Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 0:04
Hello dear listener Welcome to the Future Seeds podcast. I’m your host cyprian and in this show, I explore groundbreaking solutions to our world’s unique problems by connecting seemingly unrelated fields such as technology, ecology, community and spirituality. The speaker for this episode is Mona green, a certified life coach and neuro linguistic programming practitioner. She had the opportunity to speak for audiences like the US House of Representatives, Harvard and the US Department of State, and has been featured in publications like the Washington Post and Teen Vogue. She was also selected by the Obama administration as a leading change maker in the fight towards gender equality in 2016.

Good evening, Mona. How you doing?

Mona Green 0:49
Hello. Hello, I am wonderful. How are you?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 0:54
Very nice. Let’s tell our audience right now that your official name is Jennifer green, but everyone calls you Mona?

Mona Green 1:00
Yes, yes, yes

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 1:02
We’ll stick to Mona.

So Mona, I’d say you’re a life coach. And your job consists essentially in helping people in editing their story, understanding habitual thought and knowing how to hack that and lead your clients into new ways of thinking that explained that correctly?

Mona Green 1:20
Yeah, I mean, if the general gist of it absolutely. I think the closest thing to describe what it is that I do is probably life coach. But I essentially help people discover what programs their brains are running. And whether those programs are limiting them or helping them and in the case of any limitation, I teach them how to shift those programs and to essentially rewire their brain to a different setting. So it’s it’s a lot of cognitive reframing work, but a lot of storytelling as well.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 1:55
Exactly. And this is why I wanted to interview because Future Seeds little gimmick is “planting a different narrative”

Mona Green 2:03
perfect

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 2:03
editing the story. And so your business school nomis may what’s the deal with the name?

Mona Green 2:10
it came to me the first time I meditated on what to call the business. So that’s what I how I knew that it was right I realized that now muster means the Divinity in me recognizes the Divinity in you, but in my line of work, we teach that the divinity and you can’t recognize divinity outside of you properly unless it recognizes its own divinity first, so I switched the T to an M and brought the focus back on the self a little bit. But you know, things things are shifting the name will stay the same, but my approach to the coaching is shifting dramatically. So I’m excited to chat with you about that. Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 2:56
All right. Let’s talk about that. First of all, what problems and intentions do people come to you with the people who I work with couldn’t be any more different. I have everything from like, the Wall Street guy, to the former Olympian to the magician to the stay at home parent. But the questions are always very similar. They’re all about a specific topic or a specific feeling of being stuck. It can either be, hey, I need help with my career, I’m not really sure where to go from here, or I’m having issues in my relationship where it can be. I checked off all the boxes, my life still doesn’t feel good. I don’t understand why but at the end of the day, it really is just one question and it’s why am I not feeling what I know is available to me. I would say all of those questions go into that one broader one

Yeah right. I saw on your website that you insist on being happy by creating the life you’ve always wanted. And it also says The first step is taking responsibility. Can you explain that a bit?

Mona Green 4:14
Absolutely. I mean, I honestly think that the only thing that really separates us from our childhood and the real meaning of maturity lies and how much personal responsibility you’re willing to take over your life. I think it’s perfectly possible for us to keep the spirit of our inner children alive. You know, that sense of wonder that sense of adventure that beginners mindset about life? Where I think we we benefit a little bit more from the growing up part is really learning either on purpose or not so on purpose, that it is by taking responsibility that we are empowered. If you feel responsible over something, you feel like you’re in a position to affect change. And that’s huge. A lot of the people that I’ve helped one of the biggest mindset changes that we actually work on is specifically that of feeling like life just happening to them, and that they are the victims of their circumstances. And really shifting that belief into one of I am in one way responsible for at least some of the factors that I’m having to deal with right now. What happens if I actually decide to really accept that? And what does responsibility look like moving forward if I want to navigate outside of a situation? Does that make sense?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 5:46
Absolutely. And let’s dig in and see how you actually do that. I know you’re certified in NLP, but you recently told me something really interesting. You said that you were changing the way you were going about coaching and integrating service to community into your recommendations into your teaching. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mona Green 6:08
Yeah. So I noticed both in my personal experience and in helping guide so many processes for people that you know, there’s, there’s a very noble intention behind this work. You know, those of us who either as coaches or clients jump into this process of unpacking and discovering the self and trying to restructure the self are doing it because they usually want to be better people. What I find a little bit tricky about that, though, is that it can become very easy for us to get a little bit self absorbed in that process of self discovery and self improvement because there’s always something that you can improve on yourself. Right. So I started noticing a trend where it became easier and easier for both the people that I helped but also in my own process for me to stay in my head and constantly be analyzing and shifting and and course correcting and being in that coach mindset all the time, to the point where a lot of what was occurring externally seems to not be a priority anymore. And I had a really beautiful conversation with a friend, maybe three or four months ago and he said something that really stuck with me, which was when your life problems start feeling big, just make your world a little bit bigger. And…

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 7:53
Relativity

Mona Green 7:54
Right and if you think about it, this whole, this whole process is really about becoming a master of perspective and finding perspectives that empower you. But what do you do with that perspective? Why, you know, what’s the point of becoming a better person if to not be more useful? And I’ve been noticed, so I started doing an experiment with some client with all the new clients that have come in through the door, where now, we do the hour of coaching a week that we do normally. But then we also they’re also contractually obligated to give some sort of an hour to some sort of community service. They have the first month to decide what that is. But for those for the first four weeks, they’re actually actively looking for random acts of kindness to perform, to do that exercise of stepping out of their stuff and their and their thinking and their lives. Stepping into bigger community, a bigger sense of self and kind of if we if we were to think of ourselves as like concentric circles, just going a couple of circles out. And interestingly enough, that exercise of stopping the thinking about yourself and engaging in something bigger than yourself, ends up being a huge ally in your own transformation and in the way that you’re dealing with your problems because you come back with a fresh pair of eyes. But more importantly, your hearts been open a little bit, because you feel purposeful.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 9:35
Right, it reminds me a lot about the the emphasis that Tony Robbins puts on contribution and how much he insists on it. I do like your you mentioned of how it opens the heart though.

Mona Green 9:48
It absolutely does. And you know that that needs a exercise that Tony Robbins uses is a common one that I use in my client work because it’s an easy way to break down the why we do what we do. And if you remember what he talks about, contribution being… contribution is one of the needs of the soul, not one of the personality. So you have the first four that have the personality, and then you have contribution and growth as the two needs of the soul. And apparently, as as you’re working your way through life,

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 10:26
for those who don’t know, its certainty, and like safety, uncertainty, like diversity, significance, love connection, growth and contribution.

Mona Green 10:40
Yes, exactly. And I would definitely, if you’re listening to this, check that out, it’s a good just temperature check for where you are, you know, ask yourself, okay, if these six or the six needs that are most important to me, how am I prioritizing them in my life? About that, and then think about what your actions are saying about how you’re really prioritizing them.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 11:07
That’s interesting.

Mona Green 11:09
There’s usually I call it minding the gap, kind of, there’s usually a gap between how we perceive ourselves and how we’re actually showing up. And so I love doing exercises in that way

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 11:21
The gap

Mona Green 11:22
The gap. Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 11:26
Yeah. So that’s really interesting how you added community service to coaching. But you I know, you also mix that with a lot of classical techniques. As your NLP practitioner, you tell us a bit about that and like maybe some of the specific exercises and practice that you recommend to clients?

