The Space Between Thoughts Is Where Freedom Lives

Mindfulness extends beyond being a buzzword into a practical, accessible tool for navigating life's challenges with greater ease and presence.
Alan Carroll, a public speaking coach with 50 years of spiritual practice, shares how creating space between thoughts transforms our relationship with emotions and enhances our ability to respond rather than react.

• Mindfulness lives in present time, while the ego lives in the past and future
• Creating space between thoughts allows us to observe rather than identify with our emotions
• The parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) counterbalances the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight)
• A simple breathing technique can interrupt anger patterns in just 10-12 seconds
• Daily practice of just five minutes with no expectations can begin transforming your relationship with thoughts
• Mindfulness doesn't negate human emotions but provides tools to experience them without drowning in them
• The "fifth element" of space is available to everyone, regardless of age or background
• Learning to "play the note of silence" alongside sound transforms communication

Find Alan Carrollat acamindfulyou.com or through his podcast, Mindful You, where he continues to share insights from his extensive experience training public speakers in over 60 countries.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 1:12 Alan's Spiritual Journey
• 2:28 Mindful Moment Practice
• 4:47 Creating Space Between Thoughts
• 10:31 Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness
• 15:52 Breathing Exercise for Anger Management
• 22:30 Daily Practice for Mindfulness
• 33:02 Navigating Life's Challenges Mindfully
• 39:17 Alan's Personal Reflections
• 43:17 Final Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

NatNat - Liftoneself: 0:00

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast. I'm your host, nat Nat, and today I have a guest that we're going to dive into what mindfulness is and give you a broader perspective, because this is quite a buzzword now, yet some people might be over analyzing it or not being able to practice it in their everyday life, because they think that it has to be something very grand. So, alan, would you please introduce yourself to myself and the listeners and let us know a little bit about yourself.

Alan Carroll: 0:30

Be happy to Nat. Nat, a little bit of my background. Started out very early being a seeker, feeling in my early teens that there's something missing, not knowing what's missing. But then there's something missing. Read a book by Paramahansa Yogananda, autobiography of a yogi. Talks about his journey through India to the United States and the creation of the Self-Realization Fellowship.

Alan Carroll: 0:58

That got me on the path of psychology, got my degrees in psychology and fell in love with a psychologist named Carl Jung, and Carl Jung would be the spiritual kind of psychologist. Freud I wouldn't call the spiritual guy, jung would be the spiritual guy. And then I read another book, be here Now. Be here Now by Baba Ram Dass. And then I got into yoga, I got into meditation, got into spirituality and I ended up having a really cool job, which I still do after 50 years, and I train public speakers around the world. Train public speakers around the world and I'm able to train them to transform their ability to speak through the application of all those spiritual things that I learned on the journey. So I'm now happy to talk to your audience about mindfulness from the things that I've discovered on my journey.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 2:02

Great, I have my curiosity peaked in with all the things that you said, so I'm intrigued to hear a little bit about your journey Before we dive in. Would you join me in a mindful moment so we can ground ourselves?

Alan Carroll: 2:16

Absolutely.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 2:17

Okay, and for the listeners, as you always hear when I ask about the eyes being closed, if you're driving or need your visual, please don't Safety first, Yet the other prompts you're able to follow. So I'll ask you to get comfortable in your seating and, if it's safe to do so, gently close your eyes and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose, bringing your awareness to watching the rhythm of your breath. You're not going to try and control your breath, you're just going to be aware of its rhythm, allowing it to guide you into your body. There may be some sensations or feelings coming up, and that's okay. Let them come up. You're safe to feel. You're safe to feel. You're safe to let go, surrender the need to control, release the need to resist and just be, be with your breath, drop deeper into your body.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 3:21

Now there may be some thoughts or to-do lists that have popped up, and that's okay. Gently bring your awareness back to your breath, creating space between the awareness and the thoughts and dropping even deeper into the body, being in the space of presence, of being, of presence, of being. Again, more thoughts may have popped up. Gently, bring the awareness back to your breath, beginning again, creating even more space between the awareness and the thoughts and completely surrendering into the body, into presence, into the breath, now coming into your senses, into this moment, at your own time and at your own pace. You're going to gently open your eyes while staying with the breath. How is your heart doing?

