336 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ Can You Be Addicted To Healing And Personal Development?

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More About Joanna Hennon

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What You’ll Learn

• Why healing and spiritual stuff can sometimes be an escape from physical reality
• Is learning/growth really the goal of life, or can we have other reasons for being here?
• Why personal development culture feeds into the idea that there’s something wrong with you
• Why personal growth satisfies our need for control
• Why healing can be a distraction from action
• How to know when it’s too much – when your personal growth is actually a problem
• Is there truly always something more to heal?
• What to do when you’ve been peeling your onion layers, but the onion feels infinite
• What if you don’t feel like you’ve been addicted to healing
• What about people who have good lives and don’t do any personal development at all?
• When personal development can be used as a crutch
• Why is it a problem to be addicted to healing? Isn’t healing good?
• How to find the happy medium between addiction to personal development and doing nothing at all

Things We Discussed

• Kambo
• 332 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ How to Step Into a New Identity Even When You’re Not Sure What It Looks Like

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Related episodes

• 334 Holly Worton ~ How To Let Go Of Toxic People In Your Life & Mind
• 331 Holly Worton ~ Facing Your Fears & Overcoming Them
• 322 Holly Worton ~ How Much is Too Much Healing? Is There a Limit?
• 288 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ How to Know Which Investments to Make in Your Personal & Professional Development
• 283: Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ Remember, It’s Not Just About Energy: Balancing the Inner and Outer Work
• 250: Jo + Holly ~ Who heals the healers? Who coaches the coaches?
• 244: Joanna Hennon + Holly: Can You Expect Miracles From Doing Transformation Work?

Transcript

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Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 336. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another episode with the fabulous Joanna Hennon. Today we ask the question: can you be addicted to healing and growth, and personal development? And I think the answer to this is probably obvious, but I think the conversation is really useful, it is something that I hadn’t really thought about it until as of yesterday, as of when I am recording this, I had another Kambo ceremony and the woman who was running the ceremony said something to me that really made me start kind of reflecting on this and ask myself: have I been addicted to personal development and healing and growth? And, I think I have at certain points in my life and I have certainly changed a lot of the ways that I work with myself since a retreat that I went on back in August. I have been working with myself a lot less in terms of working PSYCH-K® and changing beliefs, I just haven’t felt the need to do that.

So it has been a really different experience for me, I was really compelled to do a lot of work and now I am pretty okay, I have been doing less frequent and more intensive things, that doesn’t mean that I am not still addicted to it, there are still things that I want to share. But things have really changed for me in the way that I have approached my personal growth and my healing. So I think that you will find this episode really interesting and useful, I know I get a lot of really good feedback from my episodes with Joanna.

Before we get into today’s episode, I just want to let you know what you are going to learn today. We talk about why healing and spiritual stuff can sometimes be an escape from physical reality. We ask the question: is learning and growth really the goal of life or can we have other reasons for being here? We discuss why personal development culture feeds into the idea that there is something wrong with you and that is something that can be hard to get our heads around, because a lot of times we want to change and we want to grow — and there is a real fine line with being good with where we are and wanting something better and feeling like we are broken and we need to be fixed. We discuss why personal growth satisfies our need for control sometimes and we also talk about why healing can be a distraction from real, practical, action. We discuss how to know when it is too much, when your personal growth is actually a problem. And we ask the question: is there truly something always more to heal? What do you do when you have been peeling the layers of your own personal onion, but your onion feels infinite. What if you don’t feel like you have been addicted to healing, how do you figure out whether maybe you are, and you just haven’t seen it. We ask the question, what about the people who live good lives and don’t do any personal development at all, how does that happen? We explore when personal development can sometimes be used as a crutch and we ask the question: why is it a problem to be addicted to healing, isn’t healing good? Finally, we explore how to find a happy medium between addiction to personal development and simply doing nothing at all. I hope you find this episode interesting and useful, I am really, really, happy with it, I thought we had a useful conversation for us and hopefully you will feel the same. So without further ado — and I hate it when I say that! {laughing} – here is the episode.

Holly: Hi Joanna!

Joanna: Hi Holly!

Holly: How are you doing today?

Joanna: I am good, how are you?

Holly: Good, looking forward to our topic.

Joanna: As always.