Mona Green 11:46
Sure. Um, actually, I’d love to talk about because one of the things I’m careful to not do is to frame the coaching discussion just in terms of psychology, because you are more than just your mind, your mind is a part of you as an organism. It’s not exclusively running the show. So I can I can tell you a little bit about the way I approach things. But within that, there will be an explanation as to the why if that’s cool. Yeah. So I read a fascinating book years and years ago called the presence process by a gentleman by the name of Michael Brown. and in it he walked us through how to essentially integrate the different traumas that we experience in our lives. And and how doing that properly can bring a different type of freedom and experience in general to to our everyday And what I one of the things that stuck with me from that book that my continuous research has also then supported is the fact that the most important phases of our development as human beings all happened before, we’re 21 years old. And that to me as a 35 year old adult, sounds kind of crazy, because 21 was a long time ago. I’ve had a whole lot of life since 21. And I feel like I’ve changed a lot. But sitting with that made me realize that a lot of the stuff that we deal with as adults is is just literally unintegrated trauma from our childhood. And so, you have these three phases of development that happened before you’re 21 years old. Each of these three phases corresponds with what I call one of your bodies. You have your emotional body, you have your mental body, and you have your physical body. So each of these phases also lasts roughly seven years. What happens in phase one, okay, so you come out of your mother’s womb, pretty much an emotional being. That’s how you communicate. That’s how you get your needs met, your experience is entirely guided by emotion. You don’t have the mental capacity to contextualize things yet, you’re kind of still, you know, experiencing and gathering data, but not having the proper tools to categorize it or or make much sense of it just yet, that part of your brain hasn’t been fully developed. And that would be your prefrontal cortex and kind of the neocortex the newer part of your brain. So, from zero to seven, what that means is we’re literally Pretty much at the mercy of our environment, which makes us pretty susceptible for trauma. Now trauma doesn’t necessarily have to be something incredibly messed up for it to have a deep, deep impact on your life. It can be something as simple as a comment that one of your parents made when they were angry and you were four years old that you took, and it kind of stayed with you. The problem is because you don’t have the tools to integrate it, it stays inside of your body as almost like an unresolved electrical charge. So as we get a little bit older, and we start then going to school and we start interacting with our peer group, and that part of our brain starts developing at seven through through 14. We do start developing the ability to categorize, judge and organize information. But from seven to 14, we don’t have the experience or the wisdom to know that a lot of the stuff that happens to us isn’t personal. So we acquire even more trauma. So from zero to 14, you’re like the sponge for experiences that are difficult for you to properly integrate. And if you think about it, if something happened to you in that first phase, you might not even have a story for it. Because you may not have even developed the language yet to express what it was that happened to you. But that doesn’t mean that that trauma is not stuck in your body somewhere. Right? So where that first phase was all about the emotional body, the second phase is all about the development of the mental body and the development of the stories about who you are. You know, you talk about narratives all the time. How crazy is it? That we essentially build the narrative about who we are as as people from things that we didn’t choose, essentially between seven and 14 That to me is is pretty bananas. And and the reason I have a job right, so Right, right, because all of that unresolved goo for lack of a better word is still there. So then we move on to the third phase which corresponds with the development of your physical body and the cocktail of hormones, that is puberty. And, and all of a sudden, anything that has not been properly integrated, is is desiring to come out. That’s when we start seeing things like anxiety. That’s when we start seeing things like depression, substance abuse issues, behavioral issues, eating disorders, anything that we as human beings either try to do to sedate or control usually starts popping up at around that age and as a consequence from whatever unresolved issues we still have in our bodies, so I’m the age until you take care of it. Exactly. So for that reason, I think it’s really important in coaching and whatever healing that you decide to do to make room for those three bodies. It’s not just your psychological body that needs to be addressed. If you don’t have a story for what happened to you, how are you going to heal that? So you have to find a way of engaging the mental body, the emotional body, and the physical body. That’s why I’m also a big fan of everything from breathwork, to nutrition, all of that stuff factors into who you are as a person. So it’s a lot more comprehensive than just the psychological discussion, if that makes sense. That was a Awesome, but it’s still like the wanted to specific practices or exercises that you you get clients to do. Sure. Um, let’s see. So, um, I have a really cool exercise that I offer as a workshop, as well, where it’s all about learning how to reframe the conversation with your inner critic. And I think one of the most valuable skills that as a coach, I hope people learn is how to create that distinction between the person that is in their life doing their thing, and the person who is capable of observing themselves while they’re living their life and doing their thing. Right. So if we were using a metaphor, I don’t want you to be the lion in the savanna hunting in the Serengeti. I want you to be the national Geographic photographer that has been tracking that lion for six months, and knows and understands its behavior a little bit better, right? Is that a real threat? That’s a perceived threat. But sometimes the lion doesn’t know the difference. So it’s important to to work out the muscle of the observer self, right? So with this particular tool, I have a six step process by which whenever one of my clients has identified a particular inner critic kind of voice, where they can do the six steps to essentially be friend, their inner critic and redirect the energy anywhere, because the inner critic is just a manifestation of our fear. It’s kind of like that friend who has the greatest of intentions, but sometimes terrible delivery and what they’re saying.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 20:54
That friend,

Mona Green 20:55
yeah, that friend. It doesn’t make them a bad friend. It just makes them Hard to deal with sometimes. And it’s the same thing for for your inner critic. you’ve developed your inner critic as a mechanism to protect yourself. So it’s really teaching people how to in those six steps get curious, ask the right questions and see how to shift the energy from one where you’re feeling like crap to one where you using all of the things that make your inner critic so believable and so good at their job to help you actually generate the complete opposite result. So it’s really cool.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 21:39
Sounds cool.

Mona Green 21:40
Yeah. Yeah. That’s one of my favorites for sure.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 21:46
Yeah, talking about that, is there some you know, classical problems, you know, recurring issues that you see in most of your clients, recurring thoughts. patterns that are common negative ones I’m talking about?

Mona Green 22:03
Yeah, I mean, and this is true for pretty much every living breathing human being on the planet. But I think personal relationships, particularly romantic relationships are a really interesting point of inquiry for just about everybody who comes through the door. And one of the beautiful things that I help my clients with is understanding at the level with which we project our thinking on to the people that we love. And we forget that just because they know us just because they have, we have we may have familiar points of references, doesn’t mean that they inhabit in our brains and in our heart, and it’s never going to be the same point of view. So to expect somebody in your life to be able to read your mind is is a recipe for continued disappointment in your relationships and so one of the things that I work really hard with is helping them realize the depth of projection that we usually arrive to is normal human beings but also that love Love is love is like a room. You can be in love. By making the decision to do that we talked about and I heard this I can’t remember where a couple of weeks ago but it really stuck with me and it was. What is love is this room that you willingly walk into. You can then think about it as you can. Be in love with anybody because it’s you deciding that this is the type of space that you’re going to be in with that person. You can learn how to fight in love, you can learn how to communicate in love. You can learn how to deal with issues or strangers on the streets. In love. It’s a decision that you make, it’s a quality of your consciousness just like purpose is, if you’re present, and loving, you’re essentially doing everything that you need to do. And so it’s really helping people realize that although it can seem scary peak, others will never fully be able to understand you 100%. And that’s what makes life beautiful, but that’s what also creates a lot of the issues that we have. And it’s because we expect them to be able to understand us that way. That understanding is not a prerequisite for love.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 25:05
Right? So you’re saying, one of the most common things you see is this expectation to be understood and disappointment of not being understood. Especially in the area of love,

Mona Green 25:21
of love. Right. And and a lot of people get caught up in this narrative about how unseen the feel, and how sad that is. And that’s totally understandable because that’s what this one of our basic needs to you know, we talked about its significance, we all want to feel like we matter. We all want to feel like the people that we love, actually know who we are. But when you connect with the fact that that’s actually impossible. There’s also a lot of freedom in that. Because then you’re not beholden to what you think you need to be. In order to elicit that love it makes a little little bit easier for you to say Okay, you know what? I’m just a strange flavor of ice cream. And that’s pretty much it and I’m okay with that.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:15
I’m like cucumber ice cream.

Mona Green 26:17
Oh, honey, I’m like a lavender. saffron honey panacotta. Vanilla thing. I don’t know.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:28
That sounds delicious, though.

Mona Green 26:29
Right?

All right, cool. Thanks for the answer. That’s quite interesting. not what I expected. Very interesting.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:42
Can you tell us in the last five years, what new belief behavior or habit has most improved your life?

Mona Green 26:53
I have two. I just decided that in order to allow for magic in your life, you have to believe it. So that if you have a filter, through which you see reality that is full of everything that’s wrong, it’s probably all you’re going to see. But if you make that decision, kind of like making that decision to be in love in that loving state, your life will start reflecting that and you will get a cast of characters that you could have never imagined the set of circumstances, all these incredible chapters unfolding in a magical way just because you made the decision that there’s more to life than waking up and going to work. And then getting home and turning on the TV and doing the whole rinse and repeat and going mindlessly through through things. I felt like I understood that as a kid, I felt like I progressively started losing that in college. And into the earlier part of my career. And within the last five years, that belief has really come back and come back strong. And because of that, it the ride just keeps getting sweeter. And I keep feeling the older I get, the more irreverent and disobedient I get, but in a responsible way, because it’s it’s it’s just more fun. There’s more cheekiness

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 28:27
You’re on the magic carpet.

