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Conversations With Thomas is a podcast where humor, heart, and a touch of sass collide. Hosted by Thomas Kevin Dolan, each episode explores raw, real topics like self-compassion, healing, and the delightful mess of being human. As the seventh of ten kids, Thomas didn’t always have a voice—now he’s sharing it with you, and trust us, you’ll want to hear this.
Expect vulnerability, laughs, and thought-provoking questions that dive into subjects most people avoid (because, let's face it, some topics just need to be tackled). With a mix of wit and wisdom, Thomas takes you on a journey where you might cry, you might laugh, and you’ll definitely feel a little more connected to yourself and the world.
New episodes drop every 2nd and 4th Monday. Tune in for a dose of honesty, heart, and just the right amount of quirky.
Hello and welcome. My name is Thomas Kevin Dolan. I'm excited to welcome you to the
25th podcast of Conversations with Thomas. To be quite frank,
grind culture is toxic and rooted in outdated molds of ableism.
How's that for a start to a podcast? Listen to this language. Rise and You've got
to grind. Don't stop grinding. Get up early. Stay late.
Push harder. Outwork everyone. Never quit. Work while they rest.
No pain, no gain. You'll sleep when you're dead. God, I'm exhausted simply reciting
that. I'm diving into two divergent states of doing in this podcast.
Grind or ground. Which one intuitively resonates with you?
I'm asking you, which one does your heart want to lean towards? Grind or ground?
Is anyone, other than me, tired of this mindset grinding?
I mean literally tired. Sometimes you should sleep in.
Sometimes you should quit. Sometimes you should take your foot off the gas. I don't
know about you, but I have zero desire to grind my way through life.
Do you know the definition of grind? Listen carefully to this.
To reduce something to small particles or powder by crushing it I'm not trying to
reduce myself to small particles. I don't want to get through life. I Want to get
from life. I Fully acknowledged the need to work hard Smart and consistently with
gratitude with humility and reverence I actually do those three things. I know the
importance of leaving a comfort zone and embracing the process and trusting the
process. I do all three of those things as well. I realize the value in continually
growing, evolving and reinventing. I've invested heavily in my development heart,
mind, body and soul. I found this treasure. You can do all of these things without
grinding, not grinding 24 /7.
My last corporate gig in Vancouver taught me a lot about the hazards of grinding
and how much I wanted to be loved by being perceived as a grinder or there's no
sense of embracing grinding.
I took on a CEO's employee. I supervised this person for free. I allowed a major
event to be placed on my responsibilities list and asked for no additional
remuneration. In fact, I started the job by accepting a five -figure salary when this
beautiful Twished a mind gently said, "Work for nothing less than a six -figure
salary." My head told me, the part of me that can garner fear, my head told me,
"You grind your way to a six -figure salary in no time. Oh,
how I needed a gentle slap." The salary never came, but the grind did.
I'm proud. I'm proud to have stopped grinding in 2015 and I've never,
I've never felt happier as fulfilled or drumroll as successful.
And I say that with all humility, with privilege and most certainly gratitude, all
of that successful as I feel now. The grind doesn't work for me and because it
doesn't work for me, I possess peace as my prize. Now let's explore grounding.
When I say grounded, I mean being physically connected. No, not necessarily. Let's
just say connected. When I say grounded, I mean being connected, fully, in the
present moment. Physically, emotionally, and energetically, firmly in the now.
Grounded means that your thoughts are not straying or all your energy. You are not
looking into the past with sadness, for instance, or the future with the ever
-present cultural anxiety. My grounding begins by taking literally three simple deep
breaths,
and then I'm fully present.
Being in the present is as simple as breathing. Yet being conscious of it is what
takes immense strength. Being grounded means not allowing unkindness to take up space,
rent free in your body, in your heart, in your mind. It also means you love deeply
without the need to be right, without the need to make somebody else wrong. It
means gently digging beneath culture all of those ways of our family,
Our parents, our work, our religion, the clubs that we belong to, to dig beneath
cultures to understand and see the beauty in each human being. I'm going to suggest
and assert that I certainly did. Everyone pays a price for their ungroundedness.
Being grounded, you expose yourself to the universal energy flowing around you. And
when you choose to be fully present, you actually strengthen, you strengthen your
resolve. Tension levels decrease, calm and tranquility arise,
and actually healing occurs. All of us have been in tense situations when someone is
about to lose it, and then that calm individual walks in and everything changes.