Holly: So today we are asking the question: can you be addicted to healing and personal development? And this is something that I proposed because yesterday I had a Kambo ceremony and was working on a topic that I feel like I have been trying to heal for many years and it still hasn’t shifted and this is kind of the last big topic that I feel like I need to work and I want to shift. So I was talking to the woman who did my Kambo ceremony and I have another couple of ceremonies coming up at the end of the year and healing stuff and she said: set the intention that this retreat that you have coming up at the end of the year is the end of it. Set the intention that this is the thing that is going to shift and that you are done with your healing. That sounded really nice but then it got me thinking: can you really be done with your healing? I remember this conversation we had on one of the weekends on my plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship when we were talking about how there is so much stuff to heal and it would be great to heal all of our soul-stuff in this lifetime so that we don’t have to come back and we just transcend or whatever the hell happens. And I didn’t even know that was an option! I have got these two conflicting ideas: heal all your stuff so that you move on to whatever the next thing is or draw a line in the sand and say: this is it. So, thoughts!?

Joanna: {laughing} I don’t have an answer.

Holly: {laughing} How can you not have an answer to that?

Joanna: I don’t know, I don’t have an answer. I want to say that there is truth in both but that is clearly impossible because they are exact opposites. I guess that the actual answer is that we can’t know.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: You didn’t tell me that that person said: wouldn’t it be great to heal all our stuff in this one lifetime and then not have to come back, I think that is taking the over-achiever thing a bit too far! {laughing} …to be perfectly honest.

Holly: It is, but this was her intention and she believed that that was possible and that was kind of her goal to finish up her soul’s work in this incarnation and then move on to…

Joanna: Okay, so this makes me think about one of the points that we wanted to talk about today which is that it is really easy to just keep playing at the spiritual level, at the soul level, almost like as a distraction from being fully present in physical reality. This is certainly something that I have experienced and have been called out on because, for me, being physical reality is really hard and it is much easier for me to be channeling and hanging out at the soul level and working with people at the soul level than having to address real life stuff. And I think a lot of people who are “awakened”, a lot of people who have that connection, that spiritual connection, I think it is easier, it is easier for them to do the spiritual stuff because that is our natural state. The physical space is not our natural habitat, so we are just more comfortable at those levels because we remember that is our home and that is where we came from and all that thing. But we have to remember, I think, that we were born into the physical to experience the physical and to be here in the physical. I am not sure if it is possible to heal all the soul stuff in one lifetime.

Holly: That is of course assuming that we have had previous lifetimes?

Joanna: Sure, sure. I wouldn’t even, from my understanding, I can’t imagine that that would be a goal or intention, or soul-level intention, of any soul coming into the physical to heal everything, that feels really weird to me, I have to say.

Holly: I mean it was a concept that I had never considered but it came from someone that I really respect, and I thought: hmm, I didn’t realise that that was an option.

Joanna: It comes from this assumption that the soul needs healing and that is why we come into the physical and then we can heal stuff here and that is not necessarily true. I have this story that I tell, I always assume, because I am an over-achiever, that life is about learning, that it is like one big classroom and we learn our lessons and if we don’t learn them we have to come back and have to learn the same lesson — it is all lessons. I remember, somewhere at the start of my journey with this, at the start of my exploration with this, and I can’t remember what it was, there was something around my mother that I was really judging and I remember thinking: why can’t she be open to this lesson, she is clearly not learning this lesson, she is just going to have to come back and do it again. I remember my mentor who has the clearest connection to the spirit world that I have ever seen to this day and she said to me, but not everybody comes here to learn, some souls incarnate simply to experience. So it is possible that your mother just came to experience this kind of life. A soul can be born into this lifetime to experience just what it is like to be a housewife and I have heard the same thing about more difficult choices like alcoholic. So there is no expectation from the soul to overcome that challenge or to make that choice and then grow into another choice, the only point is to see what it is like. So even if the personality isn’t quite happy it doesn’t matter because it is that unhappiness that the soul wanted to experience or that lack of satisfaction that the soul wanted to experience. It wanted to know what it would feel like to live as this kind of person, or as this kind of person, or this kind of person. And that really changes the conversation, doesn’t it?

Holly: Yes it does and so many people have popped into my head as you are saying that. So that means if you are not into personal development there is nothing wrong with you it probably just means that you came to experience whatever you are experiencing in your lifetime and it certainly doesn’t mean that people who are into personal development are in any way superior to people who are not into personal development. And I think some people can get on their spiritual growth high horse and think that they are better than other people.

