The Social Dilemma: 5 Ways to Stay Conscious On Social Media
The Social Dilemma: Is Social Media Helping or Harming Your Business?
For many of my business clients and conscious entrepreneurs–social media is simply accepted as necessary for business.
The question is, how do you measure whether social media actions are working? And even more importantly, how does being social media impact your energy and mental health?
In other words, beyond basic ROI of financial return (which frankly, many clients have very poor results after pouring thousands a month hiring experts), what is your ROEI (return on energy invested) and ROTI (Return on Time Invested)?
But after watching the 2020 Netflix docudrama The Social Dilemma, it shifted my entire paradigm of what we are actually dealing with. After many months of how to navigate the social world consciously as a conscious business, I’d like to share my best practices.
But first, some context of how we came to be. Warning: this is a total spoiler alert of The Social Dilemma!
The Social Dilemma
The Netflix documentary drama “The Social Dilemma” interviews many founding and former investors, execs, and software engineers of Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter who share their experience of grappling with the unintended consequences of features they built like the “infinite scroll” that caused enormous growth in users–but at a cost.
With the rise and power of (thus far mostly unchecked) Big Tech companies like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube these companies are facing a responsibility and moral dilemma of how their algorithms impact human behavior, human futures, and our society at large.
Age of Surveillance Capitalism
One of the experts interviewed in the film is American author, Harvard professor, and social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff who coined the term Surveillance Capitalism.
Surveillance Capitalism “unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data [which are] . . . fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. . . . [these products] “are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets.”[3]
In other words, there’s a whole new market that trades and traffics in selling your human behavioral future.
Meaning, Big Tech social media platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, and Google, are not really in the business of selling your data to advertisers. They are selling your future behavior or predictive pattern of your future “click behavior” to groups, causes, and content that has now shown can have unintended consequences OFFLINE.
Marketing has entered another realm, where software engineers are literally being trained in psychology classes by the company, with unanticipated impacts that essentially hack your subconscious to quietly gather data on your every behavior online–how many seconds you pause, how long you scroll, which emoticon you use, and most importantly–what you click on to then inform, influence, and feed what you’ll get served up.
But not just to buy–the complex algorithmic AI (artificial intelligence) now can inform who you’ll become and actions you’ll take offline. This unchecked power is what is now informing legislation like Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act.
What This Means for You
As a conscious entrepreneur, please know that your online social media habits affect you subconsciously now when you’re offline.
This is simply what is so. There’s no finger to point or blame. The challenge is complex.
In a world of big data, while unintended, it’s a bit like the story Frankenstein. A scientist creates artificial intelligence called Frankenstein that turns into a beast or monster that takes on a life of its own, where the scientist can no longer control it.
Like Frankenstein, initially software engineers were simply doing their job innovating features like the “like button” or “infinite scroll” who had a good intention to help the world. But the AI now has a life of its own collecting so much data each nanosecond, that it’s hard to stop.
The part to pay attention to as a business owner is the unintended consequence of shifting your offline behavior by what you consume online, based on what avatar (customer identity) the AI predicts you’ll fit based on many factors such as where you live, and all your other click behaviors.
As Chamath Palihapitiya, one of the former VP of Growth at Facebook in the movie acknowledges in a later interview:
In 2017, many of us have grappled with the unintended consequences of the products we’ve built. Social media platforms in particular have been used and abused in ways that we, their architects, never imagined. Much blame has been thrown and guilt felt, but the important thing is what we as an industry do now to ensure that our impact on society continues to be a positive one.
How do we stay “conscious” online?
5 Best Practices to Stay Conscious on Social Media
So now what?
1. Vote with your click.
Stay conscious online. The less you mindlessly scroll and instead cautiously and carefully choose where you click next, you give yourself a shot of having more control of what gets fed to you online.
2. Get in and get out. Be clear what you want to accomplish then close the platform. Set a timer if you think you’ll be tempted to stick around longer. Do NOT get stuck in endless scrolling.
For example, I have an objective when I go on social media for my business. I plan my post, publish and schedule the post, then only answer comments in my community that I am to nurture. I am picky with which notifications I choose to respond to.
3. Filter your friends and content. Who you friend or not, what posts you like or not, what ads you click on or not, all impact your social media feed and “recommended” ads or posts.
I only friend people after checking out their profile. If they are life-giving, positive, inspirational–I friend them. If they frequently share and spread posts that are political, religious, or anything that enrages one way or the other, I ignore or delete the request.
If you see a sponsored ad, you have the option to stop seeing ads by clicking the little X in the corner. When I experimented with clicking on them (out of curiosity of how other entrepreneurs did their ads) I noticed I got more of them through retargeting. This is where once you click and ad, Facebook “retargets” you by serving up that same ad or a variation. When I clicked out of all sponsored ads in my feed, I get no ads in my feed.
