Revenue Diaries Entry 83

This week is all about the voices in our heads. Yep... the head trash. It’s bacccckkkkk.

I’ve got two things for you on this Sunday.

First, I’m launching something new: a Head Trash podcast. Episode one is with Caitlin Allen, who ghosted me on LinkedIn ten years ago (more on that in a second). If you are interested in joining, respond to this email. Let me know!

Second, I’m sharing how meditation finally clicked for me after years of downloading apps and never opening them again.

I didn’t plan for these two to land in the same week, but they’re basically the same story. Caitlin has spent decades collecting tools to handle the voice in her head. I’ve spent the last six weeks sitting with mine around a campfire. (Sounds weird. I’ll explain.)

♥️ kyle

On Meditation and Inner Work that Works

I’ll never forget that week during COVID where I looked myself in the mirror and said, “Hey. I know you’ve been thinking about meditation. Pandemic. School canceled. Work a mess. There isn’t a better time to learn.” 

Downloaded the Headspace app. Used it twice. Never clicked on it again. 

And I’ve been lost ever since, well before I discovered Michael Brabant and his recommendations.

I’m now in the sixth week of the Presence Process by Michael Brown, and it’s pretty crazy enlightening. The book asks you to sit twice a day for 15 minutes, once in the morning and once at night. 

It’s only 30 minutes total a day, but it’s intense. The best part? It worked.

So, I thought I would share what made it work for me in hopes that it will help you if you’ve ever considered meditation.dfssf

The hardest part is definitely the act of meditating over the first couple of days because my mind was a party. Everyone talking at once… it was deafening. 

And my “everyone” are my “parts.”

If you’ve read the entry where I discuss my parts (the IFS stuff), you know I’ve been trying to have a better relationship/conversation with the voices in my head. And those voices weren't quiet when I first started the process. 

“Your back hurts. What about that doc you were supposed to review last night? What is someone walks in the room? This is stupid. This is never going to work. Why do you keep doing this to yourself? Weren’t you supposed to work out this morning? Instead, you are meditating? Did Mark respond on Slack? What about that email?”

Shame. Dubious questioning. Doubt. And on, and on it goes. 

Sound familiar?

So here’s what finally worked: 

I’ve learned I need to set the stage in the first three to five minutes. If I skip that part, my brain wanders aimlessly. 

The first 3-5 minutes are setting the stage. In the book, Michael Brown encourages you to focus on five breaths. Breathe through your nose with your mouth closed. 

Recite the following words with each breath, “I’M HERE NOW IN THIS.” I’m. Here. Now. In. This. 

Whenever your mind wanders to doubt, self-preservation, work to do, etc. You focus back on the saying, “I’m here now in this.” 

Once I got into a rhythm with the saying, I started focusing on building a fire. 

Yep, in my head. I imagine picking up a piece of wood. Then another. Stacking them like kindling. Slowly lighting the fire. Hearing the wood snap as the flames lick the bark. My face slowly warming. Around the fire is a semicircle of rocks fashioned into seats. 

Those seats slowly fill with my parts, sitting around the fire. Eventually they all show up. And if my mind wanders, I pull it back with: “I’m. Here. Now. In. This.” 

I look to my left through the firelight; there’s the anxious leader and father. And to the right? There’s my six-year-old self. And sitting next to him, is Kyle at 14. And over the top of flames, I see post-college Kyle at 25, the worrying father, and the driven executive.

They are all there. And then we talk. 

Probably sounds a little woo-woo. I know. But it gives all the parts in my head somewhere to go to chat. And it’s calmed my mind significantly since I started listening. 

And when you listen to the child, to the parts that have been running your life unimpeded for decades, you will start unlocking memories you haven’t thought about in 20-30 years. And they’re vivid. 

I’m standing in my old bedroom at my parents’ house. Or I’m back on a family vacation as a teenager, and I can feel what it felt like to be that kid.

Some of it’s good. Some of it’s hard. Honestly, “bad” isn’t the right word. It’s just... a lot.

And it’s starting to connect the dots. From that kid to my anxiety. From that kid to the imposter syndrome I’ve written about here more times than I can count. From that kid to how I show up for my own kids.

It’s been overwhelming. It’s also been the most useful thing I’ve done for myself in a long time.

You should do it. :) 

I’m not a therapist. I’m just a marketing leader who finally figured out what works for me tl not control my head trash, but evolve it. It’s almost like I’m recycling my inner pain into energy to embrace the present and the future. 

So, ofc I think you should try it. Here’s were I would start: 

Start with Outshining Trauma by Ralph De La Rosa. It’s the best introduction to parts work I’ve found (thanks to Michael Brabant for recommending), and it blends IFS with meditation in a way that actually makes sense. I’ve read it three times. Spend real time with it.

Then, if you want to go deeper, pick up The Presence Process. Fair warning: it’s heavy. It took me a while to get into. But it’s the thing that finally made the practice stick.

And when you sit down, build the fire first.

The voices are still going to show up. The question is whether you give them a seat.

