Queer Authenticity with Seth Lusk

Jonathan [00:00:02] Welcome to Not Going Quietly the podcast where we inspire growth, beat and biases and get into all sorts of good trouble with co-hosts Jonathan Beale and Brett Beast.

Britt [00:00:11] No topic is off limits as we explore ways to help everyone leap into life with a greater sense of clarity, passion, purpose and joy.

Jonathan [00:00:19] So get ready to join us just in courageous conversation, because not going quietly starts right now.

Britt [00:00:30] Hey, everybody. Welcome to Not Going Quietly, the podcast for outraged optimists and heartbroken healers all over the world where we surface life's searing truths in the name of radical togetherness. I'm your host, Britt East, and unfortunately, my co-host is still on sabbatical. However, I've got great news. We've got an awesome featured guest for you today. I can't wait for you to meet him. So let's just get rolling. I'll introduce you. Seth Lusk is no ordinary individual. He's a trailblazer, a force of nature, a champion of authenticity, and a living testament to the power of embracing your truest self and never letting the world convince you of anything else. After moving to Switzerland, Seth started his own business as a life coach, personal trainer and nutrition specialist. He decided to use the psychology he had studied in university to bridge the gap between how people care for their health, their relationship with themselves, as well as their mental health. His coaching practice focuses on bringing the power of authenticity to people's lives to help them not only achieve the success they want, but to make sure it is a success they are authentically designed to feel fulfilled by. Says clients experience liberation from limiting beliefs. They achieve clarity on their long forgotten values and passions in life. They develop consistency and the courage to not back down from what they are here to create. Even when facing setbacks, obstacles, or outright resistance from the world or people around them sets clients get the support, clarity, guidance and tools needed to come out to the world, tell the world who they are. Live into it and not back down. Seth Lusk, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you all. How are you today?

Seth [00:02:27] Thank you for having me. Doing really, really well. And thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Britt [00:02:32] Yes. It's absolutely wonderful to meet you. So, Switzerland. Tell me some about when you moved to Switzerland. And I'm really interested to know, as somebody who was born and raised in the U.S., you lived in the U.S. most of your life. You know, you might have heard that we're going through some things. What's your current view of the U.S. now that you have this bird's eye view, you're a little bit removed. What do you think about us? What can we do to heal? What's going on here?

Seth [00:03:01] Oh, man, that's a huge question. I would say since leaving the U.S. when I lived in the U.S., I felt very frustrated. I felt very, very alienated and very much like I was on the outside and I was stuck in this place that I was just never really fully accepted. And I sort of resented the U.S. when I left. To be honest, it was kind of like I was on the plane flying out of New York and heading to Switzerland doing this as I was leaving. And then after being here for five or six years and now I've been here for seven years, I, I sort of started to develop kind of a compassion for what's going on in the U.S., being able to kind of see it from a removed situation and being able to see more of, I think, a bigger picture of what's going on, not just from the US perspective, but from the perspective of, you know, the Swiss people are very interested in what is going on in the U.S. They talk about it constantly in the news. I mean, you listen to political shows and podcasts here in Switzerland and every other topic that they're talking about is something with Donald Trump and what's going on in the U.S. and the Republicans and the Democrats and Joe Biden. And just kind of hearing the way other people see the U.S. has been really interesting for me as well. I mean, most of Europe sees the U.S. as being this hero. You know, that kind of saved them during World War Two and are really kind of worried like what's going on in the U.S. and are they going to pull through and are we going to be able to help them like they helped us? And so it's been really interesting watching it from an outside perspective, from a more removed perspective. And I would say that that removed perspective for me has allowed me to approach some of the difficulties that are going on in the U.S. without all of the rage and the anger and be able to talk about it a little bit more openly without me being in the middle of it and experiencing it and being like, you know what? Fuck this, I'm done with it.

Britt [00:05:11] Oh my God, I'm so envious. I would love to have that balance and clarity and compassion that you talk about. I think a lot of us who are here just feel angry and a little bit helpless at the moment. What about queer communities? What is it like being queer in Switzerland versus queer in the U.S.?

Seth [00:05:31] So one really cool thing, Switzerland is very slow with with kind of adopting policies. Their democratic system works so well here. The way that they vote, everyone really feels like they have a voice, but it takes a little while for them to implement things because once something is done in Switzerland, it's done. They're not talking about it anymore. So gay marriage was actually not legal in Switzerland until two years ago. They voted on it two years ago. Up until then, it was a partnership. You could have a domestic partnership. And they were talking about it and talking about it like all the other countries have. Gay marriage. Why don't we have it yet? And two years ago, they put it up for a vote. And typically speaking, when they put things up for public vote, the the gap between the yeses in the nose is about 1%. So we're talking like 51%. Yes, 49% know or vice versa. This time the vote was over 65%. Yes, for gay marriage. So Switzerland was like, listen, we don't want to debate this. We don't want to talk about it anymore. Of course we're okay with it. It's done. And we're you know, and so it's I feel very safe in Switzerland as a gay person. I've especially in Zurich where I live, it's very comfortable to walk down the streets holding your boyfriend, your husband's hand, walking down the street in drag if you. One, two, Nobody is going to stop you and say anything to you. Nobody cares. They have. They're all having such, you know, colorful lives that they're just they might look at you and look you up and down and check you out and be like, Oh, that's cool. And they keep moving on. Nobody has negative things to say. I would say maybe when you get out into more of the rural mountainous areas, you might run into some some farmers that might be a little bit taken back by it. I'm not I don't think that they would ever say anything mean to you, but they would just maybe be like, what is that? What's going on here? I've never seen that before.