Both you and I have the ability to be that calm person who changes the situation
for the better, but specifically changes it for ourselves. When you remain grounded,
you actually don't cause havoc in the world. When you remain grounded and you've
done that internally, there can be no havoc outside of you. It can't exist on the
outside of it, doesn't exist on the inside. You Experience a separation between your
body and spirit when you are not grounded your emotional stability and Clarity of
vision are both affected by this separation which distorts How you perceive the
world? I Used to be that person who lacked a sense of grounding Because I adopted
beliefs and realities of other folks. I Adopted them as mine.
I was the people pleaser. My connection to spirit was out of harmony. During this
period I could feel incredibly unsteady and as a result it left me feeling depressed
and unable to fully live in my fundamental truths. And of course my work,
although at the time I didn't know it was from or it needed to be from a place
of groundedness, was to become more aware of what my truths were and it feels so
humble and so grateful to have done that work and it doesn't mean that I don't
lose that sense of what my truths are I do I actually I absolutely do but
grounding comes best from knowing who I am here's what being grounded looks like and
feels like you have a sense of tranquility that is actually rooted in your intuitive
self that part of you that knows, that part of you that absolutely can steer you,
it's kind of your North Star if you will,
and that intuitive self, right, is available when you're grounded. You feel your
inner and outer worlds are equal. That's what groundedness looks like and feels like.
Your connection to the spiritual world, however you experience that, and your physical
body, are actually They're in harmony. You can't stay grounded when your being is at
a balance. Grounding involves a closer connection to your inner self and having
control over your mental and emotional well -being. How grounded you are is influenced
by how you let the environment support or mold you. After all, you can't change
everything around you. You can only have authority over yourself. And even after
mastering the technique of grounding, and I'm not going to arrogantly suggest that
I've mastered it, no, it's ongoing. And I think I will still be working with
mastering this notion of groundedness as I draw my last breath. But even after
mastering the technique of grounding, there will still be stressful moments. But what
you will have is a strategy for channeling your energy to respond in a target,
a targeted, a deliberate, and a wholehearted manner. You may avoid or you may mold
your grounding through a variety of methods and activities, including mindful
breathing, body scans, daily meditation, and gratitude. And I'll talk about those in
a moment, specifically give you some instruction around them. By practicing grounding,
you actually prepare yourself to listen to messages from your intuitive self.
If you're on a path to understanding your intuition, you need to rely on your inner
communications, which actually come through grounding. Being grounded allows you to
notice that you don't change. I don't change much under stress when I'm grounded.
And that's what being grounded helps me accomplish. I can hold this notion of
anxiety and stress in this world in a different way, and sometimes not hold it when
I'm grounded. And ultimately, I often wonder, why is it difficult for some of us to
get grounded? And I think this is really important to acknowledge, really, really
important to acknowledge. Grounding goes against how we were raised,
right? Your culture, I mentioned it before, your parents, your family, your friends,
your religion, taught you to persist in your efforts rather than give up. This was
the beginning of the call to grind. Were you trained to maximize every minute and
avoid setting aside time to indulge self -care? Who ever said to you, nobody ever
said, "Little Tommy, why don't you take a moment to acknowledge yourself? Give
yourself some kudos for being the best version of yourself. They taught you to do
more and not be content when the work was complete. There was no moment to savor.
Being productive while grounded allows you to feel renewed, but continuing to live
life without grounding is actually what leads to burnout. Being grounded does not
appear to be beneficial for anything other than the mind, heart, body and soul,
which is why many don't want to acknowledge the significance. This notion of
groundedness doesn't contribute to producing something. It's not a cog in our sacred
cow called capitalism or self -worth based on what you produce. Another thing that is
underappreciated is how grounding helps you access and engage with your intuitive
self, with your intuition. You can appreciate the importance of grounding because you
are aware of the benefits that come from doing so, including the ability to access
your intuitive skills and senses. And of course, it's all from a place of self
-love. And being able to access these powers brings up a level of self -awareness
that culture will never fully grasp. But you will. You'll know it to be real.
I want to, I want to suggest why grounding is vital. First,
grounding creates the conditions for using and allowing your intuition to be heard.
I've talked about that already. Setting your focus on noticing the energy that comes
via your intuitive senses is actually becoming grounded. When you come grounded,
you actually can analyze, you can hold whatever's coming in from both your internal
self and your external world, you can hold them in a way that you'd never been
able before if you weren't grounded. And of course, establishing the setting, the
tone, and your awareness by grounding allows you to accept what is, and that allows
you to open yourself up. And remember, when we accept what is, We actually suffer
less than our lives when we argue with reality when we argue with that thing that
is actually right in front of us And we say it shouldn't be in front of us We
suffer and as Byron Katie says only 100 % of the time Grounding is really another
way or exercise in letting go of reliance on what I call my monkey mind Or more
formally our egoic mind. You are giving your intuition, I point to my heart,
permission and a nod that you are open to being more receptive and actually
perceptive to it. So why? Why ground yourself?
