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Begin Again is for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Host Winston Faircloth — spiritual director, daily poet, and fellow traveler — brings honest conversation, personal story, and original poetry to the journey of remembering, releasing, and returning to who God created you to be. Visit www.myreuniontour.com for more resources.
Hey there, it's Winston Faircloth, and welcome back to a live edition, bonus edition of the Begin Again Leadership Podcast, also simulcasting on Facebook within the Future Seven Figure CEO Facebook community. Today, we're coming back for another bonus episode on the refinement journey and we're recalling our last visit together that the refinement season for me was an experience I had about six or seven months ago when I completely hit the wall and was just totally out of my element in terms of feeling good and focused and with fire and passion in my life. And so the Refirement Process is my reflection on four stages, four seasons that I went through to recapture and restore the flame within. And so last time we talked about the four step process of unplug, unlearn, rest, and relearn. Now, this is a very counterintuitive way of going about thinking about how to capture your passion back.
Winston Faircloth:Normally, want to grind. We want to do more when we're feeling unsettled and not hitting our goals and things like this. And this is a very counterintuitive process that I went through. And last time, we spent a lot of we spent in both a podcast and a bonus episode talking about unplugging. Now this week, I got some comments and questions from some of the folks that are following along, and one of the great questions was on unplug.
Winston Faircloth:So what do I plug into? In other words, they were thinking about unplugging strictly from the perspective of taking away things that may be depleting or bad in my life. And actually unplug is a season of unplugging both from things that are really helpful as well as things that are counterproductive because this step of unplugging creates more space, more quiet, more solitude in your life so that you can be more present in what's going on both inside yourself and around your environment and with your loved ones. Unplugging is not just replacing things that are unproductive with productive things. In fact, it's taking a step back and curating your connections, your content, your communities, and taking a pause from them for a bit so that you can draw more inspiration from inside.
Winston Faircloth:And, you know, fear of missing out or FOMO is real. It's a real thing. And so you may feel a little jittery at first when you start to unplug. That's a good thing. It just shows you how connected and how dependent we are on some of those external sources.
Winston Faircloth:So it's going to feel hard at first, but it's definitely a worthwhile step. Today, and if you want to learn more, go back. Just a couple podcasts ago and you can pick up more tips and tricks on the unplug season. The next season and the one we're going to spend time on today is unlearning. Now, this is really hard to do because we come into this world, we come into our daily lives with certain habitual beliefs and instincts and ideas that we act upon, maybe even unconsciously.
Winston Faircloth:And yet something is amiss in our life. And so this season of unlearning is suspending or re examining or reconsidering a handful of beliefs or ideas that may not be serving us really well. So after we've unplugged, it's going to become we're going to have enough space to actually reconsider or re examine some existing beliefs. Now, this is where I'll share a practical example from my own experience this spring and summer. I have struggled for many years with my health and nutrition.
Winston Faircloth:And like many in our culture, we've been bombarded with the formula of calories in calories out equals weight or weight loss or weight change. And it is so prevalent. And it's not for lack of knowledge. It is, in some cases, just so much knowledge that it's really hard to discern between the good, what's supporting my life, and the bad that's not supporting my life. In nutrition, there's always yet another big program that comes out.
Winston Faircloth:Maybe around every Christmas and New Year's and early part of the year, there's always some new hot trend that gets the media's attention. And so, like many of you who may have struggled to wait, I've had dozens and dozens of books, programs, processes, and pills, and shakes, and all kinds of stuff I've tried. And so I was fortunate to have an ally, a coach, a mentor working with me and our whole process was to suspend temporarily any of those beliefs about what would help me restore health with my body. Instead, we began to practice some very counterintuitive things. Here's a couple of things right out of the bat.
Winston Faircloth:My very first assignment was to plate my food, not eat out of container, not out of a serving bowl, not out of a, you know, package or anything else, but to plate it and then to sit quietly at a table to consume it. Now, I live by myself. Didn't often eat at my table. I often ate in front of the TV and multitasking and doing other things. And I couldn't even really tell you some days what I had eaten or whether I'd eaten or how fast I'd eaten.