Mona Green 28:29
Well, exactly. And I’m driving. So how much fun is that? So that’s one and the other one really is just understanding through empirical observation, the importance of things like your diet, and your emotional state. Things like how you exercise your mood, your body and your emotional state. You know, I think I’ve tried every modality under the sun when it comes to alternatives for healing and integration or whatever it is because I’m a very curious person. And, you know, to be frank, I’ve had a lot of difficulties to kind of overcome within that process. But the minute that my diet and exercising started coming from that place of actually wanting to nourish and take care of and steward rather than, oh my god, I gotta count count these calories because I need to look like this. I started realizing that by shifting that belief, it was easier for me to be kinder to myself, it was like my brain was shifting right along with what I was consuming. So consumption is a direct input into whatever output you’re trying to generate. So to be really careful about what you’re inputting into your body.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 30:03
Right. What What is it that you? What is it that touches you that reaches you in this job? Why do you do this?

Mona Green 30:11
I mean, it’s it’s humbling. It is humbling to listen to somebody at times, ask and answer some of life’s most difficult questions with you by their side. Because it takes a lot of courage. And it’s not easy and people are literally allowing me to go into the depths of their soul. Sometimes I get to hear information that they haven’t even allowed to share with themselves out loud. So it’s it’s a privilege. And it feels just very humbling and honoring that I’m afforded that privilege by my clients. But that’s like the beginning of the most beautiful process, which is literally to see somebody, little by little just lose their crap. And start the like, people start looking different. And they start noticing different things in their environment. And all of a sudden, you know, that thing that they were thinking about when they were 16 that they never gave themselves permission to do they’re like, whatever I’m doing it I signed up for a salsa dancing class. What? Amazing. So it’s like you, you you literally see what happens when you just hold the space for somebody to feel safe enough to ask those questions and where they feel supported. Enough, and they don’t feel alone. And when do you believe in them? The best thing that you can do for a person is just to believe in them. I mean, listen to me, dude, I’m about to start crying right now. Just think. No, seriously because we have so much information bombarded at us on a daily basis that literally creates this narrative of unworthiness on so many different levels.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 32:33
The unworthiness.

Mona Green 32:35
Yeah, it’s an epidemic. It’s our whole economic system is based on selling us our unworthiness. If we are unworthy, but we buy this thing, maybe we’ll be a little more worthy and that’s how you know this this cycle of unhappiness and unworthiness has been perpetuated. It’s like, please think

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 33:00
Do you think it’s a problem of our age? More than it? Do you think it’s more present than was 1000 2000 years ago?

Mona Green 33:11
I do. I do because our needs are different than they were 2000 years ago. You know, when when you had to worry and spend all day working to find shelter, food. Nobody had time to sit down and think about the bigger picture. You’re trying to just feed yourself and survive right with, with the agrarian Revolution and the change that we started seeing in the way that we not only lived but then created community. Then you start seeing the need for more psychological needs, as our psyche and brain got more sophisticated. So did our problems.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 34:02
So you think unworthiness is a feeling that comes from your place in the community?

Mona Green 34:09
I think unworthiness is is I mean, it that’s a it’s a multi layered issue, I think. I think our society makes it very easy for us to feel unworthy because the word discussion is usually tied to things like how much money you’re making, how much impact you’re having, what you look like, how old you are. And all of these things that place your sense of worth, in an external factor that you have no control over a lot of the time. But if you do have control over it, and you build a life around trying to like achieve that, and then achieve that and still don’t have that sense of worthiness, then you really like whoa, then then what happens and that’s when people usually come And start doing this work with me.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 35:04
So you think it’s also a, there’s a correlation between our age and time making people feel unworthy and the fact that since the 80s, there is more and more and more life coaches?

Mona Green 35:19
Oh, absolutely. I mean, coaching is the biggest, the fastest growing industry after tech. And the United States for a reason.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 35:27
I didn’t know that.

Mona Green 35:28
Yeah, yeah. And it’s and it’s because I think we’re waking up to the fact that the system that we have built is no longer serving us, or sustainable. sure we’re more connected than ever. We’re hyper connected. I don’t even know people who go to the bathroom without their phone anymore. So sure, we’re connected in this very superficial sense, but we forgotten what it’s like to actually be human and connect and and feel held and supported and in community with it. Like, our society has also made it easy for us to focus on a particular set of neural transmitters rather than others we’re addicted to dopamine for example, you know that like that you get on Facebook or at or that achievement high that you get when you achieve something that’s That’s dope I mean, we are addicted to dopamine we get our everything about how our society has been designed, and our technology mirrors that is geared towards achievement and doing and doing and doing so then what happens to other feel good hormones. That used to be a very prevalent part of our experiences older simpler times, like the oxytocin or the serotonin that you get more from being in community. They both feel good, but we’re completely imbalanced in in which ones were chasing Because of what we’re being fed from a messaging standpoint every day

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 37:04
crash course in neurology and psychology, so is that how it’s meant to, to work with the current state of science that we’re meant to be balanced? And the amount of oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine that we get.

Mona Green 37:18
I mean, there are many other ones actually, Simon Sinek has a fantastic talk about this. I think it’s called why leaders eat last. So I would check that out if you can, but I think you get to decide what your magic mix of them is. But I think as a responsible adult, you also get to the privilege of observing what your actions are telling you about where you currently stand in that mix. If you’re a type A personality, if you have if you suffer for perfectionism, if you if things have to be scheduled, then Chances are, you’re probably running that dopamine a little bit higher than than some of the other ones that could make you feel more at ease and equally as satisfied just in a different way. So it’s, it’s, again, informing yourself and empowering yourself through that exercise of observation. So that then you can make an educated call. Because if you’re not informed about what is potentially brewing underneath your hood, how are you going to make an educated call? If you don’t even know where you stand? How do you know how to chart your course?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 38:36
bit of a tricky question, but what are bad recommendations you hear in your professional area of expertise?

Mona Green 38:48
that’s that that’s

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 38:56
Come on, let it go.

Mona Green 38:57
I think about this Often So, believe it or not, I have more than one thing that I’d like to say about this topic. I’m just trying to think of what it what would be most useful, or what’s most alive right now. One of the things that I notice a lie has to do with the process of real integration, right. One of the other biggest truths that I’ve really come to terms with the last five years is that simple doesn’t necessarily equal easy, or that easy, doesn’t mean simple. Just because something is easy to understand doesn’t mean that it’s that there is an easy way of applying it in your life. and I think a lot of the coaching approach that I’ve seen in all areas, you know, spiritual coaches, business coaches, or whatever. There’s a lot of theory and there isn’t a lot of emphasis on embodiment of that theory. I’ve come across a lot of programs that are very information heavy and very practice light. How do I actually put into practice these things that I know where where’s the dojo? Where do I go and actually train for this life? Of course, but is there a method is there a methodology or a way where I can willingly and proactively infuse this theory into my everyday life because I hear a lot of breakthroughs on the mental level back to our previous discussion, like the mental body gets a lot of attention, but like How is that registering in your other bodies? You can under you can’t think your way out of a problem you acted your way into for 30 years, you got to think and act your way out of it. And it’s got to feel good for it to be a long lasting change. So you have to evolve those three bodies. And I think that a lot of the coaching I see, again, is is very mental body focused. Also, achievement focused, meaning the deliverable, the dopamine hit, and not so much more of that functional, holistic. What does it look like in practice in your life, not in my life, in your life? What does getting your needs met actually look like? How can we make you practice that? So the practice component I think, is really missing.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 42:00
Yeah, okay, thanks. I want to come back to our conversation on storytelling and story editing. myself have tried a few things in my life. And I know of a few things I heard recently, this cool podcast was talking about a book written by Dr. Timothy Wilson, the social psychologist, and the book is called redirect the surprising new science of psychological change. And it talks about a whole range of techniques and story editing. This is division from from the book, the set of techniques designed to redirect people’s narratives about themselves in the social world in a way that leads to lasting changes in behavior. And the interview was amazing, but one that stayed in my mind is clinical psychology was getting really interested in that field and not only that, but the whole Science is actually linked with epigenetics. For those who don’t know, epi means surrounding. So it’s the layer that surrounds your DNA. And it basically defines which of your genes are being expressed and your lifestyle effects that layer around your DNA, clinical psychology, getting really interested in that field that it experiments on students and their exams to see how efficient it is. We all know. We all know how the placebo effects is hardly understood, but some studies that came out recently show how the strength of your belief affects this strength of the placebo effect. Tony Robbins argues and insists over and over give a different meaning to your past and your present experience and empowering meaning, and even techniques such as the Buddhist Vipassana meditation teaches you to scan your body And don’t jump into this interpretation, that sensation giving negative interpretation that turns into a negative thought. And you create that story because you had this weird feeling in your body saying for Chi Kung meditations and also have tried family constellations which actually put you into either a situation in which you can relive a particular situation to give it a different meaning. This has been a lot of that stuff. Maybe this this sounds like you there’s actually quite ancient traditions that give incredible emphasis on storytelling and story editing. Very famous figures like Julius Caesar were very known to control the narrative. And more recently, there’s so much writing from Goebbels, I don’t know how to pronounce that, the propaganda master of Hitler, and how he was controlling the narrative and story Telling to create a particular effect on the population. And this is one on on segway and link. And I want to get into this topic, what’s the link between individual narrative and global narrative? I want you to Yeah, get into this conversation with me and see if we can get some interesting bits.