4. Don’t watch or share news from social media. Find your news from unbiased journalism. The Social Dilemma shares how misinformation, or fake news, spreads six times faster than real news.
Watch out for seemingly credible looking posts with visual charts or nice graphics citing statistics that incite anger or rage.
Pause and ask yourself: Does this post show both sides of an issue? Am I feeling angry and want to share this? Do I feel more empathic and loving and expansive now?
If you’re left with a “them vs us”, realize your subconscious just got hacked. You’ll be easily manipulated to then spread and share that likely fake news designed to evoke anger and rage.
Instead, find a credible journal newsworthy source that shares all sides of a topic like AllSides which gives readers a cross-partisan view of world events.
Good journalism leaves you with empathy for all sides and not a black and white right or wrong, “them versus us.” Take back control of your brain and emotions.
5. Call or text a friend directly to connect. Use technology to love people, not divide them. If chatting publicly on social media isn’t going to be interpreted in the best light possible–pick up the phone. Have a real conversation with the opposite side.
Before the pandemic, I avoided talking politics or religion with friends and colleagues. Since the pandemic began, I’ve had over seven hard conversations with friends and colleagues who voted differently than me. I simply listened to understand. Learn more about How to Transform Fear Into Love here.
How I’m shifting my Business Practice
In addition to following the practices above, I really had to rethink my online marketing strategy. Namely, with Facebook–where I’ve invested countless hours building a business Facebook group called the Community of Conscious Entrepreneurs.
Personally, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I was someone who posted daily and frequently on FB “for business” so others could “know, like, and trust me” using it to document life’s milestones, wins, big news, and to feel good.
I justified any concerns about privacy, censoring, or addiction by using the platform “for good” with live yoga classes, sharing music, food recipes and more.
Not gonna lie–the dopamine rush of getting 150 likes in a few hours for a post felt great. In those moments, my concerns of “comparisitus” (comparing my life to others and feeling bad when I was struggling), getting addicted to getting more likes, or living my offline life thinking “How will I capture and post this event on FB?” didn’t matter.
But after watching the Social Dilemma, when you’re up against a team of brilliant engineers who day in and day are contributing to building and creating a super complex, ultrasmart AI logarithm that might even know you better than yourself, I had to get clear on WHY I’m using social media beyond “for business exposure.”
My real why is to build a community of conscious entrepreneurs who use business as force for good and measure the quadruple bottom line of people, planet, profit, and presence.
For the last 2 years, I searched for a platform where I don’t have to worry about privacy or worry about my every click behavior being tracked to sell me ads or feed me down a rabbit hole that enrages me offline.
I’m migrating my Facebook group to Mighty Network, a platform that’s actually private regarding your click behavior, delivers your posts to everyone in the group (versus the algorithm dictating it), and isn’t designed to addict or hack your subconscious. This platform is an actual tool that’s non-addicting. You choose when you use the tool, versus feeling withdrawals if you go offline and having to check your phone.
Tristan Harris, the filmmaker of the Social Dilemma and Founder of The Center for Humane technology–provides other ways to be more conscious online.
- Turn off notifications
- Remove toxic apps and download helpful apps designed to support your mental wellness
- Eliminate outrage from your diet. Unfollow outrage driven Twitter and Facebook groups or sharply polarized media (from both sides!)
- Follow voices you disagree with.
- Be compassionate. Social media profits off hate and anger because it generates more engagement. Let’s fight back with compassion.
- Pause → Remember there’s a real person behind the screen: Don’t be so quick to unfollow or publicly argue with someone who posts something you disagree with
- Be compassionate → Try a private message to ask why they feel that way, with genuine curiosity and a desire to understand
- Set boundaries with your devices.
- Fully disconnect 1 day per week.
- Cultivate gratitude by using technology to share your love.
- Support your local journalism.
Check out their full list here: https://www.humanetech.com/take-control
In Summary
By learning to stay conscious online, you’ll better navigate and discern the noise out there to tune in to what really matters for you in your life. The Center for Humane Technology summarizes it best:
As long as social media companies profit from addiction, depression, and division, our society will continue to be at risk. Imagine a world built on human technology that operates for the common good, strengthening our capacity to tackle our biggest global challenges.
Vote with your click. Go offline once a week. Connect to people, to nature, and to yourself. Each moment you choose a healthy choice, the world is little brighter from your choice. Choose wisely. Our society depends on it.
*****
Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity’s consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company.
As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery.
If you’re interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.
How has Covid-19 changed your behaviors from 1 year ago?
Can you believe it’s been about 1 year since the pandemic began?