Joanna: That was definitely me judging my mother at the time: I am doing this personal growth; how can you not want to grow? I remember think that there was something wrong with not wanting to grow, clearly wanting to know more and grow more is a good thing. Then I came to understand that that is not necessarily the case and as I grow older I gain more understanding of the beauty of just experience and to not always be looking for challenges and growth but just to be.

Holly: Yes and to experience things.

Joanna: And to allow yourself to experience things. If you are constantly looking for the lesson, the growth opportunity, you are not in the moment experiencing the thing, your energy has moved ahead to where this thing will lead you. It is an interesting thing.

Holly: It is, it is.

Joanna: I am not against growth obviously I actually think I am very drawn to growth, so I don’t know if that is something that I came to experience, this constant learning over, I don’t know what that is.

Holly: I think that absolutely makes sense. I think that people who have come to earth and are really into personal growth, I think that is what their soul chose to experience in this lifetime rather than just…

Joanna: Although those people may have come to experience for example, low self-esteem. Or may have come to overcome low self-esteem and may have got caught in the trap of personal development marketing, which is: there is something wrong with you lets fix it and then you will be better.

Holly: So let’s talk about that. I feel like this is a very delicate thing. It is so hard because I don’t see it that there is stuff wrong with me, and I need to fix it; it is more like I am experiencing things that I don’t want to be experiencing and therefore I want to heal those things — but there is a really fine line between those two perspectives.

Joanna: Yes because you are not accepting those things that you don’t want to experience and I think you have a really good example and I hope it is okay to share it, because I haven’t asked you if I can share it?

Holly: I don’t know, let’s see. {laughing} If not we will just edit this chunk out of the podcast – delete.

Joanna: You got this message a while ago that you were meant to experience slower success.

Holly: Did I!?

Joanna: Yes, you came to experience the step-by-step…

Holly: Yes, yes, yes. I came to start from the bottom and work my way up! Oh my god, my memory is so terrible I totally forgot that! {laughing}

Joanna: I don’t think we are editing this out because it is a really good example.

Holly: Yes it is.

Joanna: So in your case it is the right thing for you to do to keep learning and keep growing because that is the path you chose. So you haven’t necessarily gotten caught in the trap but somebody who came for a different reason may have gotten caught in the trap and we see that, we see people getting really, really, addicted to personal development stuff. They go from self-help book to self-help book. No real change but they feel crappier and crappier about themselves because with each self-help book you identify more stuff that is wrong with you and that can’t seem to shift because you don’t know how, right?

Holly: That’s the perfect example, the example you gave about me that I couldn’t even remember. So let me just explain this for people that haven’t heard this. It was a session with Lisa, one of the guides that she works with came in and said and said that I have been very successful in previous lifetimes and so my soul wanted to come in and experience what it is like to start from the bottom and work my way up — slowly.

Joanna: As an aside I remember when Holly got this message and she called me and we were like, for f***’s sake! {laughing}

Holly: Why did I choose that! {laughing} Maybe I need to make a sign on my wall every time I am frustrated: you came here to experience slow success.

Joanna: We were like: oh man, that really sucks!

Holly: Thank you soul! {laughing}

Joanna: Yes.

Holly: So yes, it makes sense that I have been really into the personal development thing to support my slow success. {laughing}

Joanna: Yes but I think it is really easy to get addicted. We mentioned this a little bit before we started recording, I think we have both been addicted, because it is really easy to do that. It is easy to focus only on the personal development stuff, on the journalling, on the beliefs the tapping, all that stuff. Partly because we feel like we are in control, of a result, so we want a certain experience, we want a certain result, and by doing this stuff, we think that we are working our way towards it, so it feels good, it feels like we are doing something towards what we want. We are proactive, right? And we are taking charge of our lives, and all that stuff and also doing all that stuff is actually much easier than taking some of the action that is required to get to experience the stuff that you want to experience. The example I give with this is my own struggle with visibility and putting myself out there to a much wider audience. Much, much, easier for me to sit on my coach with my beautiful Paperchase notebook and journal about this.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: Than it is to identify and pitch to podcasts.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: So what am I going to choose? I can convince myself that I have to do the mindset stuff first, and I am not saying that I don’t, by the way, that this is anti-mindset, an anti-development thing, but I think we have to be really careful and unless you are super-conscious and super-aware and super-honest with yourself you can get caught in these mini-traps that you can just kind of trick yourself into thinking that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing when in fact you are not doing much of anything at all.