Mona Green 45:23
I love this. Okay. I mean, they’re inextricably linked for sure. I think the epigenetic portion of things is particularly interesting in the context, for example, that you’re talking about Hitler as well, some of the research that has been done. I think it was on earthworms. Which doesn’t seem like a great example. But we’re heading to the to the place where we will be getting more data on what happens with humans as well, but that those that suffered some sort of trauma passed on that particular genetic sequencing and information up to 12 generations after that initial traumatizing event happened. Now if we take that in the context of what you were just taking, talking about, and focus on the conversation more generally and historically, and we look at what happened, for example, with the Holocaust. And and that being a very well known story that we’re all telling, and that we know to be true. And a lot of people also assuming this, this attitude about it, oh, we, you know, we should move on. That’s history. It’s gone or whatever. But understanding what we do know between the epigenetic link of how trauma is passed down from generation to generation, and how Particularly communities have shared trauma that tells us a lot about how we also have behaved in an almost tribal mentality in many different instances in our in our history as well. You know, like, the Holocaust may not be happening anymore, but the consequences of it are still being felt in the babies of the babies, of the people that were a part of that. And that’s the reality that we have to make space for, in our thinking, as well as we think about how to tackle our societal issues, how to build stronger communities, because we can’t ignore trauma if we’re wanting to build safe and secure societies. So the individual manifestation of whatever It is and the individual process informs the the bigger societal one in the sense that, you know, you’re you’re a thread in that bigger textile. And if you become a thread that is responsible enough to clean, clean, whatever it is that you can, you’re at least ensuring that your bloodline might not have to deal with some of the same things that you and your ancestors did.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 48:26
Absolutely. It’s a very complex problem myself. My grandfather was in camps during the war and his whole family went through that and it’s also part of my story at the moment. I live in Australia, and narrative and the story around the genocide of indigenous is palpable. And it’s, you know, one of my girlfriends is a CEO of an NGO here working with indigenous kids helping them to get off get off the street through musical expression and It’s It’s It’s incredible to see how global stories global narrative and actions and the colonization of the British Empire here and how they didn’t recognize their actions for a long time and still sometimes don’t affect individual stories and generations of them generations of indigenous kids now. It’s hard. It’s done, but it’s hard to have one of those children to change it. Individual story without the global story. You know, Australia recognizing what happened. It’s so linked.

Mona Green 49:37
Yeah, absolutely. I had a very similar observation. I did some, some work with the Navajo tribe here in the US earlier last year, and I had one of the most humbling moments of my life where I realized how privileged I was. Because some of the things that these kids were dealing with on an everyday basis were things that I couldn’t even imagine having to go through. And they were living through it, because they there is nothing, there is no sense of there particularly being anything super, super wrong, because that’s all that their population has known for so long. They’ve been used to being treated like crap by the government. They’re used to being overlooked. So it’s almost like it’s expected and it doesn’t register as being unfair. At a subconscious level, when their sense of self kicks in when you start, you know, poking a little bit, and you see, yeah, that is messed up and that fire and that sense of justice is very much still there, and very alive but you also have to understand that one of the biggest coping mechanisms that colonial alized peoples could adopt was just to put their head down and not rock the boat and just take it and it’s all the more all the more reason for us to also just start being more honest about where we are all the more reason for people like you and people like me who just by virtue of looking the way that we do have privilege in the world. All the more reason for us also use our platforms not to get up and pontificate on the top of the mountain say, Hey, I realized this thing and look at me how woke I am. You know what, let’s give the mic you give the microphone to an Aboriginal activists. I’ll give the microphone to an indigenous person here and putting other people’s narratives and stories at the forefront of the discussion. Because we lack that perspective, we can’t course correct the general one if we don’t even know what’s going on.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 52:08
But have you had the actual opportunity to witness the the impact effect of a global narrative being recognized or edited a bit, and the effect it has on the whole community and individual persons that can be?

Mona Green 52:26
Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen it here in the United States with race relations. I mean, the civil rights movement didn’t happen that long ago. And that is still very present in the societal fabric of this country right now. Look at look at the prison system. Look at the economic segregation look at the disenfranchisement of communities of color. Were still colonizing we’re just doing it economically and under the guise of capitalism selling people on this dream that doesn’t really exist anymore. And I think it’s irresponsible for us to continue doing that. Now that said, I would like to though also illustrate something positive that is happening in the world. Look at look at one one little girl from Sweden, named gretta Thun Berg, I think that’s for her last name is doing for the global narrative about climate change. And that’s one kid. So, let us not also think that just because we’re one we don’t matter, everything matters because we’re all tied together.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 53:52
Right. I do think that people in power actually masters at storytelling.

Mona Green 54:01
Oh, absolutely.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 54:02
Mainstream media is just doing that sending messages every day all day, and telling us which story they want us to listen to, and to believe in. And particularly, it’s full of negative messages. And that’s why, in at least in this podcast, I’m trying to have a series of interviews that send positive messages with actual solutions. But what do you think? How can we actually participate in re editing that narrative that’s going around the world?

Mona Green 54:38
That’s like my favorite question, because that’s the question I’ve been asking myself for the last three months and literally the direction where I’m taking them as men moving forward. And it has everything to do with understanding that there is nothing more powerful. seductive than joy?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 55:03
Hmm.

Mona Green 55:05
People usually don’t like getting involved with issues because they feel heavy or community service because they associate it with being boring. What if we can make not only the process of getting to know yourself better, but also the process of becoming a more active and proactive community member. Sexy and joyful and fun. What if activism doesn’t have to take on the anger? What is activism can look like? For example, I went to a protest downtown LA a couple of weeks ago to protest the banks funding the five companies that are in charge of 80% of the destruction of the Amazon right now. It’s literally five companies and so we went, you know we did. We didn’t go in like yell at anybody Yeah, sure we had megaphones or whatever. We dance. We partied. We made noise. But it was joyful. And it felt good. And it felt purposeful and community oriented. And I loved being able to look around and seeing people from all ages and backgrounds involved. Because, yes, there’s a lot of heaviness in our world. But we’re actually really good about figuring out what to do when we simply stop focusing on the stuff that doesn’t matter. And we start focusing on the stuff that does. And if we can make that fun, then we can enroll the best minds on the planet to help with these issues. So I think our biggest homework assignment right now is to get people to start asking the right questions of themselves and of how they can contribute, and to get creative about how they can make that fun in their lives. Because we didn’t we didn’t come here to not have a good time. We literally live in Eden. Are we screwing it up pretty badly? Yeah, but we have the most beautiful planet ever. Like this place is paradise. What are we thinking not enjoying this. This is ridiculous.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 57:29
I agree. I totally agree reminds me and we seek a geek or he’s like, if God came back on Earth, he’d be like, what did you do? Brown who shit over the poor bears.

Mona Green 57:44
I love that. But Oh, that reminds me and I will also say this. I have a lot of hope because I’m starting to see also that the education system is skewing more in the direction at least in the US. of Developing compassion, empathy, these things, you know

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 58:06
I think I’d like to give you a few seconds. minute. If you’d like to say something to our listeners, something that has to do with your line of work, something that has to do with making people happy and living the life they want.

Mona Green 58:26
One of the biggest comments I get when I’m starting this process with somebody new, and we’re doing that process of taking apart the story of who they’ve been. One of the most common phrases I hear is, yeah, but I’m just like that or I’ve always been like that. And if that happens to be a phrase that comes out of your mouth often my call to action for you listener today is to really sit with what ever comes after that phrase. Because you are more than your habitual thoughts, you are more than your habitual actions and you have everything that you need to start shifting even the things about yourself that you believe to be just totally ingrained inside of you. I’ve seen it in myself. I’ve seen it in the people that I help and all it requires is a healthy dose of courage. So open that door, start asking those questions and get ready for the ride.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 59:41
Wow Did you hear that everybody if you want more discussions more help from Mona it’s on three W dot nomis men calm and thank you so much for this conversation. wanna thank you.

Mona Green 59:55
Thank you. pleasure talking to you brother

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 59:58
pleasure talking to you.

