In our journey toward personal growth and self-discovery, a profound realization often emerges: each of us harbors the innate ability to overcome the critical voice within our heads. This inner voice, often filled with judgment and self-doubt, can be a significant barrier to living a peaceful and intentional life. In a recent conversation with Anita Tomecki, a human behavior expert, we discussed the transformative power of understanding and managing this inner dialogue. The unique perspective shared in this discussion emphasizes that we have what it takes within us to overcome the voice in our heads, live without judgment, and reshape the mental programs that define us.
The inner voice is a constant companion, guiding our thoughts and actions. However, it's essential to recognize that this voice is not always our ally. As Anita points out, understanding this voice's origins and functions can be a game-changer. Our inner dialogue is shaped by various mental programs formed during our early childhood. By identifying and understanding these programs, we can learn to navigate our thoughts more effectively and diminish the negative impact of self-judgment.
Anita explains that there are over 120 mental programs that influence our behavior and personality. These programs, developed in the first seven years of our lives, can have lasting effects on how we perceive ourselves and interact with the world. For example, a person praised for being cheerful as a child might become an extreme extrovert, constantly seeking approval and validation. By recognizing these patterns, we can begin to understand why we react the way we do and start making conscious changes to live more balanced and fulfilling lives.
A pivotal aspect of personal growth is embracing self-responsibility. Anita emphasizes that our reactions are our own choices, shaped by our mental programs. By shifting our perspective from blaming external circumstances to taking ownership of our responses, we empower ourselves to make meaningful changes. This shift from external blame to internal responsibility is crucial for overcoming the inner voice and fostering healthier relationships and self-perception.
Living without judgment is a liberating concept that can transform our interactions and inner peace. According to Anita, judgment is a reflection of our own internal conflicts. When we judge others, we project our unresolved issues onto them. By cultivating an understanding and compassionate mindset, we can reduce our tendency to judge and instead seek to understand. This shift not only enhances our relationships but also contributes to a more peaceful and contented state of mind.
To begin this transformative journey, Anita recommends several practical steps:
Embracing the journey to overcome the inner voice and live without judgment is a powerful step toward personal growth and a more peaceful life. By understanding and reshaping the mental programs that influence us, we unlock our potential for authentic and intentional living. Remember, each of us has the strength within to navigate this path and transform our lives.
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Kelly Berry (00:00): Hi and welcome back to Life Intended. I'm your host, Kelly Berry. Life Intended is a podcast that explores what it means to be true to yourself and live an authentic and purposeful life. Each episode explores my guest's version of personal growth, self-discovery, and the pursuit of becoming the best version of themselves, as well as how to find the joy in the journey. Today, I'm really excited to be talking to Anita Tomecki.
Anita works as a human behavior expert. She's a speaker and a coach. She's also certified in NLP, is a master of integral semantics theory, Enneagram personality typing, and works with people to facilitate the change they are usually not even aware is required to live the life they long for. She has a particular passion for relationship dynamics and the unconscious human behavior that often gets in the way of success in all relationships. She has a saying, "The greatest relationship of your life is the one with you and is the key to success in all areas of life. Once you can realize this, then anything is possible." Thank you so much for joining me today, Anita. I'm happy to have you here and excited for our conversation.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (01:18): Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So thank you for inviting me. Looking forward to this.
Kelly Berry (01:23): Yeah, definitely. Great, me too. So tell everyone a little bit about yourself. I know probably the first question everybody asks you is, what is a human behavior expert? What does that look like and what do you do? So tell us a little bit about that.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (01:40): Yeah, so I work as a human behavior expert. And what that means is the kind of the shortest, quickest way I have of describing this is it's all around, you know, working with people to help them understand the voice in their head. So I know we're going to focus a lot, you know, in this conversation around the self-talk and the judgment voice. So as I work with people, we start to become experts of that voice in our head. So we start to understand how and why we learned to talk to, to even start talking to ourselves and, you know, more in-depthly on exactly why we run the programs that we do in our mind. Yeah. So I work with people on 120 different programs that run in our minds. And what we do within this work is we look to establish which are the main drivers, which programs. An example of that would be, you know, as simple as, are you an extrovert or are you an introvert? Is your mind driven by positivity and extraversion? Is it driven by negativity or pessimism? Yeah, one example. And so what we do within that work, 120 programs, that's just two. And so what we do within this work is if we're extremely on the extroverted side and it's actually exhausting us a bit now, we don't really have much access to worst case scenario pessimism, then we're looking to why we chose extraversion in childhood.
These programs are all formed in the first seven years of our lives. And what may happen for an extrovert is they were valued and praised for being the happy child, for being the excitable child, for being the child that was always, you know, making people laugh, happy. And so they got love from that. So they learned to program themselves with that and tell themselves that it's not okay to not be positive. And then they're now in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and they're still running this optimism that is maybe not serving as much. Maybe it would be useful to be able to lean into a bit of worst case, you know, we're making decisions, just saying yes to everything, maybe being a bit of a people pleaser wanting to be liked and you know, all the rest of it in that sense. So we're working to identify the key driver programs, there's usually around 10 of them, that make up our personality and that we are, you know, inflexible in.
Kelly Berry (03:42): Thank you. So who do you work with mostly?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (04:02): So I work with, so I also say anyone that wants to understand that voice in their head, I work with. I don't say that I have a niche, so I work with men, I work with women, I work with people in their 20s, I have clients in their 70s. So anyone, you know, I don't have any limits on that apart from I don't work with younger children in the sense that anyone pays me, but when I'm around young kids, they're usually getting something from me, whether they like it or not, because I'm just fascinated, you know, especially seeing that's the age where we really started to form this stuff. So for me, it's really interesting to be around my friends and their kids and just watching the dynamics play out and really seeing how no one taught us how to understand our own mind. So a lot of the time when I see parents with their children, and this is said with complete compassion, there's stuff playing out that is so, you know, not being understood within that child because no one taught us how to question ourselves, let alone question what might be going on for that child as we call them naughty. You know, terrible twos, you know, they're just teenagers. All of these, you know, phrases that we have. But what we do is we kind of just write them off as an age thing rather than going, what's actually going on for you right now? I really want to understand what's happening rather than naughty steps and, you know, not saying that there's, you know, not judging anyone for this, but there's so much depth that we are missing in understanding each other in general, whether that's as kids or as grownups, as adults.