Britt [00:07:34] Yeah, Yeah, that that's really cool. Yeah. Very, very different than the US. You know, I somebody my co-host who's not able to be with us today has lived all over the world. And I've somebody who's always wanted to have that kind of expat experience and but I always let my worrying get the better of me, my anxiety, my overthinking. It's just such a big jump and and there's so much involved in it. And, you know, as reflecting on that as when I was preparing for this episode and I was thinking about how so many of us in the queer community are kind of notorious over thinkers. And I was wondering what your thoughts on how or how we can learn to break this habit and retrain our minds and release our anxieties, because I think so much of it is just retreading old ground, you know, worrying and fretting and not actually productive analysis. It almost becomes a habit like a go to coping mechanism. And I would love to hear some of your thoughts about that.

Seth [00:08:45] So I think that one first of all, the first thing that we need to do to I don't want to say break free from it, because when we say break free from that, the picture that people get in their heads is that the overthinking is going to stop. Like it's just going to stop, the brain's going to stop being a brain. The truth is, your brain is always going to be your brain. It's going to overthink. That's what it's designed to do. It's it's an evolutionary organ in our head that's designed to keep us alive and try and predict things in the future based on what it's experienced in the past to try and keep us safe and alive. So the best thing that we can do for ourselves is to recognize that storytelling is going on. And that's that's the first key, is to recognize it's a thought, it is a story. It's not a fact. And then once we can just sort of allow for that to sit in and allow it doesn't feel so dangerous, then when we recognize it's just a story, it's just a story going on in my head, I don't have to be so upset about it being there. I also don't have to believe it. It loses a little bit of its grip. And the second part to this is I kind of just alluded to it, is that we don't want to demonize the stories. We don't want to make the stories bad and try and resist them. We want to recognize why they're there. Of course they're there. The brain doesn't just hold on to stories and create them because it likes to make our lives miserable and make it difficult for us. There's something there that we want to pay attention to, and we won't get to it if we see the story coming up and we're like, Oh my God, I'm getting anxious. This is bad. I shouldn't be feeling anxious of what it was that's going on here. And then we start resisting the story, and then the story becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until it feels like it's fact again. And then we react to it. So step number one, recognize that the story is step number two, just allow it to be there. Allow it to have its space, because it's not going to it's not going to hurt you or threaten you if you just let it have a seat on the couch. That's what I tell my clients. Let us sit down on the couch, let it talk. It's all we can do.

Britt [00:10:50] Exactly. It's like denying it is actually just going to make it more powerful because you've been conditioned through lived experience over your entire life to trust that almost primeval part of your brain for good reason, and to pretend it doesn't exist or to try to deny it. It's just not going to work. There's no bypassing that you might be able to to to get around it for a few days or something. But inevitably something will happen and the story will come back larger than ever. And so instead, like making friends with it, even playing with it, rewriting with it, that feels really empowering to me as opposed to like bypassing or denying it or, you know, and I was thinking, as you were talking about the cost, like, what does this overthinking cost us when we identify with our stories, when we forget that they're just essentially made up things by our mind to protect us, but we think that we are the stories. What does that cost us?

Seth [00:11:55] Hmm. It costs us our life fulfillment when we believe in these stories that aren't our authentic story. The story that we were designed to create and live for ourselves. It costs us our fulfillment in life, because what we're doing at that point in time is we're surviving a version of ourselves and surviving a version of life that isn't true for us. And every minute that we spend in that version of life and ourselves, we are missing out on the fulfillment that we were designed for. And that's the greatest cost. It's not. We can talk about, you know, the the mental distress that it causes us and the cost of that. And of course, this is costly. But I think where we're really, truly missing out is that every second of every day is a moment that we can feel fulfilled in our life. And when we are not really looking at these stories and leaning in and saying, hey, is this is this really what I want to believe about life? Is this really what I want to believe is true for me? Then we're spending so much of the only resource that we cannot get back, which is time surviving a version of life in ourselves. That's not what we were designed for.