It does take time to learn how being grounded feels for you. I would argue that
being in a state of grounding could seem dull, yet pleasant. And Oh,
I love that state of doneness. I really do. If you're sitting in it, you actually
could question your presence or feel that it should be more complicated or that it
was too easy. And of course, since we in our humanity overthink things, let me say
that yes, it really is that simple. You can also have a loss of awareness
concerning the passing of But this is actually really beautiful. Time behaves very
differently when you're grounded, making it a serene environment.
I get lost in time. This morning's meditation, I might have dialed up 34 minutes
and it felt like, because I was powerfully grounded, it felt like the meditation
took two minutes.
What a joy that is huh? Being lost in time.
I mentioned I would share some ways in which you could ground yourself These are
very simple and you could find a lot of other ones take what you want from this
leave What doesn't work for you? And of course the first one is not going to
surprise you with this notion of breathing You find your quiet place And of course
this simple grounding exercise of breathing is really simple. So I'm calling it a
box breathing. It's this idea. Breathe in to the kind of five or your breath for
kind of five. Breathe out for a kind of five to begin with.
If you could do it once, that would be really great.
But see if you can do it three times and then see if you can create a daily
habit of this
Repetition of this technique can help you refocus. It can help you actually remove
your emotions from your current scenario. You can redirect your thoughts and behaviors
in a way that is actually more beneficial and healthy for you,
centering your mind and body on the present. It's a powerful grounding technique.
The second is a body scan. And this is something I typically will lead all of my
clients through, usually in the beginning of us working together. And I use it all
the time. It's me checking in on what I call my body compass, right? The body is
always right in the body always wins. A body scan and the premise of the lie
detection science is based on discomfort in your body. And we've cultured out of our
we've cultured ourselves out of listening to the discomfort in our body that actually
hold the truth for us. So by mentally scanning your entire body, I do it from my
toes to my head and everything in between. I look or feel for and sometimes I
don't feel anything. I look for spots that are perhaps hurting me or uncomfortable.
When I perform this body scan during meditation or even sometimes outside of
meditation, I sometimes use what I call a kind of fast check -in when I'm in a
challenging circumstance or my emotions are running high and I look for anything
that's out of balance. I look for a whisper from my body. I pay attention to my
intuition about it and how I might correct that. So a body scan really helps take
advantage of this body compass of ours that always tells the truth and of course
it's always right. And the third would be this, again, not a surprise. If you've
listened to me in past podcasts, it's this notion of gratitude and wrapping that up
in a meditation. So a daily meditation and gratitude focused thinking are powerful
tools for maintaining your sense of grounding. We can go through five senses in
about a minute's time to become grounded in the present. And we can do this anytime
we feel ourselves in worry or some level of anxiety or some level of speculation,
speculation being a fancy word for us worrying about the future. Becoming grounded in
our present actually makes us available to happiness.
So here's some suggestions how to actually move yourself forward while being grounded.
I thought of this and I'll present it this way. Here's our choice. Being actively
involved in being fully present or actually being oblivious to it. The practice of
grounding involves returning to your core. It does not imply a constant calm or
absence of negative feelings. That's not what it's about. When difficulties throw you
off track, it actually gives you a method to remain calm while actually regaining
equilibrium. And it helps you build stronger bonds with both yourself and with a
strong bond with you. Guess what? It's one of the only ways you can have a strong
bond with other people. By using grounding practices, you act more intentionally and
prevent negativity from dragging you down. You feel you have more control,
that's control with a small C and you are in balance by practicing techniques like
mindful breathing, which I talked about, body scanning, body compass that I talked
about, and of course that daily gratitude reflection. Grounding allows you to develop
the capacity to appreciate your genuine rhythm and feel a natural,
relaxing flow in both your internal and external worlds and to wrap all of this up
grind culture is never been about making it to the top it's about trying to
compensate for lack of self worth built in by a culture that wants you to feel
this way so that it can keep you on producing and dominating everything I pull some
wisdom from roomy ancient ancient wisdom roomy got it back then this is a poem from
roomy out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field I'll meet you
there when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about
when you find that field or if I find that field Let's share the location with
each other and meet each other there. I'm grateful you've spent your precious time
with me. Thank you.