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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
Voiceover: [00:00:00] Rise Up Live Joy Your Way from emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness. Coach Kamini Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit. Through these small bites of self visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live, Rise Up Live Joy Your Way.
Kamini Wood: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time to hang out here with me today. So today I wanna start with a sentence that might actually surprise you. Not every boundary is defensiveness. Okay, second, second.
State sentence. Not every hesitation is avoidance. I think right now there's a little bit of, um, confusion happening. So if you pull things [00:01:00] back, if you pull yourself back, maybe you are being avoidant, right? I think that's one, one thought that's out there. Like if you pull back, you're being avoidant. If you speak up, you're being reactive.
If you question something, you're being triggered. If you protect yourself, you're being defensive. I think in somewhere, somewhere in all of that and all of that noise, people are starting to lose their ability to trust their own discernment of what's actually happening. So I just wanna spend some time actually untangling this idea that discernment, um, is defensiveness.
I wanna really talk about the fact that discernment is not necessarily defensiveness, and if you don't understand the difference, um, sometimes I think what ends up happening is. We'll overcorrect into people pleasing or we might collapse into our own chronic sense of self-doubt. And neither of those are really leadership and neither of those are really us growing or, or working through anything.
So when was the last time, I just want you to think about this. When was the last time someone called you defensive and I'm, I, it's important because I think I've even [00:02:00] noticed that sometimes when I am trying to actually be assertive, I've been called defensive, so. I it, I think this is just an interesting conversation to have.
So I wanna define defensiveness clearly. Defensiveness is. An immediate reaction to a perceived threat to our ego or our identity. So it often sounds like a quick, uh, comeback of like, okay, that's not what I meant, or you misunderstood. Um, that's not fair. You're overreacting, or you always do this right?
Defensiveness is fast, it's reactive, it's protective. It resists any type of self-reflection. The nervous system hears a criticism and it moves into fight mode. Uh, defensiveness. Let's be clear. It's not evil. We're not calling anybody bad. It's, it's just protective wiring that we. Have acquired over the years, but it also does limit our ability to grow.
So the key here is that when we become defensive, we are actually rejecting data without giving it an [00:03:00] opportunity or giving ourselves an opportunity to evaluate it. Discernment, evaluates the data before we choose how we're gonna respond. And I think that that's the important distinction that if we can lean into that allows for the growth to happen.
So. Let's talk about discernment. We talked about defensiveness. Let's talk about discernment. Discernment is much slower, it sounds like. Let me think about that for a second, or. That, that I don't fully get what, what, what we're saying or I don't fully understand. Let me just give it, gimme a second to, to consider what you're saying or I see a part of what you're saying, um, or even I disagree.
And here's why. Discernment doesn't collapse into shame. It doesn't escalate into fight. It doesn't escalate into attack. Discernment gives us a chance to assess what's being shared with us. Um, and it asks. Questions like, you know, is the feedback accurate? Do I feel safe with this person? Do we share a common reality here?
Is there [00:04:00] a pattern? Is, is it potentially that there's some projection happening here? So discernment gives us the ability to be in a regulated state and to evaluate what's happening. And yes, it does require a sense of emotional maturity, but it also requires a lot of self trust. So, you know, when you think to yourself, do you pause before responding?
And when you do, do you feel slightly more in charge or do you feel weak? Because if pausing feels weak, maybe you've been conditioned to equate. Speed with strength, but really sometimes when we slow down, we actually can offer, we can actually lean into some clarity. So I think that there's a little bit of the, the issue that we run into is that sometimes culturally there's an overemphasis on accountability.
And I, I believe in taking accountability. I talk about radical self accountability all the time, but I think sometimes we overemphasize that. We overemphasize, um. You know, uh, boundaries. And so that creates a sense of tension. Like there's everything in balance, right? So if you question feedback, people might [00:05:00] think that you're being defensive.
Also, if you accept all feedback, that could mean that maybe, maybe you're, you lack a little bit of self trust now, if you set boundaries, are you being avoidant? If you stay? Are you being self abandoning? I mean, that's where all this confusion starts to happen. So people then start to ask like, okay, well, you know, I've had clients ask me, so comedy, how do I know if I'm protecting myself or if I'm just protecting my ego?
And, and actually that's a really good question to ask because. Ego protection and self-protection may feel similar in the body. Both involve activation, both involve a sense of tension, both in involve, a desire to push back. So it's important to say, okay, well how's, how, how do we tell the difference between the two?