Britt [00:13:13] Yeah, I love that. It's like like you said, we can focus on the resulting addictions or neuroses or physical harm or what have you. But at the end of the day, whether it's business or arts or personal life or whatever, it's really the most expensive cost to me seems to always be opportunity cost. What else could we be doing with that time, money, energy, etc. Were we to have more liberation, freedom, grace, release or awareness? Maybe as the best word when it comes to describing our stories so that they're not running our lives where we're feeling more empowered to, like you said, to to do what we were really meant to do. And I was thinking that, you know, freedom from the culturally constituted straight life scripts and constraints is supposed to be one of the magical parts of being queer. And it's like when we carry the sack of rocks on her back of all these accumulated stories that we have not sorted into their proper places, we identify them. We think that we are the stories. We self flagellate, we carry them on our backs, they weigh us down. Then it's like it seems almost more like we're more susceptible to social pressure. And as queer people, that's such a terrible irony because so much of our magic is in our liberation. And then to allow these anxieties, these stories, these scripts to constrain or confine us seems cruel and really unfortunate getting back to that opportunity cost. So I guess, Seth, my question to you is, how can we find that? How can we maybe embody that freedom break through, break free to become more of our authentic selves who were truly meant to be?

Seth [00:15:15] Hmm. Okay, so the first thing that we the first thing we can do for ourselves is, like I said, first of all, recognize that most of what we're living in is a story. And once once we have that awareness, it's about taking that time for curious and open self-discovery. And I think this is this is a big struggle point for the queer community because we were so conditioned at such a young age to have these thoughts, these feelings about ourselves that, you know, discovering ourselves as something dangerous, that it's something to be ashamed of, that it's something to feel guilty of, that we almost approach our self-discovery with this sense of judgment. We don't we don't approach it with curiosity. We approach it with wanting to resist what we think is a fact about us. And when we do this, we don't ever actually get to know the real us. We never we never get the opportunity because the real us hides, because it's like, Whoa, you're coming at me with that. I'm sorry. I'm going to hide back here and wait until you're ready to actually see me. And we never we never fully get introduced to ourselves. I spent decades doing this. I mean, I came out when I was 17 to my family. I mean, 20. What was that? 17. So that's a little over 20 years ago, 22 years ago that I came out to my family and I spent well over a decade still learning how to discover myself. I mean, I thought once I came out, it's like, okay, well, that's it. I know myself now. I introduced myself to the world, but I still spent so much time approaching my image of myself with resentment, with fear, with, you know, this, the shame. And so when I would try to spend time getting to know myself, it was really me judging myself and trying to be like, Nope, that's got to be better. That's got to be better. Instead of approaching it with this almost childlike curiosity and realizing I don't know shit about myself at all, I really don't. And it took me years to figure that out, that there was so much more to me that I didn't know because I was being too judgmental to see it.

Britt [00:17:26] Yeah, it's like the first step is to. Stand to know that we do not know to create that void so information can come in. And as queer people, we have this delayed adolescence through straight supremacy in the closet experience. And I love what you said because so many people think of coming out, quote unquote, as a singular experience or even a queer experience when the truth is everybody comes out all the time throughout the course of their lives. We're constantly closet ing ourselves, constantly revealing ourselves as we make pragmatic decisions about what we can afford in a given moment, whether it's disclosing something about our personal life at work, that doesn't necessarily mean you're gay or straight or anything. I mean, we all go that that's a that's a unifying experience. And I love the way that you talked about. It's like, okay, now I'm queer. So now what? And I guess my question to you is, especially in the absence of so many would be mentors, whether dying through the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. or other effects of homophobia, how can we as young queer lings know not everybody comes out when they're young, but let's, for the sake of this question, say that I'm a young girl and just coming out, how can I learn to be gay or queer or whatever my identity? Like, how can I learn to, you know, like you said, I have this clean slate. I finally discovered who I am, and then all of a sudden everything is weaponized against me and I retreat. So it's like, how can I start to overcome that?

Seth [00:19:11] Yeah, I talk about this quite often with people in the gay community. It's people in the LGBTQ plus community. We we don't just come out of one closet. It's like we come out of one closet and we go into another and really. I was coming out and discovering who we are and needs to be approached with that that curious approach that I talked about. It's I think a lot of times what ends up happening for for young people when they're coming out as being queer, is that because they were programed to look to their, you know, straight heterosexual cis community to tell them kind of who they are once they come out, they're kind of like, oh, well, I don't I don't have that backbone anymore. I don't have that support to tell me kind of like guide me into figuring out who I am. So we turn around and we look to the queer community to tell us who we are instead of taking that freedom, that that liberation that we created for a space that we've created ourselves and that liberation to be like, okay, hold on. Before anyone else gives me any more input, I'm going to take some I'm going to take some time to get to know me and figure out how I want to show up as queer, because that's what I what I find to be so interesting is, you know, in my lifetime, in the beginning it was what the LGBT community and then the LGBT community, the LGBTQ community, LGBTQ, a LGBTQ oppressed. So it just keep evolving. And I think what this is here to show us is that queer doesn't have one flavor. It doesn't even have ten flavors. It has probably millions of flavors. And we we sort of we trap ourselves when we come out of the closet and we take on that identity is I'm bisexual, I'm asexual, I'm transsexual, I'm pansexual, I'm whatever whatever label you want to put on yourself. And then we look to that community to say, okay, so now how do we act instead of deciding for ourselves, Hey, this is what I know to put the label on me so that other people kind of understand, I guess, who I am. But I'm a lot bigger than that. So let me tell you who I am instead of you telling me who I am because I'm here to bring a whole new for the LGBTQ community, because you don't have me there yet. And we kind of think we're comfortable with that perspective, you know, like I'm bringing something new to the community that you guys don't have yet.