Kelly Berry (05:31): Yeah, I need you to come follow me around. I have a two-year-old. So I need you to follow me around and help me understand what's going on. And I was talking to somebody else the other day. We do know so much more now that we have so much more access to information. There's a lot of resources. But at the same time, there's so much information. It's hard to know what to do, what's right. And so it feels like there's a lot at stake when you want to raise and develop the best human and try not to give them problems down the road just because we do have more information, but it is complex, I feel like, for sure.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (06:14): I hear you on that and you know the way that I look at it with a two-year-old it's going to be more difficult because they're nonverbal so it is more guesswork but the more work that we do on ourselves individually now the less angry we're going to get with them the less frustrated we're going to be the more peaceful we're going to be and that energy then will reflect back and forth between the nonverbals once the child becomes verbal at that point I would say it's as simple as constantly inquiring into what's happening for them because I know what you mean there's so much out there but it's so simple like if I could you know give any you know phrase to anyone in this world that's having problems in their relationships whether it's romantic with their kids people at work is sitting down and going I really want to understand what's happening for you right now and that is the simplicity of it it's that simple so all of that stuff out there that we get overwhelmed by it just bring it back to seeking first to understand. That's the key to success in every relationship, any relationship.
Kelly Berry (07:16): Yeah, that's great. Thank you for All right, to me, it sounds you know, I don't know if you relate this topic. Is it like in the mental health field? So is that kind of how you work with people over a period of time? What does that look like?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (07:33): So what it starts off as is I do a minimum of a three-month program with people. So that's six sessions every two weeks. And what I say with this, the most important part is the two weeks in between the sessions. So no one leaves a session without some homework. So what are you taking away from this session? What are you gonna do over the next two weeks? So the most important part is the embodiment. So I don't want to have clients for 20 years. I was in therapy for eight years. I don't mind them coming in and out, but I don't want to be seeing anyone weekly for eight years like I was. I want to know that they're walking away from sessions with stuff to make this stuff embodied. So it's a minimum of three months. So some people stay for that three months. Most people, you know, you want to get a year out of it really. I would, you know, I always recommend it's up to people whether they stay longer. But I've had some clients, I mean, my longest client was four years. I've got some around the two-year mark is pretty normal at the moment. The recommendation would be a year for people but if they just want the three months then there's the three-month as a minimum.
Kelly Berry (08:36): Okay. Great. And then some of the other specialties that you, I guess, certifications, areas that you work in, tell us a little bit NLP, what role that plays in it, or the integral semantics. Just speak to some of the other things that you work with people on.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (08:59): Yeah. So when we look at NLP, so what NLP is, neuro-linguistic programming, it's all around understanding exactly how we do our thinking and exactly how that translates into feeling and exactly how our thinking and feeling then translates into our reactions or responding if we're a bit more advanced in it. And so a great example of this is, say you have two people, and they are witnessing the same incident. So you've got two people, two friends, you're in a cafe and you watch an incident play out in front of you. So it may be that the waiter comes over to you and they are a little bit flustered and they've messed up your order, let's say. And they come over and they've brought it over and it's the wrong thing. How those people react to that isn't always the same. So you may get one of those people being really angry. You're disrespecting me, you've messed up my order, go and take it back, blah, blah. And the other one may sit there and go, I can see you're a bit stressed, is everything okay? And so what NLP does is it shows us that we are all perceiving the same situations play out, we've got the same kind of external reality in front of us, but the meaning that we make is going to be different based on the programs of our mind that we form in the first seven years of our lives. So in that incident, you've got someone who's angry. In their past, they may have not felt respected as a child. Yeah, their parents may have not treated them well, or they may have watched their mum not be respectful to their dad or vice versa. So they now hold a really strong value of respect and get angry when something happens for their respect to be violated, let's say. The other person may be more of a helper type, a people pleaser. They want people to like them so they overcare for people. They've got an over responsibility. In the first seven years of their lives, what may have happened is they may have been the caretaker of their family. They may have had lots of siblings, for example, or one of their parents was sick. And so they learned to neglect their own needs and be more about the other person. So what NLP does is it really helps us to start to understand our reactiveness. You know, why are you not bothered by it, but I am. Why are you acting this way, but, but, but. And it's not to do with the situation playing out. It's to do with how we've programmed ourselves from a young age. Yeah. So it's, it's all around, you know, this is kind of probably been heard, you know, quite a lot out there now, but we don't see reality as it is. We see reality as we are via the programs of our past. So we're not perceiving reality. If we were just perceiving, we would watch someone be flustered, the waiter, and we would simply watch them and they'd go and sort the order out and there'd be just nothing running. That's perception. But we fall into judgment. And now we're judging the situation based on our programs. So that's kind of a shortcut into what NLP helps us. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (12:01): Yeah. And what about the integral semantics one I've not heard.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (12:19): Yeah. So, so what, what this stuff is all about, this is, this, this can be quite an in-depth one, but integral theory, if anyone wants to look it up, the work of Ken Wilber, amazing work in short, what I can, you know, describe this as is integral theory is all people will know that, you know, we have IQ and we can do a test and we can measure our IQ. Yeah. So what integral theory looks at is it looks at our EQ. So it looks at our emotional intelligence. And so within integral theory, there's a mapping of our stages of psychological development. And there's nine different stages of psychological development. And most of us are around the third, second, third stage out of nine stages of development. So it really helps to see, so as we do more of this work, we progress then into the fourth stage of psychological development, which has massively increased since COVID, I'm gonna say, because there was a lot more self-work potentially happening within that time. So as a race, as humanity, we're looking more and more to progress into the fourth stage. People that have done a lot of this work and we're talking very few numbers, we're talking less than probably 5% of all humanity are touching on fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth stage is like barely anyone, you probably count them, you know. It's a real present state, it could even be seen as a state of non-thinking. People that just don't think anymore because they're so present, they've meditated so much or had enough trauma that there's just no thoughts happening. So integral theory basically is really looking at what stages are we at in our psychological development and what can we do to move through those so that we are more and more healthy, clear, if that's the way we wanna go, you know, if you wanna go and sit and meditate somewhere for a few years, because we've just, you know, we've seen through, you know, all of this stuff that we torture ourselves with day on day. So it's all about integrates. So it's called integral theory because it's about the integration of us. So when we talk about, you know, our best self or whatever, our actual best self is the truest version of us that isn't in their mind thinking. So it's a process of going through the stages of psychological development in order to understand where we've come from, why we do what we do, and then start to slowly change that and then start to let it go. So we start to think less once we are really, you know, once we can understand all this, we don't need all these thoughts running all the time. We can enjoy or be in the joy of presence. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (14:53): Mm-hmm. Well, that sounds... Yeah. Sounds like aspirational like that. That does. It would be nice to have a clear mind and definitely to be more present. So yeah, I'm excited to jump in and talk. I know, you know, we're going to talk about the voices in our head and judgment and all that. So.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (15:04): I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll go.