Here are questions you can ask yourself that allows your brain to focus on leveraging this “unprecedented” event towards your own vision and goals:
1. What learnings are you grateful for?
2. What became possible or what new dreams became accelerated?
3. What new habits have you developed you that want to keep no matter what?
4. What business practices will you continue or drop moving forward no matter what happens in the future?
Learnings
Our family has a very clear sense of what’s enough in how much time we spend Pre-pandemic was always overbooked and not enough while 6-9 months into the pandemic was way too much. Experiencing what a healthy boundary looks like.
I’ve experienced the rhythm of slowing down from my ultra fast life. I know how to slow down and cycle with natural rhythms versus always on go like before.
While things have sped back up, I know how critical the slow down is to the power back up–allowing way more clarity on what to simplify, discontinue, or start.
Our family revamped our home space. My son’s bedroom moved to the family/guest room while we created a new classroom/second office. That move worked wonders in personal space.
We built a covered deck and an outdoor “kid cave” under the deck that was warm enough for those long winter, rainy days to still get outdoor playdates in.
Finally became much more of a chef creating vegan creme brulee dishes, sourdough bread from scratch, and more. Cooking is not only healthier for me (ate out way more before) but gives me a zoom break and physical way to be present. Let’s my brain rest.
Dreams
For us, our dream to be 100% geographically free and snowbird 1-3 months became possible. My husband Leo’s job is now 100% remote for good and we were glad to say goodbye to a daily 3 hour commute on a ferry to Seattle!
This allowed us to take major experiments remote working from his home on Stuart island for 3 weeks. Locally, boat rides and nature excursions can give as much a sense of adventure as travel while still being in community outside.
We also tested which places we’d snowbird to 1-2 months a year to recently taking a 16 day road trip to visit the southwest while remote working for 3 of those days. When countries open up again, we’re looking at taking 1-3 months to live abroad in South Korea to learn Korean and do an upcoming book tour.
Habits
While painful initially and still a roller coaster, testing every possible scenario of homeschooling with two full time working parents–we’ve finally found a homeschool rhythm that works.
Both parents are way more available on weekends to be present with Eli our son, so we’re starting a Saturday-Tuesday, 1-2 focused hours, with long afternoon, outdoor playdates. Then we naturally do life school all the hour times of the day (cooking, chores, allowance, etc).
It’s been humbling to “unschool” ourselves off the typical school system and realize how learning is happening *every moment.* Life is school.
Business
I’ve learned how to market 100% online than rely solely on in person and speaking events–but integrate movement, dance, and creative experiences to prevent zoom fatigue and isolation.
While I’ve determined to stay 100% virtual (enjoying a national clientele), I can still integrate in person events when that’s available as needed.
Summary
If you take time to reflect on these questions, you might surprise yourself with how resilient you’ve become.
I would *love* to hear your thoughts and reflections in the comments!
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*****
Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity’s consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company.
As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery.
If you’re interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.
How to Easily Identify and Fix Your Biggest Energy Leaks
Recently spoke at the Seattle Chamber’s NW Elevate Series on “The 5 Secrets to Reclaim Your Energy!”
I was so surprised with the response to this poll: What is your current energy level?
The poll results?
Not one attendee answered they have high levels of energy.
Not a single person.
Yet nearly half of the sixty attendees responded they had low energy and struggled to maintain energy through the day. It hit me hard how much folks are struggling.
Check out the results below:
I figured others are feeling this way as well.
Here’s quick way to identify the source of your energy drains using the ENERGY POWER checklist below.
The more energy leaks plugged, the more you can feel energized.
The intention of this checklist exercise is to bring awareness to what is happening.
Simply read the question. Tune in to your heart. Then answer authentically. Don’t worry about scoring, or getting as my yes’s as possible. Simply answer as honestly as possible.
At the end, pick 1-3 areas you can start shifting today.
ENERGY POWER CHECKLIST
BODY POWER:
1. Are you getting quality sleep?
2. Does what you eat make your body sing?
3. Is your core and gut area warm throughout the day?
4. Do you regularly move your body (let’s not even address exercise yet!) throughout the day?
HEART POWER:
1. Do you smile throughout the day for no reason?
2. Do you feel light and expansive (versus heavy, tight, constricted) in your chest?
3. Do you know how to name the emotion of your feeling, focus on your heart within, and breathe deeply?
4. Do you allow unwanted emotions like irritable, anger, sadness, anxiety, rage, embarrassment, disgust, judgement to energetically flow through you and pass?
MIND POWER:
1. Do you do one task at a time, fully present? Multi-tasking includes not just doing two things at once. It also includes doing successive actions in a row quickly with no break or switching rapidly back and forth between two tasks.