Alan Carroll: 4:30

Very relaxed.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 4:32

So there's a lot of, you know, jewels and nuggets that have guided you through this journey. In your personal experience, what has been the most challenging part of mindfulness?

Alan Carroll: 4:47

First of all, what you just did was not a challenge, it wasn't difficult, it didn't require me to have a PhD and yet it transformed me and transformed the audience, if they did the exercise, into a physical state of consciousness. And the physical state of consciousness there's a label for that state of consciousness and it's called the parasympathetic nervous system. And as compared to the sympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system would be one in which you have stress, tension, high blood pressure, constipated kind of flow of energy. Parasympathetic nervous system is a rest, relaxing, digesting, melting, dissolving into nothingness kind of place. And the challenge that people have is they get caught by their ego identity. The ego identity, nat Nat, is interested in protecting, surviving, defending, attacking anything that offends its identity. And so, as you practice mindfulness, you learn and practice what you said the ability to create space between the observer and that which is being observed.

Alan Carroll: 6:30

And space is pretty cool because the Greeks talked about the reality in which we live. The dream world in which we live is composed of four elements earth, air, fire and water. Then Plato comes along and says well, you know, I think there's another element. He referred to it as the ether, he referred to it as space, and so space turns out to be comprised. 99.9% of the universe in which we live is empty. Only less than 1% and one-tenth of 1% is actually physical things like the planets, the body, the atoms, the asteroids, the suns. And yet most people, from the ego point of view, spend their whole time focusing on the preservation of the things in the space rather than the discovery of the space itself.

Alan Carroll: 7:27

So as you begin to discover the space itself by actually consciously creating the empty space, you then fall into the gap that's between the things, the thoughts that you think, the emotions that you feel, and, as every time you're able to create a space, for example, right now, in my speaking, what you'll notice if you listen carefully, I'm playing two notes when I speak, I'm playing the note that everybody can play, which is the note of sound. I am making sounds. You're making sounds from Canada, I'm making sounds from the United States. Je vais, je peux créer un son. Depending on the language. Protect my weak French.

Alan Carroll: 8:24

I can make French sounds. I can make English sounds buenos dias. I can make a little Spanish sounds, but I'm still making sounds. So everybody knows how to speak, but very few people know how to make the second note, the wind instrument. I'm blowing air out of my body, making sounds, but the second note is the note of silence. So when you can play the note of sound while I'm speaking to you, and if I can play the note of silence when I'm speaking to you, I now can dance between the yang energy, which is the forward thrusting of my consciousness, and the yin or feminine energy, which is the flowing into. And so now we have the outward flow and the inward flow, and now you have the balance, you have the dance.

Alan Carroll: 9:21

But in order to do that net-net, you have to be in present time. And in present time, all of a sudden, you're there where mindfulness lives in present time. The ego does not live in present time. The being lives in present time, the spirit lives in present time, mindfulness lives in present time. So you can actually create present time by pausing between the sounds that you speak, and at first the ego is not interested in that. The ego is into the preservation of its identity, which is comprised of the thoughts that it believes itself to be. So as I begin to create empty spaces between my thoughts, my ego identity begins to dissolve and I begin to wake up and I begin to be the observer rather than the participant of life. And when you can observe things and become the watcher, that's your ticket to heaven. If you can do that, Very much so.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 10:31

You described it very beautifully. For people that may not even know what we're speaking about, you gave a great visualization so that they can be a little bit more curious of opening up that dimension within themselves, because a lot of people are tethered on the outside of them, they're not even aware of this inner world that goes on with their nervous system and the observer, the awareness.

Alan Carroll: 10:54

Absolutely. That's part of. There's a term we use in corporations called emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence first definition is self-awareness. When you become self-aware, what does that mean? That means you're developing the observer.

Alan Carroll: 11:16

In communication we talk about, well, you have the speaker who knows how to speak, you have the listener, you have the part of you that judges, the part of you that creates, the part of you that observes, and you want to develop the observer. But in order to observe, there has to be a space between the observer and that which is being observed In the ego, identity, in the sympathetic nervous system. There's no space. There's an immediate reaction to what's going on. There's no wait.