Britt [00:21:31] I am in love. I wish I would have done that for myself. I'm sitting here thinking like, Why didn't I do that? I mean, I was a young kid, but still, I'm just like, That sounds so cool, what you described. And like you said, transforming the community instead of having the community transform me. It's these labels are so thrilling at first. It's so fun and exciting. Like I finally figured it out. Some of these identities are not easy to arrive at, and they require so much introspection. There's so much working against you and society to to embrace some of these identities and they can feel hard won. And there's so much pride, especially at the beginning. And what I found over my life is, frankly, a series of diminishing returns when it comes with the labels. And maybe this is kind of what you were alluding to, and everybody's experience is going to be somewhat different. But because I came out when I was young, like like roughly the age that you said stuff, you know, at first it was thrilling and then it became less thrilling with each year. And now there's other parts of me that it's more thrilling to share that are more raw, that I'm, you know, it's like that I've more newly come to accept as opposed to just having an orientation. So my point is like, I love the way that you describe. It's like it's almost like the labels where us instead of we us wearing the labels when we just adopt them the whole scale without doing the introspective work. It's almost like we're commodities in our souls in a way. And Seth, my question is. How do we do what you just said? Because of like, you know of you know, of course, some people now are coming out as children and stuff, but assuming that we're adults and we have the requisite brain development and support and all that, it's like, how do we take that time? How do we protract that bubble to give us the space and grace to, like, fully individuate, fully become ourselves, and then allow that energy to flow into the community as you described.

Seth [00:23:38] The how is. The whole question is a bit difficult to answer because the truth is for every person it's going to be a little bit different. And this is what I've discovered as a life coach working with my clients is that, you know, I can come up with systems and procedures. And when I go to work with a client one on one, what I figure out is I've got to adapt that system. I've got to adapt those procedures to each individual because there isn't one way that this works for everybody. You know, some people, the way that they relate to their stories about life and themselves is completely different than how other people associate and relate to them. And so how we're going to kind of get in there and and create that that little bit of space in in which the person can recognize, ha, this is only a story. It's not the truth. It's not a fact. It's not this is it's this is what I'm thinking is true. That's our first step, is being able to create that space there. And I would say that it's really difficult for people to do on their own because we are in that story so much that. We our brain is to our brain. We are that story. And sometimes what is needed is finding that person that can hold the space for you to recreate that that that discovery space for you where they can even point out to you, Hey, wait, wait. I think we're slipping back into a story here. Is this really what you want to believe about you and hold you accountable to keeping that space open for yourself? Because the truth is, we try and close that space as fast as possible. It's uncomfortable. That's what we call cognitive dissonance. You know, where we're holding two separate ideas in our brain at the same time that seemingly conflict with each other until we can make them, you know, rectify with each other, make them make sense with each other. And the brain freaks out when we do this. And so its goal is like, we got to fill that space in as fast as possible. And what you need is that that patience, that curiosity and someone there to, you know, hold you accountable to keeping that space open. Like, hold on. That's not rush this here. Let's let's really let's give this some space. There's no there's no need to feel anxious. There's no need to rush this process. And we don't need to arrive somewhere right now where you're going to be traveling for the rest of your life. You're never going to arrive. Even when you're dead, you're not going to arrive. You're going to transition to something else. So it's this idea that we're that we're going to get to an arrival point where we're finally I know who I am and I'm okay and I'm comfortable with it. And it's and then we just, you know, it's like the Disney movies. We ride off into the sunset on the porch and everything is good that that doesn't happen. That does not happen. So really offering ourselves that opportunity to leave that space open, to allow that little bit of discomfort to constantly exist in the background of I know who I am, but I also have no fucking clue who I am, and you're going to be discovering it for the.

