, it is important to answer with your gut, reflecting how you have “always been.” If in doubt, think about how you were in your early 20s, before you “evolved” and worked out the kinks in your personality and how you manage yourself. Taking the test is only 1/2 of the personality assessment. The test provides a report but doesn’t tell you your type. Spend time reflecting on the results and reading the report. Look at your top 3-4 and skim the sections about each (or look them up on the website) and choose 1-2 that sound most like you.
- Join Luke’s Shadow Works Seminar on January 17-19.
- Luke is launching a men’s leadership group. Apply now.
- Check out our Evolution partners.
- Join the Allowed Facebook Community
- Download a transcript of this episode.