Alan Carroll: 11:49

A minute, boy, I just got triggered by something. I'm not quite sure what it was, but something really caused a lot of stirring up inside of me, emotions going inside of me. A lot of you're wrong and I got to fix you, and this is not right. This shouldn't be. A lot of you're wrong and I got to fix you, and this is not right. This shouldn't be a lot of that kind of like.

Alan Carroll: 12:16

The analogy that I use is the you have the snow globe and the snow globe gets all shaken up when you get agitated and triggered. But when you pause and take that breath, all the snow begins to settle and clarity is restored and you return to the parasympathetic nervous system. So you want to get, you want to be able to access that ability, to develop that muscle of observation. So you're no longer a participant. You're a participant but there's a buffer zone now that gives you a chance to participate. But I am in a spacious state of consciousness when I'm participating and out of that space comes forgiveness and compassion. When you're not in that space, it's anger and upset and irritation. And you, you, son of a, we got to fix you. Well, that that's that's going to cause you physical harm, emotional harm and mental harm. But it feels good to the ego but but it's not feeling good to your spirit.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 13:19

Yeah, and as I mentioned to people you know, unfortunately the emotion of anger has had a bad rap. And anger is healthy. It gives us information, it guides us of things that are unsafe and it's protective. It's the behavior that gets hijacked of that fight or flight and, as you just demonstrated, how we project that energy outwardly and rather than be able to listen to the information that's coming up. So a lot of people you know don't know how to relate to that emotion so that it doesn't hijack their behavior. Do you have any guidance for that?

Alan Carroll: 13:57

As you become more mindfulness, as you become more present, as you have a practice. So my coaching to your audience is you want to have enough discipline to have some sort of mindfulness, daily, regular, everyday kind of practice in which you become still, you become a snow globe that doesn't shake, no agitation. Go out in nature. Yesterday I was out by the river in the Mystic area and there was this granite bench overlooking the river with the ducks and the reeds, and just sitting there in that space of stillness, becoming still, and that will calm down the thoughts. It's referred to sometimes as the monkey mind going all over the place. You want to calm down the thoughts so when any emotion comes up, the emotion doesn't hijack you, the anger doesn't hijack you. The anger doesn't hijack you. You're able to observe and watch the emotional storm come up and not judge it. Accept it. It's there and so you're not at the effect anymore of that emotion you now can begin to look at.

Alan Carroll: 15:23

Well, if I was in my higher state of consciousness and watching the event that's happening in front of me, how would I respond to that event? But I have to go from the lower state of consciousness, which is the ego, which wants to react to the event based on my conditioning, and I know what's right. You got to put that aside. That lives in the past. You got to be present in the moment. And then you ask yourself well, what would the higher self do right now? What would my spiritual self do right now? What would the Holy Spirit? How would the Holy Spirit judge this right now?

Alan Carroll: 16:01

Well, if I was the Holy Spirit and if I was the higher self, and if I was this being of mindfulness, how would I respond to it? Well, I'd be a lot more loving, a lot more kind, definitely a lot more forgiving. A lot more compassion would flow from me. And all of a sudden, you'd notice that, oh, I'm back into that parasympathetic nervous system state. I'm now relaxed and calm, I'm healthier, I'm emotionally more balanced, I have a higher level of emotional intelligence because I'm able to develop that through practice, that space, the gap, developing the gap. And every time that I pause as I talk to you right now, a wave of relaxation flows through my body. But when you're in the, in the moment of anger and upset, there's no wave of relaxation flowing through your body, net net. There's a wave of anger flowing out to, to defend what you just did and that that is not healthy mentally, spiritually or emotionally.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 17:09

Yeah, and I'm, you know, as a person that has experienced significant trauma, and when my nervous system gets activated with that and feeling the angercerally, you can go into your mindset and say what would I do higher. Yet I think there's a part that needs to be brought in is the integration of the body, because those visceral effects in the body of the tightening of the chest, the shallow breathing, I think there's a part where we forget to validate the body, because the body is keeping the memory, the nervous system is keeping the memory, and if we can integrate and process that memory, then the activation of the nervous system doesn't feel that it needs to defend and protect us from feeling our emotions. Because when anger is coming up, most times people are not feeling it. They're trying to offload it and get rid of it. Yet and they cut off the stream, but that intense energy they don't know how to sit with it, they don't know how to be with it.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 18:16

So what you gave as an example, if people are doing a practice, sure, but if they're at the beginning of this, it's like that's easier said than done. Like my body does all this coping mechanisms and strategies that I wasn't even aware that I do Like. I may mentally know that I shouldn't be yelling, I shouldn't be silent with people. That's not how I want to. Yet this body just takes over at times. Is there something that you would offer, especially for men, because men are conditioned a lot that sensitivity is a weakness or it impacts their sexuality and in society, what would you offer to men when anger does come up and how they can engage and integrate that?