Holly: Yes, that’s the thing we see the healing work, the journaling, the mindset work as the action in itself rather than acknowledging that that is one of the actions but then you also have to take practical action. That is why I always talk about going up, what I call the spiral staircase, which taking one step, the left step is your mindset work and the right step is your practical action. Mindset, practical action, mindset, practical action, because you have to do both otherwise you are not going to achieve anything.

Joanna: Yes, and I think, but, the personal development industry is so big now that it is in their best interests and in the best interests of all coaches and mindset specialists and anybody in our industry really, it is in their best interest to convince people or to show people that the more of this mindset stuff that you do the better because then you are going to buy more courses and you are going to do more things. Just to be aware for yourself, obviously it is important to do the mindset, we have proven that over and over again. You have to address that piece, you have to address your energy otherwise, everything is hard, and it just won’t go in the end. You also have to be really honest with yourself about when enough is enough.

Holly: Yes. So how do you know when enough is enough? First of all, how do you know when it is too much? How do you know when you are doing too much personal development? Too much personal growth? Too much healing? How do you know when it is too much? How do you know when you have a problem?

Joanna: How do you know when you have a problem? {laughing} You have to be really honest with yourself, I think. Because I think you know when you have a problem when you notice that you are not doing any of the things, or even trying to do any of the things that your mindset work or energy work was supposed to help you do. So, I spent a load of time on visibility mindset and I noticed eventually that I was doing all this “work”, but I still hadn’t pitched to a single podcast.

Holly: So you were doing the inner work but not the practical work.

Joanna: So that meant that I couldn’t even prove to myself that the inner work, worked. I was perpetually staying in this, ‘I don’t feel ready’, state. These are, the differences we are talking about today, I think, are really, really, fine lines. On the one hand, yes, I do believe that you need to align first and then act, which means that you have to do that energy work so that your system is ready to take the action that you want to take and step into the identity that you want to become. On the other hand, it is really easy to just…you are never going to feel super-ready, there is always an element of jumping into something, jumping into the unknown and trying something that is a little bit scary, and it is only the action that will show you that something has changed, but you can convince yourself forever that you are not ready to take the action. The line between those things is so fine.

Holly: I think that is why you really need to pair: inner work, practical action, little-by-little, step-by-step, so that you don’t get into that kind of trap of thinking: oh, I am not ready, I need to be more aligned, I am not aligned yet and I won’t take action until I am 100% aligned.

Joanna: Yes, and I think you have to be a little bit comfortable with taking action that feels a little bit scary and jumping into the unknown, you can’t be in control of everything. I remember when we were deciding when to when to have a child and I remember people with children telling us, it is is never a good time.

Holly: Yes, I have heard that so many times. Everyone says that.

Joanna: It is never a good time, if you are going to be looking at it logically you are just never going to do it because it is never a good time. You have this plan, you have that plan, you are hoping to go on this one trip. Whatever, being pregnant in the winter, being pregnant in the summer, it is never a good time you know.

Holly: If it is something that you want to do, do it, or something that you can afford to.

Joanna: It is something that you have to be really honest with yourself, you can see in your third month, of still wanting to do a certain thing but you have not been doing it, look at what you have been doing and whether it is time to try some action.

Holly: It is the action that takes us out of our comfort zone and stretches our comfort zone. The mindset work helps us get into the place where we can take that action but it is really where we can take the action itself that makes us grow that muscle of doing something different.

Joanna: Yes, that takes us back to the point of whether learning and growth is the name of the game and maybe it is not for you. I really hate all the comfort zone stuff that is out there, I cannot stand it, I am a big fan of the comfort zone, a big fan! I like it in the comfort zone, why the hell should I not have a comfortable life, I don’t want to live my life in perpetual discomfort.

Holly: Oh no, no.

Joanna: But that is what we are encouraged to do, to constantly push the limits. Move beyond the comfort zone and whatever, you know, and I am not a huge fan of that either.  I think that you have to look at the assumptions, again, in the personal development culture we have this underlying belief that there is always something to heal.

Holly: Yes, there is always something more.

Joanna: Is that true? I say it all the time, it is layers, and you have got to keep uncovering and it is never-ending and I always say the only thing that ends it is death and you don’t want that.