Britt [00:26:48] Rest of your life. Yeah, it's a paradox. It's such a paradox. And you know, at first when you were talking in talking about our unique journeys, I was you totally read my mind because I was like, Well, but our human design is such that we require community input. We require love as maybe another way of saying that. And for queer people, through necessity, many of us have trained ourselves to become little islands, little silos, and to withhold parts of ourselves, as you describe earlier, to feel consigned and ostracized from polite society. Some of us are cut off from our families. Some of us cut our families off from us for the sake of self-preservation. And even the most well-meaning, well-intentioned, straight parents don't. I mean, they lack the requisite lived experience to transmit queer cultural knowledge. And so there can be an overreliance on self. And so I so appreciate what you said about mentorship, whether it's therapeutic with a therapist or a coach, whether it's a faith community or reading a book or listening to a podcast. There are so many resource resources out there for all of us. If we have the courage to to utilize them and to invest in ourselves. And trying to do it alone is, I think, a recipe for disaster. And like you said, the goal is the journey, not there's not some magic pot of gold at the end. The goal actually is the journey getting in the game, actually claiming ownership over your life, reaching out for help, that actually if you've reached out for help, that actually is the goal because you're now on the journey. And and like you said earlier, the opportunity cost and just slapping on Band-Aids, you're not actually taking charge of your life. So I guess my question to you is, how do we learn to start investing in ourselves? There's there's a world of free information out there with the Internet, and I meet lovely, well-meaning, queer people every day. Who? Who are afraid to make the leap. Whether it's a story about money, a story about time, a story about belief systems, how how do you do you try and break through those resistances with your clients or prospective clients? Do you take a more kind of Zen approach with just allowing them to come to you with that? How do you how do you prime people to get into that journey?

Seth [00:30:02] I think everybody is really kind of primed to to get into that journey. Whether they see it or not might be a little bit different. I think all humans are a bit we're curious. We we have that desire in the background to want to solve for that that that voice that keeps telling us this isn't that this isn't this is not what we're meant for. And just in this in and of itself, we're all primed to to get into that journey. But like you said, fear gets in the way. A lot of our stories that we have get in that we allow them to become us and stop us from taking that action that's going to transition us into showing up as the more true version of ourselves. You asked me about how do we begin investing in ourselves? And one of the one of the things that I see a lot of people doing that's, I think, a huge hold back or setback for people when it comes to their investments in themselves is that people keep investing in information. They keep investing in wanting to know more how tos. And when we do this, what we're asking for is, hey, you tell me how you did it. You tell me your version of the story. You tell me your version of life, and then I'm just going to do that. Okay, So the truth is, how they did it is not going to work for you because you're a completely different. You had a completely different experience in life. And then we start to try and put these step by step guys into our own life and then they don't work and they're like, Oh, I'm broke. And see, it doesn't work for me. Of course it doesn't work for you. That's not your how to that's someone else's how to. And until we learn how we can fall forward into action and discover our own, how to listening to other people's how tos is actually going to hold us back. First, you need that willingness to step forward into action and say, Fuck it. I have no idea how I'm going to do this. But if I don't take a step forward, I'm never going to. I can read all the how to guides in the world, and I'm always going to have a reason why it doesn't work for me because it's not your how to. So if you want to invest in yourself, you want to invest in action. That's what you want to invest in. Because belief is action and action is belief. And I get that we want the mindset there too. We want to do the mindset work that is, of course, important. I mean, that's why I do life coaching. But at the same time we can mindset work ourselves until we're dead and still never change anything in our life, still never change the way that we're showing up and presenting ourselves to the world. And that's what we truly desire. We desire that change. Not this is another thing that I'm very passionate about, explaining about personal development. The change is not that we are changing ourselves. We are not changing ourselves in any way, shape or form because our selves are already perfect. We just haven't been able to express that because we've been told all of these stories about who we are, and so we express ourselves as if we are those stories. Personal development is about removing those stories and remembering who you are and then figuring out how do I express that in the world around me in the most authentic way? That's personal development. That's what we're developing, that's what we're working on. And in order to do that, we have to take action. We have to take action. We can't just think ourselves into a new version of life. We have to show up differently. We have to realize more of who we are so that we can show up differently so that we understand, okay, I'm showing up this way and I see why people are interpreting me this way. Because when I show up that way, of course it's going to be received that way. So how can I adjust this in a way that's more truthful to who I am and understand that still people are going to get it wrong? About 70, 80% of people are going to get it wrong. Let them get it wrong. Let them be wrong about you. But, you know, keep showing up in the authentic way. You know, how to express the truth of yourself that you are uncovering in that journey. It's all about the action. How are you going to show up different day?

Britt [00:34:14] I feel so attacked. Oh, I'm such an overthinker and controller and like anything to prop up my little illusions of control and I like to pretend I have over life, over my existence. And like I want to know every little nook and cranny or something before I even dip my toe in. And I suspect there's a lot of our listeners out there like that who who think who want to think they have it all figured out or at least want to pretend or a good percentage of it when it's like obviously, the more you know, you realize, the less you know. And you just I was like, oh my gosh, I, I, I sometimes think like, I want to be that person who who takes bold action. And there's something there's resistance in my body and in my nervous system. And I wonder if you could talk some about how we can learn to sit with discomfort and to learn to. I mean, sometimes it's important to self-soothe semantically, mentally, whatever, and other times it's important to, I don't know the word maybe acclimate or make friends. You know, there's a there's a old cliche about the trick to managing stage fright is not to get rid of the butterflies in your stomach. That's a cliche, but to teach them to fly in formation and to harness and channel that energy. And I wonder if you could talk some about that, maybe somatic in sitting with that in your body and retraining your body and maybe how some of the indirect procedures in life like fitness and nutrition, all that kind of stuff, can help prepare you to take this bold action that you described.