Kelly Berry (15:27): I guess just if you can take us through you know, what does that look and sound like for people? And then how do what issues does that present and how do you help people work through it?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (15:38): So what it looks like, so the voice in our head, the judgment voice, is it's the between good and bad. So if we start to look at what goes on in our mind, if we really start to pay attention to this, and for those obviously listening that are in this work, you may start to realize that we are in constant compensation, good to bad. Yeah, so it's like, if it... If we were only just 100% thinking good thoughts, we probably just wouldn't bother thinking anymore. But there's this polarity that we're constantly trying to balance out of good, bad, good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. So we are literally going through our days, you know, on that cycle, you know, I've done really, you know, terribly today, and we might be really judging ourselves. And at some point, you might come in with something good to try and make yourself feel better for a moment. Yeah, or if you're too, you know, you're too positive. You're probably masking something. So at some point that bad, you know, that judgment, you know, that negative judgment is going to set in. So this is the real thing. It's actually looking at good and bad and going one is not better than the other. There, but if we're running either of them in any extremity, there's probably, you know, more to have a look into there. Yeah, so this is what we're doing within this work. It's really paying attention to, you know, the polarity between and so. you know, what I work with clients on is starting to look at, and this is going back to that kind of present state. So even when we are in a state of maybe moments where things are very quiet, it probably for most people isn't long before we're grasping for something to fill that silence. Yeah. So it's like we, you know, we talk about being addicted to things and we have a list and we've all got our own addictions to something even though there's extremities of it. We've all got And so what I say with this is, as I've worked more and more with this stuff, we're not addicted to the vice. We're not addicted to our phones. We're not addicted to our vapes. We're not addicted to smoking. We're not addicted to sex. We're not addicted to exercise. We're not addicted to anything apart from our thinking. And then we're addicted to wanting to get away from our thinking. So that's when we reach for the phone or the vape or, you know, going out with people maybe or exercising, you know, whatever it is, whatever it actually doesn't matter whether it's the drugs, you know, the sex, whatever it is, if we're using that as a thing, because we're so tortured by our own mind, then that's obviously where the problems begin. But then we focus on. I need to, you know, go and sort out my eating disorder or my drug addiction or my sex addiction or my phone addiction or whatever it is. And what we miss within that is we're still only focusing outside then of how we're going to give this up rather than going inside and going, what is it really that I'm really not comfortable with? And it's the self-talk. So this was huge. Let's say during COVID. I had so many clients coming to me. You know, I was when I got the most clients ever. That's when the business really started to pick up at the start a couple of years into me after my training. And it was because people were coming to me either lonely, bored, angry, you know, the, obviously the lockdowns, all the rest of it. And, you know, as we talked it through, what we, you know, what we found with, with, with all of my clients was, was the thing they were most upset with was sitting at home with the voice running. Yeah. So it wasn't any of those external things that were more the problem than our own voice. So what I worked on with all of those clients at the time was getting more comfortable with what was happening in mind. So understanding it, journaling, you know, looking at how the programs relate to our past, worst case scenario, thinking, control aspects, you know, all of that stuff, the judgment, all of the stuff that was playing out for us. It started to be a process of mapping back to when did these programs start for me in childhood. And then what we did, the more that people kind of got more comfortable with that inquiry, they became more comfortable with themselves. Yeah. And then we did lots of exercises for them to do in the practice of, you know, breathing. So the minute we take a breath, our problems diminish because our problems exist more in mind than they do in reality. So I like to say the bigger the breath, the smaller the problem. Yeah. And so what this was, you know, massive for me. So, so for me, you know, I used to really distract myself in food, let's say, but you know, people were a massive thing. And the more I did this work, the more people got upset with me because the more invisible I was, and I really started to enjoy spending time on my own because now what was going on in mind was a lot more enjoyable than some of the conversations maybe out on the streets with people. And it's, you know. That was my growth and it wasn't that I needed to get away from anyone that I didn't love. I still loved everyone as much, but I just loved myself more and I was more comfortable with, you know, not needing to be distracted by too much gossiping and all the rest of it that used to bring me joy, you know, talking about other people and all those things that we do, because that's what we do when we're around people. And so, you know, it became this thing where I started to spend a lot more time on my own and that has only gradually and gradually increased and increased because it's a much more pleasant space to be. And if it is a bit, you know, if it's not feeling great for me, then I do whatever I need to do, whether it's breathing exercises, I do a lot of that kind of thing to get myself back to presence. Watching, letting that stuff run, if it's running, just letting it run. People are so judgmental of themselves and of other people on their phones and on technology, but this is the big thing. So when I work with people, this is how I work probably quite differently to a lot of people. We're not working on how to stop looking at your phone. We're working on what benefit that phone is providing for you in those moments. And then, you know, nothing, that's what I get from people, nothing. Like it's no, it's just bad. It's mindless scrolling, but this is the thing. Mindless is where you wanna be, not full of your bullshit. And so the minute we pick up our phone and have a little scroll, we're getting out of the torture in mind and we may be present for a few moments. And that's kind of like the state interrupt for us. It's like pick your phone up and now you've got something different to maybe make yourself feel better. And then five minutes later, you may be then comparing yourself and judging, you know, I'm on the phone again. There's the problem. The phone was never the problem. You're the meaning you're making around the phone and the judgment, your programs in here are the problem, not your programs on your phone. And so this is it. We just we judge and we judge all of these things that are giving us moments of pleasure. But what we're not doing in that, we're judging, but we're not understanding. So if we can move our judgment to a place of understanding, that's where the gold is. Then we can maybe have some compassion for ourselves and for other people as to why we might be on our phone so much or smoking or whatever it is, eating too much, blah, blah, blah. As I say, it's like, what's the positive intention in doing what I'm doing? And people go, nothing. Like, I challenge that. You wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't giving you something in that moment. So the outcome may not be positive, but the intention in the moment is for a positive reason. And this is where the real work is. And if we could adopt that, this is life-changing stuff because there's so many coaches out there, you know, as well that we'll just focus on, yeah, it's bad. I still hear that a lot, of course, because they're at where they're at in their psychological stages of development. But it's like, we don't get to understand it if we just keep judging it.