Holly: I have come from that as well and yesterday the women that I was doing the Kambo ceremony said to me: it is like the layers of the onion, you peel off the layers, you do what you can and I said to her: but my onion feels infinite. I feel like I have been peeling off layers for ten years and I have still got sixty years left of onion layers. {laughing}

Joanna: {laughing} That is like a really giant onion!

Holly: My onion is huge, this is the mother of all onions!

Joanna: This is what it feels like to everybody, I hear that all the time. Again, again, I have to heal something or address something, when does this end?

Holly: I think that is the thing, we are the ones who choose. You can either choose to peel your infinite layers of onion or you can choose at one point in your life to say: I am drawing a line in the sand, I am good now. I am going to accept this is the way life is and this is the way I am and this is it.

Joanna: Or you can do both. We touched upon this in our last joint episode on this idea of acceptance and change and so you can both accept yourself as fine and good and you will be happy in your current life and your everyday life and you can still desire some kind of change and be exploring growth and seeing where that leads you. I think where that gets addictive and dangerous is where we are coming from this place of hating our present moment, or being like, not wanting to be here. So wanting to be someone else or somewhere else so doing all this personal development stuff hoping that will get us somewhere else and I think that is where it can get addictive, because if you are coming from a belief that you are not good enough, that your life is not good enough, that you constantly want more, you are never going to be satisfied. To be going from goal, to goal, to goal and it is never-ending, then those layers never are ending. I am not sure that it is actually a problem that it is never-ending, I think it is a problem with how you feel, it could be an excitement thing, that there is so much growth to be experienced and I still have sixty years of onion peeling.

Holly: Like, I look forward to seeing what layers are underneath my onion.

Joanna: This is wonderful, because the key is to love the peeling of onion just for the process of the peeling of the onion and not attach it to a certain result or outcome. So we get addicted when we want something, we want more money. So we are constantly miserable and dissatisfied and judgy and whatever else about our money situation and we are constantly buying personal development courses, books, etc. to get a different money reality. It keep us in this perpetual state of dissatisfaction and unfulfilment and just feeling crappy about our life.

Holly: This is reminding me about years ago when I trained as a coach, we were constantly being reminded that when you are working with someone, when you are working with a client, the correct, the correct state of mind is to be open and curious about what the client says and bring to the table. In that same way you can be open and curious about what layers of onion you have rather than judging your onion layers.

Joanna: Yes, like judging your onion layers and relating it to: this is why my life sucks and if I only peel this one layer then I will have the holy grail of a million dollars in my bank account, because then you are linking your whole personal development journey to an external factor and you are hoping that external factor will make you feel good about yourself, but it is not going to, we all know that.

Holly: Well…

Joanna: It is not going to make you feel good about yourself.

Holly: We don’t all know that because some of us keep hoping that {Laughing}

Joanna: We know at a deep level, we hear this, happiness comes from within and we all know that is true.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: Whether we want to accept it or not, that is a different story, but you can hear the truth in that.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: We have all experienced achieving goals or getting to a certain point in life and still not being happy, so we know that’s true.

Holly: A part of us does.

Joanna: A part of us does, yes.

Holly: So if you are listening to this and you are thinking: you know I really don’t think I am addicted to healing, so what are some signs that people might have been? As you said earlier, you think both us have been addicted to healing and personal development. One of the things that popped up into my head was that a friend of a friend of ours was really kind of addicted to the pendulum and wouldn’t make decisions without consulting the pendulum and you had mentioned someone who had something similar with tarot cards.

Joanna: Yes, I got really excited that someone in my “real” life community had used tarot cards and when I approached her about it, she said: I used to, but then I got really addicted and I was not capable of making any decision at all, even the simplest decision without consulting the cards. And I myself would consult the ouija board all the time when I was in my teens and early twenties, I got really addicted to that. So that is a clear sign, if you are asking your pendulum if you should wear the blue or the green top, there is a problem.

Holly: Exactly and this person was like that specifically, literally did not make a decision without checking.

Joanna: You have to be able to rely on yourself and your inner knowing and your instinct and all that because otherwise what you are doing is giving that power away to something external and it feels like it should be a good thing because it is spiritual and whatever else but it is not, it is still some external object that is showing you the way. That is a very clear sign that you are doing too much. I would say also if you are hoping that the next self-help book will fix you.

Holly: Or that next therapy session or healing session.

Joanna: I used to hire people from this space, I would be like: I am not earning enough money so I am going to hire this person and she will heal my money blocks and then I will earn lots of money.