Seth [00:36:09] Yeah, I think in order to make sense of this, first of all, we need to have an understanding that we aren't we aren't just a human. We are a human being. And it's called a human being for a reason. We are a spiritual being, having a human experience. So we are energy inhabiting a body that is trying to figure out how to express its truth through the limitations of human language, through the limitations of physics, through the limitations of having a human body, all of that. And when we can understand that, what we can understand is that we have multiple layers to our experience. The body has its experience, the nervous system has its experience, while at the same time we have the spirit part of us that sees so much more that's trying to come through. And yes, there is a point in time where we have to well, we don't have to, but we might want to unless you want to die at an early age, which is also a choice here, if you want to make that, by all means make this choice. But for those of us who want to live until we're 80, 90 years old, you know, there's some care that we want to take with the body. We don't want distress. We want you stress. The difference here is that you stress is the kind of stress where it teaches the body to build itself stronger. And then we have distress where we put so much stress on the body, it can't build itself stronger anymore. It can't keep up. It starts breaking down and becoming weaker. So. You're very correct in the fact that we have to keep in mind that the body also has its physical needs. Emotions are energy in the body. That energy has to be moved. If it's not moved, if it gets stuck in the body, it starts to create dysfunction. And this is where things like exercise and yoga and meditation and breathwork and cold plunging and kickboxing, you know, martial arts and the getting getting rage and anger out of the body is so important because we can talk about what feeds the spirit all day long. But at the same time, we also have a body to take care of. Otherwise that spirit doesn't have a body to inhabit and to express itself to the world through. And that's where these activities such as, you know, making sure that we're getting enough sleep at night, making sure that we're eating in a way that, you know, the nervous system and the body are getting the fuel that they need to show up in the way that we want them to to express ourselves in the authentic way that we want to express ourselves, which is going to be different for everybody. The kinds of movements that we need to do to move the energies through our body that we experience in our emotions is going to be different for everybody. So it's really about also creating that awareness that when we are doing this kind of work, we have two things to consider. What does the Spirit need? What does the body need? And making sure that they're working together, not against each other.

Britt [00:39:07] Yeah, absolutely. And it's like the way you describe it, it sounds like it can be fun, actually. It can be play and it can be experimental. It doesn't have to be drudgery. Like, you know, I think when a lot of listeners are thinking about going to the gym, I'll just say it's like the gym is gross. I hate it. It's it's ugly, It's whatever. And it's like, well, maybe the gym is not for you. There's all sorts of ways to move your body and all sorts of things you can do in life. It's like, Oh my gosh, we get to have fun and play and not take it. Especially as queer people when life has been serious, that has that has been that seriousness was foisted on us purposely to keep us down. It's almost like, to a certain degree, our deepest work as queer people is play is learning how to rekindle that spark, that twinkle in our eyes, that sense of wonder. And I was also thinking like, I like to be really productive because I like to pretend that it improves my worth. It obviously is completely unrelated, but there we go. I'm American, What can I do? And so I've been thinking a lot over the last decade or so about efficiency and effectiveness and working directly versus working indirectly. And I've been experimenting in my life and noticing that sometimes direct work is called for. You know, it's not like you can bypass your homework, but sometimes I've found it's actually more efficient, effective to rest, to stop and to work indirectly. So like you said, focusing on, you know, if I've got I work in digital marketing in my corporate career. So if I've got a website to build, for instance, I mean, the website's not just going to magically get built unless I work directly, but I know that if I show up in the seat in a different way, in a certain way, my productivity is through the roof. Or if I'm preparing for a podcast interview, there's preparation that I do to put the best episode out there I can to our listeners on the featured guest, etc. But if I engage in that manically to the exclusion of all else, I'm likely to burn out, unlikely to get stressed and anxious because, as you alluded to, I haven't moved the energy. Whereas instead, if I focus on how I'm being, as you described, human being, who I am, the unique flavors at my fingertips, my special magic, then often that creates space for something truly alive and unexpected and surprising to happen, which inevitably delights me, the listeners, the guest, etc.. And so I'm wondering how you think about those kind of direct procedures versus indirect procedures. How do you calibrate that? How do you learn how to to calibrate that effort in your life? And so you can show up authentically and be who you were really meant to be.