Kelly Berry (23:42): Yeah, that is so interesting. And I've had some conversations that now I'm like thinking about different things that people have said, you know, kind of relatable. But one is, you know, if you say you're unhappy in your career or unhappy in your marriage or unhappy in a relationship or, you know, whatever it is, and you think that changing that career or that relationship or whatever is going to solve your problem. It's kind of the same thing you're talking about addiction. I feel like we see that a lot when somebody go, they have an addiction and they get treatment for that addiction, but then really their addiction shifts to something else. All of the things that you're talking about, it's making me think really they're just going from distraction to distraction. Or if you make a big change in your life, everything else. under that really isn't going to fall in line now just because you've made this big change. Like all of the things that you were trying to escape are really just going to follow you there. Is that all like in line? Yeah. Yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (24:49): Yeah, exactly. Totally agree. Yeah, yeah. And it's like we have this honeymoon period where it kind of goes, yeah, at first it's like, that was the right decision, that was the right thing to do. And then after a little while, as you say, the shit kicks back in. Yeah. And now you're still there and you're still unhappy. So then it's like looking for what do I need to change externally again? What needs to change? Because obviously that wasn't the thing. And what we miss within that is it's, yeah, the more that we can change the self-talk, that's the key. But again, we didn't get taught this at school. No one taught us this. You know, we're brought up in a world where we look up to people that are making loads of money and have got loads of followers and we're looking up and all we're looking up to, this is said with complete love, but the more people have, the more there's a mask there for their own insecurity. So we're actually only looking up to people that are as insecure as us. So it's like, stop looking up to the insecurity that you've already got within you and just look up to yourself. Because, you know, I look at, you know, I look at, you know, people that have made it in a sense, you know, they kind of, they've got the billions, they've got the millions, but usually it's still never enough. And when you hear them now talking with a bit of awareness, they'll tell you that. They'll say, you know, it's still not, we still don't feel fulfilled or they'll say, the fulfillment then came when I went to watch the sunrise, you know, in those moments. Because the fulfillment of us isn't all of that external stuff. The fulfillment of us is take a deep breath. You know, when we're striving and striving and striving, I'll feel better when I get that amount of money or when I get in that relationship or when I get this, I'll feel better. And the amount of times I've heard this with clients, I can see them just like, they're not in a position yet anywhere near that potentially. And I'm like, so you're going to feel shit up until that happens. And they're just there going, and I'm like, okay, just take a deep breath here and now. Couple of deep breaths. How do you feel now? Amazing. So can you do a bit more of that rather than waiting till you've got all of this stuff that may not even give you what you think it's gonna give you? And a lot of people will say once they've achieved it, I've heard people say, yeah, once I got to this many followers, you know, I thought I was gonna feel loved and adored and I thought I was gonna feel really great, but actually I've got more admin to deal with. I've got more people messaging me and I've actually got more people hating me because the more popular we get, the more it's gonna be love and hate, because it's polarity. You're not just gonna be famous to the people that enjoy you, you're gonna be famous to the people that are gonna criticize you. The more famous you get, the more you're up on that pedestal of judgment. And what's happening is the reason you wanna be famous is to feel great. What you don't realize is you're putting yourself up for more and more judgment, which is the thing that you wanted to get away from, your own judgment. And now you've got the judgment of the world on you, which isn't all gonna be adoration. And people go, I just focus on the positive comments. But it's like, focus on it, and this is said with love, but the more that we focus on it all, the better we'll be because anyone's opinion of us is their reflection of themselves, it's their own judgment of themselves. So if we can look at all those comments and go, even the nice ones, they're not about you, they're about us. I'm gonna write this nice comment because that person may like me if I do that. I'm gonna write this nice comment because I want them to feel good in the face of me. It's all coming back to us ultimately. So it's like don't take anything personal, even the good, because the more you take the good personally, the more you're gonna take the bad personally. Know yourself within yourself. Don't worry about what everyone else is thinking of you. It's kind of irrelevant. It's just a reflection of their own internal world. It's got nothing to do with you.
Kelly Berry (28:05): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Something else that I'm thinking about as you're talking is, and I'm sure we all know people like this on both sides of the spectrum. It's like, you know, some happy people who are happy no matter their circumstances. And you know, some people who are unhappy or bitter or, you know, whatever, and they're unhappy no matter their circumstances. And so it kind of just, as you're talking, you know, it makes me think. there maybe they've done some work or they have some of their thoughts under control or you know they they're just in a different place where it just doesn't really matter what comes at them like they're in this state and they're staying in it whether it's happy or unhappy.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (29:18): Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think the difference there is that the happy can be a false happy. So it's whether it's a, as you say there, the negativity, you know, that person is obviously, you know, undeveloped in their psychological development. They've obviously got a driver of pessimism based on maybe what they watched growing up. On the happy side, I would say happiness, someone that's too happy, always be suspicious of, anyone that's too nice. Always watch because there's probably some more going on in the inside. What you really want to see is that contentment, that more of that balanced state. You know, someone that's more balanced within that, they're not overly nice or overly happy. They're balanced, you know, and they'll be honest. So sometimes their honesty can seem maybe a bit harsh, but it's honest. But what you know with them is that they're always going to have that level of honesty that you're always gonna get with them so they're not gonna get annoyed with you because sometimes what happens with the nice, happy people is they all have resentment building inside of them but they're not allowed to show that because of the facade that they've needed to put on based on their upbringing. And so what you see in people that are too nice is at some point they may start to flip because that resentment can only be held in for a certain amount of time and now they're clocking up how much they're doing for everyone else. and how nice they're being and how they're people pleasing and how they don't actually agree with everything that you've said, but they've kind of come across that way. And now they're just annoyed. They're annoyed with you for taking them for granted. So really moving towards health is being honest in your love and in your ruthlessness, not in a loving way. You know, ruthlessly compassionate, let's say, in that way, where you're just getting more honesty from them, you know. Like with me, when I started to go through this process of not seeing my friends as much, some would be really upset and they would come to me. And my thing wasn't to then try to make them feel better. It was to be honest with them and to say, I'm not gonna be spending more time with you, but I still love you. And that was hurtful for some of them, but that was me being honest. And then what you get from me is you're always gonna get the love and honesty. And then I'd see them falling out with their other friends who they had these amazing tight relationships with, but there wasn't that level of honesty happening. Whereas with me, it's honest. And you phone me up with some real stuff going on, I'm gonna be there for you. But all the day-to-day stuff that we used to do, that's changing now as I'm going more inward and doing this inner work. So for me, there isn't arguments and fallouts. If people want to get upset with me then that's up to them, I'll still be here. They can swear at me and call me whatever and hate me. I don't take that personally. I can see that that's their stuff and if they want to ring me in two weeks time, I'm here. I'm here to listen because I want to understand their process. I know it's not about me.