2. Are you able to relax and quiet your brain on demand in a moment?
3. Do you go offline completely at least one day a week to recharge?
4. Do you eat a meal sitting down, slowly and mindfully without doing anything else? (versus scarfing down leftovers in 5 minutes standing up before you run to the next meeting while listening to a podcast)
SOUL POWER:
1. Do you wake up happy?
2. If today was your last day to live, would you be ready to pass away?
3. Do you have no regrets?
4. Do you feel you’re fulfilling your highest potential in your day to day life?
All too often, the boundless energy reserves available as children get sucked up through layers of stress over the years, leaving us depleted like an empty cup.
Once your natural energy depletes, it’s like an empty bank account that you now have to borrow energy then from your body–accelerating your aging process.
Instead, by noticing and bringing awareness to these energy drains, you can consciously replenish and recharge yourself, feeling higher levels of energy in your day.
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Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity’s consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company.
As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25.
Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery.
If you’re interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.
How to Transform Fear into Love?
With so many global and national events happening each day while dealing with the pandemic, no matter what you believe, it’s become difficult to stay in a bubble without feeling the impact of what’s been happening lately.
In my work with business clients –they are already dealing with life stresses of caretaking elders, not seeing their family more regularly, or being triggered by the news and unable to focus at work.
This is causing higher levels of emotional stress than they are used to managing and looking for ways to stay grounded while also taking care of their well-being, growing their business, and taking a stand for what they believe in society will create a better future for all.
Let’s take the following situation – a family member voted differently in politics or doesn’t acknowledge or believe in the same reality as you. This divide can be healed by first going within to face and embrace your fears, then having tough conversations and creating your stand in the world.
But first, it starts with you.
This is the vast majority of work. Remember, no amount of “conflict resolution” or “communications” training will make a lasting difference unless you’re at peace with yourself, able to face, and even love your fear.
If you consider the world’s chaos on the outside is a reflection of the inner turmoil within–you’ll begin getting to the source of the chaos in our world today.
Let’s begin and make friends with fear.
Here’s an executive summary video version of this blog as well:
Step 1: Be Willing to Face Feeling the Fear
What is your relationship to fear?
Rather than thinking intellectually about it, let’s look to your body to tell you. Just like numbers don’t lie in a business, your body’s reactions don’t lie about your subconscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions on a matter that causes your reactions.
To understand your default narrative on fear, picture any current event, relationship, or daunting task in your business that brings up fear for you.
Then simply observe what first words, feelings, or body sensations popped in your head and write it down. Do the following exercise:
- What instant thoughts or phrases come to your mind? Fear is ______. Fill in the blank.
- Where in your body do you feel the fear? Does it constrict your chest, get stuck in your throat, or make your gut churn? Do you get enraged, want to hide and run away, or do you get numb and freeze?
- What other memories arise from your past or from the future? What feelings arise from those past or future memories?
Don’t get lost in those memories and reactions. Do your best to simply notice how your body responds when you imagine this fear raising event, relationship, or daunting task.
Step 2: Allowing and Accepting the Fear
After you face the feeling of fear, you’ve almost already accomplished the next step of allowing fear. Allowing or accepting fear doesn’t mean you condone the fear or that you think the fear is ok or even good.
Allowing or accepting the fear is simply being with the fear, allowing it to exist, and accepting that it’s there at all. To do this, you must be neutral as you tap, observe, and watch yourself as if on the outside looking in.
Fear can even be reduced down to a particular set of feelings, thoughts, and body reactions; then humans labeled fear to describe that experience. Perhaps your heart races, your mouth goes dry, and you’re anxious, and your head says, “stop!” or get angry. That collective experience is now called fear.
Whatever version of fear you experience, take a deep breath. Take another deep breath and keep taking deep inhales and exhales as you continue being with fear, noticing your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations.
Step 3: Picture Fear Like a Little Monster
Picture fear like a little monster who just wants love.
Imagine you’re sitting at home when suddenly the little monster – Fear, shows up at your doorstep, knocking on the door. Seeing it’s the little monster – Fear, your initial reaction is to ignore the door knocking.
But fear keeps knocking louder. You say to the door, “Fear go away!” but the fear simply knocks more loudly and is getting angrier. The more you resist, the more fear starts banging loudly on your door, wildly shouting obscenities.
This is like what’s happening in our world. We cannot continue to ignore the fear that lives in the hearts of many in our country that may have different or opposing beliefs.
We must first be willing to face feeling the fear then allowing the fear.
If you continue to ignore, get angry at, or whatever other reaction in your unique response to fear is, the little monster will keep growing inside you until it rears its head and leaks out while you’re with a client, and something happens when you’re sitting at dinner with your family, or just walking outside.