Seth [00:42:15] So it's kind of like what we were just talking about. We've got to listen to the energy that's going on in our body. We've got to figure out how to move it, what it's there for, And being able to calibrate this also goes back to understanding. Where our emotions come from, I think is also truly important because in order for us to understand. Am I. Am I pushing? Am I pushing really hard? Because I'm trying to increase my value, increase my worth in the world or my own perceived worth of myself. We need to understand what emotions my experiencing right now and where are they coming from. And this is this is, I think, a big step for people to make in being able to navigate this is understanding that emotions don't come from our circumstances. Emotions come from our thoughts. They come from our stories. So for, for instance, if something is happening in life around me and I start experiencing panic, then I need to recognize I'm not experiencing panic because this is happening. I'm experiencing panic because I am perceiving this happening. And I have a thought and a story about it that tells me panic, that says panic is an emotion you need to experience right now because this might happen and this might happen and this might happen. And when we can really navigate that space and understand the difference between emotion, things happening to us because of circumstances versus emotions happening, because of the thoughts that I'm having about life, we can also begin to navigate those feelings that we have surrounding our work as well and recognizing, am I pushing? Because this is something that's truly important for me and I want to do it and I'm excited about it. And this is something that I truly desire to feel fulfilled by, or is it something that I'm doing because I'm anxious that I'm not proving my worth fast enough to the world? They don't they don't see me as being valuable yet, so I need to hurry up and prove it so I can feel valuable to myself. When we can understand where those emotions are coming from, we can start to hear the narrative that's driving it and we can say, okay, right now I'm pushing because I'm trying to prove my worth. Let the foot off the gas a little bit. Let me take a step back. Let me figure out why am I doing this for me? Why is this important for me? What does this create in the world around me that is truly valuable for me, regardless of anyone else's opinion of me? And if that's what I'm creating, do I need some time to rest now? Or is this something that I'm I'm wanting to develop and strengthen and push myself a little bit on, stress myself a little bit on so that I grow stronger?

Britt [00:45:10] Wow, that's so fantastic. It's almost like you're describing the difference between ego and divine guidance. And I was hoping maybe you could we could flip this on its head and you could tell us some about, like, how do we distinguish between our urges and our true desires.

Seth [00:45:26] I don't think there's a simple way to explain this, but one one kind of obvious way that we can navigate this space is paying attention to the emotions around it, paying attention to the story around it. And a lot of times, if you if you really listen in, urges are driven by fear. If you pay attention to urges, usually they are telling you to avoid something. Do you see what I'm saying? Like when I have the urge to go to my kitchen and eat. It's different than when I'm actually hungry. I'm hungry because I want to nourish my body. You know, I have the urge to eat because I'm trying to avoid an uncomfortable feeling. So that's one really quick way to now. Now it gets a whole lot more intricate and complicated here, but that's one really quick way that you can notice the difference between an urge and a true desire. Is is it fear based? Am I trying to avoid experiencing an emotional experience in life because I'm afraid I can't handle it. I'm afraid of how uncomfortable it will be, and I might not I might not enjoy it. So I'm trying to avoid that experience because I'm telling myself it's too difficult for me to handle. And so what I'm doing right now is me trying to avoid that experience. That's what urges are really all about and how we can tell the difference between a true desire, a passion, a desire to want to do something versus a desire to get away from something else. And that urge is about me trying to avoid that.

Britt [00:47:10] Because that is a great. I think you did.

Seth [00:47:13] A great job navigating for a lot of people.

Britt [00:47:16] Yeah, I think you did a great job breaking that down. That was fantastic. I hope everybody was taking notes. I'm going to go rewatch that. You know, we we kind of talked about information gaps earlier. And I want to talk about your book. It's got a fantastic title. What I really want is but I'm just too full of. Tell our audience what it's about.

Seth [00:47:46] Yeah. So the title confuses people a lot of times. Like, what is this book about? So the book the book is autobiographical as well as kind of a personal development self-help book. And one of the reasons why I got into this space is because I wanted to use my experience of life to help people navigate their experience of life with more liberation, freedom and curiosity versus judgment and shame and guilt. So the book is like the title, as you said, what I really want is dot, dot, dot, but I'm just too full of dot, dot, dot. And it's all about my story in life of trying to figure out what do I truly want in life, what do I want in life? And my experience with this has been that I realized after so long that I was chasing after cheap substitutes and chasing after imitations, chasing after distractions from the things that I truly wanted because I feared what it would take to create the things that I truly wanted in life. Hence the title of the book. So it took me a long time to be able to, first of all, create that space where I could see what it is that I truly wanted. But then the second problem came in. So now I see what I truly want, but I'm just too full of all of this bullshit over here to make any space for it so that we've got to make that space for it to come in and fill up. And that's scary for a lot of people. It's kind of like when we decide to start showing up in our lives in a different way. A lot of people that we associated with the new us as a version of ourselves that we were showing up as, aren't going to like the new version of us anyway. I like doing that as well. Yeah. Yeah. And so many people get terrified when they start trying to show up as the real them, and then people start backing out of their life slowly and they're like, Oh, I must be doing it wrong. People are leaving. I'm like, No, no, no, no, no. Let the space, let the space come. Because as that space clears out, guess what also happens? The void of who you are has more space to amplify itself and the people that are there to see the real you and like you and show up for you can actually see you, hear you and show up for you. They're going to come and refill that space. But you've got to make the space first. You've got to allow for that, that feeling of emptiness. That's not real emptiness. It's not emptiness. It's all there. It's just you've got to create that what appears to be space on the human experience level, so that that realness, that that truth of you can start to show up in the world and produce the same evidence of that that real version of you that the false you has been producing evidence of all around you this whole entire time in your life. But we have to make that space work.