Alan Carroll: 19:05

In your background you have the word breathe, and the issue is the anger is preceded by thought. The thought is an interpretation. You're watching the movie of life. Something is happening in the movie. Hey, I don't like that, that shouldn't.

Alan Carroll: 19:26

There's an interpretation of the scene of the movie, and once I have an interpretation that justifies anger, anger will follow the interpretation. So anger is second. The first thing is the getting control of the thoughts that you think, which paints the picture which you get upset by, which then directs the anger to. So you have to be able to manage your thoughts, be aware of your thoughts. And before you're aware of your thoughts, you have to realize you're a victim of your thoughts. And so, now that I'm a victim of my thoughts, how can I begin to erase the thought? Well, the easiest way, the simplest way, is to be able to practice what you did in the beginning a breathing exercise, because you can. You cannot do what you, what you had us do, which is close our eyes, and what I'd recommend is it's a breathing exercise. It's similar to what you did. You close your eyes. First of all, close your eyes Because a lot of the interpretation you have about what's going on in the movie is because you're looking at the movie. If I can stop looking at the thing which is causing me to be upset, immediately you'll notice that the upset begins to lessen. But as long as you continue to look at it, oh, it burns me. But you can't take your eyes off of the thing that is bothering. You Close your eyes. Good, got your eyes closed. Now take that deep breath again. Breathe into the nose, do the belly breath, push your belly out.

Alan Carroll: 21:00

I would recommend doing it for a three cycle. The first cycle is you close your eyes. You breathe in for a count of four. You fill your breath as much as you can fill your body up. Now, just on a little bit of the aside there, normal tidal breathing is about 500 milliliters in, 500 milliliters out. It's normal breathing. You have the capacity to take 600% more oxygen. When you say, hey, I'd like to take a deeper breath Because now you can add another 3,000 milliliters of air to your lungs, it will take it. And so now I'm breathing in for a count of four, holding the fullness for a count of two, breathing out for a count of five, four, three, two, one. Hold the emptiness for a count of two. Do that three times.

Alan Carroll: 21:51

I use the idea of you know, it's like smelling flowers blow the candles out, do that three times and what happens? You'll notice that the thoughts that you were thinking fade away, so the thoughts that were firing up the anger begin to dissipate. Because, as Eckhart Tolle talked about it, if you put attention on your thoughts, it's like giving your thoughts life support. If you take your attention off of your thoughts, then you're no longer giving the thoughts life support and those thoughts which were causing the anger will begin to fade away and all of a sudden, relaxation will return to your body. So that is possible to disrupt the source of the anger which affects the body by by controlling the breath, and everybody can breathe. It's just that you have to be self-aware in the moment that you're angry to catch yourself.

Alan Carroll: 22:55

Wow, I just got triggered. What, what, what did Alan and that say oh, take that deep breath, take those three deep breaths, okay, good, good. Close my eyes and then notice what happens to your physical body, notice that the tension begins to melt the relaxation into it, and so you're no longer as upset. And all of a sudden, the boat is no longer longer capsized, the boat is now right side up again and now you have that, that, that self-awareness now. So you disrupted the conditioning pattern of your thinking and just and it takes about what? 10 seconds, 12 seconds to do it, and that that is a very easy technique that I'd recommend everybody to do.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 23:43

Thank you for that demonstration and it being relatable so that people can actually. You know, this is the thing about mindfulness it's free, it's simple. Yet our minds have been conditioned to complicate everything and to be fast paced. Mindfulness asks us to slow down, to be in that flow state, not this hurry, momentum and impulsivity and run. Everything's on fire. It's okay, slow down into this so that you can interrupt these patterns and the way that you explained it.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 24:18

Some people might be like yeah, that's great, but I'm not doing that in a meeting or I'm not doing that with my friends. I'm going to look really ridiculous and the suggestion I always give is like well, you know, you don't learn your fire roots and escape when the house is on fire. You learn it when everything is relaxed so that when the house is on fire it's not exaggerated, you can do it internally without other people noticing While you were giving the description of the belly breath and the exercise I was following through. Yet many people wouldn't know that unless they're looking at my belly and seeing the demonstration. So what would you offer to the listeners to start engaging in this practice? What would that look like on a daily basis?