Having the courage to feel the fear and be with it anyway by simply practicing feeling it and breathing through it to relax your body is something you should be proud of. Because you are building a muscle of handling fear constructively in a healthy manner.
If you’ve made it even this far, you are far ahead of the vast majority of humanity, which is SO worth celebrating. Take a break, and enjoy yourself, relax, and treat yourself.
You can hang out practicing just these steps for a while until some basic mastery is attained. Then you can move on to the next stage.
Step 4: Connecting to the Fear
Once you can see fear like a little monster who wants love, next you can connect to the fear. You can talk -much like a mom or dad would talk to a child throwing a tantrum and doesn’t know any better.
To connect to your fear, presence it again by imagining the situation, the person, or the challenge you face.
Breathe deeply as you notice your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations arise.
Once in a fairly neutral or calm state, now ask your fear “What’s your message to me?” or “What do you want to say to me?” Now your job is to listen.
It’s likely you’ll have lots of automatic responses from fear, saying some form of “Pay attention to me!”. Simply listen. You might also journal some notes.
Step 5: Thanking the Fear
Now that you’ve allowed fear to say it’s peace, it’s time for you to acknowledge the fear for the role it’s playing.
Whether that’s teaching you a skill you otherwise wouldn’t have to learn or building a muscle that needs building–you can ask questions like:
- How have you served me?
- What is your lesson and gift for me now?
- What do you need from me to take a healthy and constructive place in my life?
- What guidance do you want to give me? What do I need to embrace or let go of?
- What actions am I called to take? What does it specifically look like?
The beauty of questions is that your brain will then work hard to answer them. This will take critical thinking to truly inquire, explore, and listen to your inner wisdom’s responses to the fear.
Automatically when you inquire and explore a question, your brain eagerly wants to find an answer. You might have automatic answers which could be valid, and I invite you to wait patiently and listen. Take notes of what replies you receive.
Thank the fear for being in your life.
Step 6: Embracing the Fear
Now that you’ve connected with the fear, got an understanding of where fear was coming from, and perhaps learned some new perspective or insight that wouldn’t’ have been possible had you not cared to ask questions and been courageous to face the fear in the first place, you’re now ready for the next step.
Embracing fear is very much like giving fear a hug. Now that the fear isn’t a threat (in essence, you didn’t treat fear with more fear to feed it), give the fear some love. You will often find love is MUCH more powerful than fear and has the power to transmute the fear into love.
You might discover that fear was just the monster clothing on the outside, and on the inside, fear at the core is light and love. It’s as if by loving fear, you are reintegrating, or unifying the yin and the yang, the polar opposites into one piece–true unity of dichotomies.
You can make a motion of hugging yourself or any other gesture and/or sound of relief once you’ve integrated and come to terms with the fear in a very loving, positive way.
Anytime that particular flavor of fear comes up, you can simply smile and say: “oh hey! I love you –there’s nothing to be scared of.” Then embrace the fear into your heart of shining love–not in order to get rid of, exterminate, and disappear the fear. That’s just a disguised way of fighting the fear through fake love.
You must authentically in your heart FEEL an expansive sense of openness to truly embrace fear. You’ll know if it’s fake love by simply checking your heart rate.
If your breath is shallow, or you feel constricted or contracted energetically in anyway –fake love. But if you feel relaxed, expansive, triggerless, and open–then you’ve just had a moment of enlightenment.
Now What? Apply these Steps in Real Life
The game from here on out is to continue more instances of embracing fears as they come up. As you get more fascicle and powerful in building up your muscles, you’ll likely be able to handle larger fears.
This simply means fears may never go away–they simply have less charge, less grip as you continue building your ability to embrace fear.
Journal your progress. Make a note each time fear comes up. Run through this sequence of being willing to face feeling the fear, allowing, accepting, connecting, thinking, and embracing the fear. In the beginning, it will take effort, and once you practice this, it can get easier and faster.
Know that your fears will just get bigger, so the game is to have big enough fears worth having. When fear is a word like “the,” and you have the power to choose how you’ll be with fear or not–that’s the point of this conversation.
Many times, you may choose to react to the fear with more fear. That’s ok. Give yourself grace and space to continue making mistakes and practice. The act of giving yourself grace IS doing this entire sequence in a moment. It doesn’t have to be hard. It’s not a linear path. It’s simply bringing an awareness instantly into the moment.
What’s Possible: The Future is In Your Hands
Right now, we face unprecedented times. While you make a tune out that overused word, it’s accurate and worth tuning back in.
Consider these times are an opportunity, a spiritual test of radical, unconditional love.
By being willing to face feeling the fear, allowing and accepting fear, connecting to and thanking the fear, and embracing the fear is essentially practicing unconditional love.