Kelly Berry (32:07): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what I was getting ready to say. You know, you, it sounds like you understand or like you're working with people to help them understand it's those types of things are not about the other person really. They think they are, but for you, they're not, you know, and they're, they're just like getting in, I guess, you know, they don't understand or they're getting in their own head or, know, probably a lot of reasons about that.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (32:47): Yeah, and what's happening in those moments is they're drawing on their childhood wounds of rejection and abandonment, you know, all those sorts of things, and they think it's me. I remember with one friend, there was this whole conversation around it, and there was this kind of thing, there was this kind of thing at the end where it was just a confusion because it's not about me, and it was only love then. I think it can be confusing for people to hear that, and it's like, well, why do I feel what I feel if you still love me? Because it isn't about me. It's about what happened when you were growing up for you to have an experience where you felt abandoned and that abandonment wound carries with you and we go through life looking, we just look for evidence to reconfirm the deep belief that runs outside of our awareness. So we will each have our own individual language that we use, whether it's, they've rejected me, I feel abandoned, I feel hurt. You know, I feel lonely, I feel, you know, and what will happen is as I listen to my clients, they will bring the same dialogue into different stories. And as I hear my friends, I hear people, it's not, there's not a change up too much in the language. And it's because if there's not a change up in the language, it just proves that something's happened in childhood for them to adopt and program in that language. You know, whether it's anxiety, whether it's depression, you know, we could have the same life, you know, happening to two siblings, you know, twins, for example, they could have exactly the same upbringing, but one may have depression and the other one may have anxiety, for example, and they've had the same upbringing, but what they've chosen is the programs that they've chosen based on the interpretation of their own experiences. So it's not just because you've had this experience growing up, this is going to be what you end up with. It's the meaning that you make of it. You know, we tell ourselves in childhood and then how you choose your language around it. Yeah, so I felt abandoned in that situation. My sister, you know, felt unloved. So different language, same, same set of parents, same, same incidents. And so then we go through life going, I'm unlovable or I'm going to be rejected all the time. And then from friends, my friends don't love me or, you know, my friends are rejecting me and we're just constantly looking for things to reconfirm and then that language keeps playing and we keep deepening that program.
Kelly Berry (35:10): Yeah, yeah. So what does it look like for the people that you work with to go through this? I'll say like, they are looking for something when they want to work with you. They want to feel better, but maybe they don't really understand what's going on with themselves. So what does it look like for them to seek you out and then they have this unawareness and then they become aware and they work through it? What... What kind of changes do you see in them?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (35:43): So the biggest change, so people will come to me with mainly specifics, right? So as you say there, it's like, so maybe someone comes to me because they want to meet someone, they wanna be in a relationship, they wanna be in a different relationship, they wanna break up with someone, they wanna change careers. People do come in a lot more now, more recently. There's definitely more awareness in the world happening. So people will come in more with the language of, I want to feel worthy or I want to feel loved or I want to love myself more. So there's, you know, I want to find my purpose in life, for example. So there's lots of different things that, you know, people will come to me with. And so what we do at the start of a program is we set out these goals. But as I say to everyone, hold it lightly because the version of you right here and now that wants these things, that thinks you want these things here and now to feel better may get something very different out of this process, which is usually the case. So the biggest things that I witness in coaching is it's like, it's a change in language. So what I notice for people is they start to, you know, when we go back to the integral theory, they move up the levels of psychological development. So their language starts to change. So the main things that we're working on is like we spoke about their personalization, taking things personally or not taking things personally. We look at how we start to change our language. So when people come into coaching, they'll maybe talk about, so my job makes me feel like this, this person made me feel like that as an example. By the end of the coaching, they'll be walking away going. This is how I make myself feel in the face of these situations. And now we're taking self responsibility. That's a key part. Yeah, so we do a lot of shadow work. So when we talk about shadow, shadow is the parts of us that we have not recognized and that we have, you know, that we have kind of pushed into the shadows of us and we don't want to kind of look at because we think, you know, we're ashamed, there's shame around them, you know, things like that. So what we do within this work is we work on, you know, this is where we go. So if there is someone in our lives, for example, that we're really triggered by, the work that we do in coaching is starting to look at what's the part of me that I don't like about myself that I'm seeing in them. So say someone is very judgmental of you and you're really triggered by it. What we do is we start to work on what is it? you know, in the face of the words that they're saying, what am I believing about those to be true? Yeah. How are they highlighting something to me? And so rather than, you know, again, that thing of that person makes me feel like that we start to go, you know, we start to recognize how we are judging ourselves massively in that. And that anything that they're saying is just reinforcing something, you know, within us. So as we go through this whole coaching process, it's, as I said, it's that whole self responsibility piece and starting to see that what's happening in relationships and with people outside of us isn't about the relationship here and there. Again, it's about the past and what we're trying to do in this, it's like we're now going through a separation process. So this is our past and this is us now and this is us. Some people will talk about the inner child. This is us. The inner child is the outer child. We are enmeshed still. And so the process of coaching, the changes that I see for people, is the separation now of this. So how now your past stays in the past and you in the present is no longer had by that. Even if there's little rumbles in the moment where someone said something and there's a trigger occurring, you are catching yourself in those moments going, just take a breath, this isn't about now. If there's a trigger in my body, this sensation is probably not familiar. It's been done a lot of times and the moment there's something there, there's a sign that this is familiar, yeah, that this is some sort of wound playing out. So we are now separating, so we're not bringing those past wounds into now. So now we can respond to people. You know, what they may look like is not defending someone said something to you now. I don't need to defend it, because I can see this isn't about me. If I still have my past self with me, I'd be defending this and arguing whereas I can go here, okay, what's going on for you right now is I can see you're a bit flustered, something's happening, you've got a bit of a change in your face. What's happening for you? And this is what I encourage with my clients. If anyone's really angry, it's not to do with you, ask them what's going on for them. And that's where you really know that you've made some shifts where you're not defending it anymore and you're just in the moment inquiring for them what's happening for you because this isn't about me.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (40:41): And there's the real key stuff that we start to change in through this process.