Alan Carroll: 25:05

A daily practice would start with getting a place in which you, as Sadhguru talks about it is, you're a little bit hungry, you're a little bit tired, you are dead to the world, there's no distractions, as quiet a space as you possibly can get, so there's no noise and do the best you can with that one and also another key aspect to the practice is have no expectations. Start the practice with no expectations, like I'm going to reach enlightenment, I'm going to be able to control my breath, I'm going to be able to control my breath, I'm going to be able to relax my mind. I'm going to be able to no expectations, because if you have an expectation, then, oh, I didn't get what I wanted to get. I'm not doing it right. These thoughts are bothering me.

Alan Carroll: 25:55

No, I have no expectations. So that anything that happens falls within a context of hey. So that anything that happens falls within a context of hey, that's cool Because I had no expectations. That's really important to get that thought across, because a lot of people, when they meditate, they complain that I'm not achieving all those things that Nat and Alan are talking about. No, you have no expectations.

Alan Carroll: 26:15

And that allows you to maintain a calmness rather than getting upset because it's not happening the way I want it to happen. Just five minutes a day. Just see if you can do five minutes a day of quiet stillness. Breathing would be great. Breathing is fine. That would be a great way to start and you know, if you could do that, that would be an indicator. Oh well, then I can go to 10 minutes. I've been practicing off and on for 50 years. Finally, I went to a training with Sadhguru, what's it called? He offers a basic training. It's a 20-minute.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 26:56

Oh, Inner Engineering.

Alan Carroll: 26:58

Inner Engineering. You can do it online and it's really cool. It's a 20-minute practice that combines the breathing a little bit of light yoga. You do it sitting down, alternative nostril breathing a lot of things that. I've been involved in. That for every day for 10 years, for an hour and now it's like brushing my teeth and what happens is that you increase the amount of empty space because you're creating empty space. So every time I pause, I create an empty space. So my empty space statistic, my space statistic, goes up and up and up and up and up. And after 10 years you've been practicing empty space for a long time you actually, organically, have developed and blossomed into a being that has a lot of empty space.

Alan Carroll: 27:55

Now the benefit of empty space is I use the analogy of the wintertime you have a storm door on the outside of your house that blocks the flow of the wind and the cold and the snow. In the summertime, you have the screen door that allows the flow of energy. Well, what's the difference between the two? Well, the storm door has no holes. So everybody, the ego, is like a storm door that blocks the flow of energy, that resists the flow of energy, and you want to convert it into a screen door. Well, how do you do that? You begin to poke holes at the storm door. So you poke holes in the pattern of your psychological fabric, of your consciousness, of your ego. How do you do that?

Alan Carroll: 28:41

Pause between the sounds that you speak, take a conscious breath. They put holes and pretty soon you're, you are a space now that is speaking and that you. You no longer get offended, you no longer get as upset. If you do get upset, you can get back right very, very quickly. You're no longer take things personally. You know you, it comes out of someone else's conditioned reality. So you're able to stay balanced in in life rather than storms and suffering and capsized and anger and upset and irritation and annoying all that begins to get. It's not that it's not there, it's just that the waves aren't as big in the ocean anymore. All of a sudden you've still got waves, but you're able to navigate and keep things moving. So you're no longer spending a lot of time complaining and having grievances about life. You're much more appreciative of life and joy and more love, more compassion and more forgiveness.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 29:58

Yeah, I wanted to highlight that because sometimes, no-transcript your nervous system is trying to communicate with another nervous system and it's no longer there. We understand, I understand that energy doesn't die, so our life force is still there, in you know the frequency but that body. So, while we can use these tools, we don't have to drown into the water. We might intake a bit of water and feel a little rough, yet by using this mindfulness, you're able to ride with life, especially when these big ruptures happen.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 31:00