Embodying unconditional love requires a life of mastery, and it can be easy, instantaneous, in a moment.
Making peace with yourself and others begins with you. From there, you can take the next step of interacting with others where fear may come up and practicing the same sequence.
Imagine a world where instead of fighting fear, resisting fear, ignoring, or running away from fear–we look forward to uncomfortable conversations. We know it’s the only way to truly unite as humanity on this planet, making war a notion of the past as we create a more peaceful society. It all starts with you.
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Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders–who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day–prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy.
Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com.
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If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE.
Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation.
How to Find Peace in Times of Chaos as Conscious Business Leader?
Humanity is at a tipping point in the transition from the digital information age to the transformation impact age.
Are you feeling trapped in the rat race at work or the hustle and grind of business? Do you feel like a machine trying to work harder and smarter yet still exhausted?
Consider what worked two years ago, let alone last year, is now becoming obsolete.
How do you navigate the noise, the chaos, of the day-to-day?
Defining Chaos
Chaos has many forms.
On a personal level, chaos might look like dealing with separation from loved ones, an unexpected diagnosis, or a sudden job loss.
On a day to day level, chaos might look like trying to get on zoom to present while your child suddenly throws a temper tantrum or is joyfully making loud bizarre noises. Or texting 2 people at once while cooking a meal, listening to a podcast. Or scrolling through your social media feeds, being triggered by the news, reactions, or comments.
Chaos can also be internal. Chronic headaches or body pain, feeling underlying anxiety, or the mind that never shuts up right before bed.
Sometimes the chaos can be good things in life. Like the growth in your business you can’t keep up with, so many passion projects you’re overcommitted to, or being addicted to achievement fulfilling vision board after vision board, yet still missing peace of mind.
On a personal level, chaos might look like dealing with separation from loved ones, an unexpected diagnosis, or a sudden job loss.
On a day to day level, chaos might look like trying to get on zoom to present while your child suddenly throws a temper tantrum or is joyfully making loud bizarre noises. Or texting 2 people at once while cooking a meal, listening to a podcast. Or scrolling through your social media feeds, being triggered by the news, reactions, or comments.
Chaos can also be internal. Chronic headaches or body pain, feeling underlying anxiety, or the mind that never shuts up right before bed.
Sometimes the chaos can be good things in life. Like the growth in your business you can’t keep up with, so many passion projects you’re overcommitted to, or being addicted to achievement fulfilling vision board after vision board, yet still missing peace of mind.
What if you could create moments of peace in your day to day chaos?
I became obsessed with this question, pouring over every and peace training, becoming a taekwondo student, yoga instructor, Energy Master, and business coach helping high achieving conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders in burnout focus their energy as they grow their business.
I’ve gleaned and distilled down all these energy practices into a few I want to share with you to easily access peace in your chaos.
You’ll get to practice and experience these interactive exercises, directly together, right there in your chair.
I’ve gleaned and distilled down all these energy practices into a few I want to share with you to easily access peace in your chaos.
You’ll get to practice and experience these interactive exercises, directly together, right there in your chair.
Before doing so, first, you have to accept the chaos.
What is your relationship to chaos?
Are you someone who:
Accepting chaos means surrendering the illusion of control–that life has always been uncertain and always will be.
Once you accept the chaos, you can allow the chaos. This looks like facing fears, pain, or other unwanted emotions like anger, loneliness, disappointment, or embarrassment.
When you don’t face your fears, there’s an impact to your body. Suppressed or overly active emotions can impact your organs’ ability to function. For example, if you get angry, it floods your body with stress hormones, increases your blood pressure, which makes your liver work harder to filter higher volumes of blood.
Are you someone who:
- Analyzes or figures out why the chaos is even there;
- Tries to fix the chaos;
- Is determined to overcome the chaos;
- Avoids the chaos by looking the other way or saying “not my problem”, or
- Resists the chaos by any combination of the above?
Accepting chaos means surrendering the illusion of control–that life has always been uncertain and always will be.
Once you accept the chaos, you can allow the chaos. This looks like facing fears, pain, or other unwanted emotions like anger, loneliness, disappointment, or embarrassment.
When you don’t face your fears, there’s an impact to your body. Suppressed or overly active emotions can impact your organs’ ability to function. For example, if you get angry, it floods your body with stress hormones, increases your blood pressure, which makes your liver work harder to filter higher volumes of blood.
Practice One: Allowing the chaos
Now, let’s directly practice allowing chaos by facing unwanted emotions or physical pain using a method introduced to me by a Mind-Body Coach Uma Sangvhi, and former Stanford neuroscience researcher.
Ready?
I invite you to close your eyes, scan your body from your head to your toes.