So here are a couple of filters that I would offer to, um, to notice the difference between the, between the two. First one is pattern. Is this a one-off comment from somebody or is this a, a repeated dynamic between the two of you? Um, and also in your own response? [00:06:00] You know, defensiveness, reacts maybe to a single moment, but discernment's gonna track is going to track a pattern.
The second filter is power. Does this person that I'm in relationship with, hold power over me? Is there emotional power? Financial power, institutional power, relational power? Because oftentimes defensiveness might actually ignore the power. Differential, but discernment's gonna pay attention to it and evaluate it.
And then the third filter is safety. If I engage in this conversation, is repair with this person possible? Or is this historically a situation where there will be retaliation or some type of negative feedback loop? Defensiveness assumes threat. Discernment will evaluate what's in front of us. So to make this PRA practical, um, let's just imagine somebody says.
You tend to shut down in conflict. If we were to be defensive, we might just immediately say, that's not true. But discernment would actually, we'd slow it down and we might start asking like, okay, is that, is [00:07:00] that accurate? Haven't done that before. What's happening in my own body right now? Now imagine somebody says You're too sensitive, that's trauma.
Defensiveness might actually escalate it, but discernment will again, slow down and say, um. You know, is, is there minimizing happening here? Does this person historically respect my boundaries? Again, discernment can still say no, but it just comes from a place of clarity instead of reactivity. So discernment allows us to respond to a situation versus defensive, and it just has us reacting.
And it's really important that, you know, it's important to be able to, to understand this distinction because sometimes people will label discernment as defensiveness because. Clarity actually threatens their control. So like you might actually be slowing things down and discerning for yourself something that doesn't work and they'll, somebody else might call you defensive, but you know the truth.
So those are those moments where it's important for you to ask that. That question yourself is what do I know to be [00:08:00] true? Uh, because otherwise what ends up happening is you might start self-blaming or you might start self-doubting or you go into over explanation. So it's just important that when somebody calls you defensive, you are slowing down to recognize is that really what's happening For me, especially if you do have a pattern of people pleasing, it's very easy to get caught up in the loop of then saying, oh my gosh, I need to make this better.
And you start to over accommodate. Now if someone benefits from your self-doubt, they're going to actually resist your discernment. And it's really important that we name that, you know, 'cause that's what happens, happens in toxic dynamics. Now it's important to say that discernment is really hard without self-trust.
And self-trust is something that we. Um, we build, we continue to build the way through it until the way to continue to build your self trust is to to check your patterns, to ask yourself some curious questions, to stay in self-compassion with yourself. Slow things down before you respond to a situation because [00:09:00] discernment.
It really is about the middle space. It's, it's that, you know, the Viktor Frankl quote, and I'm gonna mess it up, but it's between stimulus and response. There is this space, and I truly believe that that's where discernment lives. It lives in that middle space, and it's just important to give yourself permission to step into that space and not always stay in the space of, I have to defend myself.
Growth does require feedback, right? We can't, we're not always gonna be able to grow without that feedback, but growth also requires boundaries and it requires the ability to request respectful feedback. And so when we're able to discern something doesn't sit right with us, then we can communicate that to somebody else.
Discernment is that regulated assessment in real time. Leaders without discernment become defensive. Uh, leaders without boundaries become compliant. Leaders with discernment are the steady ones. They're the ones that are gonna lead their team. And this goes for parents too, right? So just, [00:10:00] it's something to think about and something to consider.
You know, even asking yourself, when do I. When do I default to speed instead of slowing down? Or, you know, who in my life feels safe enough for honest reflection? Or where might I be shrinking my discernment to avoid being labeled as defensive? It's just, those are really important questions to just, it helps us also understand and become more discerning with the people that we're in relationship with.
Just to sort of summarize again, defensiveness is the rejection of data. Discernment gives us the ability to evaluate it and to use it. In order to figure out how we want to grow or what actions we wanna take. If this was helpful for you or you wanna hear more about how coaching could be helpful to support you in different areas of your life, whether professionally or personally, I invite you to book a time to chat with me at anytime at coachwithkamini.com and until next time, stay well.
Voiceover: Thank you for listening [00:11:00] to Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. For more information, Book a chat with Kamini at www.chatwithKamini.com, or visit her website at www.kaminiwood.com. You can also find Kamini on Facebook or Instagram username, it's authentic me. Thank you for listening!