Kelly Berry (40:42): Mm-hmm. It's all so do you see people resistant to like that self responsibility part of it?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (40:55): Yeah, massively. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah. So when I was training in this stuff and I learned about shadow work, it was the most confronting thing of my whole, you know, of anything, the most life-changing because to go, how can that person, how can those behaviors, how can that be me? And it was really, really confronting. So, so yeah, I, you know, when I have clients that aren't, you know, that they're not offended by it, I'm like, are you sure you're okay? And then some may say, you know, later on down the line, when you said that to me, I wanted to kill you. You know, you kind of hear all of that as well. And it's like, but for me, it's like, if people don't feel confronted in coaching, then I say, I might as well give you your money back because if we're not uncomfortable in this process, we're not going to be moving and changing. So all I'm doing here is I'm holding a mirror up. You know, I'm not here judging anyone. I'm here just excited for this process, you know, for this, this potential for change. So I have had clients that haven't been able to handle, you know, handle it and that, you know, have left early or whatever, because it's, it's big work. And, and, you know, sometimes clients go and they may go, go to therapy, you know, because that's a much kind of, in a sense, gentler space. This is, you know, what we say with coaching, it's, it's like, it's for healthy egos. So, you know, if people have got a lot of trauma, that's where, you know, therapy is such a beautiful space to be in. This kind of work isn't for everyone. You've really got to be ready to start looking at yourself. Because, you know, I'll do things like, I'll have a list of words and I'll go, can you embody, and this is going to be confronting for listeners to hear this, can you embody all of these really ugly words within yourself and know that this is part of being human? We're all narcissistic. We all get jealous. We're all mean at times. We can be absolute assholes at times. We can get angry. Just picking out the words. I'll say to clients, what words you absolutely hate? What behaviors do you hate? Disrespect. And this is like an example. When someone's disrespecting us and we're going off about how disrespectful they're being, how respectful are we being about them in that moment? There's our shadow. And it's like, if you can just embrace all of those things, like the whole narcissist thing, yes, there's different levels of it, but we are all doing things for ourselves at every moment of the day. Even if it's being really nice to someone, we're getting something out of that. Embrace that. You know, there's different levels of it, I get that. And the more narcissistic someone is, the more pain and trauma they've been through in their life. It's like, we've all got elements of that and the more we shudder at it and the more we don't like it, it's the part of you that you're rejecting. That's a part of you which is looking after yourself at every moment in the day. Start to love those ugly words and those ugly behaviors and then you're free. And then someone calls you a narcissist, someone calls me a narcissist, I'm like, yeah, great, yeah. I love looking after myself. It's like, there's no, and then they kind of go, you know, and then that's it, game over, it's done. The conversation is done because I'm not arguing. I'm not, I'm like, sure. You know, you've got a perception of me that's different from someone else's, you know, that's, you know, it's all fine. It doesn't matter. And the more that we can just, you know, be free with that, call me whatever you like. Like absolutely, don't want you to fuck off, you know, do whatever you like. It's just no offense taken. And this is how, you know, I build very good relationships with people because someone like the people that are like the most kind of hurt and maybe nasty and all the rest of it. I just love it. Cause I'm like, all right, let's see what we can do with this one. And to kind of win them around, you know, just to see, to see the human being. That's what I want to see is I want to see the human being in everyone because we're all human. Yeah. I haven't met anyone yet that hasn't got that human side that isn't in a lot of pain if they're being, you know, acting in certain ways that aren't great. It's a sign of pain. And I want to see that pain. I want to understand. This is what my life's work is about, is understanding every human being so that I get to learn about them, but also so that I get to see, you know, there isn't anyone yet that hasn't shown me a human side.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (44:59): And the reason they don't show it to anyone else is probably a feeling of being deeply misunderstood because the way that they show up isn't the best. They're not the greatest communicator. They're angry. They've had trauma in their past that has made them the way they are. But if it only takes one person to sit with them, ask them some questions about themselves, and you just watch that person start to melt when they feel seen and understood. Life-changing, world-changing stuff. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (45:01):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think anybody who's been, you know, I've done a lot of coaching in different various formats. And I would say, like, if you haven't experienced a moment where you're just really disappointed to know that something is coming from you, then you're probably not. And disappointed can be like a really... light word to use about it, but if you're not like embarrassed or just totally blown away or disappointed or you know a number of words, you probably just haven't gone like deep enough or haven't hit the right spot in in like getting to the root of the problem. Because I mean there's been a lot of times when I've felt like, you know that doesn't feel very good to know what something comes out as or why, I guess in some ways just like why you are the way you are.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (46:26): Absolutely, absolutely, that's it.
Kelly Berry (46:30): This is something else that I just had a conversation with somebody with, and I think I would like to highlight it because I think that listeners can, you know, they can be hearing this and they can be like, well, I don't really have any trauma or I don't really know of any experience that I've had that has kind of like shaped me a certain way in your experience. You know, is this something that affects more people than maybe they realize? Or, you know, what would you say to people who are like, I don't really think I have enough trauma or bad enough trauma to do work like this?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (47:06): Yeah, absolutely got you. That's a great question. So obviously, what I say to anyone is, you do what you want to do. If you don't want to do this work, then of course. Like for me, I love it. So I think everyone should be, I see the benefits of it. But I've often had people go, no, and I'm like, they say, I'm fine. And I can see that there's stuff going on there. I can see the way that they're reacting to things or getting angry about stuff and all the rest of it. But I'm just like, of course, that's fine. And I think the more that I sit there and go, of course, and then they go, maybe there might be something, because they expect a professional to go, of course you've got shit, everyone's got stuff to sort out. Whereas I'm like, you do whatever you want to do if it's not comfortable for you, of course. And then the deeper answer to the question is, any memories that we have from the past, from childhood especially, if you're holding those memories, they're the ones that have shaped and formed you. So I often have clients come in and they'll go, I don't really have a lot of memories. And then they'll have like four and I'm like, brilliant, you know, those four memories, if you can still remember that 40 years later, whatever, you know, that's amazing. They're the memories that have shaped and formed you. And, you know, and people will go, no, but I had a really good childhood. You know, my family were really nice and all the rest of it. And there's no disputing, you know, that side of it. So I think the word trauma can be a bit heavy for some people. So it's, and obviously there's different levels of trauma, but this is something that I don't know whether you know, you the listeners, Gable Mate, he says it really nicely, which is trauma isn't what happened to you in childhood. Trauma is all around the meaning and the internalization of what happened to us in childhood that causes us, you know, to be who we are. So I have had clients, let's say that have had some really horrendous experiences, you know, maybe sexual abuse, you know, stuff really, really big stuff going on in childhood. And then I've had, you know, clients who have maybe, you know, had someone call them a name at school or whatever, you know, bullying at school, some even like bullying. And the difference in the way that they are as adults isn't that one is worse than the other. It's not that the one that, you know, had some sexual trauma is more fucked up than the one that got, you know, bullied at school. In fact, the one that got bullied at school may be worse off. So again, it's about how we've internalized it. And this can sound quite heavy for people. And it's not to discount anyone's experience, but it's like, you could have got called a name or a teacher could have said one thing to you, why did you only get 90%, for example, and you're now 40 years old and you're striving to be the CEO of a big company. because of that one comment that you had from a teacher, because that has traumatized you so much that everything you've got in your life today is still not enough, and now you're going for bigger and bigger roles because you're trying to fulfill this comment that the one person said to you that you've now taken on, and it's just become this massive wound. So I say to people, I've not met a perfect human being. I don't profess to have got this sorted in any way myself. And I know how many years and how many hours I spend on this. It's hard, hard work. So everyone has got some sort of, we've all got something, whatever we wanna call it, we've all got something. Yeah. And so when people say that they, you know, that's ignorance is bliss in a certain respect. If that's, you know, for some people it's too painful to go in there to even start to unpack this stuff can be so painful. It's kind of like, It's not ignorance is bliss because people are still living with that stuff. They're just not looking at it, but it's less painful to do it this way than to then the thought of actually looking into it. So, you know, unless we have completely turned off our thinking, you know, I've done lots of meditation or in that really small percentage of people, we've all got stuff. And, you know, unless we've blocked out memories, which is a problem to explore in itself, we will all have, you know, some sort of memories that will have shaped and formed us that, you know, could be helpful to start to unpack in order to be a bit more free in our mind, in our life. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (51:20): Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned presence and you talked about breathing and feeling better, like what are some of the tangible benefits that people get from doing work like this?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (51:37): So I would say, you know, some really key stuff will be things like, you know, less anxiety in the body, right? So if people have got a lot of energy going on in the body, in the system, you know, they will, you know, if done well, they will have less, you know, of that. You know, I've had plenty of clients go through and say they're a lot less anxious than they used to be. You know, if people have come in with, you know, problems with food, with their relationship with food, things like that, their relationship with food People have often come to me wanting, they're going for a new job, so they've come to me with a new way of being in an interview or public speaking. So people will leave after we do this work. It's no longer to need to go to an interview prepared with all of these answers and you know, an interview prepared. I remember I had some clients going, I can't come to you because I want to go for interviews. And I'm like, please come to me. Because what we do in those sessions is we get them to start to speak from their heart, from their breath. So as they go into an interview, rather than trying to recite and remember things, speak from, you've got all the answers within you. Trust that. Because when people are in interviews and they're stuttering or they're public speaking, they're stuttering, it's because they're in their head trying to either remember stuff or talking to themselves about what they're looking at. I can't remember what I'm supposed to say. The minute we can take a breath and talk from here, there's the answers, there's the beauty. So these are kind of the tangible thing. Relationship dynamics, that has been so key. When I've worked with people, I work with couples if people wanna bring in the couples, but I work with them separately. So what they come away with is they come away with a whole new language so that when they come together, they're no longer going, you don't love me when you don't take the rubbish out or when my dinner's not ready, it means you don't care about me and all of that. It's going, when you don't take the garbage out, when you don't take the garbage out, I just wanna let you know this is how I feel, but I'm not blaming you. I'm completely owning this abandonment wound that I've got. Yeah, and this is what people get to take away with. They get to take away a whole new set of language in order to improve relationships, the tangible things, you know, my relationships improved. You know, I've had so many clients come in and I'm just trying to think if any of them actually split up with their partners, but I don't, I can't recall a split up. I can just recall, and it doesn't matter whether they break up with them or not, if someone's in a toxic relationship. But what I do with people is when they come in and they start, you know, talking about their partner and how their partner's this and that, what we do is we work on the shadow aspect. What is it within you that you're triggered by? And most of my clients go and they resolve, they don't need to dump them, they go and they resolve the parts within themselves that they're seeing in their partners. You know, I don't really see people as, I know people aren't gonna like this, but I don't really see people as toxic. I see them, as I said before, as hurt. And most of my clients aren't dating toxic people. They're not married to toxic people. They're just not communicating effectively. So most of them leave the process with their whole new set of a way of being that they can now no longer, that any toxicity is the workings between the two of them. And now they can un-toxify their communication. That's all it is. So, yeah.
Kelly Berry (54:42): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think something else that has been like, as I've gone through this on my own, and just like, think about this type of work all the time, something that just always frustrates me is, you know, like, nobody can make you feel a certain way. Like, you make yourself feel a certain way. And sometimes that can just be really irritating when you feel like somebody is making you feel a certain way. But you know, it's It's all related. Nobody can make you feel away. Yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (55:31): I'll add to that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll add something to it. So when I first heard that from someone, this was in my training, I was so triggered because I was, I'd met someone and I had used that whole language when they were being a bit of a, you know, an asshole and, and, and they turned around, they said to me, no one can make you feel that way. And that was the first time I'd heard that. And I was so triggered. Like, so I completely get this stuff is, you know, for anyone listening, please believe me. I know, you know, this is not easy. But this is the thing that I started to learn then within that. So we think that they can because what we're missing is there's a tiny moment called choice. This is kind of where the whole free will part comes into it. And so what happens is there's this like a second, not even maybe even a second of choice where someone says something, we internalize it and then we make a choice to get angry about it and get defensive. It's so small that we don't even realize it's there. So it can only be them that's doing it to us. But once we can start, you know, adopting different exercises, what I do with my clients, it's like, okay, so someone says something before you respond, react, take a moment, take a subtle breath, you know, whatever you're just, you know, what am I going to choose to do in this moment? Yeah. And there's your choice point. And this is another way of looking at it. It's like, someone's gonna say something to you on one day and they're gonna say something the same thing to you on another day. If you've just met someone and you're happy and in love, you may not care as much. If you're angry and haven't slept that night, you're gonna be angry. So it's like, what are we choosing here based on how we're feeling as well? And really seeing that, that's where our choice comes in. And it doesn't feel like choice when we haven't slept all night. Yeah? But it kind of suggests that it isn't them and it's us, not to judge ourselves, and that's the thing. This is the key part of it. It's to take the self responsibility without judging ourselves. Because what we do is we judge them for how, you know, we're angry with them. If I brought that into self, that means that I would be annoyed with myself like I am with them. This isn't about judging yourself. It's about just seeing how, again, your past and your programs come into the moment. And you feel the way you do in those moments based on that. So it's about being compassionate to yourself rather than judgment. So I'm taking responsibility for this, for feeling this way, because that's part of my programming. No one taught us growing up. We weren't taught this stuff. We don't know. All we were taught was to be under-responsible, to blame other people. That's what we're taught, you know, compassion to us as human beings. That's what we watch. That's all we see. Corporates, you know, when we're at work, it's a blame, it's blame, blame, blame. When we're younger, we're blaming someone else at school, we're blaming us, we're watching our parents blame other people. We're brought up in a blame culture, so we don't know any different. That's all that we know to do. It's what we're programmed with. This is like the unprogramming of us.
Kelly Berry (58:30): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I could talk about this or listen to you talk about it forever. This is, it's all so good. And so happy that you came on and, you know, we had this conversation because this is the exact type of information that I just, you know, my goal is to bring awareness to how we think, how we see life, how we... decide what we want out of life. And maybe if there are things getting in the way of what you want and where you are, that you can learn some ways to do the work or work on it or seek out help. And I just think things like this are fascinating when you can figure out how to see things differently and just how much better you feel as a result of it as well. Yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (59:22): Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. And I love how much you love it. And, you know, always it just, whenever I do this, you know, have podcast conversations, go into corporates, work with clients, it's like, I just... It can be so new for people and that's the thing for me. It was new for me a few years ago and it just blows my mind how imagine how different the world would be if we did learn this stuff at school, you know from a young age and and you know, it's like the more that we do these beautiful conversations and you know, we put these out and you put these things out the more the potential is is that the world gets to heal and and we become younger and younger learning this stuff not not in our 40s, you know, and you know, not that there's anything wrong. It's better now doing it than we were in our 70s. But you know, imagine this being just the normal way of living for everyone. The world would be... there'd be no world wars, you know, it'd be such a different place. You know, it's, yeah just the normal way of living for everyone. The world would be... there'd be no world wars, you know, it'd be such a different place. You know, it's, yeah.