Because you know, I feel that sometimes people listen to this and, like you said at the beginning, they have this expectation and they don't feel like they're doing it properly and it's like nowhere is it to negate the human experience. Emotions are going to rise. You know grief requires its space. You know disappointment needs its space, like these are human experiences, yet it's that you don't have to fully identify and drown into them, which many of us do, because we think we are that thing. So I just want to make sure that that's clear for the listener, that it's not that you're not doing it right, it's not that this is going to be this magic pill, that you're going to arrive somewhere and life is always going to feel joyful and blissful because life is going to happen, and so that's the reason why you use mindfulness so that you can stay present as best as you can and not stuck in the past and future and trying to control things that you can. Allow curiosity to be out, not certainty.

Alan Carroll: 32:04

Absolutely the part of certainty is the desire for certainty is sort of the opposite of what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is the erasing of the whiteboard. It's not putting things on the whiteboard, it's getting to that space of nothingness, a space of non-judgment. Another one that is sort of a tricky one is that the ego is in the judgment business and the judgment and comparison business, and it uses the past in order to judge the present. But as the past is comprised of your thoughts, as you begin to erase your thoughts and begin to practice stillness and creating gaps between the thoughts that you speak, see, the goal in meditation is you want to be able to create gaps of spaces between the thoughts that you think. Well, that's a little more challenging. But everybody here who's listening to this podcast, who speaks and I think probably everybody speaks you're you want to notice that there's an empty space between the words that I speak. And if I can consciously create the empty space, then then you have what's called fluidity. Fluidity is a flow of energy, but if there's no space between the thoughts that you think, which is the ego, consciousness constipated, then there is no fluidity, there is heat, there's resistance. So, just from a physical physics point of view. By creating empty spaces between the thoughts that you speak. You become more fluid and fluidity allows you to you.

Alan Carroll: 33:59

Use the word you. You're able to navigate better through through the water. There's a flow. Use the word you. You're able to navigate better through through the water. There's a flow in the water you. You no longer are resisting life. Stuff still happens, but you're more surfing the waves. You're not in the way, you're on top, surfing like space surfing, I call it. You're surfing the space, and most people are start, are trying to swim in the water. Well, get on the board of space and become a space surfer and you'll notice that, hey, life is a lot more fun.

Alan Carroll: 34:30

It is and really, it's all one, it's all divine. All those things you think are horrible, they're not horrible at all, they're divine. You just aren't able to forgive it. The problem of it is is that the ego is not in the forgiveness business and that that leads to a lot of suffering. The being, the spirituality, the Holy Spirit operates from forgiveness and and and part of the forgiveness you discover is the forgiveness of the quote sin that you've done yourself inside. Oh, I've done that. No, no, god did not create sin. God created a being of light and love and cheerfulness, the ego boy that created sin and shame and guilt.

Alan Carroll: 35:16

But I like when the Bible talks about in the Apostles' Creed, is what do those apostles say you want to believe in? Well, I believe in the forgiveness of sin. Well, yeah, that's in the Bible, but no, no, that's right here in Ottawa, canada and Connecticut the forgiveness of sin. And so now forgiveness is a loving quality. And all of a sudden the sin inside of me is no longer projected onto you and all those bad things you've done, because you and I are the same, and it's like wait a minute and all of a sudden you realize it's just one one, one dream. We're all in right now and and the way to navigate it is with love, and joy and compassion yeah, as Ram Dass says, we're all walking each other home and we can tend to forget that.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 36:05

I want to bring you into a reflective question. I want to ask you what would your past self say to you presently?

Alan Carroll: 36:22

practice forgiveness earlier and start your meditation practice earlier, and I was lucky in that because I started to practice pretty early. I didn't wait till later on. I was caught by the bug in my early teens and so I was able to. Well, I was also blessed.