Holly: This person, or this therapy, is going to be the answer to all my problems or this specific problem…

Joanna: If you are doing that and you can just be honest with yourself, then that’s addictive and again it is looking for answers beyond yourself, external to yourself. And it is not dealing with what is going on in your life, it is not accepting, and being present with your current life experience, it is a constant focus on being someone else or wanting something more. Again, there is a really fine line here between you can do this in a way that is healthy, only you can know if the way you are doing it is healthy. We can’t tell if you listening have that problem or not, just really think about how you think about yourself, whether you are good enough and what are you using these personal development tools for, and what are you hoping to achieve, whether it is just out of curiosity or whether it is because you want to fix yourself.

Holly: Yes, because if you feel like you are broken and you are just trying to fix yourself that could go on forever.

Joanna: And it will just perpetuate the cycle of trying to fix yourself so you are not fixed and so you feel bad about yourself and then you try something else and you still feel bad about yourself and that is… I like to think about examples of people who have really good lives and seem really great, but don’t do any personal development work. That can be due to lots of things like we said the soul comes in with a certain plan, certain things to experience. Nevertheless it certainly seems possible to have a good life without focussing on personal development and growth, and energy healing, because people do it.

Holly: All the time, I know plenty of successful people, highly successful people, who don’t do any personal development work. They just came into this world and did the practical work, and achieved success.

Joanna: Or did nothing at all, they were just lucky. I know people like that myself, who are just lucky. You have to think, I think when you use personal development as a crutch and the be all and end all, when you assume that you will be a failure unless you do this stuff, we keep coming back to the same reason, I think.

Holly: I think so, because we need to hear that. It is so easy to fall into that trap: I am not good enough, I need to fix this and fix that.

Joanna: The more personal development work that I do, the more I understand that the key to everything is finding joy in your current moment and depending where you are and how much personal development work you have done. That might make you really angry with me, because it seems like such a trite statement and at various points in my life, when I would hear something like that I would be like: no, go away, you clearly don’t know what you are talking about. These simple things are really the keys to everything. Self-acceptance and finding joy in the moment and just being where you are right now and being okay with where you are right now. All the true personal development stuff brings us to that moment rather than to creating more. But, interestingly, of course, when you get that part right the more that you want comes more easily.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: It is really counter-intuitive, because you would think that if you focus on success and goals it would be easier to achieve those things than if you don’t, but in fact I have found that it is the opposite, when you focus on the other side of success, the fulfilment and enjoyment and all those things that you think that success will bring you…

Holly: Exactly.

Joanna: Even though, you have to be okay with not getting success and allow yourself to feel good anyway, that’s what actually has more chance of bringing that success you desire into your life, but then it won’t be as important because you already have the things that you want on the other side of success. Am I making any sense, Holly?

Holly: It is, I am thinking of Daniella La Porte and how she talks about your core desired feelings, so it is like you want to achieve all these goals because you think they are going to make you feel, x, y, z.

Joanna: Exactly and I am thinking about this a lot right now, I think this is going to air, when is it going to be live, December or January?

Holly: Towards the end of the month, December.

Joanna: So as we record this it is mid-December and I am thinking about goals for the New Year, kind of seeing all these workshops go by and all that stuff, you know, and I am very tempted to sign up for things that are coming from that space. It is what I am used to, I like goals, I like lists, I like all that stuff, but it is not feeling right to me because I know that it is the fulfilment piece that is more important. Yeah, I mean you can be addicted to healing or addicted to goal setting, it is the same thing. It is a desire for something different and a resistance to what is.

Holly: It is interesting that you say that, because when I look at my plan for 2020, I have got this whole page, half of it is goals and projects that I want to complete and half of it is experiences that I want to have. So the ethnobotany course, that I signed up for, the wildlife identification course, I signed up for a lot of workshops and courses and things, because those are the experiences that I want to have, the walks, the long distance trails that I want to walk, those are the experiences that I want to have. And I don’t see them so much as goals, but I guess it is a goal to walk x trail, whatever, but that is what I want to experience and I want to achieve these other things. I feel like I have a really exciting mix of plans for next year, it is not just goals, it is experiences.