Winston Faircloth:I had no consideration at all about that. And so, this process of unlearning is setting aside temporarily that math that I've learned for the last thirty four years or fifty years, I don't know how long I've been on this journey, in versus out equals weight change. So here's a real statement that kind of shakes me up when I think about unlearning. And it is that wisdom comes from knowing that you know nothing. Can you accept that statement for just a second?
Winston Faircloth:Can you let that just kind of sink into your chest and soul and think about how this would land with you? If you understood that you really don't know, how wise would you be? And I can apply this across the board in so many dimensions of my life. This is something I learned in as I was getting my philosophy degree, And it shook me to the core. It's actually one of the reasons that I pursued a philosophy degree as my second degree in college because this really shook me and made me explore and reconsider most everything that we are taught.
Winston Faircloth:So how do you practically take an unlearning season? So here's a few steps I would recommend you take a look at. Number one, take inventory of some areas in your life that you're struggling today, Things that you've tried everything. When you say you've tried everything, that's probably a really good candidate for this. Or maybe you're struggling with business and you have been grinding and trying a very similar process over and over again and it's not yielding the results that you had hoped for.
Winston Faircloth:Regardless, there's something in your life that is not meshing right for you. And so I want you to take one dimension of your life and pick one. And now here's the practical steps. First, do a thought download. And a thought download is a very simple exercise where you take a sheet of paper and you write down everything that you believe about this particular subject or aspect of your life.
Winston Faircloth:Get in a quiet space. Just take down takes take soul dictation or spiritual dictation. Whatever comes to mind. Do not filter. Do not edit.
Winston Faircloth:Don't worry about it being grammatically correct. Don't worry about it even making sense. Just capture all the things that you believe about that subject. What success looks like for you in that arena of your life. What contentment looks like for you in that region of your life.
Winston Faircloth:What progress looks like for you in that dimension of your life. Just do this thought download on one side of a sheet of paper. And if you need to flip it over and do several pieces of paper, even better. Because the more of these beliefs we capture, then this next step is going to be really interesting, which is to be willing to then take the opposite view for each of those beliefs. What would be the opposite of each of those beliefs?
Winston Faircloth:Now, that may be more challenging to you because these are deeply held convictions or principles or knowledge that we've gained and held over a long period of time. But take a thought experiment. And this is just for fun. You don't have to do a single thing with any of this. All I'm asking you to do is to capture for a moment what is the opposite.
Winston Faircloth:If you were having to argue, the one thing about philosophy or debate or a lot of discourse in our country right now, I think one of the challenges with the discourse in our country right now is people are so certain that they are right. Let me say that again. People are so certain that they are right that they cannot even consider another one's viewpoint. That is not a wise place to be. That is not the definition of wisdom, That you are so certain that you can't consider a contrary view?
Winston Faircloth:That seems pretty shallow to me, honestly. It's certainly not consider that there is another way of doing this. That's it. Unlearning means that you are going to set aside temporarily. You're going to suspend temporarily your existing ideas and beliefs.
Winston Faircloth:Now you've unplugged, and now you're beginning this process of unwinding, unlearning some things. It is going to feel like a crazy thing to do. But I I assure you that with the third step, this is going to give you even more space to reconsider and to reevaluate because where we're going with this whole process is for you to tune out the noise, distraction, the influencers, all of that because truth lies within. Truth lies within. You know what is consistent with your deeply held values and what makes you the unique gifted person that you are.
Winston Faircloth:And we can't be a clone of somebody else and expect to really enjoy life, enjoy work. So if you have any questions, concerns, challenges with this process, either the unplug or unlearn phase, here's an invitation. Send me a text. Send me a text. I'd love to engage with you one on one in this process to share my wisdom or more likely my experience with this process.
Winston Faircloth:And you'll help me grow too by sharing your your challenges, your breakthroughs, your whatever's going on with you. Send me a text to this number. It's me on the other side answering, not a robot, not a another member of my team. This is my text number. I'd welcome your involvement.
Winston Faircloth:And those of you on the podcast, check the show notes for the text number. And for more information on the refinement process, I'm posting all of the content including some special bonus blog posts at winstonferrocloth.com/blog. That's where you can pick up and subscribe on your favorite podcast player. It's also where you can catch all of the content related to the Refirements series. I hope this serves you.
Winston Faircloth:It has certainly made a huge difference in my life and I can't wait to hear from you and find out what's going on in your life. Take care. We'll talk soon.