Alan Carroll: 36:43

I had a psychic reading when I was 21 years old by a very high level psychic and they closed my eyes. I was thrown back in my chair with energy and he told me exactly what my job was on the planet. Because I asked him what's my purpose on the planet? And so at 21 years old, I knew my purpose. So everything was easy to make a choice. So I, I was blessed, so I I can't, I can't complain, I can't argue, I can't really answer the question, because I've I've had a blessed life and I'm very appreciative of this and I'd like to be able to do more. That's one reason why I do the podcast, because all the things that I've learned, the things they were talking about, might save people time on their own journey, that they can get there quicker, because Alan and Nat Nat have spent a lot of time doing push-ups in the gym, in the gymnasium of space.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 37:38

Yeah, what would your future self want to offer to you?

Alan Carroll: 37:44

Joy and love and compassion. Have fun, do more push-ups, enjoy the journey.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 37:54

Nice, nice. Now can you let the listeners know where they can find you? Because, as you said at the beginning, you offer a service of helping people bring this mindfulness into their public speaking and be in their body and be in who they are and emit that energy out. So could you let the listeners know where they can find you, Alan?

Alan Carroll: 38:17

We have a website, acamindfulyoucom acamindfulyoucom. I wrote a book called the Broadband Connection the Art of Delivering a Winning IT Presentation. Most of our business that we've done in the last 50 years are for corporations around the world. We've been to over 60 countries and large corporations. We really don't do private courses anymore, we do individual coaching. So if they wanted individual coaching, we can do individual coaching online virtually. We can also do live trainings, but the idea of the website would be a good way, a good portal, to get into our world. I'm also the host of the Mindful you podcast. Mindful is M-I-N-D, mindful you Y-O-U dot com. No, my Mindful you podcast. So that's available to hear us talk more like we have conversations right now. That's another way of listening to the words that we speak.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 39:25

I want to ask you to reflect and be internal, and is there an intention that you want to offer the listeners that would empower them?

Alan Carroll: 39:41

The fifth element of space is available to children, is available to teenagers, is available to adults, is available to old people like me. It's available to everybody, it's free, it doesn't cost any money. All you have to do is stop, smell the flowers, blow out the candles and you return to that state of mindfulness, that state of creating a space. And I want to point out again I said it, but I want to point out again everybody knows how to speak, but everybody only plays one note the note of sound.

Alan Carroll: 40:25

When you begin to do research on practicing by yourself in front of the mirror, creating a sound in the mirror and then creating silence in the mirror, creating sound in the mirror, creating silence, and so you begin to perform your thoughts rather than just talk, and everybody can do that, it's free, it's simple, and that's another mindfulness activity that you can do that will return you to a sense of presence and stillness. And, boy, when you become still in the world of agitation in which we live in, it gives you an advantage in terms of how to manage things and make decisions, because you're still where everyone else is going bonkers with. I mean, canada is the 51st state of the United States. It's just a lot of things that can easily upset you. It won't upset you as much, and decisions are not going to be made out of anger. They're going to be made of you got to be kidding, kind of thing.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 41:30

Yeah, yeah. Well, I really appreciated this conversation. I appreciate the way that you explain this in very simple terms so that it doesn't feel so academic or too nuanced, that it can be attainable. And if people are open and curious, they can enrich their life in so many ways. And I thank you for being that light in the world, that you are bringing this mindfulness into corporations and into people so that we can connect and create that village, not be all independent that we can be interconnected and not be that king of the hill, that we all have abundance to share amongst each other, so that we can be in that flow state and not in those power dynamics. So thank you so much for what you bring forth in the world, alan.

Alan Carroll: 42:25

Well, nat, thank you for the opportunity to let me sing my song for 45 minutes. I enjoy singing the mindfulness song, so thank you for the opportunity to be on your show.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 42:37

Please remember to be kind to yourself.

Alan Carroll: 42:40

Absolutely.

NatNat - Liftoneself: 42:41

Hey, you made it all the way here. I appreciate you and your time. If you found value in this conversation, please share it out. If there was somebody that popped into your mind, take action and share it out with them. It possibly may not be them that will benefit. It's that they know somebody that will benefit from listening to this conversation. So please take action and share out the podcast. You can find us on social media on Facebook, instagram and TikTok under Lift One Self, and if you want to inquire about the work that I do and the services that I provide to people, come over on my website, come into a discovery call liftoneselfcom. Until next time, please remember to be kind and gentle with yourself. You matter.