Joanna: See, I would argue that behind both goals and experiences, the key to all of that is an identity, who you are and how you show up and what you are willing to feel in your daily life. Even experiences, you might not get to experiences, because of money, or your health fails, all sorts of reasons people want to travel the world and then they can’t for whatever reason. The key is to be okay with that, to be okay within yourself. I think if your healing and your personal development stuff is geared towards more self-acceptance, and more of that, more of being okay in you, then I feel that that is “good”…the word is not coming to me. Where it gets really dangerous is when you attach it to a desired outcome, to something else, because then it comes from resistance to who you are, there is something that you don’t like, you don’t accept, you want to change and that is where the addiction comes in.

Holly: So why is it a problem to be addicted to healing and self-development? I think it is an important question because I think it is still very, it is so easy to be: it is good, it is good, the more we heal ourselves.

Joanna: Well it can detract from you life right? You can actually spend all your time doing healing stuff and reading personal development books and not be present in your actual, physical life, and with your actual physical friends and your family and the food in your fridge and the mess and clutter in your house. All that stuff, right?

Holly: Yes, it is an escape.

Joanna: It is an escape. You know, you could argue that that is not actually a problem, that you could choose to live your life that way. I think it is important to just remind yourself that you were born into physical [life], to be physical, whether that is to experience something or to share some kind of message and help people, it is all connection stuff. It is all done on the physical plane of existence.

Holly: Well my spiritual teacher that I was with for you know 12 years always used to say: you must be in the world but not of the world…you are spiritual people but you are in the world, you have got to live this life in physical reality.

Joanna: I think that is really hard, I think it is easy to get addicted to all sorts of things, we are talking about addiction to healing work and personal development, watching Netflix is the same thing. I am sure people could argue that it is a better use of your time, I am not convinced because it kind of depends on what you do next. If you read a personal development book or attend a course and do nothing based on that then you may as well have been watching Netflix, it was the same sort of escapism, getting a dose of something different, something better, some inspiration, but if nothing changes what is the point.

Holly: Exactly, that is why an old coach of mine always used to call them shelf-help books, rather than self-help books {laughing}

Joanna: Oh my god that’s so good!

Holly: Isn’t it? It makes your bookshelf look super-spiritual, but what has it done for you internally?

Joanna: If you are still hating yourself and your life, you may as well be watching Netflix for escapism.

Holly: Or having another glass of wine.

Joanna: Yes, it really doesn’t matter.

Holly: So what is the alternative? If you recognise that you have been addicted to healing and you want to shift things, what do you do instead, do you just cut it all out of your life? Do you find a happy medium? How, what, do you do?

Joanna: Oh my god I don’t know, what do you do? A happy medium I would say, no?

Holly: But that might not be your next step. I tend to go from one extreme to the other before I can find that happy medium sometimes.

Joanna: Yes.

Holly: It is like I do a lot of one thing and then I cut it out of my life and then I kind of come back to the middle and I find that. Do whatever works for you.

Joanna: I think whatever feels best, I think that is always a really good way to make any sorts of choices, what feels better to you? If reading those personal development book feels really good, if doing the healing work feels really good, then why not if that is how you want to spend your life, that is your decision.

Holly: Yes, but make it a conscious decision, that is what we are kind of hinting out throughout this conversation, be conscious about how you are choosing to spend your time.

Joanna: And also, don’t put so much pressure on the healing and personal development work, even that is not a magic bullet. I think there are so many other things at play when it comes to our lives, what if you also are a person whose soul wanted to experience slow success, or maybe you wanted to experience what it is like to just try.

Holly: Yes and push yourself, maybe that was what you came to learn.

Joanna: If you are doing your healing and personal development stuff only to change something in your life, something external in your life that is really dangerous, because then if it doesn’t change you end up feeling miserable and nothing you are doing is working.

Holly: I have been thinking also as we have been talking about this, that for me sometimes the happy medium is, there is like an ebb and flow. I will do a bunch of work and then I won’t do any work because I am integrating or taking the action and then I will do some work. When you were talking earlier about the comfort zone and how some people say that you have to be constantly pushing the comfort zone and I feel like I do consciously push my comfort zone but not in that way, I will push it and then I will settle into the new zone. I will push it, like with my kickboxing, whenever I do one of the advance gradings it is really, really, hard and totally takes me out of my comfort zone but it is every six months. So I stretch and I am like oh my God that was so hard and then I settle into it, and then I stretch, so I think…

Joanna: You enjoy the process though, don’t you?

Holly: Yes I do. I very much do.