Kelly Berry (1:00:11): Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is awesome. Is there anything else? Because we are at a time we need to wrap up. I know it's been a kind of lost track of time in the conversation. But is there anything else that you just want to make sure that you kind of get out or a message that you would want to leave with listeners?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:00:23): Thank you. Yeah, I really want to say because I know that, you know, people can find this stuff really confronting, like we can love it. And, you know, sometimes when podcasts have gone out, I love hearing that the people that are, you know, quite confronted by it. But it's really to say that anything that I've said within this conversation is said with complete love and compassion, like it really is. And I know, like, you know, I've I've made a choice to do this work at a level which is very confronting. And there's a lot of other, you know, therapists and beautiful work out there at the earlier stage of that psychological development. This is at a later stage. So this is, you know, there's a process to go through before, you know, people are necessarily ready to hear this stuff. So just to say to anyone that is feeling, you know, particularly confronted by this, that, you know, everything I say is with love and for, you know, for the good of the evolution of humanity. And not everyone can see it at the stage it's spoken at yet, but it's possible to get this. I often have people getting really annoyed with me and they'll come and they'll be like, Anita, I wanna talk to you and that thing that you said in that post. And I just sit and I listen. And some of them, I give a little poke and I went, you come and see me in a few months time, especially my friends that are coaches, maybe a bit earlier on. You come and see me in a few months time and then I see a few months later, they're embodying this stuff now, because it's part of our process. So not everyone's ready for this now, but potentially in the future, you know, it may click a little bit more. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (1:01:51): Mm-hmm. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, that's great. So I do have a couple of questions and actually one before I get to end of the podcast questions. Do you work with people remotely?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:02:10): Always. That's all I do at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (1:02:13): Okay, okay. So Anita is in Bali. Everybody can be really jealous of that. So she's in Bali, living in her tropical paradise. So yeah, I'm gonna include her social media links and contact links in the show notes. I'm sure she would welcome any inquiries or conversations or really any feedback on the conversation. But I think she's, yeah, an incredible resource. So if any of this has, you know, piqued your curiosity or if you've been looking for doing work like this, definitely reach out to her.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:02:49): I always say that anyone, you know, find me on social media, send me a personal message. I've never not responded to anyone. So I love to hear from people. So yeah, feel free to get in touch with me for sure. Thank you.
Kelly Berry (1:03:03): Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So I do have two end of the podcast questions for you. So what is one thing personally or professionally that you would like to accomplish this year?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:03:15): That's a big question. See, I'm someone that doesn't, I don't, there's no goal setting or anything like that. So it's a really interesting question that you've asked that. Yeah, I've really got to think about this is where, this is kind of that thing where it's like, life is very much lived very yeah, there's not a lot that's...Okay, I'll give you one thing because this is something that's very real when living in Bali. It's around health stuff. So at the moment, there's some Bali belly going on and there's a bit of, you know, so I would like to, you know, resolve whatever's happening within this at the moment. So that obviously being here is a lot easier. So yeah, I'd say around, yeah, my health, let's say. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (1:03:58): Okay, yes, yes, I have heard that is a real, that is a real thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:04:04): It's a real thing. I had it 10 years ago when I was here and I was hoping it wasn't coming back, but there's definitely some getting used to it, you know, some, some, some change in diet or something that needs to be able to get the system. Yeah. Fully prepared for, for being here.
Kelly Berry (1:04:12): Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And then the second question is, how do you recharge?
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:04:29): My whole life is a recharge. So I think it's my safety at the start. Like I work, you know, I work a couple of hours a day, you know, two hours a day. I work 10 hour a week. So, even my calls are a recharge, you know? I just, my whole life is this constant recharge.
Kelly Berry (1:04:33): Hahaha! Okay. Yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:04:52): How I don't recharge is when I'm getting excitable and when I'm around my friends and I'm talking lots, which doesn't happen a lot. So all of my other time is I'm wandering around, I was in Bondi for 10 years and I used to just wander around, just looking at nature, listening to podcasts. So my life is like a recharge. So yeah, walking around in beautiful nature, listening to podcasts, voice noting friends. breath work, spending lots of time alone. So it's, yeah, it's kind of, yeah, work fits around recharge. So that even when I am working, it's not work because I'm sitting there listening to my amazing clients, they're doing most of the talking. You know, it's, yeah, there's a lot of recharge in this life. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (1:05:00): Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm sure you've done a lot of work to make it that way. So, yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:05:47): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to say, you know, it's important as well, you know, I had mad, really high anxiety for a lot of years. So when I came to Australia 10 years ago, that was when kind of there was a real shift in not working a nine to five job anymore and just really making it a priority that, you know, I want to work a couple of hours a day. I'm not getting back into what I used to do. All of that stress. And so it was kind of, I guess, off the back of that, that I was like, there's gotta be more to life than just being in this, you know, this overwhelming anxiety that I'd had for many years. So yeah, it's definitely driven by something.
Kelly Berry (1:06:26): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The normal, the normalization of that, I think, is something hopefully I've seen in certain individuals, they're shifting out of it. I don't know if it's, you know, something that's gonna affect a lot of people, but I think that more and more people are realizing that they're operating, you know, in fight or flight all the time, that, you know, they're just... in too much stress and the way that they feel is not normal. Yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:07:00): Exactly. And I think that comes back to, you know, what we've talked about, you know, in this time, which is really, what are we doing it all for? And often it will come down to, you know, obviously safety, security, worthiness, you know, what are we, what's all this pushing for? And a lot of the time it's like coming back to, you know, that whole thing of just taking those, those breaths and, and really seeing that feeling better. We've got it all here within us. We can access feeling better at any moment. And yet a lot of the time we're out there trying to feel better by when I get this, I feel better. When I do this, I feel better. When this happens, I feel better. And you know, for a lot of people, and I'm not saying, you know, everyone listening is going to be, but for most people that, you know, I know, and me, we're not living on the bread line. We've got enough, it's okay. But what we do is we never feel it's enough because we don't feel better. So it's kind of like, can we accept where we're at and focus more in on, you know, the inner work, the taking those breaths, doing all of that instead of, you know, kidding ourselves that having more of anything is gonna make us feel better. It's kind of going, do I have enough right now? And most of us, we're okay, you know, we're doing okay. And to feel better is to go within and do that work.
Kelly Berry (1:07:57): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. This has been so good. I'm so appreciative of you being here and talking. And I definitely look forward to getting this conversation out because so much good for so many people. So, yeah.
Anita Tomecki - Human Behavior Expert (1:08:34): Me too, I can't wait. Thank you so much. It was awesome to talk to you. Thank you for your amazing questions. It was a beautiful interview. Thank you.
Kelly Berry (1:08:41): Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And as I mentioned, all the ways to get in touch with Anita will be in the show notes. And thanks so much. We'll talk to you later.
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader and business coach. She is known for her operational excellence and her ability to drive growth and results across multiple industries.
She is also hosting her own podcast, Life Intended.
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