The Future Seeds podcast is a project that is supported by its community of listeners. If you like the show and what it stands for, I invite you to head to three W dot futures. It’s not news, where you can support the show for just $2 a month, be part of the futures community connect with its amazing members and speakers and enable this podcast to thrive. I thank you for your time and hope you enjoy the show and its exploration of alternative solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 0:04
Hello dear listener Welcome to the Future Seeds podcast. I’m your host cyprian and in this show, I explore groundbreaking solutions to our world’s unique problems by connecting seemingly unrelated fields such as technology, ecology, community and spirituality. The speaker for this episode is Mona green, a certified life coach and neuro linguistic programming practitioner. She had the opportunity to speak for audiences like the US House of Representatives, Harvard and the US Department of State, and has been featured in publications like the Washington Post and Teen Vogue. She was also selected by the Obama administration as a leading change maker in the fight towards gender equality in 2016.

Good evening, Mona. How you doing?

Mona Green 0:49
Hello. Hello, I am wonderful. How are you?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 0:54
Very nice. Let’s tell our audience right now that your official name is Jennifer green, but everyone calls you Mona?

Mona Green 1:00
Yes, yes, yes

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 1:02
We’ll stick to Mona.

So Mona, I’d say you’re a life coach. And your job consists essentially in helping people in editing their story, understanding habitual thought and knowing how to hack that and lead your clients into new ways of thinking that explained that correctly?

Mona Green 1:20
Yeah, I mean, if the general gist of it absolutely. I think the closest thing to describe what it is that I do is probably life coach. But I essentially help people discover what programs their brains are running. And whether those programs are limiting them or helping them and in the case of any limitation, I teach them how to shift those programs and to essentially rewire their brain to a different setting. So it’s it’s a lot of cognitive reframing work, but a lot of storytelling as well.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 1:55
Exactly. And this is why I wanted to interview because Future Seeds little gimmick is “planting a different narrative”

Mona Green 2:03
perfect

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 2:03
editing the story. And so your business school nomis may what’s the deal with the name?

Mona Green 2:10
it came to me the first time I meditated on what to call the business. So that’s what I how I knew that it was right I realized that now muster means the Divinity in me recognizes the Divinity in you, but in my line of work, we teach that the divinity and you can’t recognize divinity outside of you properly unless it recognizes its own divinity first, so I switched the T to an M and brought the focus back on the self a little bit. But you know, things things are shifting the name will stay the same, but my approach to the coaching is shifting dramatically. So I’m excited to chat with you about that. Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 2:56
All right. Let’s talk about that. First of all, what problems and intentions do people come to you with the people who I work with couldn’t be any more different. I have everything from like, the Wall Street guy, to the former Olympian to the magician to the stay at home parent. But the questions are always very similar. They’re all about a specific topic or a specific feeling of being stuck. It can either be, hey, I need help with my career, I’m not really sure where to go from here, or I’m having issues in my relationship where it can be. I checked off all the boxes, my life still doesn’t feel good. I don’t understand why but at the end of the day, it really is just one question and it’s why am I not feeling what I know is available to me. I would say all of those questions go into that one broader one

Yeah right. I saw on your website that you insist on being happy by creating the life you’ve always wanted. And it also says The first step is taking responsibility. Can you explain that a bit?

Mona Green 4:14
Absolutely. I mean, I honestly think that the only thing that really separates us from our childhood and the real meaning of maturity lies and how much personal responsibility you’re willing to take over your life. I think it’s perfectly possible for us to keep the spirit of our inner children alive. You know, that sense of wonder that sense of adventure that beginners mindset about life? Where I think we we benefit a little bit more from the growing up part is really learning either on purpose or not so on purpose, that it is by taking responsibility that we are empowered. If you feel responsible over something, you feel like you’re in a position to affect change. And that’s huge. A lot of the people that I’ve helped one of the biggest mindset changes that we actually work on is specifically that of feeling like life just happening to them, and that they are the victims of their circumstances. And really shifting that belief into one of I am in one way responsible for at least some of the factors that I’m having to deal with right now. What happens if I actually decide to really accept that? And what does responsibility look like moving forward if I want to navigate outside of a situation? Does that make sense?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 5:46
Absolutely. And let’s dig in and see how you actually do that. I know you’re certified in NLP, but you recently told me something really interesting. You said that you were changing the way you were going about coaching and integrating service to community into your recommendations into your teaching. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Mona Green 6:08
Yeah. So I noticed both in my personal experience and in helping guide so many processes for people that you know, there’s, there’s a very noble intention behind this work. You know, those of us who either as coaches or clients jump into this process of unpacking and discovering the self and trying to restructure the self are doing it because they usually want to be better people. What I find a little bit tricky about that, though, is that it can become very easy for us to get a little bit self absorbed in that process of self discovery and self improvement because there’s always something that you can improve on yourself. Right. So I started noticing a trend where it became easier and easier for both the people that I helped but also in my own process for me to stay in my head and constantly be analyzing and shifting and and course correcting and being in that coach mindset all the time, to the point where a lot of what was occurring externally seems to not be a priority anymore. And I had a really beautiful conversation with a friend, maybe three or four months ago and he said something that really stuck with me, which was when your life problems start feeling big, just make your world a little bit bigger. And…

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 7:53
Relativity

Mona Green 7:54
Right and if you think about it, this whole, this whole process is really about becoming a master of perspective and finding perspectives that empower you. But what do you do with that perspective? Why, you know, what’s the point of becoming a better person if to not be more useful? And I’ve been noticed, so I started doing an experiment with some client with all the new clients that have come in through the door, where now, we do the hour of coaching a week that we do normally. But then we also they’re also contractually obligated to give some sort of an hour to some sort of community service. They have the first month to decide what that is. But for those for the first four weeks, they’re actually actively looking for random acts of kindness to perform, to do that exercise of stepping out of their stuff and their and their thinking and their lives. Stepping into bigger community, a bigger sense of self and kind of if we if we were to think of ourselves as like concentric circles, just going a couple of circles out. And interestingly enough, that exercise of stopping the thinking about yourself and engaging in something bigger than yourself, ends up being a huge ally in your own transformation and in the way that you’re dealing with your problems because you come back with a fresh pair of eyes. But more importantly, your hearts been open a little bit, because you feel purposeful.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 9:35
Right, it reminds me a lot about the the emphasis that Tony Robbins puts on contribution and how much he insists on it. I do like your you mentioned of how it opens the heart though.

Mona Green 9:48
It absolutely does. And you know that that needs a exercise that Tony Robbins uses is a common one that I use in my client work because it’s an easy way to break down the why we do what we do. And if you remember what he talks about, contribution being… contribution is one of the needs of the soul, not one of the personality. So you have the first four that have the personality, and then you have contribution and growth as the two needs of the soul. And apparently, as as you’re working your way through life,

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 10:26
for those who don’t know, its certainty, and like safety, uncertainty, like diversity, significance, love connection, growth and contribution.

Mona Green 10:40
Yes, exactly. And I would definitely, if you’re listening to this, check that out, it’s a good just temperature check for where you are, you know, ask yourself, okay, if these six or the six needs that are most important to me, how am I prioritizing them in my life? About that, and then think about what your actions are saying about how you’re really prioritizing them.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 11:07
That’s interesting.

Mona Green 11:09
There’s usually I call it minding the gap, kind of, there’s usually a gap between how we perceive ourselves and how we’re actually showing up. And so I love doing exercises in that way

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 11:21
The gap

Mona Green 11:22
The gap. Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 11:26
Yeah. So that’s really interesting how you added community service to coaching. But you I know, you also mix that with a lot of classical techniques. As your NLP practitioner, you tell us a bit about that and like maybe some of the specific exercises and practice that you recommend to clients?