Joanna: It is not just to get the next grade…

Holly: Exactly, exactly, I do it because it stretches me and makes me feel good about myself, because I did something that I was scared of and I did it anyway and it makes me feel better.

Joanna: That makes it different. If you think you feel you have been doing too much personal development work, you have given up on it because you have done so much and nothing is changed, consider these things that we are talking about today, consider whether you can come at things from a place of curiosity and enjoying the process rather than goal achievement. That’s the thing, it is almost like we have tricked ourselves. We are supposed to be, in theory, going away from goal-achievement and all that masculine go-go-go hustle energy and so we do soft healing and intuition and all that stuff, but for most people I have noticed that nothing has actually changed. They are still doing it from that go-go-go and hustle and all those messages about heart-centred hustle and whatever it is still hustle it is still focussed on achieving a goal and something about your current situation being wrong and you wanting to do something to make it right or better. To fix it. I really think that is where the problem is.

Holly: Ignoring self-acceptance and trying to fix.

Joanna: Trying to fix. So it all comes from this place of resistance and Ekhart Tollie who I have a lot of respect for, I think the stuff he comes out with is real, proper, truth, it is just very difficult for us to integrate because it is so deep or whatever. He says, one of the things that has stuck with me from some of the stuff that I have read of his, is that all of our pain and suffering comes from resistance. All of it. So, if you are doing healing and personal development from a place of resisting where you are, so if you are doing it because you don’t want to be where you are, you don’t want to be who you want to be, that is where we run into problems. I don’t know if you can hear all that noise outside of my window?

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: First of all they have been drilling and now there is this giant truck pulled in and I don’t know what they are unloading… {Both: laughing} It looks like half of a construction site, I am sorry about that, I am not sure we can do anything about that.

Holly: {laughing} No, I don’t think we can. But I think we are also probably coming to the end of this episode, so perfect timing. So any final thoughts for anyone who might be listening to this and thinking: ah shit, I think I am addicted? {laughing}

Joanna: Really focus your attention on just being okay with who you are and where you are and from that space it is much easier to make the changes that you want to make. This is what Holly and I touched on, in the other episode on identity, it is not that if you accept where you are, your current situation, learn to appreciate yourself the way you are now, it is not that you are getting complacent and nothing will ever happen and you will get stuck in that situation. It is from that place of self-acceptance, it will be much easier to achieve the things that you want to make those changes and at the end of the day all that you want is to be happy and enjoy life, right? And if you release that resistance, and focus on accepting the moment and being in the moment, being present, that enjoyment comes a lot more easily and it is not so dependent on whether you achieve a certain goal or not.

Holly: And be kind to yourself, I feel like so much of this comes from beating ourselves up because we are not the thing that we want to be, or we are not doing the things and it is like we are beating ourselves up. Just chill and be kind to yourself. {laughing}

Joanna: Be aware that the personal development industry is a multi-million dollar industry, it has become the same as the weight loss industry. We can agree that the weight loss industry has a vested interest in you never losing weight, or yo-yo dieting, right? And so it follows that the personal development industry has a vested interested in you always feeling that you are not good enough so that you buy into the next thing. So just be very aware of that, kind of learn to question things and discern what is really right for you and what really feels good to you as opposed to: they said if I do this I will be fixed and I will have a happy life, I will be able to…all my dreams will come true if I do this one thing.

Holly: Trust yourself and trust your gut.

Joanna: Good! I think that is enough food for thought!

Holly: I agree! Thank you very much for another fascinating conversation! {laughing}

Joanna: Let us know if you have any questions or thoughts about this, we would love to know.

Holly: you can get in touch with Joanna at…?

Joanna: [email protected]

Holly: Or you can email me at: [email protected] Thank you for listening.

 

Holly: Please drop me a line and let me know what you thought about this week’s episode, you can email me: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there, I would love to hear from you. I would also love for you to join me on Patreon, if you head over to Http://Patreon.com/hollyworton You can join there and support the show – I put a lot of time and effort and I invest money into the show and I would love to have your support. If you find these shows, these episodes, interesting and useful I would love for you to support me, you can start at just $1 a month or more.

So thank you very much and thank you so much for listening. Thank you, thank you, thank you for tuning in every week and for subscribing, it really means the world to me. Remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/336 for the show notes on this episode.

Now, I am going to be at a retreat when this goes live and I know we are approaching the end of the year and I just wanted to say I hope you you have a fantastic 2020! Have a great year.