Britt [00:50:41] That is so fantastic and it takes so much courage to do that because we don't like to go without. Space is scary. Voids and gaps are scary. It's like, I want everything all at once. Like the movie was called and you also have a podcast called The Authentic Life Connection Podcast. Tell us about.

Seth [00:50:58] That. So yeah, on the podcast and now on episode 143 this week, I think you see the. One 4201 43 I put out one episode a week and it's just all on different topics about how we show up authentically, spiritually, how we show up authentically for our physical health, our mental health and our relationships with other people in our relationship with ourselves. And I discuss all sorts of topics on this podcast relating to what it truly means to live authentically, because I think we have a very simplified version in our heads of what authenticity is, and it's not it. A lot of people believe that authenticity is just I set the intention to be the real me and then it's just going to show up and I'm just going to tell people off and tell them who I am. And this is not authenticity. It's not authenticity, my friends, because a lot of that is the reactive behavior that you're reacting to, stories that you have believed about life, that you think that you have to fight against that's not authentically you, the authentic. You doesn't need to fight against anything. So there's this whole energy of like, I'm going to tell the world that's not authentic. When we show up as our true selves and we say, Hey, I'm going to tell the world who I am, it's a completely different energy. It's like, Here, here's the truth of me. You can love that and you can accept it. You can choose not to, and it's totally fine if you don't. Totally fine if you don't, because I know there are people out there that will and I love me. It's a completely different energy. So that's what the podcast is all about.

Britt [00:52:31] Yeah, it's beautiful. It's so funny. The picture that you paint, I just resonate is so well, like of my early attempts of like, you know, I'm being authentic. What you know, I can't tell you what I want. What? I'm just being authentic. Yeah, just being honest. Let me be. Seth. What gives you hope?

Seth [00:52:56] Oh, I'm glad you asked me this question. Hope is one of my biggest values in life. So what gives me hope is that I constantly see on an everyday real life basis people. Transforming their lives, transforming the way that they choose to show up in their life. And seeing this on an individual level. Already gives me hope that it's it's only a matter of time until it's happening on a scale of societal level. And that, for me is exciting. Being a part of that is exciting. Being someone who is a catalyst to holding that space for people to make those discoveries and realize that there's so much more to them that wants to show up in this life and then feel fulfilled by and watching them do it is. That's what brings me the most hope. That's what brings me the most hope.

Britt [00:53:54] And it's so beautiful. Where do you seek refuge? And don't say Switzerland, because not all of us can go there.

Seth [00:54:03] So where I seek refuge is the physical place. Where where I seek refuge is. It's a space of expansion and knowing and connection that I feel. It's when I start to have my human experience of feeling disconnected, when I start to have that human experience of feeling misunderstood. Being able to go to this place of reminding myself of who I actually am that's bigger than that, that human that that that kind of illusion of disconnection and an acceptance and being able to go to that space where I am reminded that everybody around me is also existing in a story that causes them to misunderstand themselves and therefore me, and that they want to wake up going to that space and reminding myself of my own worth and my connection to these these people and what I'm here for. That's my refuge.

Britt [00:55:11] I'm so beautiful. We have so many links in the show notes for all of our listeners. Whether you want to read sets, book, you want to listen to us podcast, you want to check out his website and maybe partake of some of his coaching services. We're going to load you up soon after. Scribble anything down on the fly. Just go to the podcast, show notes and you'll find it all there. Seth, it has been such a pleasure chatting with you today, so such an honor. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Seth [00:55:42] Thank you so much for having me. This is it's a fun experience. You know, I have guests on my podcast all the time and I'm always talking on my podcast. And I think it's only been like, this is the third time I've ever appeared on someone else's podcast. So I'm like, This is exciting. I like this is fun. I don't have to be the one coming up with.

Britt [00:55:59] It, but oh my God, you're such a natural. That's crazy. Well, dear listeners, you have done it. You have made it through yet another hour of No, not going quietly. Thank you so much. We're so proud of you. We could not do this show without you. We get all of your notes and all of your affirmations and are so grateful for all the good energy that you send our way. And thank you from the bottom of our hearts. So until next time. My name is Britt East, co-host of Not Going Quietly. Thanks and Goodbye.

Jonathan [00:56:30] You've been listening to. Not Going Quietly with co-hosts Jonathan Beale and Britt East.

Britt [00:56:35] Thanks so much for joining us on this wild ride as we explore ways to help everyone leap into life with a greater sense of clarity, passion, purpose and joy.

Jonathan [00:56:43] Check out our show notes for links, additional information, and episodes located on your favorite podcast platform.