Mona Green 11:46
Sure. Um, actually, I’d love to talk about because one of the things I’m careful to not do is to frame the coaching discussion just in terms of psychology, because you are more than just your mind, your mind is a part of you as an organism. It’s not exclusively running the show. So I can I can tell you a little bit about the way I approach things. But within that, there will be an explanation as to the why if that’s cool. Yeah. So I read a fascinating book years and years ago called the presence process by a gentleman by the name of Michael Brown. and in it he walked us through how to essentially integrate the different traumas that we experience in our lives. And and how doing that properly can bring a different type of freedom and experience in general to to our everyday And what I one of the things that stuck with me from that book that my continuous research has also then supported is the fact that the most important phases of our development as human beings all happened before, we’re 21 years old. And that to me as a 35 year old adult, sounds kind of crazy, because 21 was a long time ago. I’ve had a whole lot of life since 21. And I feel like I’ve changed a lot. But sitting with that made me realize that a lot of the stuff that we deal with as adults is is just literally unintegrated trauma from our childhood. And so, you have these three phases of development that happened before you’re 21 years old. Each of these three phases corresponds with what I call one of your bodies. You have your emotional body, you have your mental body, and you have your physical body. So each of these phases also lasts roughly seven years. What happens in phase one, okay, so you come out of your mother’s womb, pretty much an emotional being. That’s how you communicate. That’s how you get your needs met, your experience is entirely guided by emotion. You don’t have the mental capacity to contextualize things yet, you’re kind of still, you know, experiencing and gathering data, but not having the proper tools to categorize it or or make much sense of it just yet, that part of your brain hasn’t been fully developed. And that would be your prefrontal cortex and kind of the neocortex the newer part of your brain. So, from zero to seven, what that means is we’re literally Pretty much at the mercy of our environment, which makes us pretty susceptible for trauma. Now trauma doesn’t necessarily have to be something incredibly messed up for it to have a deep, deep impact on your life. It can be something as simple as a comment that one of your parents made when they were angry and you were four years old that you took, and it kind of stayed with you. The problem is because you don’t have the tools to integrate it, it stays inside of your body as almost like an unresolved electrical charge. So as we get a little bit older, and we start then going to school and we start interacting with our peer group, and that part of our brain starts developing at seven through through 14. We do start developing the ability to categorize, judge and organize information. But from seven to 14, we don’t have the experience or the wisdom to know that a lot of the stuff that happens to us isn’t personal. So we acquire even more trauma. So from zero to 14, you’re like the sponge for experiences that are difficult for you to properly integrate. And if you think about it, if something happened to you in that first phase, you might not even have a story for it. Because you may not have even developed the language yet to express what it was that happened to you. But that doesn’t mean that that trauma is not stuck in your body somewhere. Right? So where that first phase was all about the emotional body, the second phase is all about the development of the mental body and the development of the stories about who you are. You know, you talk about narratives all the time. How crazy is it? That we essentially build the narrative about who we are as as people from things that we didn’t choose, essentially between seven and 14 That to me is is pretty bananas. And and the reason I have a job right, so Right, right, because all of that unresolved goo for lack of a better word is still there. So then we move on to the third phase which corresponds with the development of your physical body and the cocktail of hormones, that is puberty. And, and all of a sudden, anything that has not been properly integrated, is is desiring to come out. That’s when we start seeing things like anxiety. That’s when we start seeing things like depression, substance abuse issues, behavioral issues, eating disorders, anything that we as human beings either try to do to sedate or control usually starts popping up at around that age and as a consequence from whatever unresolved issues we still have in our bodies, so I’m the age until you take care of it. Exactly. So for that reason, I think it’s really important in coaching and whatever healing that you decide to do to make room for those three bodies. It’s not just your psychological body that needs to be addressed. If you don’t have a story for what happened to you, how are you going to heal that? So you have to find a way of engaging the mental body, the emotional body, and the physical body. That’s why I’m also a big fan of everything from breathwork, to nutrition, all of that stuff factors into who you are as a person. So it’s a lot more comprehensive than just the psychological discussion, if that makes sense. That was a Awesome, but it’s still like the wanted to specific practices or exercises that you you get clients to do. Sure. Um, let’s see. So, um, I have a really cool exercise that I offer as a workshop, as well, where it’s all about learning how to reframe the conversation with your inner critic. And I think one of the most valuable skills that as a coach, I hope people learn is how to create that distinction between the person that is in their life doing their thing, and the person who is capable of observing themselves while they’re living their life and doing their thing. Right. So if we were using a metaphor, I don’t want you to be the lion in the savanna hunting in the Serengeti. I want you to be the national Geographic photographer that has been tracking that lion for six months, and knows and understands its behavior a little bit better, right? Is that a real threat? That’s a perceived threat. But sometimes the lion doesn’t know the difference. So it’s important to to work out the muscle of the observer self, right? So with this particular tool, I have a six step process by which whenever one of my clients has identified a particular inner critic kind of voice, where they can do the six steps to essentially be friend, their inner critic and redirect the energy anywhere, because the inner critic is just a manifestation of our fear. It’s kind of like that friend who has the greatest of intentions, but sometimes terrible delivery and what they’re saying.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 20:54
That friend,

Mona Green 20:55
yeah, that friend. It doesn’t make them a bad friend. It just makes them Hard to deal with sometimes. And it’s the same thing for for your inner critic. you’ve developed your inner critic as a mechanism to protect yourself. So it’s really teaching people how to in those six steps get curious, ask the right questions and see how to shift the energy from one where you’re feeling like crap to one where you using all of the things that make your inner critic so believable and so good at their job to help you actually generate the complete opposite result. So it’s really cool.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 21:39
Sounds cool.

Mona Green 21:40
Yeah. Yeah. That’s one of my favorites for sure.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 21:46
Yeah, talking about that, is there some you know, classical problems, you know, recurring issues that you see in most of your clients, recurring thoughts. patterns that are common negative ones I’m talking about?

Mona Green 22:03
Yeah, I mean, and this is true for pretty much every living breathing human being on the planet. But I think personal relationships, particularly romantic relationships are a really interesting point of inquiry for just about everybody who comes through the door. And one of the beautiful things that I help my clients with is understanding at the level with which we project our thinking on to the people that we love. And we forget that just because they know us just because they have, we have we may have familiar points of references, doesn’t mean that they inhabit in our brains and in our heart, and it’s never going to be the same point of view. So to expect somebody in your life to be able to read your mind is is a recipe for continued disappointment in your relationships and so one of the things that I work really hard with is helping them realize the depth of projection that we usually arrive to is normal human beings but also that love Love is love is like a room. You can be in love. By making the decision to do that we talked about and I heard this I can’t remember where a couple of weeks ago but it really stuck with me and it was. What is love is this room that you willingly walk into. You can then think about it as you can. Be in love with anybody because it’s you deciding that this is the type of space that you’re going to be in with that person. You can learn how to fight in love, you can learn how to communicate in love. You can learn how to deal with issues or strangers on the streets. In love. It’s a decision that you make, it’s a quality of your consciousness just like purpose is, if you’re present, and loving, you’re essentially doing everything that you need to do. And so it’s really helping people realize that although it can seem scary peak, others will never fully be able to understand you 100%. And that’s what makes life beautiful, but that’s what also creates a lot of the issues that we have. And it’s because we expect them to be able to understand us that way. That understanding is not a prerequisite for love.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 25:05
Right? So you’re saying, one of the most common things you see is this expectation to be understood and disappointment of not being understood. Especially in the area of love,

Mona Green 25:21
of love. Right. And and a lot of people get caught up in this narrative about how unseen the feel, and how sad that is. And that’s totally understandable because that’s what this one of our basic needs to you know, we talked about its significance, we all want to feel like we matter. We all want to feel like the people that we love, actually know who we are. But when you connect with the fact that that’s actually impossible. There’s also a lot of freedom in that. Because then you’re not beholden to what you think you need to be. In order to elicit that love it makes a little little bit easier for you to say Okay, you know what? I’m just a strange flavor of ice cream. And that’s pretty much it and I’m okay with that.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:15
I’m like cucumber ice cream.

Mona Green 26:17
Oh, honey, I’m like a lavender. saffron honey panacotta. Vanilla thing. I don’t know.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:28
That sounds delicious, though.

Mona Green 26:29
Right?

All right, cool. Thanks for the answer. That’s quite interesting. not what I expected. Very interesting.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 26:42
Can you tell us in the last five years, what new belief behavior or habit has most improved your life?

Mona Green 26:53
I have two. I just decided that in order to allow for magic in your life, you have to believe it. So that if you have a filter, through which you see reality that is full of everything that’s wrong, it’s probably all you’re going to see. But if you make that decision, kind of like making that decision to be in love in that loving state, your life will start reflecting that and you will get a cast of characters that you could have never imagined the set of circumstances, all these incredible chapters unfolding in a magical way just because you made the decision that there’s more to life than waking up and going to work. And then getting home and turning on the TV and doing the whole rinse and repeat and going mindlessly through through things. I felt like I understood that as a kid, I felt like I progressively started losing that in college. And into the earlier part of my career. And within the last five years, that belief has really come back and come back strong. And because of that, it the ride just keeps getting sweeter. And I keep feeling the older I get, the more irreverent and disobedient I get, but in a responsible way, because it’s it’s it’s just more fun. There’s more cheekiness

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 28:27
You’re on the magic carpet.