1. Where do you notice tension, pain, or unwanted emotions?
2. Ask yourself, where is that pain located? What color? What shape? What texture? What movement?
3. Now go to another part of your body that feels good or neutral, or you can imagine one of your happiest memories. How does it feel? Warm, tingly?
4. Saturate every cell in your body with that energy of that feeling.
5. Now go back to the pain. Ask yourself, what color is the pain? What shape? What texture? What movement?
6. Repeat this exercise going between what feels good in your body and letting that feeling wash through your body and noticing your fear or pain observing it’s shape, texture, and movement.
Now you can open your eyes…
When I do this exercise with clients, many people often experience shifting the shape or color, sometimes disappearing it all together. Some are even able to transmute the painful body sensation or unwanted emotion into a healing energy.
The result of getting rid of that energy is less important than you being able to practice observing or watching your fears rather than react to them.
Don’t focus on the result. Focus on simply being with what is.
Ready?
I invite you to close your eyes, scan your body from your head to your toes.
1. Where do you notice tension, pain, or unwanted emotions?
2. Ask yourself, where is that pain located? What color? What shape? What texture? What movement?
3. Now go to another part of your body that feels good or neutral, or you can imagine one of your happiest memories. How does it feel? Warm, tingly?
4. Saturate every cell in your body with that energy of that feeling.
5. Now go back to the pain. Ask yourself, what color is the pain? What shape? What texture? What movement?
6. Repeat this exercise going between what feels good in your body and letting that feeling wash through your body and noticing your fear or pain observing it’s shape, texture, and movement.
Now you can open your eyes…
When I do this exercise with clients, many people often experience shifting the shape or color, sometimes disappearing it all together. Some are even able to transmute the painful body sensation or unwanted emotion into a healing energy.
The result of getting rid of that energy is less important than you being able to practice observing or watching your fears rather than react to them.
Don’t focus on the result. Focus on simply being with what is.
Practice Two: Moving Meditations
Now that you’ve accepted the chaos allowed the chaos, now you can move through the chaos.
The moving meditations are based on the work of Ilchi Lee. He met with the UN Ambassador of El Salvador, a small Central American nation plagued by civil war, poverty, and gang violence.
Ilchi Lee took that training into schools, training teachers to share these moving meditations with their students. There was such success in kids creating peace in extremely chaotic situations–it spread to other schools that seven years later, one four four schools from El Salvador’s entire education system uses these moving meditations.
Inspired, I created a local scholarship fund through our local Kitsap Community Foundation, providing this training to teachers to lead these one-minute meditations in class with students.
Imagine our next generation of leaders learning to access peace in any chaos–transforming communities one school at a time!
Let’s experience a couple of these one-minute moving meditations now.
The moving meditations are based on the work of Ilchi Lee. He met with the UN Ambassador of El Salvador, a small Central American nation plagued by civil war, poverty, and gang violence.
Ilchi Lee took that training into schools, training teachers to share these moving meditations with their students. There was such success in kids creating peace in extremely chaotic situations–it spread to other schools that seven years later, one four four schools from El Salvador’s entire education system uses these moving meditations.
Inspired, I created a local scholarship fund through our local Kitsap Community Foundation, providing this training to teachers to lead these one-minute meditations in class with students.
Imagine our next generation of leaders learning to access peace in any chaos–transforming communities one school at a time!
Let’s experience a couple of these one-minute moving meditations now.
One Minute Exercises
Take out both hands as fists, knuckles facing out. Take out your thumb pointing outside on the one hand. And pinky, on the other hand. Now switch. Your brain’s right and left lobes are integrating, relaxing your brain, helping you focus. This is a favorite for kids before taking tests and can be used anytime you face chaos.
Now, we’re going to exercise our intestines! Place both thumbs on your belly button, palms flat on your belly, just resting. Then suck your belly button towards your spine like a sit-up crunch. Breathe normally.
This exercise is called intestine exercises because it’s literally exercising your intestinal organ. We often exercise our muscles, how often do we exercise our organs?
*Your gut is called your second brain because it operates independently from your brain and spinal cord, containing 3-5x more neurons than in your brain. Over 90% of the serotonin, often dubbed the “happiness hormone,” is created in your gut while only 3% is produced in your brain.
The water up fire down principle is about creating a balanced energy circulation. Often we have hot heads from thinking a lot (fire energy) while our guts are stiff and cold (water energy). By bringing “the fire” energy in your head down to your core and bringing cool “water-energy” up to have a calm, cool head-this allows for proper energy flow and circulation that can support your immune system as you raise your internal temperature by 1 degree.
You can do this in a check out line, driving, or sitting at your desk anytime. Can you feel the heat?
Great work–now you can rest.