On Episode 1: Caitlin Allen

I’ve been writing and talking about head trash for a while now. I even recently spent some time defining it. Why? The more I write about my own head trash, the more I want to know how other people are handling theirs.

Introducing a new Revenue Diaries podcast: Head Trash

15-20 minutes with someone I admire, talking about the voice in their head and their tips to working with the bullshit in their head. And the prompt is pretty simple: 

• When you hear the term 'head trash,' what's the first thing that comes to mind? How do you actually experience that voice, impostor syndrome or whatever you'd call it?

• What's something you actually do (a habit, a rule, a weird trick) when that voice gets loud?

• Can you think of a recent time (this month, this year) when it hit you? What was going on, and what did you do about it?

But this endeavor is more selfish than anything else. I said it in the first episode: my biggest fear is that my kids will take everything I carry and won't know how to handle it. Every one of these conversations is me collecting tools I can hand down.

And like Revenue Diaries, this show is produced by the brilliant team at Share Your Genius, who make the collecting of stories easier than it should be. 

Interest in being a guest? Just respond to this email. I’m looking for inspiration! 

Alright, time for episode numero uno. 

On August 29, 2016, I sent Caitlin a LinkedIn message. We were both marketers at venture capital firms. She was at a16z, and I was at the now defunct OpenView, and I wanted to grab coffee. She replied. We traded a couple of emails. Unfortunately, the coffee never happened and I forgot about it until Caitlin brought it up a couple of weeks ago. 

Now, she is officially my first guest on Head Trash. I asked her how it felt to be episode one, and she said she was feeling a little imposter syndrome. Then she told me what really happened back in 2016:

"I ghosted your request on LinkedIn because in my head, my head trash was, 'Oh, God, I don't want him to realize I shouldn't have this role.'"

And there you go, that’s why we are doing this show.

Caitlin is SVP of Marketing at Simbe. She describes herself as a wife, "a mother who is technically a stepmom," and the daughter of two type A perfectionists: one a world-renowned Bible teacher, the other a world-renowned brain and ear surgeon. She rides horses to help deal with the head trash. She's is also one of the best storytellers I know. And for 27 years, she lived with an eating disorder.

Head trash is an old identity

I asked Caitlin what comes to mind when she hears "head trash." Her answer was ON POINT:

"...old identity that was either given to me or that I accepted about myself before I knew better, and it's no longer allowed to be part of who I am, so it just needs to be handled."

For her, it shows up as worrying about what other people think. Heart pounding. Head rushing. And then she apologizes, "literally saying, 'I'm sorry,'" or shrinking herself some other way.

Thoughts become things

"I'm a big believer that thoughts become things, Kyle."

By things she means feelings, actions, identity. And so she has a set way to deal with the thoughts around three main tactics: 

1. Self-talk: "God, we're so mean to ourselves," she said. Her fix is to talk to herself like a friend would, with reminders like "my feelings aren't facts" and "this happens to all high performers."

2. Tell Someone else: Caitlin and her husband have coffee together every morning from 5:00 to 6:00. They FaceTime it when she's traveling and they're in the same time zone. That hour is where things get surfaced, because saying it out loud "brings truth to the light of like how crazy they are." 

3. She takes the focus off herself: Gratitude, time with people she admires, anything that points her attention outward: "We tend to drive towards what we're looking at on the road, right?"

Twenty-seven years

Highly recommend you listening to the entire episode because this story is better served in her voice: 

"If you have a problem for 27 years, like at some point I actually thought it was just who I was."

She'd done the work for decades. Inpatient treatment centers. Therapists. It got a little better and never fully went away. Then she and her husband started looking at wedding rings. Getting married meant becoming a mom, and she'd always wanted to avoid that. She was scared and so she asked her journal one question: "Why do I think something's wrong with me?"

And she answered herself: "The only reason you believe something's wrong with you is 'cause that's what you keep telling yourself."

She still got chills telling me about it. So did I because it shows that all the work… the decades of investing in herself paid off. Her true presence told her the truth. I told her I had my own version of that moment with alcohol two and a half years ago, and I'm still learning the same lesson she is. Nobody here is broken or needs fixing. It's an evolution.

First name called

Evolution means constant change no matter what. The struggle is never really over. Caitlin still feels it. She just has better tools now. 

The week we recorded Simbe had a big company announcement, they were at four conferences, and Caitlin was booked for a live interview with a major retail influencer, streamed to the host's audience. She usually keeps notes nearby, her safety blanket. 

But this one was live.

So she focused her attention elsewhere. The host had become a friend, and they care about the same thing: humans need to be in the lead, not in the loop. The host had also started her own business about six months earlier, and Caitlin cares a lot about female entrepreneurship. She focused on all of that. 

And it worked. It helped push the confidence that was there. It was just buried. And Caitlin served up the WHY better than anyone I’ve heard: 

“I'm a big believer that confidence comes from repetition, nothing more."

The last thing Caitlin said on the episode was simple: "I just think this is something everyone struggles with." That's why the show exists.

The full conversation with Caitlin is about 20 minutes. Listen on YouTube or Spotify, and if it hits home, send it to someone who needs it. More episodes are coming soon.