Mona Green 28:29
Well, exactly. And I’m driving. So how much fun is that? So that’s one and the other one really is just understanding through empirical observation, the importance of things like your diet, and your emotional state. Things like how you exercise your mood, your body and your emotional state. You know, I think I’ve tried every modality under the sun when it comes to alternatives for healing and integration or whatever it is because I’m a very curious person. And, you know, to be frank, I’ve had a lot of difficulties to kind of overcome within that process. But the minute that my diet and exercising started coming from that place of actually wanting to nourish and take care of and steward rather than, oh my god, I gotta count count these calories because I need to look like this. I started realizing that by shifting that belief, it was easier for me to be kinder to myself, it was like my brain was shifting right along with what I was consuming. So consumption is a direct input into whatever output you’re trying to generate. So to be really careful about what you’re inputting into your body.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 30:03
Right. What What is it that you? What is it that touches you that reaches you in this job? Why do you do this?

Mona Green 30:11
I mean, it’s it’s humbling. It is humbling to listen to somebody at times, ask and answer some of life’s most difficult questions with you by their side. Because it takes a lot of courage. And it’s not easy and people are literally allowing me to go into the depths of their soul. Sometimes I get to hear information that they haven’t even allowed to share with themselves out loud. So it’s it’s a privilege. And it feels just very humbling and honoring that I’m afforded that privilege by my clients. But that’s like the beginning of the most beautiful process, which is literally to see somebody, little by little just lose their crap. And start the like, people start looking different. And they start noticing different things in their environment. And all of a sudden, you know, that thing that they were thinking about when they were 16 that they never gave themselves permission to do they’re like, whatever I’m doing it I signed up for a salsa dancing class. What? Amazing. So it’s like you, you you literally see what happens when you just hold the space for somebody to feel safe enough to ask those questions and where they feel supported. Enough, and they don’t feel alone. And when do you believe in them? The best thing that you can do for a person is just to believe in them. I mean, listen to me, dude, I’m about to start crying right now. Just think. No, seriously because we have so much information bombarded at us on a daily basis that literally creates this narrative of unworthiness on so many different levels.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 32:33
The unworthiness.

Mona Green 32:35
Yeah, it’s an epidemic. It’s our whole economic system is based on selling us our unworthiness. If we are unworthy, but we buy this thing, maybe we’ll be a little more worthy and that’s how you know this this cycle of unhappiness and unworthiness has been perpetuated. It’s like, please think

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 33:00
Do you think it’s a problem of our age? More than it? Do you think it’s more present than was 1000 2000 years ago?

Mona Green 33:11
I do. I do because our needs are different than they were 2000 years ago. You know, when when you had to worry and spend all day working to find shelter, food. Nobody had time to sit down and think about the bigger picture. You’re trying to just feed yourself and survive right with, with the agrarian Revolution and the change that we started seeing in the way that we not only lived but then created community. Then you start seeing the need for more psychological needs, as our psyche and brain got more sophisticated. So did our problems.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 34:02
So you think unworthiness is a feeling that comes from your place in the community?

Mona Green 34:09
I think unworthiness is is I mean, it that’s a it’s a multi layered issue, I think. I think our society makes it very easy for us to feel unworthy because the word discussion is usually tied to things like how much money you’re making, how much impact you’re having, what you look like, how old you are. And all of these things that place your sense of worth, in an external factor that you have no control over a lot of the time. But if you do have control over it, and you build a life around trying to like achieve that, and then achieve that and still don’t have that sense of worthiness, then you really like whoa, then then what happens and that’s when people usually come And start doing this work with me.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 35:04
So you think it’s also a, there’s a correlation between our age and time making people feel unworthy and the fact that since the 80s, there is more and more and more life coaches?

Mona Green 35:19
Oh, absolutely. I mean, coaching is the biggest, the fastest growing industry after tech. And the United States for a reason.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 35:27
I didn’t know that.

Mona Green 35:28
Yeah, yeah. And it’s and it’s because I think we’re waking up to the fact that the system that we have built is no longer serving us, or sustainable. sure we’re more connected than ever. We’re hyper connected. I don’t even know people who go to the bathroom without their phone anymore. So sure, we’re connected in this very superficial sense, but we forgotten what it’s like to actually be human and connect and and feel held and supported and in community with it. Like, our society has also made it easy for us to focus on a particular set of neural transmitters rather than others we’re addicted to dopamine for example, you know that like that you get on Facebook or at or that achievement high that you get when you achieve something that’s That’s dope I mean, we are addicted to dopamine we get our everything about how our society has been designed, and our technology mirrors that is geared towards achievement and doing and doing and doing so then what happens to other feel good hormones. That used to be a very prevalent part of our experiences older simpler times, like the oxytocin or the serotonin that you get more from being in community. They both feel good, but we’re completely imbalanced in in which ones were chasing Because of what we’re being fed from a messaging standpoint every day

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 37:04
crash course in neurology and psychology, so is that how it’s meant to, to work with the current state of science that we’re meant to be balanced? And the amount of oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine that we get.

Mona Green 37:18
I mean, there are many other ones actually, Simon Sinek has a fantastic talk about this. I think it’s called why leaders eat last. So I would check that out if you can, but I think you get to decide what your magic mix of them is. But I think as a responsible adult, you also get to the privilege of observing what your actions are telling you about where you currently stand in that mix. If you’re a type A personality, if you have if you suffer for perfectionism, if you if things have to be scheduled, then Chances are, you’re probably running that dopamine a little bit higher than than some of the other ones that could make you feel more at ease and equally as satisfied just in a different way. So it’s, it’s, again, informing yourself and empowering yourself through that exercise of observation. So that then you can make an educated call. Because if you’re not informed about what is potentially brewing underneath your hood, how are you going to make an educated call? If you don’t even know where you stand? How do you know how to chart your course?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 38:36
bit of a tricky question, but what are bad recommendations you hear in your professional area of expertise?

Mona Green 38:48
that’s that that’s

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 38:56
Come on, let it go.

Mona Green 38:57
I think about this Often So, believe it or not, I have more than one thing that I’d like to say about this topic. I’m just trying to think of what it what would be most useful, or what’s most alive right now. One of the things that I notice a lie has to do with the process of real integration, right. One of the other biggest truths that I’ve really come to terms with the last five years is that simple doesn’t necessarily equal easy, or that easy, doesn’t mean simple. Just because something is easy to understand doesn’t mean that it’s that there is an easy way of applying it in your life. and I think a lot of the coaching approach that I’ve seen in all areas, you know, spiritual coaches, business coaches, or whatever. There’s a lot of theory and there isn’t a lot of emphasis on embodiment of that theory. I’ve come across a lot of programs that are very information heavy and very practice light. How do I actually put into practice these things that I know where where’s the dojo? Where do I go and actually train for this life? Of course, but is there a method is there a methodology or a way where I can willingly and proactively infuse this theory into my everyday life because I hear a lot of breakthroughs on the mental level back to our previous discussion, like the mental body gets a lot of attention, but like How is that registering in your other bodies? You can under you can’t think your way out of a problem you acted your way into for 30 years, you got to think and act your way out of it. And it’s got to feel good for it to be a long lasting change. So you have to evolve those three bodies. And I think that a lot of the coaching I see, again, is is very mental body focused. Also, achievement focused, meaning the deliverable, the dopamine hit, and not so much more of that functional, holistic. What does it look like in practice in your life, not in my life, in your life? What does getting your needs met actually look like? How can we make you practice that? So the practice component I think, is really missing.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 42:00
Yeah, okay, thanks. I want to come back to our conversation on storytelling and story editing. myself have tried a few things in my life. And I know of a few things I heard recently, this cool podcast was talking about a book written by Dr. Timothy Wilson, the social psychologist, and the book is called redirect the surprising new science of psychological change. And it talks about a whole range of techniques and story editing. This is division from from the book, the set of techniques designed to redirect people’s narratives about themselves in the social world in a way that leads to lasting changes in behavior. And the interview was amazing, but one that stayed in my mind is clinical psychology was getting really interested in that field and not only that, but the whole Science is actually linked with epigenetics. For those who don’t know, epi means surrounding. So it’s the layer that surrounds your DNA. And it basically defines which of your genes are being expressed and your lifestyle effects that layer around your DNA, clinical psychology, getting really interested in that field that it experiments on students and their exams to see how efficient it is. We all know. We all know how the placebo effects is hardly understood, but some studies that came out recently show how the strength of your belief affects this strength of the placebo effect. Tony Robbins argues and insists over and over give a different meaning to your past and your present experience and empowering meaning, and even techniques such as the Buddhist Vipassana meditation teaches you to scan your body And don’t jump into this interpretation, that sensation giving negative interpretation that turns into a negative thought. And you create that story because you had this weird feeling in your body saying for Chi Kung meditations and also have tried family constellations which actually put you into either a situation in which you can relive a particular situation to give it a different meaning. This has been a lot of that stuff. Maybe this this sounds like you there’s actually quite ancient traditions that give incredible emphasis on storytelling and story editing. Very famous figures like Julius Caesar were very known to control the narrative. And more recently, there’s so much writing from Goebbels, I don’t know how to pronounce that, the propaganda master of Hitler, and how he was controlling the narrative and story Telling to create a particular effect on the population. And this is one on on segway and link. And I want to get into this topic, what’s the link between individual narrative and global narrative? I want you to Yeah, get into this conversation with me and see if we can get some interesting bits.