Moving Meditations throughout your day brings your awareness from outside yourself into your body to generate peace in the chaos.
Now that you’ve accepted allowed, moved, your body is now primed to receive and listen within.
Now, we’re going to exercise our intestines! Place both thumbs on your belly button, palms flat on your belly, just resting. Then suck your belly button towards your spine like a sit-up crunch. Breathe normally.
This exercise is called intestine exercises because it’s literally exercising your intestinal organ. We often exercise our muscles, how often do we exercise our organs?
*Your gut is called your second brain because it operates independently from your brain and spinal cord, containing 3-5x more neurons than in your brain. Over 90% of the serotonin, often dubbed the “happiness hormone,” is created in your gut while only 3% is produced in your brain.
The water up fire down principle is about creating a balanced energy circulation. Often we have hot heads from thinking a lot (fire energy) while our guts are stiff and cold (water energy). By bringing “the fire” energy in your head down to your core and bringing cool “water-energy” up to have a calm, cool head-this allows for proper energy flow and circulation that can support your immune system as you raise your internal temperature by 1 degree.
You can do this in a check out line, driving, or sitting at your desk anytime. Can you feel the heat?
Great work–now you can rest.
Moving Meditations throughout your day brings your awareness from outside yourself into your body to generate peace in the chaos.
Now that you’ve accepted allowed, moved, your body is now primed to receive and listen within.
Listen Within
Listening within your body’s wisdom requires being aware of and feeling energy.
Energy comes in the form of light, sound, and vibration. Energy comprises the building blocks of all matter, from the stars to the oceans and mountains, to your body, to microscopic atoms invisible to the naked eye. Energy includes your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.
Now let’s experience how energy feels.
Shake your hands like you’re screwing a light bulb in. Great! Now clap 10x. Rub your hands together to create friction and heat. Now slap your hands up and down like this.
Pause and feel the sensation of your hands. Do you feel a tingly sensation or heat or magnetic sense? That’s energy.
Imagine a big bright energy ball between your hands. Focus your awareness on the space between your hands. Where your mind goes, energy flows. Don’t forget to breathe.
As you inhale [breathe in] expand your energy ball bigger, as you exhale, contract the ball imagine the ball growing brighter. Inhale…and exhale….take a last big inhale…and on the exhale
Bring the energy ball into your heart. Imagine and feel that energy permeating to the rest of your body.
Now ask your heart: What is my message today?
Listen within. Whatever message you get is perfect. You can now open your eyes.
And you can let that message ground you for your day in any chaos.
You can give that energy ball anywhere -your brain, core, or to someone else.
You can ask yourself, “What’s my message for today” to not just your heart; you can ask any organ, or pain, and listen within to generate peace anytime in any chaos.
In conclusion
So far you’ve accepted the chaos, allowed it, moved with it, which has set the foundation to be able to more easily listen within and generate peace -accessing an abundant, limitless source of peace no matter what chaos hits.
If you forget all those principles, just smile–that’s the shortcut to generate peace! [There’s lots of science behind the benefits of smiling.]
A colleague of mine is a Neurologist Physician working in the ICU, who is often present at the time of passing for patients in his line of work. When asked…” What have you learned during this time?” he said, “Well, there are good deaths and bad deaths . . .
Bad deaths are when a family refuses to speak to each other and burdens the staff with having to communicate separately with 3 family members for updates. At the time of passing, the family misses the final moments of their loved one’s life.
On the other hand, good deaths are when the final moment is approaching; I’m holding up the phone on speaker with the patient and their loved one on the phone. The family often says the same kinds of final words, “I love you. Don’t worry; we’ve taken care of that thing for you. You know- that one thing you always wanted me to do? I did it. Thank you, I love you.
At the time of passing, there’s so much love, so the entire staff feels it. And it ripples out to the rest of the whole hospital. At that moment of death, there is so much peace.”
Death is likely one of the biggest types of chaos a human will face.
If you were to create peace in the chaos of death, who would you be right now?
As humans, before our precious time on planet earth passes, each moment, you have an opportunity to shine your light as bright as possible, unleashing your brilliance.
Our chaotic world could use some more peace.
You’ve now experienced choosing to generate peace in any chaos.
When you choose to become a source of peace for our world, world peace is possible.
What will you choose?
Watch the full TEDxSIL talk HERE on Finding Peace in Times of Chaos and let me know in the YouTube comments what opens up for you.
***
Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders–who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day–prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com.***
If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation.
Resource: *Microbes Help Produce Serotonin in Gut, April 09, 2015, <https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/microbes-help-produce-serotonin-gut-46495#:~:text=Although%20serotonin%20is%20well%20known,made%20in%20the%20digestive%20tract.>