Mona Green 45:23
I love this. Okay. I mean, they’re inextricably linked for sure. I think the epigenetic portion of things is particularly interesting in the context, for example, that you’re talking about Hitler as well, some of the research that has been done. I think it was on earthworms. Which doesn’t seem like a great example. But we’re heading to the to the place where we will be getting more data on what happens with humans as well, but that those that suffered some sort of trauma passed on that particular genetic sequencing and information up to 12 generations after that initial traumatizing event happened. Now if we take that in the context of what you were just taking, talking about, and focus on the conversation more generally and historically, and we look at what happened, for example, with the Holocaust. And and that being a very well known story that we’re all telling, and that we know to be true. And a lot of people also assuming this, this attitude about it, oh, we, you know, we should move on. That’s history. It’s gone or whatever. But understanding what we do know between the epigenetic link of how trauma is passed down from generation to generation, and how Particularly communities have shared trauma that tells us a lot about how we also have behaved in an almost tribal mentality in many different instances in our in our history as well. You know, like, the Holocaust may not be happening anymore, but the consequences of it are still being felt in the babies of the babies, of the people that were a part of that. And that’s the reality that we have to make space for, in our thinking, as well as we think about how to tackle our societal issues, how to build stronger communities, because we can’t ignore trauma if we’re wanting to build safe and secure societies. So the individual manifestation of whatever It is and the individual process informs the the bigger societal one in the sense that, you know, you’re you’re a thread in that bigger textile. And if you become a thread that is responsible enough to clean, clean, whatever it is that you can, you’re at least ensuring that your bloodline might not have to deal with some of the same things that you and your ancestors did.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 48:26
Absolutely. It’s a very complex problem myself. My grandfather was in camps during the war and his whole family went through that and it’s also part of my story at the moment. I live in Australia, and narrative and the story around the genocide of indigenous is palpable. And it’s, you know, one of my girlfriends is a CEO of an NGO here working with indigenous kids helping them to get off get off the street through musical expression and It’s It’s It’s incredible to see how global stories global narrative and actions and the colonization of the British Empire here and how they didn’t recognize their actions for a long time and still sometimes don’t affect individual stories and generations of them generations of indigenous kids now. It’s hard. It’s done, but it’s hard to have one of those children to change it. Individual story without the global story. You know, Australia recognizing what happened. It’s so linked.

Mona Green 49:37
Yeah, absolutely. I had a very similar observation. I did some, some work with the Navajo tribe here in the US earlier last year, and I had one of the most humbling moments of my life where I realized how privileged I was. Because some of the things that these kids were dealing with on an everyday basis were things that I couldn’t even imagine having to go through. And they were living through it, because they there is nothing, there is no sense of there particularly being anything super, super wrong, because that’s all that their population has known for so long. They’ve been used to being treated like crap by the government. They’re used to being overlooked. So it’s almost like it’s expected and it doesn’t register as being unfair. At a subconscious level, when their sense of self kicks in when you start, you know, poking a little bit, and you see, yeah, that is messed up and that fire and that sense of justice is very much still there, and very alive but you also have to understand that one of the biggest coping mechanisms that colonial alized peoples could adopt was just to put their head down and not rock the boat and just take it and it’s all the more all the more reason for us to also just start being more honest about where we are all the more reason for people like you and people like me who just by virtue of looking the way that we do have privilege in the world. All the more reason for us also use our platforms not to get up and pontificate on the top of the mountain say, Hey, I realized this thing and look at me how woke I am. You know what, let’s give the mic you give the microphone to an Aboriginal activists. I’ll give the microphone to an indigenous person here and putting other people’s narratives and stories at the forefront of the discussion. Because we lack that perspective, we can’t course correct the general one if we don’t even know what’s going on.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 52:08
But have you had the actual opportunity to witness the the impact effect of a global narrative being recognized or edited a bit, and the effect it has on the whole community and individual persons that can be?

Mona Green 52:26
Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen it here in the United States with race relations. I mean, the civil rights movement didn’t happen that long ago. And that is still very present in the societal fabric of this country right now. Look at look at the prison system. Look at the economic segregation look at the disenfranchisement of communities of color. Were still colonizing we’re just doing it economically and under the guise of capitalism selling people on this dream that doesn’t really exist anymore. And I think it’s irresponsible for us to continue doing that. Now that said, I would like to though also illustrate something positive that is happening in the world. Look at look at one one little girl from Sweden, named gretta Thun Berg, I think that’s for her last name is doing for the global narrative about climate change. And that’s one kid. So, let us not also think that just because we’re one we don’t matter, everything matters because we’re all tied together.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 53:52
Right. I do think that people in power actually masters at storytelling.

Mona Green 54:01
Oh, absolutely.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 54:02
Mainstream media is just doing that sending messages every day all day, and telling us which story they want us to listen to, and to believe in. And particularly, it’s full of negative messages. And that’s why, in at least in this podcast, I’m trying to have a series of interviews that send positive messages with actual solutions. But what do you think? How can we actually participate in re editing that narrative that’s going around the world?

Mona Green 54:38
That’s like my favorite question, because that’s the question I’ve been asking myself for the last three months and literally the direction where I’m taking them as men moving forward. And it has everything to do with understanding that there is nothing more powerful. seductive than joy?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 55:03
Hmm.

Mona Green 55:05
People usually don’t like getting involved with issues because they feel heavy or community service because they associate it with being boring. What if we can make not only the process of getting to know yourself better, but also the process of becoming a more active and proactive community member. Sexy and joyful and fun. What if activism doesn’t have to take on the anger? What is activism can look like? For example, I went to a protest downtown LA a couple of weeks ago to protest the banks funding the five companies that are in charge of 80% of the destruction of the Amazon right now. It’s literally five companies and so we went, you know we did. We didn’t go in like yell at anybody Yeah, sure we had megaphones or whatever. We dance. We partied. We made noise. But it was joyful. And it felt good. And it felt purposeful and community oriented. And I loved being able to look around and seeing people from all ages and backgrounds involved. Because, yes, there’s a lot of heaviness in our world. But we’re actually really good about figuring out what to do when we simply stop focusing on the stuff that doesn’t matter. And we start focusing on the stuff that does. And if we can make that fun, then we can enroll the best minds on the planet to help with these issues. So I think our biggest homework assignment right now is to get people to start asking the right questions of themselves and of how they can contribute, and to get creative about how they can make that fun in their lives. Because we didn’t we didn’t come here to not have a good time. We literally live in Eden. Are we screwing it up pretty badly? Yeah, but we have the most beautiful planet ever. Like this place is paradise. What are we thinking not enjoying this. This is ridiculous.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 57:29
I agree. I totally agree reminds me and we seek a geek or he’s like, if God came back on Earth, he’d be like, what did you do? Brown who shit over the poor bears.

Mona Green 57:44
I love that. But Oh, that reminds me and I will also say this. I have a lot of hope because I’m starting to see also that the education system is skewing more in the direction at least in the US. of Developing compassion, empathy, these things, you know

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 58:06
I think I’d like to give you a few seconds. minute. If you’d like to say something to our listeners, something that has to do with your line of work, something that has to do with making people happy and living the life they want.

Mona Green 58:26
One of the biggest comments I get when I’m starting this process with somebody new, and we’re doing that process of taking apart the story of who they’ve been. One of the most common phrases I hear is, yeah, but I’m just like that or I’ve always been like that. And if that happens to be a phrase that comes out of your mouth often my call to action for you listener today is to really sit with what ever comes after that phrase. Because you are more than your habitual thoughts, you are more than your habitual actions and you have everything that you need to start shifting even the things about yourself that you believe to be just totally ingrained inside of you. I’ve seen it in myself. I’ve seen it in the people that I help and all it requires is a healthy dose of courage. So open that door, start asking those questions and get ready for the ride.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 59:41
Wow Did you hear that everybody if you want more discussions more help from Mona it’s on three W dot nomis men calm and thank you so much for this conversation. wanna thank you.

Mona Green 59:55
Thank you. pleasure talking to you brother

Cyprien (FutureSeeds) 59:58
pleasure talking to you.

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